The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley (an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, for promis’d joy!)
1.
Now, on board the Delta plane and flying to London’s Heathrow, with a shiver the Belfast man shakes off the entire ordeal, which begins to seem ages behind him, and has begun its transformation in his mind into that familiar sensation of having been something unreal – like a bad dream one awakens from with its residue fragments in a hazy churning jumble, fading and quickly fading until they disintegrate in forgotten oblivion and are suddenly gone.
He looks over to his right and the goofy geek girl Jennifer is asleep, a drop of drool running from her mouth. Maybe, he thinks, he shouldn’t have been so cruel to her, and when she wakes up, to maybe start a conversation. In his sudden compassion, he pulls a napkin out of a pack of Kleenex from the little travel bag he has next to him and wipes the saliva from her mouth and chin. Jennifer smiles faintly in her sleep – or maybe she’s not sleeping at all, just faking it. He suddenly regrets the move and decides to forget the whole thing.
He breaks open a couple of wet towels and wipes and daubs his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks, his neck, his face, the alcohol tingling cool in his pores.
The Belfast man feels refreshed and upbeat and decides to work on his speech for The Third Annual Kyiv Poster Minotaur Sessions, dubbed “Hooking New Markets”, where he is the keynote speaker for the part called ‘Disinformation Wars’.
Hmm… let’s see… With contemptuous disregard for international… no, no, that’s not it.
Ah, how ‘bout: Russia, in its destructive irrationality and utter depravity, has plumbed the very depths of evil. It has…
Nooooo!!! – who am I, anyway; Winston Churchill?!
Let’s see – ah, I’ve got it. Just keep it simple, and you’ll draw them to you.
Therefore, say something like: The Russians are shooting both bullets and propaganda, dropping both bombs and lies. The two types of war – the hot one and the media war – are inextricably linked. As long as they keep rolling out their disinformation against Ukraine, you can expect them to keep rolling out their tanks, for they go hand in hand to support the other…
Well, that last part’s a little rough, but I can clean it up later…
And the Belfast man dozes, for the exertion has drained him.
Jennifer for some reason has become one of those dancing images at the forefront of his mind as it drops off into deeper sleep – but of course he starts awake, because the chain of images suddenly violently provokes him to think about his niece (first cousin once removed) back in Kansas, Amelia, and now he can’t get her out of his mind.
With his eyes still closed, he tosses and turns – even gyrates his hips – in his big comfortable airplane seat, growling aggressively to himself in the half-subdued groan of a wounded beast:
Oh, Meelee, Meelee, my God – those tits, those big fucking tits, I want you so bad, I want you…!!! Incest, Statutory Rape… I don’t care, so strike me down dead and let me burn in Hell, I – don’t – give – a – damn!!! Meelee! I’m gonna get you over to Kyiv; I’m gonna put you in the other room across from us and help you on with your pajamas – right in front of my wife!!! I – don’t – care!!! Kansas or no Kansas, New Nation or no New Nation, the United States of America or what’s left of it – damn it damn it aaaaahhh…
And now, inexplicably, he suddenly wants this Jennifer, who has heretofore been so repugnant to him, and he looks for a way to put on the move…
Perhaps feeling his heavy breath on her, she opens her eyes and blinks irises at him large and brown. And then she asks, politely, and so softly, it is nearly a whisper – as though she were frightened to ask, and as though she wasn’t asking at all, but he was hearing it in his mind, Do you mind if I take my sweater off?
Her speech, which he had earlier held up to ridicule to himself, like a schoolboy, due to her overbite affliction, suddenly sounds sensuous, sexy, enchanting, beguiling. How can that be? But he doesn’t even try to rationalize his reaction, his feeling, and he no longer holds reign over his emotions, but lets them tumble out of him like marbles out of a jar.
N-no, go right ahead… w-why should I mind?
And she pulls it off and he smells her for the first time. It is a deep aroma of musk and honey, and it lures him in.
She lets the sweater fall between them. She is wearing a black satin blouse, but her back is still turned to him as she reaches both arms behind her and hooks up her up-to-now unhooked bra. The bulky sweater had hidden all this from his view. Now he sees the thick outline of the straps and the formidable width of the band… and… and… OH, NO!!! IT’S STARTING AGAIN!!!
2.
Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Yes, that’s right. As she turns to him to let him see, there they are – two large gorgeous mounds of soft firm surging flesh, the buttons fairly exploding off the blouse from their pressure and size.
He wants to look, but he can’t, because it would be too obvious, but he keeps looking and being caught looking, looking at the unbelievable slopes and underscoops and swerve-outs of flesh, and peering at the naked skin under the spaces of raised satin held tension-stretched by the buttons.
And so he disguises his unprecedented head turns toward her with the excuse that he’s concerned about her comfort and begins insisting they exchange seats so she could watch Great Britain rise out the window with the breaking day.
She, of course, refuses, saying she’s quite comfortable, but he insists and nearly molests her as he lifts her out of her seat and forces her into his. He has a crazed look and she meekly gives in, although she enjoys the thrill of being scared. Before, she thinks, he wouldn’t pay attention to me, no matter what I did, and now that’s all he’s doing… why?
The Belfast man’s a step closer to happiness. He can now look at her chest with impunity and no interruption, as he can quickly divert his eyes from her tits out the window whenever she turns away from it herself.
But he is suddenly concerned if she finds him attractive.
Before, he’d had no doubt, but now, he wants to make sure, so he keeps trying to strike up conversation with ridiculous remarks that are practically nonsense, and when he gains her attention, he lifts his head to her in profile – a trick he has begun to use in an attempt to fool people into thinking he’s still got a smooth neckline proceeding down from a perfectly perpendicular jaw.
But he’s got the start of the sagging jowls. And in truth, if he doesn’t start doing jowl exercises soon, in a few years, with that prematurely whitened hair, thick and wavy though it is, he’ll end up looking like a village Protestant minister who drinks Isle of Sky all day and memorizes William Butler Yeats.
So, so, he asks, maybe I can give you a lift home – that is, if you’re getting on the same flight with me to Kyiv.
Oh, no, she says, thanks a lot, but I’ll be spending a few days in Dublin to visit with friends. Maybe a week. And then I’m going home. I’ll have a better idea when I get there – Dublin, that is. My flight plans haven’t been confirmed.
Dublin?!
Yes, yes, Dublin. We’ll be landing in an hour.
STEWARDESS!!!
Just then, by sheer coincidence, the stewardess steps out with a note for…
Piper Nadine, Piper Nadine… message from Kyiv to cockpit for Piper Nadine… the stewardess calls out.
The Belfast man grabs the note, which says that in Kyiv they’re aware of his delay in getting in and have made a request to move his speech back by two hours at the Kyiv Poster’s Third Annual Minotaur Sessions. Signed, Sweaty Tank Top. P.S. Your wife, Lava Encole, says hi.
Say, stewardess, Piper Nadine manages to say before she turns to go, is this plane landing at London’s Heathrow?
Oh, fuck no. Sorry, sir, but whatever gave you that idea? In half an hour we’ll be landing in Dublin!
Dublin… DUBLIN!!! I can’t believe it! But, but… but that’s impossible! How do I get to Kyiv from there? Lucky Charms Airlines and Clover Air are the only two major carriers operating out of Dublin, and neither of them flies there!
Sir, that’s where you’re wrong. For you are mistakenly overlooking one smaller airline that does indeed fly to Kyiv. At the airport, make a beeline for Leprechaun Skies. That’s sure to be your fucking ticket home.
Leprechaun Skies?! Never heard of them!
Well, sir, you have now! If that’s all, then have a great rest of this flight, a great stay in Dublin, and a great journey home, wherever you go. Well – see ya… Oh, and buckle your fucking seatbelts.
Piper Nadine’s panic grows worse and worse. He is suddenly taking business cards out of his wallet and writing various contact numbers on them and, his hands shaking, nervously fumbling to get them into the upper left-hand pocket of Jennifer’s blouse. He drops the pen. He picks it up, then drops it again. She sits back, bemused.
When you get in to Kyiv, he says, his voice trembling, call me, call me. His throat goes dry. His voice goes hoarse and rough and he tries to clear it, bring the spit back into his mouth, but his very desperation turns these attempts into failure, as he makes the request over and over again, now turning it into a mantra, now practically imploring. … Call me, please, call me, call me. We can… His lips grow parched. He’s got a bottle of water, but since he’s no longer thinking rationally, he panics himself into not taking a time-out to calm down, gather up his long-practiced and experience-based suaveness and cool, and drink it, fearing the time he has for success growing shorter and shorter. Instead, he tries licking his lips, but his tongue has grown thickish in an ulcerous paste and yellow, and then it begins to stick to his palate and he is forced to suck it off only to have it turn inside an orifice of cotton as he desperately continues trying to say:
Ca ma, ca ma, pees pees jduh ca ma… wah ka…
And in this manner he proceeds in trying to as-if inadvertently touch her big breasts, hoping, praying that when she returns home to Kyiv, she will agree to…
Filed February 24, 2015