Inbound Airport Encounter

I noticed him right away. As soon as I found my seat on the 9-hour nonstop flight from Munich to JFK, I looked around to see if anyone around me was cute, young, and male. To my surprise, he was all three. Tall and slim, his dirty blone hair kept falling onto his pale blue eyes and he effortlessly brushed it away with the carelessness of someone who performs the gesture 1000 times a day.

He was in a window seat and I was in an aisle seat in the middle row. A crazy cursing Italian woman sat between us drinking copious amoutns of red wine and talking loudly. He kept looking over at me helplessly but other than a half-smile I couldn't muster much else. At first I thought he was German crossing the Atlantic for the very first time, but when the loco lady engaged him in conversation I overheard a soft-spoken American accent and some mention of being a chef. My heart skipped a beat and I listened harder focusing my anxious energy into fumbling with my journal.

I saw him tear up the barf bag into little note-size pieces but no notes came my way. Finally, the woman sitting in the row in front of the drunk, foul-mouthed Italian switched seats and the slutty foreign girl that replaced her began passing MY PLANE GUY notes. I was outraged, but what could I do. My window had closed or so I told myself, noticing I had 4 hours and 16 minutes left to witness their courtship--up close and personal. However, when I noticed that they were ripping up Airline magazines to furnish the paper to pass notes with I was inspired. I quickly tore a blank page out of my journal and handed it to the cute boy with a coy smile.

He returned a huge grin which quickly turned to bewilderment when he noticed the paper was blank. He quickly scribbled me a note--requesting that I write him a note. I obliged by sending him the one-page character sketch I had written up of him earlier in the journey while I patiently awaited him initiating contact. He was flattered and flattered me with that phrase, "you have a beautiful aura". We wrote and passed notes across the sleeping crazy woman for hours till neither of us could write anymore.

The foreign girl was a tease--apparently she had a boyfriend--yet she was insulted that he had begun communicating with me. She promptly avoided him for the rest of the journey and we flirted via scratches on paper patches. He's a traveling chef on a yacht who was in port till March--sadly in Chicago. He gave me his e-mail and begged me to keep in touch. I smiled and nodded--knowing I wouldn't.

It was a movie perfect plane ride. Of course, in the movies they would have lived happily ever after...but hey, it's real life and my real life to boot--so no such luck. But his name is Keith and I'm rather fond of his face.