The bus stops right next to the plane's stairs.
God, this iron bird is huge! It's the first time I've been this close to a plane, and the whole thing is just breathtaking. My knees go soft. I can barely climb the stairs.
"Welcome!"
Wow, my first flight attendant! How cute she is! Here's a perfect chance to practice a little English.
"Helou... I am very happy to fly on an airplane. Uh... I never flew before. I confess, it's first time for me. Basically, I am a beginner! You be gentle with me, yes?"
The flight attendant smiles, but she doesn't really look like she's in the mood to chat. She just smiles. I smile back like an idiot. She smiles again. Clear enough: today is the day of nothing but smiles. Smiles in the airport, smiles on the plane. Probably smiles in the toilet too, if I end up going in there.
I just stand there, mouth open, staring at her uniform. It fits her perfectly. The woman glances at my ticket and shows me where I need to go. I keep grinning like a moron, thank her, and head down the aisle with a grin from ear to ear, like a kid in a store who just discovered a whole aisle of brand-new toys.
Phew... it's the first time I've seen the inside of a plane! It looks pretty solid. I'm sure it won't crash. It's built solid. Wait a second, Tiberiu! The Titanic was built solid too... Eh! Bullshit!
I smile at my dark-skinned neighbor on the left, I smile at her dark-skinned baby, I smile at every passenger coming in one by one. Everything is wonderful. If I'd known how awesome it is on a plane, I would've flown more often.
"Boy or girl?"
"Boy," the neighbor answers.
Ugh, I hate little boys! Girls are cute. They look at you with their calm eyes, they sleep, they babble, in a word, they mind their own business. With boys it's different. Boys scream, cry, get colic, puke, and shit themselves every half hour. And then they have to be changed.
I've never had kids, but you don't need to have kids to know that. It's enough to sit for an hour in a public park on a sunny day, when the mommies are pushing their treasures along the paths.
From the pink strollers you don't hear much. But the blue strollers? Yowls and shrieks that would freeze the blood in even a seasoned exorcist's veins.
But... fine! If I have to sit here, I'll sit here. I lean toward my neighbor and whisper, "Don't worry at all. It's going to be fine. I bet we'll make it to Thailand safely and this plane won't crash."
She looks at me over her shoulder, blinking fast. I hold out my hand.
"My name's Tiberiu. Is it your first time too? I mean, I'm flying for the first time. But you? I mean--you, ma'am?"
She smiles a little, kind of crooked.
"We'll be fine," she says with that fake smile of hers. "Relax!"
"Of course," I answer, nodding like a wise old Chinese man stroking his long white beard. "We'll make it there alive and the plane won't crash. Don't even think about it."
"But I wasn't even thinking about it!" she snaps, a little annoyed. "What's gotten into you? What are these ideas? Of course it won't crash." She crosses herself and adds, "God forbid!"
"God help!" I confirm too. "I mean, help us, God, so you can forbid it. Something like that."
"Why are you so nervous?" she asks, while she messes with that little one's diapers. There you go! The plane hasn't even left yet and she's already digging around in his diaper. I knew it. Little boys are little shits.
"But I'm not nervous."
"Yes, you are! Look at you shaking."
I look closely. My left knee seems to have a life of its own. It's bouncing up and down like it's plugged into the wall. I stretch out my right arm and stare at my palm. My fingers are trembling. I feel sweat starting to pour off me. Am I nervous?
"Well, nah... Nervous? Maybe... a little," I whisper in a voice I don't recognize.
I look at my neighbor, calmly busy with her offspring. Now she's powdering his ass.
"I'm nervous because the customs lady took my lighter," I confess.
She starts laughing. Her teeth are really white.
"Well, yeah. You can't smoke on a plane."
"Maybe. But you can still drink something, right? Seventeen hours of flying isn't exactly nothing."
"Maybe," she says, her eyes on the kid and her mouth still talking to me. Then she gets up, abandons her kid like some messed-up mother, and leaves me talking to myself. I watch her, confused. Now she's talking to the flight attendant. Explaining something. Aha! The flight attendant turns her head and looks straight at me. Aha!
Fucking snitch. I look at the baby next to me and tell him, "I think your mommy doesn't like me too much. Ah, women..."
