drunk and flying high

He was a heavyset man, with narrow eyes and slurred speech. His voice climbed to altitude when he spoke, buoyant with the lightness of overwrought inflection and performance, and it was hard to imagine that he was not like this all the time.

Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson Airport is a Megalodon of an airport, a mammoth creature so expansive (and so imbued with a sleek brand of menace) that future generations will struggle to imagine its existence. It is a picture of distinctly American vastness, boasting what must be more than a hundred restaurants and bars, a great deal of which serve alcohol. This man who boarded my airplane without a single personal item, who pulled himself down the aisle to the last row using his sweaty palms and people's seatbacks as a makeshift winch system, did not seem to have skipped a single one.

Like any good drunk, he announced himself. This plane goes all the way to the back, he had said with just a little too much self-satisfaction, lurching between rows 27 and 28. He was one of the last arrivals to Delta steerage - it was easy to imagine how he had spent his afternoon while the rest of us boarded - and he knew how to make an entrance. His too-tight black sweater with the little rainbow in the center bobbed up and down like a candy apple being dipped and he plopped down hard, testing the structural strength of the A320.

Airplanes have become domestic conflict zones during COVID and Americans are eager for the thrill of battle. The man was hardly halfway through his first protest to the flight attendant - why should his mask have to cover both his mouth and his nose? - and the woman sitting in the seat next to mine was already filming. He's drunk, she whispered to me, as if his darting eyes and total absence of volume control were symptoms of an airplane taxiing phobia. He's drunk, she whispered, and even though her mask covered both nose and mouth, I could see the smile.

The flight attendants are tired. They do not say it out loud but it is implicit in the bend in their backs and in their drastically diminished capacity for patience. They have been tired for two years now, probably much longer. The mask slips off his nose and you can see the mental calculus inside their heads; heads that have already been carried today atop weary shoulders from Wichita to Fort Lauderdale and now up to Atlanta. Is it worth it, they ask no one in particular. Is it worth the trouble of returning to the gate, of inevitably being subjected to abuse, of falling into a foreign bed with blacklight splotches thirty minutes later than hoped? Or is self-subjugation simply the simpler path, the less resistant path? Then his mask slips a third time, he tells them he doesn't understand what the fucking problem is when they request again that he lift it up, and it becomes very worth the trouble indeed.

It is a cliche to refer to an airplane as a thin metal tube and yet when you are trapped in one, there is no other way to describe it. You develop tunnel vision and claustrophobia; you discover religion as you clasp your hands together and pray to something more mighty than yourself that the expulsion be smooth and painless. This metal tube is so thin, you think to yourself. How are they going to be able to fit two cops in the aisle? How will they be able to pull him out? When the enforcement force that is dispatched is not a police presence but instead a singular middle-aged woman whose languid approach to conflict resolution manages to render the flight attendants vivacious, you find yourself awed by how much of the outcome of this situation hinges on the drunkard's willingness to cooperate. What happens next is up to him. He could go quietly or he could throw a fit, become abrasive, thrash violently. Either way, he will never fly Delta again.

Fortunately, he is a rather gentle drunk, even if he is conspicuously unchagrined. After a prolonged, incomprehensible attempt to clear his name, it is clear that the game is up. Desperately, he beseeches his seatmates to stand up for him and yet the only standing for him that they do is to allow easier access to the aisle. He is a young man, probably no older than I. Maybe younger. I look for fear in his eyes and do not see any. How odd, I think. Fear is the overriding emotion I feel when I imagine being forcibly returned to Hartfield-Jackson International Airport.

Those of us in rows 26-33, close enough to have tracked this situation as it developed from somewhat amusing to very amusing to a little concerning to predictably inconveniencing, understand all the context as the man is perp-walked out of the aircraft. He ambles past the disapproving stare of the pilot, lifts a clenched fist as he turns the corner onto the jetway - solidarity, assholes of the world! - and is gone. It is a tightly written narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Those of us unwilling to shell out on Economy Plus experienced all three acts. Everyone else just lost half an hour of their Sunday evening without knowing why. Extra leg room isn't worth that.

The plane finally takes off and the in-flight entertainment pales in comparison to what was offered on the tarmac. The sun is setting and all the lights on the plane have been extinguished. I have a collection of short stories on my lap and I would like to read some of them before this shuttle lands but to do so, I'd have to turn on the overhead light. I look down the body of the thin metal tube before me: not a single light is on. I decide against illumination and watch a movie without volume instead. I'd hate to be a bother.