Introduction
Here is the sixth “old yarn” on albertnet (following in the footsteps of “The Cinelli Jumpsuit,” “Bike Crash on Golden Gate Bridge,” “The Enemy Coach,” “The Brash Newb,” and most recently “The Day I Learned Bicycle Gear Shifting”). This is the kind of story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.
[Picture by ChapGPT, as my daughter was too busy to create original art by press time]
The In-Flight Voyeur – ca. 1998
I used to travel a lot on business. Once a month I flew to Columbus, Ohio and there was no direct flight. Often I’d get a late flight home, after a big expense-account dinner, and I’d be too deep in a calorie coma, not to mention blown from the week of meetings, to feel like reading. Back then you were lucky if you were offered an in-flight movie, which was whatever they happened to be showing on the crappy old tube TVs mounted from the ceiling, every ten or twelve feet, above the aisle. They charged to rent earbuds and (being the world’s cheapest man even then) I seldom sprung for them. So I’d be bored to say the least.
For the first six months or so of this business travel routine I’d dig out my Bellcore T3POS manual, which reliably put me to sleep—usually for the duration of the flight—until it (eventually, unfortunately) started to make sense, and its magic ended. This was before commercial airlines offered electrical outlets (much less WiFi), and before laptops had reliable batteries; mine was usually spent pretty early. Bose noise-canceling headphones hadn’t come out yet either, so listening to music was out of the question for anyone who valued his eardrums. Sometimes there was just nothing to do on these late flights but sit and stew.
During one such flight I was bored out of my mind and happened to notice, while rooting through my seatback pocket, that the passenger sitting in front of me using his laptop had a novel email interface I’d not seen before. I was so bored I took an interest and peered through the crack between the seats at his screen. (I know … pretty pathetic to be that bored.) I wouldn’t have looked for very long, but the email this guy was writing was pretty racy. I assumed it was a guy, anyway, because his email was to a woman, and was of a romantic nature. I’ll quote him as best I can from memory; obviously this is approximate but true to the nature of what I was reading.
“I’ll be there the week after next and would love to pick you up and take you out to a nice dinner. Then we can go for an evening walk before heading back to my hotel,” he typed, and then, after a pause, added, “where I will make passionate love to you.” After typing this he paused again, the cursor on his screen flashing as if waiting for the next detail of this steamy proposed liaison. But then he backspaced over the last bit and rewrote it: “Then we can go for an evening walk before heading back to my hotel, where we can get some drinks and see where the night leads us.” Another long pause. He backspaced again and revised his proposal to “get a drink and have a nice chat.” Dude was losing his nerve already and hadn’t even met up with the woman yet! I suppressed a chuckle.
He wordsmithed the email some more, adding some logistical details, and I was just starting to get bored when he filed the draft in a folder with the name of the eastern bloc country where his potential paramour presumably lived. To my surprise, he had at least half a dozen such folders, each representing a different eastern European destination … Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, etc. He opened another of these folders, which had two or three email drafts in it, opened one of the drafts, and pasted in a passage he’d copied from his previous email, evidently being fairly pleased with it. He continued to work away like this, seeding at least eight or ten romantic rendezvous to coincide with his next two or three business trips to the region. Presumably he’d been getting leads from some kind of Internet mail-order bride service. I was shaking my head, kind of amazed at the cynicism and audacity of this guy—what an operator!—when suddenly he shifted in his seat and closed his laptop rather abruptly. I quickly slumped back into my seat, pulse racing … had he detected me snooping on this very private activity?
I grabbed my book, opened it, and hid behind it, turning a page to increase the illusion that I was just reading away, minding my own business. I could just imagine this guy craning his neck to give me stink-eye. I kept an eye on his flight attendant call button, fearing it might light up and bong, indicating he was about to lodge a complaint. I wasn’t too worried since of course he wouldn’t want to draw attention to what he was doing, but you never know. Eventually enough time had passed that I stopped worrying, managed to engage with my book (my sudden burst of adrenaline surely helping), and lost myself to the pleasure of reading until the end of the flight.
When the plane landed, taxied, and was parked at the gate, the lights came up and everyone started their rush to retrieve their stuff from the overhead bins and deplane. Now I would get a good look at the business travel casanova. I pictured him as someone needing to cut corners romantically, which meant he was probably not a real looker. Sure enough, he had a pot-belly, nerdy glasses, and that kind of unfortunately hybrid scalp where, to compensate for where he was bald, he grew the rest of his hair out too long. I made sure only to risk a quick glance at him, in case he had caught me snooping and was sore about it. We busied ourselves, alongside our fellow passengers, with the tedious process of hauling down our roller bags and waiting, tired and hot and restless, for the cabin doors to finally open.
Now the ardent emailer was facing me, and to my absolute shock he suddenly sucker-punched me right in the groin! I am not kidding! His fist flew out, right at my crotch, and it’s a miracle I was able to instinctively jerk back swiftly enough to avoid the hit. As you can imagine, I was absolutely astonished at the attack; relieved to have escaped injury; and in full fight-or-flight mode should the dude make another move. Obviously I’m just using “fight-or-flight” as an expression here … there could be no flight, commercial air travel being obviously one of the most hemmed-in situations modern man finds himself in.
A lot flew through my mind in this moment. Obviously his attack was a bit over-the-top since all I’d really done was witness his untoward behavior, but I could grasp why physical retribution took the place of a verbal altercation that could embarrass him. What perplexed me was how he figured he could come out well in a combat situation, since I frankly towered above him. Beyond this practical matter, though, I had this strange sense that I kind of deserved this retribution, as my voyeurism was frankly a dick move. But of course I could only be this magnanimous because his punch had missed the mark. Above all else, I was simply bewildered by the entire situation.
But now it got even stranger: the guy started apologizing profusely. What the hell? A change of heart? Change of tactic? He was looking down and I followed suit, and now realized what had happened: his roller bag was totally top-heavy and unstable, and had tipped over the moment he set it on the floor. The handle was fully extended, and had been flying right at my crotch. When he reached out to grab it, he managed to catch it only when it was inches away. His hand, catching the top of the handle, had only seemed to form a fist.
My god, what a relief. Not only had he not attacked me, but the sincerity of his contrition made it pretty clear my voyeurism had gone undetected.
And so it was only out of a strange perversity that I responded to him by paraphrasing the rapper Ice T: “With the ladies, you’re not just a Don/ In fact you’re more like a Don Juan/ Pull ladies in bunches/ Break their hearts, you roll with the punches/ ‘Cause you’re like a hard core casanova/ Diss you once, girlfriend is over/ Write her off like a tax, no respect/ She ain’t down? Next.”
Naw, I didn’t really say that. I was just messing with you. But everything else in this post? One hundred percent true. It’s a weird world…
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