would draw attention to me. The only thing worse than being stared at by Hot Guy is being stared at by the hundreds of people milling around the terminal.
At nineteen, I’ve endured two lifetimes’ worth of humiliation.
The pointing. The laughing. The endless jokes.
Not happening.
I finish my water and hunch into my seat, sinking as low as possible without landing on the floor. I stick my book in front of my nose. But I keep sneaking glances. This is how it’s been lately. Like I’m a thirteen-year-old boy hitting puberty. I picture guys naked or in various states of undress—how they’d taste, how they’d feel, and how they’d touch me. (Apparently I’m a gay thirteen-year-old boy with the bow-chicka wow-wow porno instrumental as the soundtrack to my life.) I play it safe, though, and stick to unattainable guys. Too risky to be seen with that girl who did that thing; popular guys avoid me. So I fantasize. No danger. No unwanted incidents. In my mind I’m always fearless, never making a fool of myself. I rule my fantasies like a sex goddess.
In real life, not so much.
Unfortunately, these daydreams inhibit normal brain function. So when a static-filled voice announces the final boarding call for flight 744 to New Zealand, I stop picturing Hot Guy soaping himself in the shower, and I hurry to the gate instead of the bathroom.
* * *
Stage two of the have-to-pee stages: A gentle pressure on the abdomen indicates the bladder is full. With a few key position shifts, the feeling subsides.
Stage two occurs about half an hour into the flight, in the narrow seat where I can’t build a barrier against the prying neighbor sandwiched to my right. Even though I’m angled toward the window with my book firmly in my face, the nice lady beside me is not deterred. “Sure will be a long flight,” she says, a slight hum in her voice. “I haven’t seen my daughter in, well, a long while. A long, long while. And you, dear? Off to visit family?”
I glance over to make sure she’s talking to me and not the large, sweaty guy in the aisle seat. A hopeful face beams back, eyes crinkled behind her reading glasses. “No,” I mumble and smile shyly.
“Vacation then?” she pushes.
I fight the urge to turn away and stick in my earbuds. That’s what the old me would do. Too terrified to say or do the wrong thing and effectively embarrass myself in the myriad of ways it seems possible, I’ve lived the life of a self-proclaimed hermit. Not any more. I’m heading to New Zealand. This girl is fearless. This girl talks to the way-too-nice lady on the plane.
Empowered, I turn and say, “I’m going backpacking.”
Three whole words of fearless.
The nice lady lifts her reading glasses and sets them atop her gray wooly curls. The lines in her dark skin sink deeper as she smiles knowingly. “Going to find yourself, are you?”
My harsh laugh blurts out. “Yeah, no. More like reinvent.” I reach above me to stop the nozzle from blasting recycled air in my face, but the thing is broken. No matter which way I twist it, a thick stream hits my cheek. My personal TV is defunct, too, and my seat won’t recline. If I could handle a confrontation, this girl would be getting a free meal.
Big, huge, fat if.
The nice lady bundles her hands on her lap and tilts her shoulders toward me. “Now, I may be overstepping, but my granddaughter, my Jasmine, she’s about your age. And let me tell you, Jasmine had it rough in high school. Did she ever.” The lady shakes her head with a tsk, tsk, tsk. “But I will share with you the words of the great Martin Luther King, Jr. The words I’d repeat to my Jasmine: ‘Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.’” The lady squeezes my shoulder affectionately. She repositions the reading glasses on her head, tucks away her in-flight magazine, and closes her eyes.
When I’m able to stop picturing Hot Guy from the terminal riding me, I return to my perch at the window, the endless landscape of blue on blue stretching to infinity. The air above blows flyaway hairs across my face. Sighing, I brush them away.
As nice as the sentiment is, Dr. King didn’t have the pleasure