1/15/16, “New
Friends”
John F.
Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)
The theme of
finding the familiar within the unfamiliar and experiencing the unfamiliar
within the familiar returns once more.
For the fourth time in three years I find myself sitting at Kennedy
Airport waiting to fly to Mexico.
However, it’s all different this time.
I am not in my familiar Terminal 4 awaiting my familiar late night
Aeromexico flight to Mexico City. I am
not meeting my old friend Enrique. No,
instead, I am in Terminal 8, awaiting an unfamiliar American Airlines flight
direct to Cancun. Instead, I am meeting
my new friend Roberto. We will travel
together to visit six WHS in the Yucatan.
It will be very different from my previous three trips to Mexico. He will be my guide, but he is not a paid
guide. He is a friend. We met in the most unusual way, a manner only
possible in today’s modern world. We met
through Instagram. I mentioned him
during my last trip to Mexico. He saw my
WHS posts on Instagram, and we started talking about them. One thing led to another, and we planned this
trip together. I did not actually expect
it to happen, but now it is. In about
five hours I will be landing in Cancun, and we will begin our journey
together. It will be a fast-paced, fun,
and exciting journey together, a trip rather dissimilar from any previous trip
I have ever taken, but also familiar in so many ways. We are soon boarding, so I will now close so
that I can begin that journey.’’
Aboard
American Airlines 1434, En route JFK-CUN
Perhaps
skipping lunch today was not the best idea.
It seems I always get in trouble at work whenever I skip lunch. It has been a wildly interesting Day 0, far
more interesting than a Day 0 has any right to be. Of course, all of it is so familiar once
more. I had no idea how I wanted to
start this morning. I needed to pack
surely, yes. I needed to shave and
shower, too. I also wanted to go to Good
Morning America in an attempt to get Michael Bay’s autograph. I should have started that process at 7:30 AM
or maybe even earlier. It was 8:30 AM
when I got out of bed (out of bed, not awake).
No chance of the Michael Bay autograph, barely enough time to shower and
shave, not time to pack.
Why did all
this happen this way? I was awake at
7:30 AM. I was engaged in an intense
discussion with my best friend about feminism and the value of opposite-sex
platonic friendships. That lasted an
hour. Finally, the conversation died
down, and I got ready. I over estimated
how long it would take to shower, shave, and get dressed. That fucked everything up.
I would need to come back at lunch time to
pack and grab my suitcase. I would also
need to buy some cigars for the trip, and a lighter. That would not leave time for lunch,
especially with the intense discussion I started having with another friend
about various Oscar considerations. I
also discovered I had still had plenty of leftover cigars in my suitcase from
my last trip. I was back from lunch
fifteen minutes late. Further, since I
didn’t have time for lunch, I was unable to properly mask the scent of my
cigar. Strike 2.
There was a proposal that was supposed to go
out by the end of the day. I had
finished it before lunch and left it on my boss’s desk. It did not seem like our boss would come back
before the end of the day. I sent an
email to the client saying the partners were reviewing it and it would be ready
Tuesday morning at the latest. He was
fine with that. Our boss came back, just
as I was about to leave. I said it’d
probably have to wait until Tuesday unless he wanted to send out himself. He was okay with that. Our sales rep was not. He went ballistic. Strike 3.
I wound up having to stay until 3:30 PM, the regular closing time, when
I had been planning on leaving at 3 PM and taking an hour of personal time
(fifteen minutes late, fifteen minutes extra for lunch, leave thirty minutes
early). Instead, I didn’t get docked any
personal time, but I seriously risked missing my flight. I figured I’d be good. I was downstairs at 3:30 PM, immediately got
a taxi, and then came the traffic.
It
was 5:40 PM by the time we got to the airport.
I cleared up my reservation with Hertz while I was in the taxi, and I
was all set. Reader, all I had eaten by
this point was a bagel with cream cheese and two cups of coffee. That’s it.
It was 6:10 PM by the time I got past security. Boarding would begin at 6:35 PM. The gate was not close. I could either write my entry or get food,
but not both. I chose to write the
entry, assuming that there would be food on the plane.
