The Passengers in Row 22 Were Having Sex
BY LAURA JOYCE-HUBBARD
and 22C didn’t want a three-way so the flight attendant moved him to the back. The pilot had to call it in, called it passengers having relations because radios are the church of aviation—thou shalt not laugh— and he wasn’t sure how else to say it without busting up. Naturally, the report was followed by cops. Come with me, they said, because cops don’t mind their diction. Then the chime went off in the cockpit again because a family wouldn’t put their masks on. This was fall 2021. I wanted to tell them, Look: do you know how close you are to oblivion here? I say flying is safe because it pays our bills but I don’t pilot planes anymore, only the man I met while flying and then married does. The fact is, you’re in a metal tube going hundreds of miles an hour and at any moment: distraction or atmospheric contraction. That same flight, the windshield lit up with electrical arcs and broke right there mid-flight, a crack running through the glass like a river. Did you know you can fly with cracked glass? The sortie before that: the weather fouled, another go-around, diversion to an alternate airport. A woman came running back down the jetway after deplaning. Is everything okay? the pilot asked. “My baby,” she said. “I forgot my baby.” I’ll tell you, I miss the days my love complained of miniature horses brought on as Emotional Support Animals, the way their hooves click-clocked down the center aisle. Yesterday, it felt like things might be arcing toward chickens again. I wouldn’t mind that. A live one made it through TSA in a carry-on. Muffled clucking on climb-out gave it away. Sometimes I think about the man who boarded with two Great Danes and claimed the bulkhead. You have to admire putting that amount of need on display. As if to say, I am hurting these two beasts’ worth. The trio couldn’t fit in the one seat and the seatmate wanted nothing to do with the dogs, he wouldn’t budge. Desperate for the metric of an on-time departure, my love ran to the concourse and came back with hot burritos as a bribe. The plane took off with the dogs sprawled at the owner’s feet; the seatmate dipping into salsa three rows back. Hell, I’d even take the old guy asking me decades ago if I was, in fact, the pilot. Standing at the threshold of the Boeing cockpit, about to fly him to Paris, I said Yes. Why, Yes, I am. But I knew what went unsaid. How he never had a woman so undeniably in charge of his life. Today, I didn’t know that while my love was up in the air, the entire instrument approach system—the green line that shows him where they’re barreling—the whole thing went blank as night. If you had any idea how close you were—
