8 Hours to Reykjavik

The man sitting next to me at the airport bar was extremely drunk.

"Are you going to Iceland, too?" He asked me, as I threw my leather bag under the stool and climbed to the bar. I ordered another whiskey and cola and nodded in response.

He laughed, his bald head and light eyes red with drink and fatigue. Clearly this man wasn’t going anywhere– most likely he had watched his son or daughter off on a flight to somewhere, and afterwards had settled nicely into the airport bar rather than return to his lonely post-divorce life. I vaguely wondered if his drinking had anything to do with his crumbled marriage.

"You're like the fif’ person who's sat there in that seat thass going to Iceland." He slurred, grinning and leaning back as he sipped his domestic beer.

"Ya, well that's because there's a plane leaving for Iceland in an hour." A large woman interjected, sitting between us. The Drunk Bald Man laughed and tried to make a joke, which caused the fat woman to turn away, disgusted. I smiled and turned back to my whiskey, grateful for the interruption from the red faced old man.

I looked at my watch nervously, with the ire of a man who has been drinking heavily and has a plane to Iceland to catch. Devouring my whiskey, I politely slid my empty glass across the bar in order to get the bartender’s attention. She quickly walked past me towards the kitchen, her face taut with stress.

A middle aged woman with dyed blonde hair, the bartender had probably been serving aviophobia whiskeys and jet lag bloody marys to strangers for years, always waking up to the same alarm clock and squeezing into the same tight black pants which had probably made her ass look good long before I was born. She had the eyes of a woman whom had been watching others move and carry on, shuffling onto aluminum aircraft which would carry them to destinations across the planet, to cities who’s names she could not even pronounce. She had the eyes of a woman who had been watching others selfishly carry on to infinite possibilities, while she silently and sadly returned to her VCR to watch taped reruns of her favorite sitcoms which had been offtheair for nearly a decade.

I caught her eye, and ordered a large Guiness beer. The extremely Drunk Bald Man was talking politics with the fat lady next to me. He was insisting that the moronic and blundering policies of the current conservative administration had no connection to the northern liberal yet patriotic states from which he himself spawned. The fat woman was intensely listening now, and every so often providing him with the general views which she assumed all Icelandic-Americans to possess, nodding her head in agreement whenever the Drunk Bald Man described his vigor for killing “terrorists and other bad guys”.

Getting sick of the show at the bar, I realized that I needed to piss. Glancing at my watch again, I gulped down my Guiness and tossed a twenty dollar bill onto the bar. I grabbed my leather bag from under the stool as the fat woman smiled at me and wished me a pleasant flight. I bid her ado, just as the aging blonde bar tender who’s ass had no business in those black tight pants told the Bald Drunk Man that he was cut off; the bartender had a responsibility as a pusher of booze. And she was certain that the airlines would not appreciate the Drunk Bald Man getting onto a plane intoxicated. Confirming what I suspected, he insisted that he was not getting onto a plane. No matter, the bartender retorted, he was cut off. Knowing that he could not win this battle, he nodded in agreement, saying that he understood, probably numb to these kind of matriarchal beat downs from years of his ex-wife.

Exiting the airport bar, I glanced around the terminal with the confidence of a man carrying a leather bag whom has been drinking heavily for several hours. I noticed a tall, blonde Nordic looking girl, approximately my age, sitting on a bench. She was listening to an I-Pod, her tight jeans ending slightly above her white Nike sneakers. I smiled, vaguely thinking of globalization and world order, but quickly turned my thoughts to finding a toilet. I needed to piss.

Walking pass the beautiful Nordic Girl, I followed the signs which pointed to the bathrooms. The bathroom was tiled and dirty, paper towels were crumpled into balls and littered the floor, no where near the waste basket. Rows of urinals lined the wall, directly behind it were toilets in stalls. I finished up and exited, passed the Nordic Girl still listening to her music and headed towards the gate. Iceland Air 9pm departure to Reykjavik was now boarding.



Climbing aboard the aircraft, I clutched my leather bag and looked around confidently. Eyes full of intent like a polar bear on the hunt, I could already taste the new existence which awaited me overseas. In an attempt to break the stalemate that was my life, I had stuffed a leather bag full of clothes, pens, and notebooks in the hopes of Leaving-It-All-Behind. A vile commute to the disgusting confines of a modern recession-proof house of bargains and blood sucking madness, I was forced to seek some kind of sanity on foreign soil. Despite still being on the tarmac, it felt as though I was already gone.

Glaring at all that I passed on my way to seat 23C, it seemed that the mostly fat Americans which had dominated the airport lounge had given away to thin, tall, beautiful Aryans and Scandinavians. The stewardess held out Icelandic newspapers and periodicals, all written in a language which I could not understand. I grabbed the current issue of Morgunblaðið, which seemed to be the Iceland Times, in the hopes of blending in better.