Big mistake.
I got to write my entry for about ten minutes. It was past 7:30 PM by the time the food cart
came to us. And announced they were out
of food. WTF?!?!?!?! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! He clarified.
All they had was Goldfish and cookies.
That was food. I got two packs of
Goldfish and a pack of cookies. That
would hold me over until I landed.
Hopefully.
Meanwhile, my
seatmates, with whom I was becoming fast friends, had similar complaints about
the lack of alcohol and the rudeness of the service in general. I began to write my entry after I ate, but we
continued the conversation, moving on to other topics, too. On that note, I will now close so that I can
hopefully enjoy the rest of my flight. I
will soon be landing in Cancun where Roberto will be awaiting me.
Cancún,
Quintana Roo, Mexico
Quebec,
Istanbul, Lake Placid, The Bransfield Strait, Macau, and, now, Cancun. Those are but a few places where I have
smoked my 2010 Christmas Pipe. Cancun,
you cannot hear that word and but think of the beach. This is not a beach trip. Cancun just happened to have the big
international airport with direct flights from New York. It is merely our jumping off point to the six
World Heritage Sites in the Yucatan.
We
will start tomorrow with Chichen Itza, the most famous one of all. However, tonight’s entry, and the now
necessary corresponding entry in my personal journal will not be about Mayan
ruins. It will be about new
friends. I hinted at this above, but I
made a new friend, the woman sitting next to me on the flight. We did more than just bitch about the bad
service. We actually had real
conversations. Not one, multiple. Who was that person sitting in Seat 20F, and
what did he do with Steven?
Was it
because she reminded me so much of my best friend that I felt comfortable
talking to my seatmate, or was it more an extension of the conversation from
this morning, that I had realized something about myself and was able to extend
it to this new friendship? Just as I
knew four years ago, I knew tonight, I could not let her leave my life
forever. It didn’t matter that her
boyfriend was sitting in the row in front of us. This was not about that. This was about making a new friend. The only new food I had
gotten was a tray of nuts, which led to more jokes about the sexuality of the
flight attendant who brought us the nuts and asked me, with a distinct San
Francisco accent, “Do you like nuts?” We
found so much to talk about and joke about for most of the rest of the
flight. It was that fateful night in
June 2012 all over again.
When we
finally landed, and I got cell service, I asked if she was on Facebook. She went to type in her information into my
phone, but she had forgotten that she had set her profile to private. I suggested she look up my information, but
she didn’t have cell service. What about
Instagram? Yes, that would work. As we waited in the line for Immigration, she
was about a row ahead of me, so we exchanged a smile or a joke each time we passed
each other as the rows moved. She
referred to me with her friends (they were travelling as a group of 11) as her
friend from the plane. Again, who was
sitting in Seat 20F, and what did he do with Steven? Just as the cute girl who rested her head
against my hand four years ago became my best friend, the cute girl in Seat 20E
who rested her elbow against mine on the armrest could now become a new
friend.
It was not long before I
finished clearing the formalities and met my other new friend: Roberto. We
found each other outside the airport and greeted each other like old friends,
which, by this point, we were. We had
been Facebook friends for over four months, which is a long time in this day
and age. This was the first time we were
meeting. It was both familiar and
uneasy. To go from a Facebook friendship
to hanging out in person with just each other for three days. But we had been talking about this trip for
literally four months. We were
ready. We took some ceremonial pictures
together, but I had trouble posting them to social media. It was after midnight before I got everything
up.
We also had a bit of wait with the
car, but we were on the road before long.
We stopped at a gas station for food and snacks. I was starving, and this was what I got. Gas station food. I was so hungry that I didn’t care. We headed to the hotel, but the first room
they gave us with still dirty. They gave
us a new room, this one clean. Smoking
was banned in the room, and there were no operable windows. The weather is beautiful out, so it was a no
brainer. After we settled in, I headed
downstairs and went outside, where I found a seat, lit up my 2010 Christmas
Pipe, and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can
publish, write my personal entry, and get some sleep.
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