He told me he knew the sound of someone dying. Not exactly the smoothest pick-up line, but in a world where swiping culture had made traditional relationships disposable, anything was better than another digital connection with someone on an online dating app who would most likely ghost me when instant gratification reared its head in the form of another, prettier vessel.

Yes, he met the current qualification: he was tangible, was kind of cute, and let’s be honest, my standards were a lot lower than they were ten years ago. Hell, at this point I was just glad that he hadn’t offered to send me a photo of his penis.

I saw him at the party, earlier, just posted up in a doorway. He was there, lurking, in a manner that looked non-threatening enough. Or perhaps it was his soft features that lulled me into false confidence. You know they say most serial killers don’t give any vibes of danger at all… until it’s too late. Oh well; as I said, it was still better than Tinder. If he wanted to wear my organs like fashion accessories, well I guess that was the risk I took. 

Either way, he had piqued my curiosity. He had that look in his eye that he wanted to tell me something. Perhaps I was projecting, but, I mean, why else would you make intermittent eye contact with someone well past a party’s natural shelf life? Most likely it was just to ask me out, but he was hesitant. Little did he know, his reluctance was unwarranted. All he had to do was play the game and he’d win.

For a moment, he broke from our cat and mouse eye contact game and I saw him glance down and get fixated somewhere between my modest skirt and point dress shoes. When he looked up, I was staring back at him and he sheepishly looked away. So much for first impressions.

Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. I had come to the party straight after work so while I wasn’t dressed to the nines, I still was dolled up a bit, especially for a t-shirt and jeans type of party. I mean, I understand toning down sex appeal at work to be taken seriously, but I didn’t want to completely hide my assets either. It reminded me of the story Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut. You know, where they made the aesthetically pleasing people dress in all these repulsive outfits, so they would fit in with the rest of society. I guess I just let my looks spill out onto the canvas in whatever fashion it could, and apparently for this mysterious man posted up on the doorway, my legs did the trick.

I smirked. Not so much because I was flattered (more so amused), but I was open to allowing for free interpretation. He must have missed the opening because it wasn’t until closer to 2 AM that he finally spoke to me and that’s when I learned a valuable lesson… you should never stay at a party for too long. No good ever comes from it.

You know the type of party… usually in someone’s apartment… big enough to float from person-to-person, but intimate enough that you wouldn’t forget a face you saw early. Eventually, the party dwindles down to a few people, ones who don’t really want to leave for one reason or another… loneliness, boredom, or in my case a red-eye flight that didn’t make much sense for me to hike back to Brooklyn, only to shuffle back uptown a couple of hours later. Also, it didn’t hurt that I hadn’t been intimate with someone in a very long time. Work was always the pinnacle of importance to me and unfortunately, everything else took a back seat. Yes, a quick makeout session was just what the doctor ordered to know I still had a libido somewhere, deep, deep underneath piles and piles of work thoughts, somewhere between stock prices and pivot tables.

In the strange case of the man in the doorway with the wandering eyes, while I had initially pegged it as horniness, truthfully, I think he just didn’t want to be alone with his own thoughts. Either way, the best conversations tend to happen when inhibitions and filters are removed and I was about one black Russian (I needed the caffeine push) away from spilling my own life story as well.

The irony was that he didn’t drink, but his inhibitions were flowing just the same, or more so he had a litany of things he wanted to get off his chest… thoughts that most people don’t want to hear, but I had a particular interest in the odd and macabre aspects of life, so when he said, “There is a distinct sound that occurs when a human body and a train make contact,” I urged him to go on, less to ease his burden, but more so to scratch my own curiosity.

He continued, “To the untrained ear, it’s not a particular harrowing noise, but I venture to say that that specific sound will be seared into my auditory cortex for the rest of my life.”

“I’m sorry to hear that… that must have been quite the shock,” I asked, more out of politeness; a formality without genuine interest. 

“That’s not what you want to know. Cut the bullshit out. Ask what you really wanna know,” he said, rather curtly, but with eagerness… this excited him. 

In fact, I’d venture to say this was the most ardent I had seen him all night. Perhaps even bordering on fervent. At this point, it was hard to completely remove “serial killer” as a possible job occupation for my mystery man, but truth be told, I was nervously excited to hear what he had to say. He was right, I didn’t care at all to know if he felt dejected; I just wanted to know what death sounded like.

“The sound… surely it sounds like any other animal being crushed to death, no?” I asked with the slightest smile beginning to curl from the corner of my mouth.

He must have been proficient at reading micro expressions because soon after, he unfurrowed his brow, pushed the tension away from his shoulders, and continued in painstaking detail, knowing full well that I was into it. He informed me that after the first time it happened, he’d be inclined to agree with my statement. In fact, on that day it sounded just like that, a plain, ordinary thud, but since then, it had happened two more times and the sound has always been the same.

I asked for more clarification, and while he put forth great effort, he struggled to string a group of words together that could coherently express what was not easily conveyed. Truthfully, there probably wasn’t a single thing he could utter that would satisfy the itch that was tickling inside my cortex. I mean, how do you describe a feeling deep inside the pit of your soul?

No, the best he could do was say that it is like when you hear the phone ring and you just know it’s bad news even before the person on the other line says a single word, and I agree… some things in life are more intuition than fact-based and that’s how he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that someone had seized existing underneath the locomotive.

It was a lot to process and before I could dive deeper, my phone alarm went off. It was time to head to the airport. While my original guess at his purpose was off, I still did find him somewhat cute and enthralling, so I offered to add him on social media, but he said he didn’t use it which seemed a bit bizarre for a man under forty, so instead, I did something that I would have never done in my twenties… I gave him my number.

He politely thanked me for it, but he didn’t seem keen about it; as if he thought that gaining ten digits wouldn’t make him any closer to actually getting with me than when he was posted up in the doorway across the hall just staring at me. I was tempted to tell him he was wrong about me, but no, this was a jaded man… it would do no good. Besides, I think he already got what he wanted that night.

In quantum theory, there is a concept called the multiverse which is a hypothetical set of various possible universes, including our present one. Long story short, every action we take forms a path, and theoretically, if we took a different action it would form an alternative universe or ‘parallel world’. One where different leaders get elected or you opted for eggs Benedict for breakfast instead of pancakes.

What’s my point?

Even the most mundane actions you take hold weight… which is why I really wish I had either skipped that party or booked a later flight to leave New York. As they say, the anticipation of death can sometimes be worse than the actual act. 

I was headed to San Francisco, the land of weird techies, an abundantly aggressive homeless population, and overpriced avocado toast… one of the few places in the world that made me thankful to pay New York rent.

In my approximately thirty-four years of being on this earth, I have only felt pure terror three times, including this current flight, which most likely would be my third and final time. The first time was when my brother and I were kids; my father swerved off the road to avoid the town mutt and our family car plunged off of a small bridge and landed into the local pond. By the time we could even process what had happened, the doors were already jammed shut due to the pressure of the rising water around us. Fortunately, it was the middle of summer and our AC had been out of coolant for months, so the windows were down. If my father had an extra two hundred dollars in his checking account the last time he visited his mechanic, I’m not sure what our fates would have been. To this day, I can hear my mother’s scream as if it were yesterday.

The next time I was panic-stricken was ten years later when I graduated college and I had accumulated more than 60k in student debt without a single job offer insight. As the months ticked by and I saw that debt number exponentially increase (thank you private financing high-interest rate), I felt like killing myself. I never thought something as simple as a financial hardship would make me consider that option, but that’s the unfortunate truth. 

I planned on fulfilling a prescription Xanax overdose, which in hindsight would have been a horrible idea (as I hear pill overdoses can be quite agonizing and drawn out). In fact, there was a boy in college who tried this and not only was it painful, but expensive, as his roommates found him unresponsive a couple of hours later, so they called 9–1–1 and the medics were able to pump his stomach in time. No, if I were to consider this route again, I’d slit my wrists for sure. Cheap, easy, efficient… just follow the river upstream.

Truthfully, it was probably more than the debt that made me consider this option. I was depressed and confused about life, which looking back, wasn’t really any different than what most people in their twenties go through, but at the time my view was myopic, at best. Fortunately, a few weeks after I seriously contemplated heading off to Valhalla (I was hoping the Norse weren’t as strict as the Christians were when it came to entry rules), a job at a high-end bank came up, and just like that, my money problems were over.

Over the years, as I’ve watched some of my peers have their wealth trickle away to nothing, via a plethora of circumstances (losing a job, bad financial investments, divorce, etc.), I now know that financial death is sometimes the worst death of them all. It’s slow, agonizing, and people tend to be less sympathetic as public sentiment typically leans towards the theory that it’s normally self-inflicted and a result of piss poor planning. At least when you have cancer you get a few condolence cards. That being said, all that was stated before was just a road map to lead you here, the third (and possibly final time) I would ever be afeared. Wait, I lied… before I get there let me take you on one last tangent. I assure you, it has a purpose.

When I finally became a VP at the bank and my career was beginning to take off, I once had to book a last-minute flight to Montreal in order to make sure a very lucrative video game company didn’t pull their endowment from an important mutual fund the bank had set up. I’m sure I was sent more for eye candy purposes, but I didn’t care… I’d do what it took to climb the corporate ladder. Besides, sex sells. Who could blame them for cashing in on that?

Well, due to the last-minute booking, we couldn’t get a flight at a major airport and had to rely on a company connection to secure a smaller, private chartered flight for other wealthy individuals (mostly from Fortune 100s) in the same boat. The plane wasn’t much more substantial than your typical puddle jumper and while it did have a bathroom on it, let’s just say no one was ever going to join the mile-high club in that tiny coffin. 

Things appeared to be going swimmingly until somewhere between my first and second vodka and soda… that’s when the plane started to shake vehemently. At first, I tried to bury myself in my laptop and throw on a premade algorithm-produced Spotify playlist to simulate the feeling of calm, but when the reverberations in the plane were almost as loud as the ones in my head, I had a full-blown panic attack. I must have been hyperventilating louder than the circulating air because it wasn’t long before I felt a substantial tap on my leg.

