Homeland Security
There’s a lot of things you can’t do at airports – joke about bombs, for example, or brag about the sly way you snuck the porcelain howitzer past the metal detector. One thing you can do in abundance, though, is watch and observe people.
Airports are a distinctly middle-class haunt, like Robinsons-May. There are no homeless people at the boarding gates, no crudely hand-lettered sign asking for spare change as you avert your eyes, crossing onto the jetway; neither are there quadrillionaires spooking the waiting area, wearily reshouldering the free duffel bag from the bank or glowering through a magazine. (Though I was on a plane with Ben Stein once. He was in first class, and neither glowering nor begging.)
It can be a game:
When the guy I’d pegged as an Unreal Tournament maven and devoted Slashdotter sighed, pulled up his dark socks above his worn sneakers and started leafing through Wired, I was vindicated.
It was surprisingly easy to pair up yin and yang, to assign arbitrary partnerships to passengers and thus construct balance in the universe. The doughy English professor with the stuffed notebook, abandoned hair and herringbone coat fit like a lumpy socket into the too-thin, too-blonde, too-tan Mexico veteran one-upping her fellow travelers (“Did you have those people trying to sell you stuff everywhere? Yeah? We didn’t.” “Well, sure we did – until we got back to our resort. So isolated. No cell phone service, no ATM – nothing.”
The loping, dew-chinned guy yanged into the yin of what may have been either a pregnant midget or an obese child.
The off-duty skycap offered me half an orange. I refused, though I was starving. A second later I wondered if maybe I made a mistake. A look clouded his eyes, like I’d offended him. I’d soon learn that his culture was enough different from mine that it was a real possibility.
Him: “I’m from Fiji Islands.”
He went on to tell me, in an accent that was just short of incomprehensible although his fluency was excellent, all about starting out as a flight attendant, moving all over and finally settling in L.A. “For my kids’ education. My son is a doctor, now, in Vancouver. My daughter is a senior at UCLA. She skipped a grade.”
He then goes on to tell me about his two wives. Apparently in Fiji you can have up to four.
“Two wives, eh?” I say. “Do they know about one another?”
“They are sisters,” he says.
Seems that he married a girl – his first wife – and she got pregnant. (Perhaps the pregnancy led to the marriage; his accent meant I got about every fourth word.) As per the culture, she went to stay with her parents during her pregnancy, and he was visiting her every weekend. The 50-mile trek to see her began to take its toll.
So by the time my friend’s kid was born, he was smitten with his wife’s 16-year-old sister. If he left his wife, since she had a child she wouldn't be beating suitors away with a stick, and thus would have to live, husbandless, with parents or family.
So, in a brave show of manliness and responsibility, he eloped to America with the 16-year-old.
He laughed. “You got to do it, you know? What am I gonna do? She’s pregnant, you know, I hadn’t had sex for so long.”
The wife, in shame, lived with his brother. I think the brother may have eventually married her too, or else one of her other sisters. “He said he wants to marry her, but I said you don’t want that, you know?” His brother and his wife didn’t visit him in America. It was only after he went back to Fiji for his father-in-law’s funeral that they decided it would be okay to visit.
He described his other brother, who was a good thirty years older than him and who lived in Australia. The brother had eight kids. I got the impression that Fijian women pop babies like L.A. women pop pills.
He still owns property in Fiji. He was a landowner, a farmer, a padròn. When his kids finish their education, he says, he’ll go back to Fiji and live like a king. For now, he works three jobs to put his daughter through college, refusing her offers to work and help support herself. “Just go to school,” he tells her.
Now, he says, his sibling wives go shopping together in L.A.
Observing people:
Her: “I travel a lot, so I’m really good at trying not to talk to people.”
The guy that’s picturing her naked: “Yeah?”
Her: “The most exciting thing I saw was Tom Skerritt on a plane once. He was old.”
Him: “Heh, cool.”
His eyes flick to her breasts when she turns her head. He’s trying to be genial.
She leans back, reaching for the railing. Misses it. Slowly tumbles backwards over her suitcase. He offers his hand. She doesn’t take it.
Her: “So, which would you rather do, act or write? Or produce?”
Someone, anyone in L.A.: “So, what do you do?”
Anyone else: “I’m an actor.”/“I’m a writer.”
Me: “Hearing those words makes me want to kick you in the head. I don’t know why. But best of luck.”
From now on:
Anyone: “So, what do you do?”
Me: “I’m an embalmer.”
Anyone: “Really?”