The flight attendant comes up smiling. In less than a minute, they move me somewhere near the back of the plane and I'm all alone across three seats. Not bad. The only shitty thing is that the toilet is right behind me and for seventeen hours I'm going to be breathing in the smell of shit and piss.
But let's not be negative. There's a bright side: back here it's quiet and peaceful. The only noise is the flight attendant explaining how we're supposed to use the life vest and exactly where we're supposed to exit after the plane crashes.
I'm calm. I know I'm going to survive. I know it for sure. I saw some statistic online that made it crystal clear: the seats at the back of the plane are the safest seats in the world.
So I grin, buckle up calmly, and recline my seat all the way back. I'm going to try to catch a nap until takeoff.
There's a pocket on the seat in front of me. I notice a corner of a magazine sticking out. I pull it out. Two things: a flower-care magazine and a small brochure.
Flowers? Weeds? Shit! I hate weeds! Weeds suck. Not just the ones in the magazine. All weeds suck. Yeah, I hate weeds!
On top of that, this whole magazine is written in German. German sucks! What a garbage magazine! I flip through it fast. Flowers. More flowers... Even more flowers. Yellow roses on the cover, white roses in the middle. Yellow roses again... red...
Roses of every color everywhere, on every page. Weeds with thorns and spikes. And explanations in German. I'm so damn glad I wasn't born in Germany. German is horrible. It's spiky. I toss the magazine away onto the seat to my right.
The brochure, on the other hand, is acceptable. It's fine. It's written in a civilized language, English. I can understand everything. It shows some cities in Europe. Clocks, tourism, museums, churches, and universities. Monuments, parks, happy kids, and people smiling. Bullshit! Why are they smiling? I don't like them. They're definitely hiding something. What are they hiding? Their smiles won't fool me.
I flip through the pages, distracted. I read here and there. The lines start dancing and my eyes are about to close.
Yeah. More churches, more monuments, museums. Small pictures. Big pictures. And tiny text. Really tiny. Shit!
But who the hell cares about Europe and its old cities and Europeans smiling while they hide a knife behind their back? Me? Oh, no! I'm going to the beaches of Thailand. That's the future!
Europe belongs to the past. It's a shitty relic and... and full of knife-wielding psychos, and it's cold. Snow. Brr!
But Thailand... oh, Thailand. Sun!
I yawn and it's getting harder and harder to read. The lines jump in front of my eyes.
I wake up suddenly. I notice someone put a pillow under my head.
The plane is still sitting there, and the engines are still off. Something's not right. I signal the flight attendant and she comes over.
"Excuse me, but... why aren't we leaving?"
"Oh, you woke up!" she says, smiling. "We're leaving right away, sir. In three minutes."
"St... strange," I stammer. "Very strange. I felt like I slept way longer, but I see we're still here, on the ground."
"Yes, you slept. You're not mistaken. You slept really well. Only like fourteen hours," she says, showing all her teeth.
My jaw files for divorce. I ask her, wide-eyed, "I slept fourteen hours? Me?"
"Yes, sir. We got scared. We even slapped you, but nothing. We brought a doctor to examine you. Nothing. We didn't know what to do anymore. The pilot seriously considered landing in New Delhi and leaving you at a hospital. In the end, the doctor convinced him not to."
"And now we're in..."
"Shanghai, in China. We made a stop to refuel. We're leaving in three minutes. I'm going right now to tell the doctor you woke up."
While she's talking, her face moves thousands of light-years away from me. China? What do you mean China? I want Thailand, not China. I want it now! I literally sink into my padded seat.
China? Nobody in my bloodline has ever made it to China. I fan myself with my hands and cool off.
The flight attendant leaves. A short bald guy comes over to me. He suddenly grabs my hand and holds it like that.
"Go to hell!" I snap at him. "I'm not gay."
"Neither am I," he answers. "I was trying to take your pulse."
Aha! So this is the doctor? Well, look at that! Too lazy to put on a white coat and hang a stethoscope around his neck? Sooner or later, somebody's going to kick his ass.
"Am I going to survive, doctor?" I ask, smiling.
"I think so," he answers with a serious face. "Did you take any sleeping pills?"
"A friend gave me some aspirin. And the night before, I had this weird drink, 'Made in Austria.'"
"As far as I know," he says thoughtfully, "aspirin doesn't cause sleepiness. It must be from the drink."
