Business beef

‘Champagne Mr. Baz?’

I can’t sleep on planes.  I’ve often tried to rationalize this with war-child psychology, insomnia or overall discomfort. Truth is, I snore like a jet engine and tend to wake everyone up. This has made for more interesting nights in the past, and helped me develop an acute case of empathy.

Booze and comfortable chairs dull this, and on flights longer than four hours I splurge on upgrades. I figure if I plan to be awake for two days, I might as well do it in a couch-bed.

‘No thanks. I’m exhausted and just want to crash.’

‘Bad choice of words,’ she said. ‘But one glass might help you doze off though, what do you think?’

Booze, comfortable chairs and underwear models in tight skirts.

‘I won’t be able to sleep, but you’re right; I’d love one. Marry me?’

You can say things like than on planes; in fact, you can say a lot on planes. We suspend disbelief when we’re up there: ‘I’m not really jetting through the sky in a metal tube; this is just a couch in a really small room. With strangers. And that there underwear model is my bestest friend.’

‘Where is my champagne, mademoiselle?’

Booze, comfortable chairs, underwear models and over-painted old women with botched plastic surgeries. No.

She was ruining my fiction, and she was still talking: ‘Or do only the men get service on this flight?’

‘I’m sorry madam, I’m responsible for this aisle only. But I’ll be more than happy to get you a glass in a minute.’

‘Excuse me? Not your aisle so not your problem?’

‘Please madam that’s not what I meant. If you’ll let me fill this gentleman’s glass I’ll tend to yours immediately after.’

‘Of course; we wouldn’t want the gentleman getting upset.’

Ya sharmoota.

I generally tend to avoid potentially violent confrontations in closed environments, especially when said environments float at around 50,000 feet. Instead, I settled into my bed; being that ugly was punishment enough.

But then some people don’t know when to quit.

Her champagne arrived via another hostess, presumably the one responsible for that aisle. Veteran cabin-crew can erect a wall of ice around disgruntled passengers in two sentences or less; and then warmly turn to ask if I needed anything before I fell asleep.

‘My God, why don’t you all just jump under the sheets with him?’

Silly cow.

The sensible hostess walked away, but I’ve never been all that sensible. I grinned at the madam for half a minute; an eternity of eerie discomfort. Sometimes violence serves nothing, but communication, well, communication is always key.

‘You have a beautiful smile,’ I finally said. ‘And your feet; you have fantastic feet. You know, I have a friend that likes to smell old women’s feet.’

I can’t sleep on planes, and by God she won’t sleep on this one.