A Hero for the ages

I fly a lot, and thus I am quite familiar with the caste system that has evolved between first class and what they call "coach." I think it is called "coach" because it is about as much fun as it must have been back in the Old West when you would ride a fucking stagecoach from El Paso to Dodge City and arrive 16 days later drenched in your own and others' vomit and with an asshole that likely would never work properly again. At least you don't get held up on an airliner, though I must say those $5 "meals" they sell aren't too far from highway robbery.

But I have discovered that the airline I use, which I will refer to as U----d in order to avoid a nasty confrontation, sells something they call "Economy Plus" seats, which I usually get whenever possible. These seats have a short pecker's worth more leg room, which is a good thing. They advertise it as five inches, but believe me, when you sit in these seats you feel like a fully dressed emperor...you can actually stretch your legs out.

The thing that stinks is that these seats used to be called "bulkhead," and were available for no extra charge if you were lucky enough to book them ahead of time. I made a bunch of bulkhead flights back when I had a severely broken leg (done in a sky diving accident, which of course I need to tell you about one of these days), and I remember that it was the same price as the other seats. Economy Plus costs you like an extra $30 or $50 or something, but I always get it whenever possible, and you should too, provided you are not bumping me out of one of the seats.

So these seats are right behind first class, and when you stretch your legs out you wind up with your feet directly beneath the seat of some dickhead in first class. I think this is wonderful, since I usually get an Economy Plus seat in Chicago, when my feet are nice and sweaty from the first flight, and I always take my shoes off and stretch my legs as far as possible so that my sweaty feet are directly below the person sitting in the first class seat right ahead of me. I then hope against hope that this disturbs the hell out of him (it's ALWAYS a HIM), and that he is unable to determine whether it is the fine cheese he is being served or my sweaty feet he is smelling. We are in a state of class warfare in America, folks, and guerrilla actions like this are our only hope.

I got the idea for this many years ago, while riding the Lake Shore Limited train from Chicago on my way to Albany. It was the middle of the night, and there was a guy -- I will never forget the sight -- with his goddamned shoeless feet up atop the seat in front of him, ankles crossed, and he was wearing these ridiculous checkered socks that looked as if he'd been born in them. His feet were right next to the headrest of the seat in front of him, and the poor asshole in that seat was sound asleep...with his face inches away from those filthy-ass, crusty checkered socks. He was snoring up quite a row, and his nostrils must have been getting one hell of a funk infusion. There he was.. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....and there were those checkered socks. My sides hurt from laughing.

Eventually, a conductor came around and scolded The Checkered Demon, telling him in a rather stern tone: "Get your feet off that seat! How'd you like to have someone's stinking feet in your face while you are asleep?" The guy sheepishly pulled his feet down, and the sleeping fellow was none the wiser, unless the foot odor burned his lungs like mustard gas and permanently disabled him, and I must say I cannot rule out that possibility.

Anyway, back to the flight. This was beautiful. I was set to deploy my feet underneath the first-class seat (all's fair in love and class warfare) and suddenly, before they made the announcement to get ready for takeoff, some joker from "coach" made a mad dash into the first-class lavatory, which he then used loudly and (hopefully) abundantly. After about six or seven minutes in there, he suddenly burst out of the shitter and went back to his seat back around the middle of the rest of the suffering herd in the coach cabin.

This was the act of a true revolutionary, a hero of the Class War. Here I was thinking I was a subversive for my sweaty feet maneuver, but that was nothing compared to defiling the first-class lavatory, an act of true heroism. There was a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine made a lame-assed attempt to sneak into first class, but this beat the pants off that. Solidarity, comrade! And before takeoff yet, thus making certain no one would be having a particularly good time in that little crapper for the entire flight to Vancouver! My only hope is that this brave soul did it right and ate nothing but Taco Bell and drank nothing but bock beer for the entire week before the trip.

No one ever said a word to the guy, either. I think he was a professional revolutionary, because he timed it perfectly, right when people were still getting settled. And what would they have done to him, anyway? Thrown him off the plane? I bet the worst that would have happened would be that they would have told him not to do it again, just like they did with all those cocaine-abusing baseball players.

So this is my hero, and he should be yours, too. Some pompous asshole in first class had to smell this guy's dump when he went in to piss away some fine 15-year-old single malt, and the thought of this lifted my spirits all the way.

Seeing things like that makes you damned glad to be alive.