LAX

Waiting in line at LAX is a hell no English-speaking person (first language only) should have to endure. It’s like riding the bus, except the bus isn’t going anywhere and there are more children. There’s something about being trapped in line at the airport that makes you empathize with the terrorists. You start to see where they’re coming from, why we need to be exterminated and squashed out. Fuck training camps. Stick would-be terrorists in line at LAX. I’ve only been here half-an-hour and the word “jihad” is spelled out in my head in burning letters.

I want to punch the people around me. A list:

The ten-year-old ginger girl named Ruth with Kool-Aid lips and a teal suitcase. The twenty-something thirty-something with too much makeup and a Paris Hilton dog sticking its head out of a purse-suitcase-doggy carrier. The fat, balding man in black Wranglers who was born sweating. The greasy-haired asshole in the cargo shorts with his dyke-looking girlfriend who won’t stop Jack Johnsoning on his acoustic guitar. The FOB Asian girls with the mullets and the acne and the unbelievably hairy pussies that smell like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cocky-looking marines who made it out alive and smile because they know they’re going home to hot, underage pussy and idolatry. The young, big-nosed foreign couple behind me jabbering in some fucked up language.

“Oshkosh! Oshkoshbgosh!”

I feel like making a bomb joke. Or maybe I should set my laptop case down near a trash can and just walk away and observe from a distance. How long until it becomes a suspicious package? Can I get this whole place shut down?

Yes, I’m more rage-filled than usual, in case you couldn’t sense it. I missed my flight. My fault, yes, but only to an extent. My writer’s assistant friend, Brendan (thanks a billion for the ride, man), and I arrived at the airport around 9:40, and since my flight was supposed to leave at 11:35, decided we had enough time to get a bite to eat. Denny’s. And, if it weren’t for our over-the-hill Armenipersian waitress with the drawn-on eyebrows, we would have dipped the fuck out of Dodge with time to spare.

But things are never easy.

I get to LAX with about forty-five minutes to make my flight. Enough time, right? Maybe. But I have to check a bag. I go to the self check-in, try to print out my itinerary. I get a message out that basically says this:

“You’re going to miss your fucking flight because we need at least 45 minutes to get your shit on the plane.”

I check my cell phone. 10:52. 43 minutes. Fuck. That.

Frantic, I grab an attendant and show her the message. With one look she acknowledges that I am indeed fucked and points to a line that’s longer than a thousand porn cocks. This is where I must wait.

I try to look at these moments as character-building moments. My day is ruined, but at least I’ll grow as a person. This is good for me in the long run. It will humble me. It will build character.

But how much fucking character can you build before you snap?

I make it out of line, the land of a thousand smells, and get re-routed to Dallas. From there I’ll fly to Nashville. Projected arrival time: 10:30 CST.

The only good that can come from this is if my original flight crashes. That way, through fucking up, I will have averted tragedy and live to fully understand and appreciate what it means to be late. If my original flight crashes my life will taste so much sweeter.

But what if my new flight crashes? God, what a kick in the fucking nuts that would be. Late AND dead. That’s like being Sudanese and having a tiny dick. I’m sure that, as the plane plummets, I’ll seek out the loudest baby and/or old person and kick the living shit out of them while I scream “Forty-three fucking minutes!” Just to vent, you know?

I imagine old people get this smug sense of superiority when the plane’s going down, like they were going to die soon anyway. I can picture old Mabel giving the finger to a four-year-old boy. Death is her turf and he’s on that motherfucker. She’s lived life and he’s only begun to learn his ABCs.

“Fuck you, sonny boy. I win.”