NEEDLING

Listening to Anne-Marie’s cd while flying 40 thousand feet over the ocean floor. Drinking some cheap scotch and ginger ale. I’m drunk and I don’t care that the plane is rocking. No matter to me. Gone to the restroom at least four times all ready since we’ve been up in the air. And once right before we took off. The plan was to go to sleep eventually, after the first movie, which I’ve all ready seen, which has all ready come and gone—a tough cop and innocent joe routine / bad guy number with Samuel Jackson … it was what it was and I enjoyed it a lot more than Walk The Line bull shit I sat through on the way to Paris.

(Not an once of sleep to be seen anywhere near my head.)

Whitewash outside. Sun splashing down on the cloud covered milky-way of smoke. Nothing to be seen. Not even the demarcation of cloud, no grey lining around the edges, not a damn thing but bright lights as if we were flying right into heaven, for Good’s sake. It’s a …

lost my train of thought. My neighbor just tapped my shoulder, took me out of my dream-land to ask me if the reading light she’s just put on bothered me. “It’s perfectly fine,” I said, trying real hard to keep my thought, the phrase I was about to write, to keep it clear and neat. No go. No deal. No honey for you. Just a white washed cotton blur of sun-blazed reverberation in your face. It’s a … forget it … kill the mockingbird and shit in the lavatory … give me a scotch, the cheap shit will do, yeah, I’m not kidding, I’m telling the truth, no … really … the cheap shit in the plastic bottle. I just want a buzz, nothing else, to help me forget the violins … so that I can pass the time.

One of the flight attendant was on the flight I took on the way to Paris last week. I was taking a piss just a few minutes ago, the second to the last time I asked for a ginger ale, and I asked it from her. I was going to tell her, “You were my last flight attendant, do you remember? You stood in the front of the aircraft as you did today, and you greeted me both in French and in English. Do you remember, I was on your flight a week ago. Have you worked all this time? Have you had any time off? Have you seen your family?” But thought better of it. I took a piss, grabbed my ginger ale, and came back to my seat …

Here I am, much higher than a kite.