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{forgive me if it touches you} tyke johnson I’d feel less guilty if I had been smoking—if I had been tampering with the fire detector. I wouldn’t feel like God was looking down upon me with furrowed brow, like God was just waiting for the exact moment to send my sinning soul to the ground 30 thousand feet below. I’m sweating. I’m shaking my foot; it’s touching the knee of an old lady on my left. She’s been patient for the past ten minutes, my knee shaking against hers. I rationalize that she’s too old to feel her knee at all so it’s no problem. Her scowl says differently but old people are always scowling. Whether they’re old Armenian men in track suits watching me parallel park or old women behind me in line at the grocery store when I’m buying condoms. I insist to the clerk that the “twisted pleasure” pack is not mine as if to save even the slightest of face and hope she won’t notice the KY Jelly, chocolate syrup and whip cream. The canned fruit though, she’s certainly upset with that, which puts me slightly at ease knowing she’s done upsetting things with Dole Fruit Cocktail too. They all scowl at me and this one, the one with the hand knitted hat and plastic rimmed glasses is joining them—a retired nation of scowlers. I stop shaking my leg. I force myself, but my mind continues to race. I think about all the terrible things other people in the world are doing at this exact moment. Men raping women. Dictators destroying nations. Children torturing cats. Certainly God must be preparing to smite them before me. I’ve done nothing compared to such offenders. So what if an image of the blonde woman in a black business suit and skirt, stockings stretched over her wide ass, which bumped me as she was putting a small suitcase in the overhead compartments, is frozen in my head. So what if she had unbuttoned her shirt enough to see down into the pale gifts that poured out like whole milk. It’s her right; all planes are stuffy. She’s hot and needs some air. So what if she’s bent over, hair tussled and tweed, skirt over her waist and resting on her back, black stockings on but tore open, blouse off, bra on, the strap cutting red lines where the weight won’t relent. I’m pulling her hair for leverage; her knees are about to buckle from shuttering. The vents are all open blowing cold oxygen down her ass. So what if no matter how hard I tried to think about golf, the sex with her wouldn’t relent and I had to walk half bent over to the bathroom and relieve myself into mini paper towels—had to clean myself with water not meant for drinking. Had to close my eyes and hold the rail tight, ignoring turbulence and seat belt lights “binging” on, as I stroked furiously to finish before the door lock breaks, before the bathroom camera turns on and reports me to the homeland security—my bid for a political life dashed. The heavy breathing ends and I double, triple, quadruple, wrapped the soiled paper towel in more paper towel and tossed it in the trash. I fear for the inspector with his black light looking for bomb remnants only to find a bathroom covered in blots of fluorescent cum. I’m convinced I have contracted a disease, airplane bathrooms third only to hospitals and crack houses. The handle, the lock, the toilet seat, all covered in white boy’s semen who were too insane and horny to wait until they landed to masturbate. I washed my hands again and I realized I’d been in the bathroom for ages. How long had it been? Had we landed? How many flight attendants were timing me? They surely knew what I’d been up to. They’d been flying the friendly skies too long to not know what a big-nosed, longhaired, twenty-something with freckles who walks with his hands in his pockets to the bathroom is doing. I composed myself. My face was flush but it’s always flush. My boner had calmed enough to tuck away, even if painfully, for I needed to get out of the bathroom before the captain made an announcement. How long the line must have been. I stepped out and a man in a Green Bay Packers ball cap nodded. He’d been waiting for a year to use the bathroom and I looked past him for fear of seeing his hands in his pockets. The team of flight attendants was serving orange juice and coke and mini bottles of wine. Mini napkins and mini pretzels. It’s ten degrees cooler in the cabin than in the bathroom. I rushed to my seat before anyone could look at their watches and honor bets. I can’t imagine the pay out being all that much though; the odds makers had to know what I was going to do. My dick was casually softening and I could walk upright to my seat. I woke the poor old lady who must have killed puppies in a former life to have to sit next to me. She huffed and puffed, cracked her tiny fingers, as she moved ever so slightly for me to get by. And before I even sat the fear set in. For not only do this old lady, the crew, and the entire coach cabin know I just defiled the mini vacuum of a bathroom but so did God. But would God kill hundreds of innocent people just to get to me? Why not? If one were to look at the state of affairs around the world it wouldn’t be hard to point out some glaringly obvious lapses in judgment. How else could you explain the abundance of Red Sox fans always sitting “just a table over”? Eagles fans even closer. In fact, killing me would be one of the most rational decisions to date. My leg shakes again; this time the old lady adjusts in her seat, pushing the pillow and blanket between the armrest and her leg to get as far away from me as possible. Across the aisle is a toddler fast asleep. His heavy eyes closed tight, his thin hair static filled and flying inches above his head. He hasn’t even seen snow. Has never swum in the ocean. Still believes penis’ are for funny dancing and not pleasuring. What have I done? I’ve sealed his fate along with his mother’s, too exhausted from raising her son alone to wear anything but terry cloth sweat pants. I’ve killed them all. Any minute now God will take action. God will smite another sinner who thought it nothing to taunt the almighty 30 thousand feet in the air. Will he shake the plane for a while first, get everyone’s wits in a tear, and then calm the skies before finishing us off? Or will he just rip the plane in half right down the middle or rip the wings off so we missile it to the earth like my hard dick that missiled our death into recycled paper? All that’s left to do is look out the window and see the clouds from above and remember the days when bowling caused thunder and peeing caused rain. I wake as we race to the earth. We’re traveling at light speed and I can see the mini circles of blue become pools and moving metal dots become cars. A forgiving God mine is not it seems. The passengers around me look calmly forward. The pure oxygen must have us all in a daze— inevitable demise never so uniformly accepted by complete strangers. She’s almost there; the trees are taller now but upon impact I hear the screech of flying tires. The burning of rubber and the "bing" of the intercom sounds off. “Welcome to Los Angeles, where the local time is 4:53pm…” The static haired child and his mom smile and un-buckle. The old lady next to me takes her glasses off and rubs her eyes. People reach and twist to get their bags and de-board. The old lady tells me to go ahead of her; she always waits until everyone gets off since the wheel chairs are never their when we arrive like they’re supposed to. I oblige and squeeze past. Up the aisle, just past the open curtain to first class is my ripped stocking mistress. She flexes to grab her suitcase but pulls her skirt back to her knees. She lifts her foot to her hand to adjust her heel, creating a V shaped target and the scene flashes again. The ripping, the racing, the sweating, the smelling. My arms are above me supporting falling bags. Her hands push at the window, knocks a tray table down. The sway and slam of her breasts breach her bra, releasing her mammaries into the stale air. I grab them and she grabs me. I’m suddenly between them, my dick appearing and re-appearing and she’s looking up at me with feverous eyes, biting her lip and scratching my legs. A bag falls past me and I wake. Below me the old lady has her glasses back on and tries to ignore as best she can my erection held by denim pressing against her shoulder. The static haired boy looks on with confusion; his mother looks on in disgust. How God will forgive me for this I’ll never know. |
