On Airplanes and Edible Underwear

3.07.2007

As I slowly figure out the Mac blogger, I'm going to continue to post here.

When asked your preference for airline seating, you are given the choice of aisle or window. You notice there is no option for that awkward seat in the middle between the fat guy and the narcoleptic woman with uncommonly large elbows. As far as I can tell, there are no discernible benefits to having the middle seat. Sure, you can look out the window, but I always end up feeling like a peeping Tom--a voyeur--as if I'm actually watching the person next to me and the window is just my cover. There are no bathroom benefits, either. The aisle person can come and go as they please, but being the middle person is one of the few times in adult life when you must ask to go to the bathroom. I'm surprised they don't make you carry a hall pass. And once the tray tables are down, you can forget about any bathroom related activity at all.

I did not have the middle seat on my flight, although I considered saying that I did just to make my ramblings on the subject appear to have some relevance. In truth, it is a theory added to my increasingly bizarre collection of musings. Like whether or not small dogs harbor a colossal angst against the world in their tiny, furry bodies, or if my particular way of washing dishes is efficient enough to be televised. Others philosophize on the nature of reality or the essence of beauty; I'm stuck on airplanes and tea cup poodles.

Which is all well and good until you decide to talk to strangers about these matters. Take, for example, at a dinner party. If you have become deluded enough to think your pet theories would draw even amusement from strangers, you're stepping on dangerous territory. Perhaps strangers do not want to hear your recounting of why your appliances are possessed by Satan. You run into all kinds of problems here. For example, your listeners may like Satan and find your tone offensive. This always creates an awkward moment. Or, you might be with someone on whom the joke is totally lost--someone who offers to discuss with you, in length, the technical nature of your problems with your toaster.

Here's a good tip: toasters and microwaves are the generic joke appliances; the equivalent of "A priest, a rabbi, and a lawyer walk into a bar." I say this in hopes of eliminating future awkwardness and misunderstanding when I make jokes in front of other people.

As if that were possible. I was recently a bridesmaid at a wedding where the groom had a female in his party. The bridesmaid beside me whispered, "I'm going to have to walk down the aisle with a girl." I said, "Hey, if you're into that kind of thing..." Which would have been funny if she hadn't been one of those people who believes you can pray your way out of homosexuality. The way she looked at me, you might have thought I had suggested she likes erotic encounters with hamsters and goldfish--not only was it wrong in the sight of God, it was just plain weird. Awkward moment.

Then again, awkwardness was inevitable at this wedding. Take the lingerie/ bachelorette party. From a store filled with whips and lollypop penises, I had selected what I thought to be a rather tame gift: a little foreplay board game, body crayons, a boa, and some flavored lubricant. But as the bride opened present after present--all sensible cotton underwear in varying prints--my grip tightened on my gift. All I could think was, "Thank God I didn't buy the edible panties!"

Saying "Thank God" is very different when speaking with my Christian friends, as they assume I am referring to an actual person. Thus, my saying, "Thank God didn't buy the edible panties," sounds more like a story of the Lord leading me through a time of temptation than an utterance of relief that my bachelorette gift was not too scandalous.

Although it was, too scandalous that is. I had deluded myself into thinking otherwise, arriving in town with my gift tied up in an attractive red box. When another bridesmaid asked me what I got, I told her flavored lubricant. "What's that for?" she asked. Thinking it was somewhat self explanatory, I looked around to let her process the information. "Oh," she said, "My husband and I don't do that. We like sex, just not wild sex."

So when the soon to be bride puled the lubricant out of the box she said to the group, "Look lotion!" and then hurriedly returned it to its place. I thought that everyone had wink-wink gotten what the little container actually was, until later when the mother of the bride asked me, in all seriousness, what type of lotion I had gotten her daughter.

It was most likely flavored lubricant that ruined my marriage. After all, I was the only divorcee of the group and look what kind of gifts I had given. Apple tasting lubricant and feather boas--the Lord would smite me down assuredly.

And perhaps he did, as I found myself in the arms of my sister sobbing in a room far away from the reception. This was the first wedding I had attended since my divorce, since leaving (or being booted out, rather) my denomination, since the disintegration of my relationship with my parents. All of it, the vows about headship and submission, the father daughter dance, the enraptured couple--I managed one piece of cake before I had to find a quiet place to hide.

Grief is an awkward dance. How could I let myself feel what I was feeling without ruining the party? How could I cry in front of people who already see the word FAILURE stamped on my forehead? I was truly happy for my friend; she and her husband are crazy about one another, but her world and my world harbor a mutual antagonism for the other and pity.

It's the pity that's the worst. At the rehearsal dinner someone asked me, "Where's your man?" "We're divorced now," I replied. She leaned close to me, "I'm so sorry. What happened?" The bride and the groom were being congratulated in the other room, and, besides, I barely knew this woman. "I don't really want to talk about it," I said. She grabbed me around the neck and held me in a seemingly endless hug. "Of course not," she whispered, "I wouldn't want to talk about it either." Throughout the night she fancied herself my guardian angel, rubbing my back and making pigeon like noises when others spoke to me.

"You're on a higher plane," a friend told me. "You've left them behind, clinging to their religion, their ignorance. " He said this without passion; it was fact to him.

I couldn't think of my girlfriend, as she danced her first dance as a married woman as somehow clinging to ignorance. Nor could I envisage my sister, her arms around my weeping form, as somehow operating on a lower plane of existence.

It works for her, my sister. In our church I had always felt alien, trying so hard to be holy--white knuckled prayers--but, in the end, leaving our church became a choice of life or death for me. Yet it works for her. Works for her not in the sense that she goes to marches condemning the evil homosexual plot to destroy the family, and she doesn't believe that you can be Christian or Democrat, but not both--like many in our denomination believe. Christianity works for her in that it taps into the deepest level of her passions, that her love for God and her belief in his love for her creates an overflow of kindness and compassion in her actions. The very things that threatened to kill me bring vitality to her.

When asked when she had to get home from the wedding, she responded that she's been teaching ESL on a volunteer basis at night and needs to get back to her students. I was just planning on watching a movie.

"My spirit guide talks to me so much more than Jesus ever did," I tell her. My beliefs now are different than my previous attempts in organized religion. I don't necessarily believe that my spirit guide exists--I believe that believing that something is happening helps my life make sense. I'm not exactly sure who does the talking, if its a part of me or the aliens hired to fuck with my brain in particular, but I do know that when I listen to that intuition, my brain has more peace and less chaos. It may be nothing at all, my grasping for straws, I may be totally wrong for following its guidance, but I've given up a bit on being right. Things seem less and less to fall into those categories.

I forget how I got here in my ramblings. Something about airplanes and edible underwear. Hmm. And the possible diabolical connection between the two industries! In case you're wondering, this is another topic not to be brought up at dinner parties.