Was there an apocalypse while I was asleep at the airport?
Heavily sedated, I fell asleep on my layover. When I woke up, the place was empty
Thu 31 May 2018 01.05 BST Last modified on Thu 31 May 2018 03.16 BST
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A lone woman waiting for her luggage at an airport baggage carousel
‘It was like that opening scene in 28 Days Later when the bike courier emerges from a coma to a city emptied of people.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
When I interviewed the US writer Fran Lebowitz a few Japanese Porn months ago, the two things she kept returning to in our conversation were Trump and “the flight”.
Trying to think of the dumbest thing she could compare to Donald Trump, she told me a story about stopping at a servo in Pennsylvania and buying a 50-cent stick of gum. She handed over a dollar before realising that the clerk could not calculate the change because the till was broken.
“And I said to myself: ‘If Donald Trump had to work, this would be Donald Trump behind the counter.’ He’s really stupid. People don’t want to say that because they want to believe that he masterminded this election.”
Fran Lebowitz: 'You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump'
Read more
Trump might be dumb, she said, but what was unspeakably evil, truly grotesque and unimaginably cruel was “the flight”. She actually shuddered.
The flight Lebowitz was referring to was the long-haul JavHD flight people must make to get to Australia. She had just come off it – and the experience had horrified and humbled her.
“I was like a child on the plane, asking the flight attendant, ‘Are we there?’ And she said, ‘Are you nuts? We’ve only been flying for four hours.’ The only people who live in Australia are those who came to Australia and couldn’t face the trip back. I’m actually one of those people.”
This week I did “the flight”, returning from London to Melbourne. Most Australians just accept it as their lot and develop strategies to get through it, usually by means of anaesthesia. Some treat a flight to London as “$2,000 all-you-can-drink”, others numb themselves by watching 12 movies in a row, some will only travel business class – silverware and a wide, leather seat part of the magical thinking needed to survive the days and nights in the air.
When you are going long-haul, it is crucial to remove the conscious, thinking part of your brain so that the reality of spending more than 20 hours sitting in a metal cylinder, 40,000 feet in the air, in too close proximity to strangers, doesn’t cause us a deep, existential panic meaning we would never, ever leave Australia again.
This time I chose to fly to and from London on an Islamic airline that didn’t serve alcohol. I decided to self-medicate with sedatives so that I would spend the 23 hours in the air unconscious. Then, arriving in Melbourne, it would be as though it had never happened because I would not be able to remember anything.
The trip was a hell flight – stopping in Dubai, where we had to get out and do a zombie loop through security, get our bags checked, throw out our water bottles and take off our shoes, and then take our seats again.
Thu 31 May 2018 01.05 BST Last modified on Thu 31 May 2018 03.16 BST
Shares
89
A lone woman waiting for her luggage at an airport baggage carousel
‘It was like that opening scene in 28 Days Later when the bike courier emerges from a coma to a city emptied of people.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
When I interviewed the US writer Fran Lebowitz a few Japanese Porn months ago, the two things she kept returning to in our conversation were Trump and “the flight”.
Trying to think of the dumbest thing she could compare to Donald Trump, she told me a story about stopping at a servo in Pennsylvania and buying a 50-cent stick of gum. She handed over a dollar before realising that the clerk could not calculate the change because the till was broken.
“And I said to myself: ‘If Donald Trump had to work, this would be Donald Trump behind the counter.’ He’s really stupid. People don’t want to say that because they want to believe that he masterminded this election.”
Fran Lebowitz: 'You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump'
Read more
Trump might be dumb, she said, but what was unspeakably evil, truly grotesque and unimaginably cruel was “the flight”. She actually shuddered.
The flight Lebowitz was referring to was the long-haul JavHD flight people must make to get to Australia. She had just come off it – and the experience had horrified and humbled her.
“I was like a child on the plane, asking the flight attendant, ‘Are we there?’ And she said, ‘Are you nuts? We’ve only been flying for four hours.’ The only people who live in Australia are those who came to Australia and couldn’t face the trip back. I’m actually one of those people.”
This week I did “the flight”, returning from London to Melbourne. Most Australians just accept it as their lot and develop strategies to get through it, usually by means of anaesthesia. Some treat a flight to London as “$2,000 all-you-can-drink”, others numb themselves by watching 12 movies in a row, some will only travel business class – silverware and a wide, leather seat part of the magical thinking needed to survive the days and nights in the air.
When you are going long-haul, it is crucial to remove the conscious, thinking part of your brain so that the reality of spending more than 20 hours sitting in a metal cylinder, 40,000 feet in the air, in too close proximity to strangers, doesn’t cause us a deep, existential panic meaning we would never, ever leave Australia again.
This time I chose to fly to and from London on an Islamic airline that didn’t serve alcohol. I decided to self-medicate with sedatives so that I would spend the 23 hours in the air unconscious. Then, arriving in Melbourne, it would be as though it had never happened because I would not be able to remember anything.
The trip was a hell flight – stopping in Dubai, where we had to get out and do a zombie loop through security, get our bags checked, throw out our water bottles and take off our shoes, and then take our seats again.
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