Staggering to my seat, I found myself sitting in the aisle. To my right was a fat American couple. They said they were visiting their son in Stockholm. He went to school there. I muttered something in French, hoping that it would confuse them and cause them to leave me alone for the remainder of the flight. I was drunk and charged up, but I had embraced this journey in order to leave these exact kind of slobs behind, not enjoy a 8 hour flight with them. I was determined to make this some kind of holy pilgrimage, but far more tangible and hopeful than any stampede towards Mecca or Vatican City.

I stowed my leather bag under my seat and browsed through the Icelandic newspaper. I focused on the sports, deciding that this would be my best chance to learn the language. Turning to my left, across the eighteen inch aisle, the beautiful blonde Nordic Girl sat down. I gazed at her drunkenly, admiring the shape of her face, watching her settle into her seat. Her shirt clung high on her back and I noticed her light green underwear sticking out from the back of her jeans. She put on her music headphones when she turned and met my stare. She smiled, her blue eyes sparkling like the Drunk Bald Man’s head, but then she turned away quickly, seemingly embarrassed.

The flight took off without any delay, and as the 12 ton aluminum transportation tube, equipped with wings and engines, somehow managed to leave the earth and enter its skies, all eyes aboard turned to the small windows to watch the planet fall behind. In the darkness, the lights of a distant human city sparkled and glowed, until all that was below were miles of water, an oceanic ecosystem on the verge of collapse, and all the turmoil and dismay from which I was running.

Lost in my rambling thoughts and drunken delusions, I was not unpleasantly jarred back to reality by a stewardess. She was shuffling down the aisle, pestering passengers if they cared for drinks. Deciding that I probably could use something nutritious, I ordered the cliche Bloody Mary, speaking in French in order to better blend in. Handing her a ten dollar bill, the stewardess, a large burly woman who resembled an upright hippopotamus, looked at me quizzically, then reluctantly handed me a tiny bottle of Grey Goose and a can of tomato juice.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her in a horrible French accent, “I’m a responsible person.” I turned to the Nordic Girl, hoping she would be enjoying fine inhibition lowering spirits much like I was, but noticed that she was asleep. She had taken her Nike shoes off, and her pink socked feet were tucked under her as beauty slept at 35,000 feet.

Just as well, I thought. Feeling recharged by the alcohol, I pulled out some scrap paper and my pen. I began jarring down notes and thoughts, in no particular chronology, sense or system. Waking me again from my ramblings and delusions, the fat American couple next to me. The wife sitting next to me was trying to motion something to me, attempting to communicate with me in hand signals still under the impression that I didn’t understand English.

“Huh– what?” I asked, no longer caring about the European facade. No need to impress these used car salesman anyway.

“It’s my husband,” she said apologetically. “He needs to get out. He needs to use the bathroom.”

I climbed out of my seat and into the aisle. I watched as the woman climbed out next, then finally her large counterpart. He shuffled down towards the bathrooms as his wife climbed back into her seat, still apologizing to me. I sat back down, pulled my tray table back down and began writing furiously once again.

The commotion had awoken the Nordic Girl. I could feel her looking at my from out of the corner of my eye as I wrote on my scraps of paper. I turned towards her and she quickly looked away. I sipped my drink again, turning the bottle of vodka upside down and tapping the bottom, attempting to Jew the last bit of alcohol from the tiny container. Sighing, I looked up and fiddled with the button which turned on the fan. I picked up my pen and looked distractedly at my writing.

“Hey?” I felt a tap on my shoulder. The beautiful Nordic Girl was reaching across the aisle.

“You want some real paper?” She asked me, motioning to a large notebook she had with her. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Here,” she said, quickly ripping out several sheets. She handed them to me. I thanked her, and we began to converse.

“What is that, that you’re drinking there?” She asked me, in heavily accented English. I was still holding my cocktail.

“It’s vodka and tomato.” I said. The hum of the plane engines gave our conversation a natural vibration, almost a steady rhythm. It drowned out our words to any of the surrounding passengers, including the fat Americans.

“Ah, I wanted one too when I saw you drinking some. But I’m not old enough in America to drink alcohol. In Europe, yes, but not old enough for America.” She laughed.

Almost dreamlike, the Nordic Girl extended her small hand across the eighteen inches of aisle.

“My name is Natascha. What is yours?”

“********” I replied.

“It is great to meet you, ********.” Natascha smiled at me. “Why do you travel to Iceland?”

“I’m not staying in Iceland. I’m going to Copenhagen. My brother lives there.” I replied.

“Oh...Copenhagen. Very beautiful city there.”

“That’s what I hear. Why were you in Boston?” I tilted back and pounded the rest of my tiny cocktail.

