Two - Fight or Flight

Even before the plane levels off and the seatbelt sign dings off, the middle aged Chinese woman sitting next to me is socializing with her friends. She thinks nothing to lean across my "space" to hand a snack to a friend sitting in front of me.  Her voice is loud and it is hard for me to imagine her as a young woman. On my left is a large white man who looks to be in his mid fifties and his snoring slightly. The person in front of him as fully reclined his seat as has the person in front of me. I feel trapped, like a mouse must feel in a a glue trap. The thing is I want to pee. Need to pee. I've been holding it in for about two hours now -- the  flight sat on the runway for 90 minutes -- and my bladder is about to burst. I check the barf bag in the seat back to see if it has a waterproof lining. It does not. I wonder why they still stock these on planes, do people really get air sick anymore. I mean, this plane, a 747 seats something like 400 passengers and weights a gizillion pounds. I squeeze my legs together a bit and try to listen to the Chinese conversing all around me. Their language sounds nothing like my learning mp3s. I decide to practice and say to my ritalin staved Chinese neighbor, "ni hao" which means hello. She smiles and responds in perfect English "Hi, first time to China?". I take out the book I purchased specifically for the flight, Nicholas Spark's The Notebook. I'm a voracious reader but with my work schedule this past year and my life blowing up the way it did, I haven't touched a book. I am so excited to finally have time for a good read. I get 30 pages into and I am bored. At 50 pages anger sets in and I put the book down. I pick up the vomit bag, pull out my pen, and begin to write: > _Came home a little bit early last night, shed not a tear when turning out the light, no I don't hurt like I used too... _ And I was off filling up every inch of the puke bag and then the inside cover pages of that horrible book. I stopped just short of writing on the notes page of the in-flight magazine. The words coming out like the anger of a teenage girl, fast and furious and I must say amazingly connected. But, I have a confession. The first sentence is the beginning of a Kelly Willis song called Not Forgotten You. It's a trick I use when my anger compels me to write but said anger does not allow my brain to lay word on paper. I've been using this trick a lot lately. As I was tearing up the barf bag into small pieces the American man sitting next to me asked if everything was ok. I said yes, and that wasn't a lie because I felt much better now. He then asked if I had taken Jesus as my savior and I told him no I hadn't but that I had recently learned that Jesus has a pet cow -- a pet baby cow -- and I've been wondering if Jesus was really a Hindu. He said that wasn't funny and I said I wasn't trying to be funny and I could tell he was extremely angry and wanted to spit on me or maybe hit me. Instead, he took a deep breath, got up and walked towards the bathroom. I followed him. When he exited the restroom and saw me ready to enter he started to smile, thought better of it, and brushed past me. Maybe he was embarrassed about the stank he left behind. When I got back to my seat, I tried to step over the rotund American and accidentally stepped on his toe. How was I to know he had an ingrown toenail.  The next nine hours to Beijing were not a lot of fun. I was written out, the in flight movies were horrible and barely visible, and the food a cross between healthy choice and Alpo. The Chinese woman spoke to me from time to time at seemingly random intervals. It was like having a five minute conversation spread out over five hours. > Her: "What's your name?

Me: "Tim, you?"
Her: "Jessica. How long will you be in China?"
Me: "Don't know, it's open ended really. Do you live there?"

Then and hour would pass and she would pick up exactly where we left off. > Her: "I live in Beijing, in Shunyi. But I used to live in the Bay Area. 15 years."

Me: "Really, where about?"
Her: "Fremont. You know, a lot of Chinese in Fremont." Then another hour would pass. I eventually found out that she had a son at Cal, a Lexus, and uncanny insights into my personality. She told me many things about myself without the slightest prompting or the slightest accuracy, but with plenty of conviction. First, I should marry a good Jewish girl, open a small business, perhaps jewelry. I should respect Chinese people more. I should sell my American car and buy a Japanese car. I informed her that I wasn't Jewish but that I did have a dead ex Jewish wife and she was only sometimes good. That I don't own a car of any nationality. This information did not slow her down. I needed to eat heather, not the heavy food that Americans eat and that was why Americans are so fat. With an hour to go, the Jesus lover asked me why I was going to Beijing. I told him I was a writer and I was going to Beijing to write. He asked me if I had written anything he might had heard of. I told him I've never been published, that I have a bit of a problem with plot. And small technicalities like grammar. And tense. He told me there are lots of unpublished writers in China. He was acting like he was telling a joke only he could understand. When I told him I planned to support myself by teaching English, he laughed out load and said "lots of English teachers too". After we touched down, the Jesus freak gave me his business card. "Bob Small, SVP, Bank of America". He told me to call him once I get settled or if I just needed someone to talk to. He seemed genuine and totally unpretentious. Maybe he was a decent guy. Then I saw his bible wrapped in his sports section and I thought even if he was decent guy, he wasn't my kind of decent. In any case, it was time to step off this plane and step into Beijing.