Love @ 36,000 feet
(Listen to music while reading blog post.)
The winglet almost hits the concrete of the runway in the crazy wind, I definitely need some clean underwear and they are kissing. This is one of the most exciting romance I have ever seen in my life. And I am going to tell you the story.
I sit on an aisle seat on the plane which is not my favourite, but at least I can drink half a liter of water, because I don’t have to wake up two snoring people to go to the ladies section. We are about to take-off, in my row a handsome man in his 40s is sitting by the window. That kind of good-looking guy who is perfectly aware of his awesomeness and expects others to notice this. In front of me in row 11 a young and tall woman with long legs as a gazelle, quite decorative. I am squirming in my seat to find some comfort and they share a smile. I try to decide whether this is their first one or they had known each other before, just didn’t get neighbouring seats, and I tend to believe in the first theory, because of the shyness of the smile.
The plane launches, the wind blows like crazy, the take-off is a bit tricky, but let’s say I am used to this kind of turbulence regarding the lot of flights I have. After reaching the cruising altitude the air smoothens, we can unfasten the seat belts and enjoy the wicked scenery of white clouds that are like sheeps on the land.
The infinity of the blue sky seems to intoxicate not only me, but the girl in the row before me, because out of the blue she stands up and come to our row to sit beside the handsome. She simply sits down. Sh*t. I have to admit, I’ve always been a shy girl, when it was about getting to know a new guy. OK, let’s be more practical, I believe in smiling and batting the eyelids, but the man has to be the one to approach. I must become old-fashioned.
After this short side-track of my private life, let’s get back to the original path, to our newly met friends. They start to chat, first about quite innocent topics (yes, ok, I overheard them, but it was exciting, what I could have done?!), but never about clichés, this is not a kind of ‘oh-we-have-a-very-nice-weather-today-for-a-little-hanky-panky’ talk. It starts slowly, softly, but from the very first moment a powerful electric tension is sensible between these two. After a (short) while, there comes the classic toolkit of flirting body language, the gal laughs with her head thrown back and sets her hair a bit more frequently than it would be inevitably necessary, showing her waist. Her laugh is breathtaking and brings the message: you are funny and I am happy that you make me smile. In the book of András Kepes, a Hungarian writer I’ve read a paragraph about the technique of hooking women. From a male point of view the recipe is quite simple: make her smile and she is yours. Well, something like this happens during this very short flight.
The guy tries to deepen his voice and squirm in his seat until his gym-big muscles gain the clearest visibility. They are turning toward each other, the girl changes her crossed legs and try to face him as much as possible (now it’s like a very bad romance book for old ladies, right?!). For a little while I lose my interest in them, I listen to music and leave them alone, and when I rejoin their conversation, the man shows pictures of his wife for the woman who makes polite comments about the wife’s beauty.
There are no photos about the boyfriend of the girl they just speak about him. So it turns out that both of them live in a relationship. OK, Meli, I think to myself, no romance then, no matter how big the electric tension is between them. And how very wrong I am…
The turbulence is bigger and bigger, the wind plays with our airplane like a small paper toy. Some become a bit nervous and I admit, my blood pressure is also a bit higher, I’ve always hated amusement parks. And the adrenalin seems to break the obstacles, because I am not the only one with a slightly increased blood pressure. Although because of a different motive. The hands of the guy rest in the lap of the woman and in the next moment they start kissing. I almost start to feel really embarrassed beside them, when the plane jumps so big that I lose my stomach somewhere sixty feet below and get really scared.
We already started our descent, soon will reach the airport, fly in the clouds, I can not even see the horizon that would help me a bit. I am not religious so I don’t start praying, but I manfully lose my nerves. And these two in my row are untouched by the danger, the turbulence, they are kissing. They opened a world for themselves that nobody and nothing can enter in this moment. I am amused by the world-changing strength of their passion, and thinking about the human fallibility and animal instincts.
The lights of the runway slowly become visible, we approach swaying, I breath three times faster than normally and probably look frightened enough. During landing our winglet almost hits the concrete of the runway but we are safely on ground and I hear relieved sighs from everywhere. The two beside me are lost in their private universe, cuddling, looking deep into each other’s eyes, not being conscious about the world at all, and I have to admit, I envy them in this moment. Not their partners, though.
The plane breaks, we are taxiing to the final destination, and while I am searching for my lost self-control, the man stretch and say something like this: ‘What a flight…!’ No comment.
And I wanted to tell you this story because of one Portuguese word. Before the girl took his hand and they left the plane in quite a hurry (errrr…., probably to reach a connecting flight), she told him about a word. Saudade. She said it was her favorite Portuguese word ever. At that time I didn’t know the meaning, but it sounded exotic enough to my ears. Later on this word appeared again and again, and once I asked for the meaning. I felt like a little child opening her christmas present, trying to find out what’s inside, but at the same time afraid that she could lose the magic of expectation. I am also a bit afraid to know the meaning, like the magic could disappear after. But this is not what happens. Because this is in fact a magical word, means something like longing, but exists only in Portuguese language so it’s quite hard to get the point. It is a bitter and sweet longing after something very good and very missed. There are smiles and tears in this word, just like in the romance weaved so naturally between two young people during a 1,5-hour flight.
