I am going to the desert, via air, from Dallas. I parked extra far away, so if I break my foot I can really savor it. I figure I’ll break it going down the broken waterslide at the hotel. One must plan these things ahead.
The American God of Bedhead and Fashionable Scumminess and his no-commitment partner Karen stumbled, hungover, up to the gate, carrying two extremely well-groomed long-hair Cavalier King Charles spaniels, yapping and pulling at their leashes. The God sauntered up to the ticketing counter, apparently to make arrangements for the dogs, but actually just to get a feel for whether he could complain and get better seats or maybe a free bottle of bottom-shelf swill. I see him plotting, but I am not inclined to understand him or this situation he is creating.
They are going to LA, because nothing beautiful that goes to the desert I seek comes back beautiful, and they know this. It is etched in the soulless eyes of every poor fool going to or scrabbling back from the burning west. The cruelty of the airline’s cramming my gate beside the voluptuous LA gate is not to be easily forgiven, by either gaggle.
The God and Karen and their Pack have relocated from ticketing to seating. They are discussing the cheapest, fastest way to get from various less-interesting places to LA, and how much a party should demand as discount tribute for the inconvenience of being outside LA for as long as they have to be, to get from Dallas to Colorado to Chicago, to anywhere that is not the golden dome mosque of the LA sunset.
They speak exclusively through their noses, their atrophied tongues lolling like those of their immensely hairy, troublingly small dogs, talking of understanding the plight of the ticketing agents while being the selfsame problem, having only moments before demanded exactly the reimbursement or refund or drink or Something, for the inconvenience of this awful place.
They are also both barefoot, which is just, I mean, come on.
Anyway, I’ve seen a Cavalier King Charles spaniel in the wild, which is sort of tangential to exciting, I guess. From the top of that hill, you can see exciting, which is practically the same thing. It’s the long walk down the hill from there to exciting where you’re likely to break your foot. Because between “saw CKCs in the wild” and exciting stands a busted waterslide at a dusty and sunbaked desert airport hotel. My wife and I had considered purchasing such a hound. There but for the good of gosh go I.
They used the dogs to get pre-boarding access on the plane. They hobble and scrape up to the gate, looking apologetic and accommodating, apparently unable to see the crowds of people who are actually in the first boarding group glaring holes in the backs of their heads. Some of these people paid upwards of forty dollars for the privilege of first boarding group, an amount of money these two have never seen in cash at one time. The ticketing agent is dubious, perhaps understandably. She looks from their boarding passes to their panicked dogs trying to dig a hole through the mesh of their carrierz. Karen whines something I can’t hear from my distant vantage, but I can hear the shape of it, come ooon, there are people waaaiting. The ticketing agent is exhausted and makes them wait as well.
They stand off to the side while the agent busies herself with something that looks important, and is, because it is keeping her from saying something to them that we will all regret, that will slow 100 souls on their way to somewhere Better. Somewhere fashionable. Somewhere that is less Dallas and more LA. They stand a few feet away, stymied. The line does not move.
He speaks, low and wheedling, again, the words do not travel, only the shape of the requests. The assembled line, wanting, straining, needing to get to LA is held back only by the dam of the agent’s firm and smoky eyes against this exorable tide. She is letting the first boarding group, the A 1-30 group, the group who paid $40 for the privilege, board first. The couple stands, becoming slowly more tense. Karen’s patience is shot, worn through like old thread. The God has boarded the plane and left her!
He’s snuck through in the tumult. She is planning, though. She has a determined look in her eye. She has seen his maneuver, and will raise him one of her own. The cracker sheaf of the first A group has boarded and make their sleepy way down the gangway and onto the plane. The second group begins to move down the way. She has thrown herself upon the front of the line.
The only words that drift over here, to the sad and lonely crowd doomed to end somewhere that is not LA, sitting and baking and reflecting on the meager beauty we retain that will doubtless die in the coming days:
that MAN has my DOG on that PLANE
The ticketing agent is, and I use this phrase lightly, entirely sick of this. The flood of passengers breaks behind Karen’s wail, dashed upon the rocks of the agent’s will. And yet, she relents. Karen saunters down the gangway, off to terrible adventures with her awfully hairy dogs and her American God of Expensive Decay, to LA, where only fabulous things happen because the people are blind to mundanity, because they have to be.
Because, and I can’t stress this enough, they are still entirely barefoot.
My wife texts me, following the story along from home. She delights at my attempts to find delight in this hideous mundanity.
Oh, best beloved. I have to. No beauty can survive where I must go. The vampire of the West sucks us all dry, we ill-fated few, venturing into the desert and finding only our own hollow husks staring back from the dead sand. I return to my ruminations and wait for the direct flight that will never come.
Audio version by Ruth Gibbs
Music by Ben