Please Don't Stop Touching Me
A fantasy connection at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic
I pass through security at LAX’s Terminal B for the first time, the terminal for international flights. I forget to remove my laptop from my backpack and wait only a couple of minutes before being able to retrieve my items from their second scan.
Excitedly, I make my way to the gate and settle in for the next few hours.
Trying to save some money, I had a friend drop me off at the airport early in the morning on her way to work, but my voyage to Thessaloniki, Greece, doesn’t kick off until the afternoon.
I have plenty of time to get some overdue grading done before boarding.
Every time I board an airplane, I think about death. Every. Time.
But I keep getting on planes because the world is out there, waiting for me to see it. And I won’t let intrusive thoughts of Final Destination proportions keep me from exploring and enjoying this life.
I used to have to take a Xanax and a glass of wine, or two, prior to boarding a plane. Then I gradually titrated myself off the Xanax and just went for the alcohol. Then I got really good at meditating on take-off and landing. Now, I look out the window as I feel the earth peel away beneath me.
Still, flying over the Atlantic puts a sense of “I need to accept the possibility of death” in my head in such a way that I start envisioning how the world will go on without me if I perish in the open sea. Provided I don’t perish in the sky first.
“Please come over,” I had shamelessly begged an ex-boyfriend prior to my departure. “Sunday is our last chance before I’m gonzo.” By this I meant to Greece, but I was accepting the possibility that it could be for good. And I wanted to get laid one last time, just in case.
He didn’t come over. In fact, he didn’t answer when I text, “I’ll miss you. I miss you.”
He doesn’t miss me. This is why he doesn’t answer such shameless text messages from me. I have to remind myself of this. I’m the one who is desperate.
As if my body is aware that my child-bearing years are dwindling, I’ve felt an insatiable—and truly, this word is apt because no one has been able to sate it—hunger. It keeps me up at night. It keeps me eye-balling dads in Target and wondering why suddenly all of the hot men have come out to play, but not with me.
When I board the plane, I follow an older French man who sits in the aisle seat of the same row I’ll be in. He pauses after putting his bag in the overhead bin and gestures for me to take my place next to the window. Before he sits, a tall—very tall—good looking man nods towards the middle seat.
Excellent.
He speaks English when the flight attendant asks him what he wants to drink, but it’s different. Not his first language, I guess. His voice is deep, and his eyes are a bright cerulean.
I accidentally elbow him while stumbling with my seatbelt.
“I’m sorry!” I say, placing my palm on his muscular back.
He turns and smiles at me. Oh, those eyes!
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The flight is nearly eleven hours long. As the sun sets and passengers start to nod off, I try to get comfortable. The man next to me leans back in a calm pose, his head back against the pillow, his hands clasped on his lap.
I take careful notice of the lack of a wedding ring.
His long legs are splayed out to either side, his thigh against mine. His shoulder overlaps my shoulder. I watch him breathe slow steady breaths. His beard is squared off, not quite the way that I’ve seen a man wear a beard before.
His skin is so smooth. I watch his closed eyelids rest gently over those magnets and wonder if he’s younger than me. But then I take a look at his neck and notice the lines and the texture of his skin. Perhaps he’s young, but he’s weathered.
I nestle in, my thigh against his thigh, my arm pinned under his arm.
Please don’t stop touching me.
I fantasize about leaning my head on his shoulder and wonder if I can get away with it if I pretend to be sleeping. But that’s impossible because I can hardly sit still for sixty seconds. My bones ache. My muscles ache. I’ve been sitting for far too long.
When I shift in my seat, he draws his arms in, and his hands cover his crotch. I hope it’s because he was turned on by our silent touching and needs to hide it.
I place my hand gently on his shoulder and he blinks at me. “Are you going out?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He and the French gentleman stand so I can escape. The tall man walks ahead of me to the restroom where we wait in a line that has gathered. Here, standing behind him, I can see that he’s probably a good foot taller than me. My head would rest just on his breastbone, if he’d let it.
He starts massaging the small of his back and reveals the top of his boxers along with some bright, tight skin wrapped around well-defined muscles. From this vantage point, I can make out the perfect roundness of his ass that was hidden before. I find myself instinctively biting my lip as I notice the definition on the back of his arms and imagine wrapping my arms around him from behind.
When we return to our seats, he pulls a book out of his bag from the overhead bin. It’s a book about Lebanon Dialect.
“Are you going to Lebanon?” I ask him, seizing a window of opportunity to create conversation beyond, “Here’s your pillow and blanket.”
“Oh, no,” he replies. “My wife is half Lebanese, so I try to learn a little.”
Ugh. Boo. “Oh, that makes sense!” I say with forced enthusiasm. “That’s thoughtful of you.”
“It also helps tire out my mind so I can sleep. I like to work my mind into exhaustion.” He flips through the book to a saved space.
Well, that explains the Sudoku I saw him playing. But not the lack of a ring.
Then I remember that the last guy I talked to who was married also didn’t wear a ring.
I halt the fantasies of slowly and subtly touching his fingers with mine or looking him in his eyes and asking how tall he really is. He might answer in something other than feet and inches anyway and then I’ll look stupid because I won’t know what it means without asking Siri, which I can’t do with my phone in airplane mode anyway.
When we exit the aircraft, he marches up the stairs to border patrol while everyone else takes the escalator. Inspired, I follow him up the stairs.
Thessaloniki
The second connecting flight from Frankfurt to Thessaloniki goes completely differently.
Again, I have the window seat while two gentleman sit beside me. They both appear older than me, but the cuter of the two is on the aisle and wearing a wedding ring. The other is older, not wearing a wedding ring, and endures me dripping water on him from a leaky bottle.
I apologize profusely.
When I have to get up to use the restroom, neither of them move, so I’m forced to awkwardly half climb, half slither around their knees, which isn’t anywhere near a smooth maneuver.
I feel redeemed, however, when I meet the driver taking me to my Villa after we land. His name is Agathoklis and he’s got gorgeous curly hair, kind eyes, and speaks in broken English. He is surprised to hear I have two children. He is only 26. This bit of an ego stroke always feels nice.
But not as nice as being touched.
After dinner, which is delicious, a group of us writers go to Greek Night where we join a couple teaching the crowd how to perform traditional Greek dance moves. We hold hands or place our hands on one another’s shoulders as we move together.
I can’t keep the smile from my face. It isn’t the touch I thought I needed. But it’s touch, rhythmic and nurturing.
When I finally make it back to the Villa and bed down, I feel satiated. Perhaps it is the lack of sleep, the seventeen hours in the air, or the activity of the day, but I no longer feel hungry.
It may have been the touch from dancing with strangers or the teasing fantasies of the handsome married man on the first long stretch. But I think it’s connection and the feeling of experiencing life as something new and adventurous.
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