Paperjam

Going To New York

Travel // Jim // 5th February 2008

Skylon! By Gruff Rhys is a great song, one that I never get tired of hearing. But a fourteen and a half minute song about a bomb on a plane is not what I want to hear when I am getting on a jumbo jet tomorrow to go on the longest flight I have yet to drag my sorry aviaphobic arse onto. I hit the skip button. Crash by The Primitives comes up next – skip – it’s the Auteurs with Light Aircraft On Fire. Even my ipod has finally turned against me. I decide to read a book instead.

After actually managing to sleep a bit I get up and with half an hour to go before my lift arrives, decide that now might be a good time to start packing. Throw some almost dry clothes into a borrowed suitcase, throw my toiletries in a tesco carrier, check I’ve got my passport and sit down to reflect on exactly how sad that lot is going to look written down.

I’m sitting on my step when Chrissie turns up to get me, I twat my head on the boot lid in a last ditch attempt to get out of flying – barely drawing blood I jump in the passenger seat. Then spend an hour or so try not to be the most annoying, nervous man in the world as we dash down to Heathrow with the least essential morning’s worth of news in the history of human existence going on in the background. Note to the BBC: MP’s expenses are not what a man in the grip of existential fear needs to distract him.

At the airport we check in dead quick and then go for a hot chocolate in the indecipherable bench maze that is the departures area. I buy some rescue remedy and after a protracted visit to the gents manage to get inverse molested by some bird who thrusts her tits into my hands and then apologises profusely. Is this some sort of strange omen?

Waiting for the plane we both agree that a) 2007 was just really the shittest year ever on a personal level, although I shouldn’t really moan and b) that thinking about a change in career is probably a good thing. Then it’s up with my already excessive heart-rate as we make for the gate and a selection of the least relevant free magazines I have ever seen. The plane is delayed by an hour so bereft of any reading material that doesn’t involve yachts, golf or property development we have a skim through the entertaining Time Out guide to New York – partly to look for stuff to do but also to marvel at the rather hyper prose style. The word “studs” features heavily.

Time to get on the plane and I am really very, very scared indeed. I feel a bit like I’m walking into every job interview I’ve ever had all at once, the rescue remedy is about a quarter down already. My mouth tastes like dry sherry trifle with an extra helping of sand in it.

Get in our seats and Chrissie brilliantly segues into a “which of the stewardesses do you like then?” routine, pointing out the blonde one a few aisles away. I have a look and say that I’ve already taken a shine to the one called Becky. Chrissie asks how I’ve got a name so quickly, I admit that I was shamelessly drawn her nametag as it bounced past me pinned to her left breast. The conversation carries on in this vein for a while – I look round to see where the gents is and the bloke behind us is saying something about how the two of us must have a very open relationship based on what he has heard so far. I nearly start explaining about how Chrissie’s husband is actually on the other side of the atlantic, probably in some kind of kimono/dressing gown at this point – decide that it wouldn’t help.

Oooohhhh - and we’re off, I’m virtually drinking the rescue remedy and asking for an extra strong whisky from Becky once the plane is up to cruising height. We try to get the games working on our screens but despite years skiving in the IT industry I haven’t got a fucking clue. We give up and try to watch a film – but I can’t even do that, Chrissie tries not to laugh at me but then has a good chuckle when I mess up trying to start 30 Days of Night for the 87th time in a row. Poor choice anyway, too dark, can’t see a thing.

Manage to get a can of lager into my overly sweaty hands and Curb Your Enthusiasm onto my TV screen when the plane starts bumping about a bit. Oh dear, I don’t like this at all. Dash to the toilet and the flushing noise scares what’s left of the shit out of me.

Get back in my seat for an absolutely shocking meal, although the chocolate mousse is - and I don’t use the word lightly - sublime. Chrissie is still being absolutely lovely and telling me that I’m not annoying her. She’s just watched the Darjeeling Limited, which she liked and I’m glad.

The turbulence gets gradually worse and the other people on the plane are starting to look a bit nervous, the seatbelt light is on and I’ve got a grip on my armrests that could probably crush granite. The words “Cabin crew to jump seats” are rapidly barked out and they all get strapped in – Chrissie grabs my arm and tells me that it is all going to be ok – in a surprisingly practical move she also grabs my can of Heineken to stop it spilling.

The plane starts lurching around a bit and I stare bleakly ahead while I have Chrissie being soothing in one ear and Larry David in the other apologising for some extreme social faux pas in the other. “Just keep breathing Jim” says Chrissie, “I didn’t realise your daughter was a lesbian!” exclaims Larry. I pull out the rogue headphone as it isn’t really helping.

There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to get off the plane at this point, it’s all I can do to not cry – probably wouldn’t happen anyway as all the moisture in my body is pouring through my palms at such a rate that it is dripping off my fingers. All the while Chrissie is telling me to keep breathing and not worry – she only lets out a quiet “Oh Shit!” as the plane takes what feels like a particularly lengthy plunge.

After what is probably only a few minutes but feels like about forty-five years to me the seatbelt sign goes off. Chrissie is straight on the call button to get more booze. “Would you like one each” asks the geezer, “Oh yes”, she says opening one can and plonking the other one square in front of me, ready for rapid deployment.

It has calmed down a bit, but I am still pissing sweat through my hands at a rate that would have oil pipeline engineers reaching for the patent forms. There is a clearly defined wet patch describing the precise shape of my hands on each thigh of my jeans. It looks like it might have been done on purpose.

Chrissie starts chatting to me about this and that. I am very aware that my adrenaline addled, alcohol befuddled brain is causing me to talk absolute shite about the piss-poor allegorical, vaguely sci-fi story I have been trying to write for the last year, the one about the clones, with the entire first chapter written from the perspective of a hamster. Confused, and with good reason, she starts pointing out the massive logical holes in what I am describing. Oh no, it all made so much sense when I was a bit stoned and in my safely-attached-to-the-ground bedroom.

Watch two episodes of Flight Of The Concordes, which is very funny, but I can’t really calm down. To quote Marwood, my heart is beating like a fucked clock. Decide that I should apologise profusely and then start checking my watch, five hours to go. Wait a while. Check again. Still five hours.

Go to the toilet and eventually locate my cock, which has attempted to retreat to somewhere near my heart it would appear. Really wonder about how people manage to get in the mile-high club if air travel is like this all the time – have a sudden recollection that I am repeatedly failing at remaining an admittedly tenuous member of the two feet off the ground club and decide to take one step at a time. The plane starts bumping around while I am trying to piss. Fortunately, my potentially fashionable hand stains take the brunt of it. Hooray.

Returning to my seat for some bizarre reason I decide that tense, action packed, jerkily filmed The Bourne Supremacy will pleasantly distract me. Yeah, good call Jim.

After a few more fear-packed hours with intermittent turbulence we pass into night. Eventually we start to see lights from the outlying reaches of North America below, perversely this is the bit of flying that I really enjoy, seeing the world from a unique, never to be repeated vantage point.

We head down the coast and eventually turn in towards New York. I am still fairly terrified but the view is just incredible, especially to a newbie like me. Chrissie and I speculate as to where we are exactly in relation to Manhattan island, we guess it is a bit off in the distance as we circle around the huge area of fluorescent, shimmering lighting. I’m starting to notice the traffic so we must be getting lower.

The still-lovely Becky gives me a choc-ice and then its time to get ready to land – a lot of people don’t like this but I really couldn’t be happier. As the wheels of the big plane barely kiss the tarmac I feel as relieved as a man who has been trying to sneeze for 27 years.

The sweat is still pouring out of my hands as we get off the plane and its all I can do to not pick up each of the cabin crew and tell them that I love them. I make do with giving Chrissie a bit of a hug as we get off the plane while trying not to get hand-sweat all over her.

I feel like dancing into the immigration hall but remember sage words of advice from several (well virtually all of) my friends and family about how a trademark humourous/sarcastic approach to US officials would be ill advised. Here is an approximate extract from one particularly heart-felt e-mail: “I realise we aren’t best mates but don’t take the piss at US immigration – I’d hate to think of you in a Guantanamo Bay style boiler suit”.

All that good advice goes out of the window as I have a bit of a crack at chatting up the lady on the immigration desk – admittedly asking if she has got stamps from other countries to make my passport look more exciting, might be a touch too far. Fortunately she is the nicest immigration person ever and we are through so I can make weak jokes at the bloke with the Freddie Mercury moustache and gun at passport control.

My bag is the first one round and pretty soon we are in the complete soulless dump that is the arrivals area. Nick’s flight has arrived by the time we have had a ten quid diet pepsi and we scoot round on the air train to meet him.

The romantic re-union of husband and wife is somewhat ruined by having a pale, grinning man with hosepipes for hands in close proximity. I give Nick a hug and a kiss to make up for it, he seems fairly shocked that I am actually in America – but to be honest, as the reality of the situation kicks in and my resting heart rate drops below 100bpm for the first time in 12 hours, he isn’t half as shocked as I am.