Choking on The Flight

Sometimes the Autism wins

For the past few weeks I’ve been island hopping through the Philippines trying to find a girlfriend. On my most recent flight, from Cebu to Dumaguete, I arrived at my gate at 4:29, which was one minute before the gate closed at 4:30.

As I walked into the area there was a woman looking for me: Mr. Johnmas Johnson?! She was calling into the void. I said Uh I’m Johnmas Johnson.. she said Right this way sir!! And everyone looked at me like what’s wrong with you white boy? Why you come so last minute? Well Brownoids it’s because every moment of my life is precious and I cannot waste a second and that’s why I walk so fast everywhere I go, it’s a different culture you don’t understand, whatever anyway so I’m the last one through the gate and instead of stepping onto a plane we step onto a bus, the bus takes us through a series of parking lots until we get to one of those outdoor planes, the ones that aren’t connected to any terminal, the kind I used to step onto in Hawaii back when I lived there, Yes I stepped up the ramp onto one of those smaller planes for this 55m flight and immediately felt its size.

I was in 20D, in the very back, which was actually the very first seat you can fill on this plane because it loads from the back, and for once in my life I was seated alone beside a beautiful perfect approximately 22-year old asian girl.

She resembled this creature

Immediately I went into fight or flight. She was on the inside, in a window seat, she had gotten there before me. Usually on flights I stick my backpack between my legs or under the seat because I like to have all my Tools on-hand but this plane was just too small, my knees were pressed up against the seat in front because the designers could not imagine that anyone would ever be 6 feet tall and so there was just no room for my bag, so I fumbled around making everyone wait for me as this girl must have thought to herself: Oh my god I was randomly selected to sit next to this tall pale fit 26 year old cute single white man… i can’t believe my ruck… (things are different in this country i swear) before I autistically shoved my backpack into one of the overhead compartments retrieving only my phone and one of my old notebooks to keep me company.

I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I’d just left all my shit in my backpack and forced myself to talk to her instead. In the very first moment I sat my ass in the chair I had this urge to turn and say: Hi, how are you? But I didn’t do it. Because where does that go? Good, thanks. And how are you. Good, thanks. So… you come here often? We were just too close together, I hate to make a stranger feel cornered or trapped, and in this situation on this flight she is literally trapped to my right (which sadly is not my good side) and I am SOBER so I just can’t muster the audacity to do it.

I always bitch about how I’m always seated next to a fat old white guy on flights and so God put me next to this literally perfect candidate on this one-way to Dumaguete, opportunity knocked at my door and I did not answer the call.

Look the cabin really was tiny, we were so close to so many other silent non-talking people, I thought to myself: They’re going to hear everything I say to this woman, they’re going to heckle me, they’re going to know I’m just some tourist white guy scavenging for filipussy, they’re going to groan and roll their eyes and we’re going to be the only ones talking and it’s going to feel forced and the lack of alcohol in my body just made these thoughts louder and louder as we sat there awkwardly together inhaling each others’ pheromones, feeling like two pieces of some impossible puzzle, she touched my arm several times and just let it linger.

Usually when I graze arms with somebody on a flight we recoil, I recoil, she just let it linger. Eventually I grew some balls: Do you have a pen? I said it with a sorry smile. I actually did need a pen. I just had my notebook and no pen. She returned a sorry smile back and said No sorry, no pen. I could hear in her voice that English was not her strong suit, which broke my fucking heart. Because I knew in an instant that any kind of conversation we could have would not be deep enough to make me laugh or smile, and this would reflect in my tone, my mood, and my negativity would rub off on her, and so the whole interaction would surely devolve into nothing and leave us both with an unpleasant anti-globalist taste in our mouths as we disembarked, and those bad vibes would follow me throughout my whole foray into Dumaguete, and I really want this island to work I really want to like it, I want to find a place where I can get comfortable and feel like I belong, and fuck I hope the local girls are fluent comfortable and natural-enough with english, so so so so I just did not push the conversation any further than that.

At one point she got up to grab something from her bag. I had to get up to let her pass. I asked her… “Are you grabbing a Pen? XD” She smiled half-laughing, so did I, it was genuine, but no she did not have a pen sorry, I said OK NO PROBLEM and did not talk to her again for the rest of the flight. Instead I just sat there, reading my own notes and smiling/giggling to myself, this notebook really followed me all around the country, I know I need to make this book, it will be such an epic task, where will I go to make it, whatever it’s not urgent yet, I sped through the year-long physical journal in about 20, 25 minutes and then just sighed, staring off into space.

I felt this girl’s presence the whole time. She was picture fucking perfect. She looked like a girl I used as clickbait in one of my old blog posts. She was shaped like a siren in a tight black dress with done-up hair, cute little nose big toothy smile, glasses, thin circular glasses, I swear, if she was somehow blessed with the kind of brain I need a girl to have to be able stand her for more than an hour she would be my wife. I would find something else to write about besides girls, I would cash out, she would be my wife.

She tried to read her own book but it wasn’t 1/10th as interesting as mine and so she fell asleep. I saw her literally nodding off in my periphery. Resting against the window, her chin dropping slowly every few moments and perking back up. Once I was sure she was asleep I took these big long indulgent glances at her which is why I’m able to recollect it all so vividly now. I wanted to touch her more than I’ve wanted to touch a girl in a long long time. Some racist infantile unconscious part of my brain feels like, when I’m with any kind of asian girl in such close quarters like this, like we are dating, because that’s what I’ve experienced before, and so the fact that we’re not grabbing all over each other right now is driving that reptile part of my brain batshit crazy.

I wonder if she was just pretending to be asleep, or if she noticed when I turned to stare at her so baldly like that. Like I knew her, like I owned her.

But yeah, we did not speak for the rest of the flight. The plane landed and everyone got up to grab their bags before me because I’m a sensitive young man and I don’t like to physically push/assert myself past strangers so I just sat there watching them all walk on by. Eventually I pushed myself into the stream of human slop much like you have to push yourself into and through traffic here and retrieved my bag from the top compartment. I was so frazzled I almost left my phone.

I grabbed the girl’s bag too, her cute pink backpack with some KPOP idol-I think-’s-picture attached to it, some japanese bear figure, classic hot girl shit, wordlessly I grabbed that bag and placed it next to her so she wouldn’t have to endure the same kind of traffic as me. She was on her phone the whole time, she didn’t even notice. I just left it sitting there beside her and stepped off the plane.

Immediately I was faced with some bona-fide natural island beauty. Kind of thing that makes you take a picture if you’re a travel blogger who can not stop commodifying his experience for some imaginary audience in your head. So I took a picture. And here it is: