Member-only story
It Isn’t Home Until You Come Back To It
A flight home with Dante and Homer
You don’t want to sit next to me on the plane
I’m not the worst possible neighbor. I’m quiet. I’m considerate. I won’t steal your space. I hope I don’t smell.
But even my not-especially-huge physical frame sits uneasily in the cramped quarters of a budget airline. I stick to the space I pay for, but I fill every square inch of it with my hairy scowling presence. And if I’m in the middle, both of those armrests are mine.
You want to sit next to who I sat next to on my way to Perpignan. A young blonde woman who, with effort, could have folded herself into a checked bag if she needed to. Short enough to sit crosslegged and still not touch the seat in front. Slim enough not to come near the armrest I hoarded for myself like a dragon on a pile of gold.
Hey, look, some of my best friends are fat. Doesn’t mean I want to sit beside them on a flight.
She read a book. I read my phone. Dante and Virgil wandered through hell while we raced through the sky in polite silence. No one’s going to mistake a cheap flight on a notoriously horrible airline for Paradise. But it’s not the Inferno, either.
In the scenery of spring, nothing is…
