T A B L E+T A L K Japan: A reader asks for advice on an upcoming visit in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk A L S O +T O D A Y Remembering an Everest hero By Suzette Lalime Death of an Everest hero: Anatoli Boukreev R E C E N T L Y Luzviminda By Richard Sterling A tale of lust and illusion (01/15/98) Nagano: Not ready for prime time By Eric Gower Hundreds of thousands of athletes and fans are about to descend -- so where's the Olympics fever? (01/14/98) Nigerian nightmare By Jeffrey Tayler A death-defying bus adventure (01/13/98) Road Warrior By Dawn MacKeen Frequent flyer guru Randy Peterson shares his secrets (01/12/98) In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great By Michael Wood Tracking Alexander the Great through the Hindu Kush (01/08/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust feature archive - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		TALE OF A FLIGHT FROM HELL ++|+P A G E+2+O F +2 Eventually, the bland guy disentangled himself from Street Punk No. 1 and walked off, presumably to call the police. The Street Punks stayed at the front of the line, where a woman soon appeared and began flirting with them. Since we had been reduced to the junior high level, this was only fitting and predictable. She had her dyed blond hair tied up with a clip, displaying her wood-colored roots as they climbed down her yellowy strands. "I live in Hollywood," she said as she peered out from the sunglasses she was wearing, "and I usually only hang out on the Westside, that's where everybody is." Even after the crowd went back to discussing the missing plane, we could occasionally hear her squeals and see her throw her head back with laughter. Finally, a Tower Air representative appeared and said we were leaving from yet another place. We followed the narrow hallway for what must have been a couple hundred yards and stopped again. And waited. Then one policeman after another, after another, showed up and pulled Street Punk No. 1 and the bland guy, who had been waiting at the new gate, away from the crowd. They talked for a long time, but there was no further drama. In the middle of all this, Tower Air employees would occasionally materialize and make announcements in such soft-spoken voices I began to wonder whether or not laryngitis was to blame. They weren't even using the loudspeaker. No one could hear anything. Finally the woman next to me, a toughened beauty in her early 20s with long braids, took off the headphones she had on, stopped bobbing to the music that was playing and repeated the announcements from her diaphragm. The crowd erupted in cheers. She then casually slipped the headphones on and went back to bobbing to the beat. After another hour in a narrow corridor with 400-plus passengers, it became hard to breathe. There was hardly any ventilation and as we sat on the floor, people complained of dizziness, nausea and headaches. Suddenly some tall, frat-looking guys yelled out, "Some lady has fainted back here." No one was listening. "Maybe you should get one of those 10 cops up there to come back here and help her out." No one did anything. No Tower Air employees showed up to help her. The guys yelled out again, "I'm serious, some lady is on the floor." Twenty minutes later, someone arrived and she was rolled out on a gurney. She was the first casualty of the day. This part of our pre-boarding adventure became known as The Faint. But the fun didn't stop there. Once we finally boarded the plane at 12:30 p.m. -- four and a half hours after our scheduled departure time -- I made my way to my aisle seat and was about to plunk myself down and doze off for the rest of the flight when a lady started poking my arm with her fingernail. "My son, my son, he sit on other seat. Seat J, seat J. He can sit here. You sit there. OK?" "Sure," I responded, irritated. I approached this new "J" seat and a military guy with a blond crew-cut jumped out of his seat and offered to take my jacket and put it in the bin up above. He grabbed my jacket, put it away and then said with a grin, "Welcome to my aisle." Unbeknownst to me, I had traded my aisle for a center seat. I wedged in next to the commando of the aisle and sat between him and a 21-year-old hippie guy who smelled like he hadn't bathed for a while. (I recognized the hippie guy from the check-in line -- he had placed his suitcase on a skateboard and pulled the whole contraption by the suitcase's strap.) The military guy then asked, I mean told, one of the flight attendants, "We're going to get free alcohol since our plane is so late, right? That's the least you could do." She told him to go ask the purser, so he did -- and returned with four cans of the Silver Bullet, which he shoved into the pocket in front of him, next to the vomit bags and safety instructions. He drank one, crushed it and moved on to the next -- and finished all four within 20 minutes. Then he leaned over me to the hippie guy and cracked what he thought was a funny joke: "So, what did the battered wife do when she got out of the hospital?" He paused rhetorically so the punch line could be that much more dramatic: "The dishes ... if she's lucky." I finally lost it. After the fights, the fainting and the waiting, I said, "Are you planning on telling jokes like this for the next five hours, all the way to L.A.? I mean, I'm just curious." He cut short his stand-up act and refocused his attention on the flight attendants, insisting on more beers every time he finished one. He burped and he shouted. Then he volunteered to help them pass out all the drinks and food -- a measly bowl of Product 19 and a cinnamon roll. Finally, after guzzling a 12-pack compliments of Tower Air, he threw up on a flight attendant and passed out next to me. Our plane eventually touched down in the smoggy city at around 4 p.m., about five and a half hours after we were supposed to arrive. In a weird way, it was hard to say goodbye to some of the characters from the flight. They had become such an integral part of my life for one day. I saw the headphones woman leave first, then the military guy, then the hippie. But nothing could prepare me for seeing the Hollywood Blond leave arm-in-arm with Numero Uno Street Punk. They walked out of the terminal, off into the city of fake dreams. Sweet love had taken wing on Tower Airlines flight 21. SALON | Jan. 16, 1998