Me: “I take things, pump out their blood and prop them up, stiff and well-dressed, for you to file by and admire. No, wait – I’m in advertising.”
Airports are a distinctly middle-class haunt, like Robinsons-May. There are no homeless people at the boarding gates, no crudely hand-lettered sign asking for spare change as you avert your eyes, crossing onto the jetway; neither are there quadrillionaires spooking the waiting area, wearily reshouldering the free duffel bag from the bank or glowering through a magazine. (Though I was on a plane with Ben Stein once. He was in first class, and neither glowering nor begging.)
It can be a game:
When the guy I’d pegged as an Unreal Tournament maven and devoted Slashdotter sighed, pulled up his dark socks above his worn sneakers and started leafing through Wired, I was vindicated.
It was surprisingly easy to pair up yin and yang, to assign arbitrary partnerships to passengers and thus construct balance in the universe. The doughy English professor with the stuffed notebook, abandoned hair and herringbone coat fit like a lumpy socket into the too-thin, too-blonde, too-tan Mexico veteran one-upping her fellow travelers (“Did you have those people trying to sell you stuff everywhere? Yeah? We didn’t.” “Well, sure we did – until we got back to our resort. So isolated. No cell phone service, no ATM – nothing.”
The loping, dew-chinned guy yanged into the yin of what may have been either a pregnant midget or an obese child.
The off-duty skycap offered me half an orange. I refused, though I was starving. A second later I wondered if maybe I made a mistake. A look clouded his eyes, like I’d offended him. I’d soon learn that his culture was enough different from mine that it was a real possibility.
Him: “I’m from Fiji Islands.”
He went on to tell me, in an accent that was just short of incomprehensible although his fluency was excellent, all about starting out as a flight attendant, moving all over and finally settling in L.A. “For my kids’ education. My son is a doctor, now, in Vancouver. My daughter is a senior at UCLA. She skipped a grade.”
He then goes on to tell me about his two wives. Apparently in Fiji you can have up to four.
“Two wives, eh?” I say. “Do they know about one another?”
“They are sisters,” he says.
Seems that he married a girl – his first wife – and she got pregnant. (Perhaps the pregnancy led to the marriage; his accent meant I got about every fourth word.) As per the culture, she went to stay with her parents during her pregnancy, and he was visiting her every weekend. The 50-mile trek to see her began to take its toll.
So by the time my friend’s kid was born, he was smitten with his wife’s 16-year-old sister. If he left his wife, since she had a child she wouldn't be beating suitors away with a stick, and thus would have to live, husbandless, with parents or family.
So, in a brave show of manliness and responsibility, he eloped to America with the 16-year-old.
He laughed. “You got to do it, you know? What am I gonna do? She’s pregnant, you know, I hadn’t had sex for so long.”
The wife, in shame, lived with his brother. I think the brother may have eventually married her too, or else one of her other sisters. “He said he wants to marry her, but I said you don’t want that, you know?” His brother and his wife didn’t visit him in America. It was only after he went back to Fiji for his father-in-law’s funeral that they decided it would be okay to visit.
He described his other brother, who was a good thirty years older than him and who lived in Australia. The brother had eight kids. I got the impression that Fijian women pop babies like L.A. women pop pills.
He still owns property in Fiji. He was a landowner, a farmer, a padròn. When his kids finish their education, he says, he’ll go back to Fiji and live like a king. For now, he works three jobs to put his daughter through college, refusing her offers to work and help support herself. “Just go to school,” he tells her.
Now, he says, his sibling wives go shopping together in L.A.
Observing people:
Her: “I travel a lot, so I’m really good at trying not to talk to people.”
The guy that’s picturing her naked: “Yeah?”
Her: “The most exciting thing I saw was Tom Skerritt on a plane once. He was old.”
Him: “Heh, cool.”
His eyes flick to her breasts when she turns her head. He’s trying to be genial.
She leans back, reaching for the railing. Misses it. Slowly tumbles backwards over her suitcase. He offers his hand. She doesn’t take it.
Her: “So, which would you rather do, act or write? Or produce?”
Someone, anyone in L.A.: “So, what do you do?”
Anyone else: “I’m an actor.”/“I’m a writer.”
Me: “Hearing those words makes me want to kick you in the head. I don’t know why. But best of luck.”
From now on:
Anyone: “So, what do you do?”
Me: “I’m an embalmer.”
Anyone: “Really?”
Me: “I take things, pump out their blood and prop them up, stiff and well-dressed, for you to file by and admire. No, wait – I’m in advertising.”
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