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From: xetwnk@shell.portal.com(NO_SPAM) (Chris F Chiesa)
Newsgroups: alt.tasteless
Subject: Occupado, Or, The Airborne Adventures of Jo Miller
Date: 24 Apr 1994 15:29:59 GMT
Organization: Portal an InterNetNews Site
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Message-ID: <2pe39n$lqt@news1.svc.portal.com>
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Greets, all. It is with great glee and delight that I post the following on behalf of Jo Miller, who traveled to Los Angeles this weekend and had an in-transit experience worthy of relating here. AOL wasn't able to deliver Jo's text unto alt.tasteless, so Jo has honored ME with the responsibility of so doing. Enjoy -- I know -I- did.
-------- INCLUDED TEXT FOLLOWS --------
----------------Occupado (Coming into Los Angelees)---------
Did you ever wonder who uses the air-sickness bags on airplanes? Well, I DO! I'm sitting on a plane now and I just heaved my guts out twice, so as a dedicated a.t.er it is my sworn duty to tell you all about it before I can even get around to picking the semi-digested peanut bits out of my teeth.
(By the way, next time you see someone whip out his laptop computer on an airplane, do pause before throwing your drink on him and shouting "Wanker!" He could be working on a post about how he was just caught in the lavatory when air turbulence hit, causing him to fall off the john, breaking his emergent grogan in half [tearing a loaf?] and smearing shit all over the walls and himself. Unlikely, but possible.)
Where was I? Oh yes, Ithaca (rising gorge again). The only way to get out of that rancid little shitpit is on tiny puddle-jumper prop planes. It was probably a bad idea to watch _Fearless_ the night before, but I digress. The acrid smell of stale, recycled airplane air on this particular flying toy was enough to make me gag before we even started moving. But move we did, and the same strong wind that knocked me off my bike this morning made it an egregiously bumpy ride from start to finish.
I guess I am prone to motion-sickness; nearly everyone's driving but my own makes me queasy. Though I never hurl (except for that time we drove to New York from New Haven to get White Castle burgers, but that's another story).
Don't know what level of skill I expected from any pilot who would be assigned the Ithaca-Elmira-Newark plum, but this guy must have been getting his cock sucked by the stewardess while steering the plane with his foot. The putt-putt plane bucked and teetered, shimmied and leapfrogged its way to the neighboring white-trash town of Elmira (I would say Elmira is to Ithaca what Bridgeport is to New Haven, but Binghamton holds that honor). Weightless, heavy, weightless, heavy. When we kerthunked down my bowels had drawn up into a tight painful knot of nausea--an interesting feeling, making me wonder idly whether the duodenum might, in extraodinary circumstances, open in such a way as to permit you to vomit the contents of your intestines.
That's what I felt like doing, and the image amused me: projectile vomiting like a punctured colostomy bag. Instead I walked over and leaned against the open door, clammy with sweat and gulping at cold fresh air hoping that would untie the knot in my gut. It didn't.
I sat back down next to the leathery middle-aged woman who would wish by the end of the flight that she'd gotten a different seat assignment. With my peristaltic pump already primed, I braced myself for the second leg of the trip, hoping that this time we'd reach a high enough altitude to avoid the worst of the wind. Yeah, right. Not only did the little stunt plane flop and dive worse than before, but we went into a holding pattern over New Jersey, careening spastically in clumsy ellipses for the better part of an hour.
Wave after wave of nausea. Now the stomach clenches into a fist, the cold sweat breaks out, and the saliva glands start pumping out their fifteen-second warning. Not wanting to alarm the woman next to me, I reach casually into the seat pocket in front of me while glancing out the window as if facinated by aerial views of low-income housing. Shit, no barf bag, this could turn out to be a better story than I'd hoped. No wait, that 'Occupied' card is a barf bag. Turn head and do a furtive, ladylike mini-puke, mostly liquid. But that's hardly enough to satisfy the vengeful gods of the air; they demand full gastric sacrifice, so onto their altar I pour full libation of Snapple, egg salad sandwich, obviously ineffective ginger ale, and peanuts, let's not forget them. Ahhhhhhhhhh--I feel so much better. Hey, this is cool.
I don't know how many of you have had the chance to hold a bag of hot vomit in your hands, but it's intriguing. First there's the heft of it--a load of regurgitated lunch is heavier than I would have thought. I concentrated on my now-calm belly to determine whether I felt that much lighter and decided that I did. Rules of conservation of mass still functioning. I had to clutch the bag tightly to prevent it from falling and disgorging its mostly-liquid contents as Mr. Toad's wild ride drew to its inelegant conclusion.
I looked out the window, warm bag swaying pendulously in hand, and tried to get rid of the chunky-post-nasal-drip sensation in the back of my throat. Some of the vomit had gone up my nose and my sinuses burned from the acid. Smelled nice too. Then as if the flight itself weren't puke-inducing enough, Newark bobbed and lurched into sight, which would make anyone sick. I courteously left the bulging blue gift on the seat for the next passenger, who will either look before he sits or will learn a valuable lesson about doing so.
Now I am on a jet to L.A. God bless jets. And Christ, am I hungry.
Don't touch that bag if you please,
Jo
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"They weren't exactly star-crossed lovers. Hard to be star-crossed
with a man who enjoys snorting cocaine off erect black penises but
still, what if things had been different?" -Rita Mae Brown
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