“I was there for school. A exchange. I live with a family for three months there. A very nice family, I liked them very much, but many times we don’t...understand each other.” She laughed.

I nodded. “How about the city? How did you like the city of Boston?”

She thought for a moment, then wrinkled her nose. “It’s a nice city. Not so big, it’s pretty small. Dirty. Gangsta.”

I laughed.

“What is that there? I saw you writing earlier when I got on the plane?” She motioned to my scraps of paper. “Are you a writer?”

I nodded. Born of that curse, embued with the haunting burden that what I thought actually mattered, and worse of all, that I was somehow responsible for portraying and passing on any insights unto the modern man who was more interested in awful entertaining electronic dross than enlightenment.

This seemed to impress Natascha very much. She squealed with delight and smiled, thinking that I was some type of celebrity.

“Do you have...whatsitcalled...a manager?” She asked, hopefully.

I laughed. “No, no...hell no....I write, and hope that someone reads it. If anyone can still read anymore.” I added bitterly, thinking of the people whom I associated with back home. I saw Thomas and Bighead, waiting tables at a bar all day then slowly drinking themselves to death at another bar after work. Where I was from, the caged birds didn’t sing, but instead drunkenly wept as they swerve home.

She laughed, probably not understanding what I had said. She asked me about the movie they were showing on the plane, some new flick about a pregnant teenage girl in an anonymous American town, hoping that she can raise the child sans money but on pure grit and love. Definitely made in the movie factory somewhere in Hollywood which mass produced seemingly every movie since 1994, almost always starring a worn out looking American, imbuing the rest of us with notions of hope and desire for the seemingly always attainable dreams of fame and fortune. If not today, then if we all worked hard, with heads down, we’d all certainly be movie stars tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, then....

Instead, I sighed and looked to my right, and responded with dismay. Taking the hint, she began to tell me about her home town in Sweden.

“Sounds beautiful.” I said, imagining a place where all the women looked like Natascha, the men stood tall and strong, war was unknown, and everyone lived happily and long.

After a while, we ran out of things to talk about, so she went back to the movie and I went back to my writing. Starring across the laps of the fat Americans, I gazed out the window, across miles of oceanic darkness. The drone of the engines and the length of the flight seemed to put everyone into a dream, as everything was very muffled and slow. I vaguely wondered what time it was as it seemed late, but realized that this high above the ground, traveling at 600 miles per hour, drunk, I really didn’t give a shit about the time nor did it particularly matter.

Coming out of my daze, I quickly put together a poem. Looking across the aisle, I handed it to Natascha. She was watching the movie, so I had to lightly tap her arm to get her attention. She turned and gave me a friendly look, then took the notebook paper with my words scrawled on them:


“Dreaming across an aisle
When 60 centimeters is a mile
The higher we fly, the deeper we breathe
The darker the sky, over land and sea
And at our highest peak,
You and I shall meet”

She read it once, then again. She turned to me, grinning wide, eyes bright as her smile. She half stood, half leaned, and quickly crossed the aisle and hugged me. Her hair brushed against my face, and the sweet smell of her blonde strands graced my nostrils. She sat back down in her chair, and leaned forward, talking fast and thanking me. Her demeanor had completely changed once again, and it seemed that not only did she want to touch me, but that she wanted to devour me.

“Sir..’scuse me...” I felt a shove to my right. I turned away from the beautiful Natascha towards the fat Americans. The woman was looking at me, her dismal face nervous and embarrassed.

“My husband...he needs to use the bathroom again. I’m terribly sorry.” She said apologetically.

“Of course.” I replied.

I climbed out of my seat and into the aisle. Natascha held whatever praise she had for me, and looked on as we all paraded out once again.

I stood in the aisle, seven miles high, looking out upon the top of all those heads, most of them speaking a language I could never possibly understand, watching a fat, bald, American with a bad prostate lunge past other passengers in the narrow aisles of the ship. As I headed towards an unlikely destination, what better way, I thought to myself, than to prepare oneself by devouring large amounts of booze then next attempting to copulate with a sweet, young, Swede who is under the impression that you’re Francis Scott Fitzgerald back for one last hooray aboard Iceland Air?

Taking my seat again, Natascha thanked me again and again, then handed me the sheet back. She insisted that I sign it, so she could show her family that a real, live author had written something just for her. Embarrassed, I quickly scrawled “Nikolas Cassidy” across the bottom, in handwriting that looked like it was traveling at high speeds very intoxicated. I tried to coast Natascha into taking a walk around the plane with me, so we could peer out all the little port windows and try to gather as much of the view as possible. She seemed dangerously worried about disturbing the other passengers, however I insisted that they wouldn’t mind. After a few minutes I gave up, and she returned to her movie. I starred into the Arthur C. Clarke novel for a bit, then I passed out.

Regards, Esortnom