"It must be," I agree, pissed off. "Those fucking Austrians! Poisoning people with their schnapps."
The doctor shrugs and leaves, and I quickly unbuckle because I feel like my bladder's about to burst. I go to the toilet, take a quick leak, and come back. I sit down again and suddenly sniff the air. What's that? Something's not right!
"Hey, what the hell stinks like that?" I ask, irritated as hell.
"You slept the whole time and farted like a horse, buddy! That's why it stinks. Come on, buckle up, we're leaving."
The voice comes from one of the seats in front of me.
I look out the window. It's dark outside. China is probably a dark country. Damned communists!
I buckle up again. Maybe I missed the first takeoff, but this one I'm going to watch in real time.
The plane starts moving slowly. The runway slides fast, then faster. The machine lunges into the sky with me inside it. I feel my back stick to the seat. Wow! My first takeoff! The other one doesn't count.
I gesture to the flight attendant.
"It's my first takeoff," I say, happy. "Could I get a glass of cognac or vodka?"
"Of course."
"It's free, right?"
I read somewhere drinks are free on planes, but even so, I still feel the need to check.
"In first class they're free," she informs me, "but you're not in first class, so I'm afraid the drinks are not free."
"That's fine," I say, waving my hand. "Bring me a whole bottle. I can pay by card, right?"
"No."
Oh. What shit! I dig through my pockets. Luckily, I find a few bills. She comes back with a whole bottle, except it's a tiny little bottle. And she pours it into a huge glass. It looks ridiculous!
"It won't cost you anything," she tells me, smiling. "You said this is your first flight. It's from the crew. We're very happy everything is fine with you. If something had happened to you, we would've had to fill out a ton of paperwork."
"Thanks! I'm happy I'm alive too. Okay, this one I'll take free, but the next ones I'll pay for."
"There won't be 'next ones,'" she tells me with a sweet face. "We have a very strict policy about alcohol consumption. But in less than two hours we land in Chiang Mai and you'll be able to do absolutely anything you want."
She turns and leaves me to admire her ass as she walks away. The ass looks good. My drink looks bad. I knock it back. That's it? This little drop? How am I supposed to get drunk off that?
What do you mean company policy? You liars! You all got together to drive me crazy? Weed magazines and vodka bottles the size of a thimble? Seriously?
I clench my teeth. It's fine, I've got two hours left. I'll survive. I won't die of thirst. Yeah, I'll survive two hours.
Out the window there's nothing but pitch-black darkness. That's it? I didn't get anything interesting out of my first flight. But... what's this? My ears pop softly and my brain feels like it's swelling. Like I've got cotton in my head.
"What altitude are we flying at, buddy?" I ask the guy in the row in front. I have no idea what he looks like, but I can hear him wheezing perfectly. He's probably asthmatic.
"I think we're around eleven thousand meters."
"Eleven thou... You're kidding?"
The guy is quiet for a few seconds, then he says calmly, "You're right. We can't be. We took off too recently. We haven't reached eleven thousand yet. Maybe eight thousand. Who knows?"
I sink even deeper into my seat. I tighten my belt harder. My knees start jumping in every direction.
Holy Mother of Christ! And I thought the seats in the back help you survive. Yeah, maybe half a second more.
Eleven thousand meters? That's enormous! In a crash my shit is going to shoot out through my nose.
I stay like that, motionless, like a rabbit under a snake's stare. I don't know how much time passes. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. Maybe... No, not years.
I travel through time and space. I don't see anything anymore. I don't hear anything anymore. Everything around me disappears into total blackness and a faint background buzz. Bzzz... But I think. Bzzz...
Tiberiu, Tiberiu! Do you want to die? What the hell are you doing here? Bzzz...
The explanation is clear: I was an idiot.
If I make it to Thailand alive, I swear I'm coming home on the first plane. Yes, I'll take the first flight going the other way. I'm damn lucky I bought a round-trip ticket.
God, I know I've been a sinner and I haven't prayed in a long time, but if you help me get back home, I promise I'll...
The Lord answers me. Creaking starts and the machine shakes up and down. Fuck! We're all going to die! I'm young! Nooo!
"What is this?" I mumble in a thin, shaky voice. "What's with all this shaking?"
My buddy's voice over the seat clears it up.
"What do you think it is? We landed and now we're rolling on the runway. Welcome to Thailand!"