Read Online Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff - Free Book Online
Authors: David Rakoff
Tags: Fiction
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Concorde, nor are there any audio channels on the arm of my seat. What there is, and it makes for completely diverting and fascinating entertainment, is an LCD readout at the front of the cabin ticking off Mach speed and altitude.
We reach the speed of sound. I feel a little bit of g-force in the back of the teeth, but there is no discernible boom. Of course there wouldn't be, since it would be happening behind us. There is the definite tang in the air of burning fuel. Like smelling a recently used cigarette lighter.
At 42,000 feet and Mach 1.71 (1,110 mph), we are given some small canapés. Triple rounds of edible money: filet mignon topped with caviar, smoked salmon, foie gras and a gooseberry; followed by a salad of duck confit with still more foie gras and greens; and a cheese course. A glass of white wine, and three small chocolate truffles, flavored respectively with Earl Grey tea, passion fruit, and champagne. We are served on linen place mats and porcelain, but for post-9/11 safety's sake, the cutlery is all plastic, an empty concession since my napkin ring is a sharp-edged cuff of machine-cut stainless.
It's time to check out the promised phenomena. The window is warm, but the wall of the plane isn't. The curvature of the earth is extremely subtle, if visible at all. It's probably just the refraction of the fish-eye windows. As for the darkness of the stratosphere, it's a no-show. I ask the flight attendant. “Myths, all of it,” she says. What about the red streak? She's heard tell but it, too, is erroneous. But, she says, the plane genuinely does expand with the heat, some eight to ten inches, in fact. This is most visible in the cockpit, where we are no longer allowed to go.
Something incredibly sweet happens at 56,000 feet and Mach 2. Something no one told me about: people come up to the front, easily twenty different individuals, to have their photographs taken beside the readout. They all smile for the camera, their faces like those of children, unashamedly delighted and amazed. The wonder of aviation revived, a full century into its innovation.
We land. Powerful, but again, no thrustier than usual. No Concorde-embossed gifts, alas, but who really needs one when you arrive in New York fully an hour before you even left London? I move through the airport like a man in love, dreamy and dancing and wanting to tell the world.
THAT CRAZY, CALLOW, buoyant feeling couldn't be further from the furtive embarrassment with which I skulk through the terminal at Newark Liberty International just a few short weeks later.
It was the Concorde's unsustainability, despite its two decades of operation, that ultimately rendered it the tangible cousin of utopian impracticalities like Smell-O-Vision and personal jetpacks. The foreseeable future of air travel is neither superfast nor super-exclusive. I have come to Newark to experience flying for the capitalist masses aboard the latest example of the new populism. Although, for something supposedly available to one and all, it is proving very difficult to find. I walk the concourse three times, looking fruitlessly for my carrier. After half an hour, I break down and ask a security guard, my voice a discreet mumble, where I might find the check-in counter for Hooters Air.
The ticket agent is handling a number of airlines. He only asks me where I'm going. When I respond with Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, we both know why I'm there. Our transaction is encoded, like I'm visiting a whorehouse. I remind myself repeatedly that there is no reason to be embarrassed, paraphrasing perhaps the most un–Hooters Girl of them all, Eleanor Roosevelt: no one can humiliate me without my consent. Although it is not for lack of trying. At the metal detectors the security guard, an older Trinidadian woman, takes one look at my boarding pass and lets out a high, fluting “Hoot hoot!” before breaking into cackles of laughter.
Hooters Air was started in 2003 by the restaurant chain known for
We reach the speed of sound. I feel a little bit of g-force in the back of the teeth, but there is no discernible boom. Of course there wouldn't be, since it would be happening behind us. There is the definite tang in the air of burning fuel. Like smelling a recently used cigarette lighter.
At 42,000 feet and Mach 1.71 (1,110 mph), we are given some small canapés. Triple rounds of edible money: filet mignon topped with caviar, smoked salmon, foie gras and a gooseberry; followed by a salad of duck confit with still more foie gras and greens; and a cheese course. A glass of white wine, and three small chocolate truffles, flavored respectively with Earl Grey tea, passion fruit, and champagne. We are served on linen place mats and porcelain, but for post-9/11 safety's sake, the cutlery is all plastic, an empty concession since my napkin ring is a sharp-edged cuff of machine-cut stainless.
It's time to check out the promised phenomena. The window is warm, but the wall of the plane isn't. The curvature of the earth is extremely subtle, if visible at all. It's probably just the refraction of the fish-eye windows. As for the darkness of the stratosphere, it's a no-show. I ask the flight attendant. “Myths, all of it,” she says. What about the red streak? She's heard tell but it, too, is erroneous. But, she says, the plane genuinely does expand with the heat, some eight to ten inches, in fact. This is most visible in the cockpit, where we are no longer allowed to go.
Something incredibly sweet happens at 56,000 feet and Mach 2. Something no one told me about: people come up to the front, easily twenty different individuals, to have their photographs taken beside the readout. They all smile for the camera, their faces like those of children, unashamedly delighted and amazed. The wonder of aviation revived, a full century into its innovation.
We land. Powerful, but again, no thrustier than usual. No Concorde-embossed gifts, alas, but who really needs one when you arrive in New York fully an hour before you even left London? I move through the airport like a man in love, dreamy and dancing and wanting to tell the world.
THAT CRAZY, CALLOW, buoyant feeling couldn't be further from the furtive embarrassment with which I skulk through the terminal at Newark Liberty International just a few short weeks later.
It was the Concorde's unsustainability, despite its two decades of operation, that ultimately rendered it the tangible cousin of utopian impracticalities like Smell-O-Vision and personal jetpacks. The foreseeable future of air travel is neither superfast nor super-exclusive. I have come to Newark to experience flying for the capitalist masses aboard the latest example of the new populism. Although, for something supposedly available to one and all, it is proving very difficult to find. I walk the concourse three times, looking fruitlessly for my carrier. After half an hour, I break down and ask a security guard, my voice a discreet mumble, where I might find the check-in counter for Hooters Air.
The ticket agent is handling a number of airlines. He only asks me where I'm going. When I respond with Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, we both know why I'm there. Our transaction is encoded, like I'm visiting a whorehouse. I remind myself repeatedly that there is no reason to be embarrassed, paraphrasing perhaps the most un–Hooters Girl of them all, Eleanor Roosevelt: no one can humiliate me without my consent. Although it is not for lack of trying. At the metal detectors the security guard, an older Trinidadian woman, takes one look at my boarding pass and lets out a high, fluting “Hoot hoot!” before breaking into cackles of laughter.
Hooters Air was started in 2003 by the restaurant chain known for
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