“Honey, don’t fret a thing.”

This portly man, whose mass was spilling from his seat over to mine, who also appeared to look as if he was trying to dress and look the type of a stereotypical oil baron from Texas (down to the obnoxious white hat) appeared to be talking to me. I’m not one to enjoy being touched by a stranger on a good day (let alone while having a full-blown panic attack), but before I could even begin to chastise him, he said, “Take a look at that stewardess right there. Does she look nervous?”

I glanced over. Mid-40s, height/weight proportional… average in every way. Nothing out of the ordinary. And yes, she was smiling. 

“No,” I muttered with a perplexed look on my face, still not understanding his point.

“Well, I’ve been on enough planes to know that unless the flight attendants are nervous, there ain’t nothin’ to worry about. This plane could jerk around, go upside down, do a loop-de-loop, and as long as they are still smiling, I’m not perturbed about a thing because honey, they’ve seen it all. So sit back and relax and lemme get you a cocktail to take your mind off of things. I’m Darrel by the way, but my friends call me Big D. So where are ya flyin’ off to this eveni — ”

Suddenly his voice trailed off and the memory dissipated into nothingness. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that sound advice would come at a steep price, for it was that very same conversation that let me know that I was most likely going to die tonight on my flight to San Francisco.

Not long into the flight, we hit a hard patch of turbulence that seemed to perpetually linger. The flight attendant who was in charge of the business class clearly had quivering eyes. There was no doubt about it. He was panicky.

“Fuck,” I muttered to myself… or at least I thought to myself until the mother across the aisle, (with a privileged, teenage brat in tow) gave me a dirty glance. You know the look, the one of bewilderment, but that never leaves in the form of verbal expression due to the passive-aggressive nature of the person.

Was it my fault she didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation? That she and her boy were soon to become sidewalk pancakes, along with the rest of this plane, regardless of how much she paid for tickets? I wondered how long it would be before they made a formal announcement. What would it even sound like?

Captain: Ladies and gentlemen, what I earlier informed you to be a small patch of turbulence was really a migratory bird getting stuck in the left turbine, causing some engine failure, and we are dropping swifter than the stock market during the housing crisis. If you want to make final calls to your loved ones, you can try to connect to our overpriced, very spotty wifi, and hopefully, you can etch out a few words before we meet the horizon. Once again, thank you for flying United.

35000 FEET

Fuck, is this real? It’s starting to dip. This all feels so surreal. Am I dreaming? I must be dreaming. I’m hyperventilating. I reach for the courtesy vomit back but the outside of the bag is sticky and I seem to have touched some already chewed gum that someone had placed in the seat pocket. Gross. Do they ever clean these planes?

30000 FEET

I’m sure there are some emergency procedures for this. I mean, what about that plane with that Sully guy? They dropped all the way and everyone was fine, minus some lost luggage at the bottom of the Hudson. I just had hand luggage anyway; I probably could even grab it on the way out.

25000 FEET

The pilot has made an announcement saying that the situation is “not good” (the understatement of the year) and that they will be going into emergency landing procedures. He has asked for everyone to remain calm and seated and has informed the flight crew and passengers to begin to put on the life preservers underneath the seats just in case.

20000 FEET

The girl across the aisle from me is actually taking a selfie and uploading it to some social media app. Are you kidding me? Is she even throwing a filter on that? Are death selfies a thing? Are they going to be a thing? Who cares how many likes you have when you’re dead? Has this whole world gone fuckin’ insane? #dealfie

15000 FEET

The oxygen masks have finally deployed and I am coming to terms that this really might be my imminent death. I’m in my mid-30s, make mid-six figures, never been married, never had my own family. I always thought I had more time. I figured that I could just start these things later on in life. You know, career now, the family stuff later. There was always supposed to be more time. When did everything become so ephemeral and right now? I thought I was happy, but I’m not happy, not happy at all… and years of therapy could never get me to admit this to myself, but now, I know this because not only am I downhearted that I’m about to be dead, but I feel so regretful. My “accomplishments” will mean nothing. Replaceable cogs in a machine, it’s all we are. The bank will replace me, they’ll get another extremely clever, attractive person and then they will pick up like nothing ever happened. Maybe a quick memorial service, some nice words… invite my parents and friends and then normalcy begins again.

That reminds me, there was a girl at the bank. She was younger than me, prettier than me… though it’s easy to be pretty at that age. I think I was a bit envious of her even though I was far more accomplished. She was simple and everyone got along with her, which isn’t to say people didn’t get along with me, but it was different. She had this type of kind calmness to her that made her so magnetic. In fact, if she was probably next to me on this plane, she’d probably just have her hands folded up neatly in her lap with eyes that looked like she was resting, or deep in thought. Anyway, I digress.

One time I saw a bunch of flowers on her desk and it not being Valentine’s Day, I was intrigued, so I went over to her desk and feigned interest in what her role was at the bank to find out more. It didn’t take long for me to find out those were sympathy flowers. Her father had passed away from pancreatic cancer not too long ago and this was her first day back to work. When I found out the reason, I was a bit ashamed of my pettiness, gave my condolences, and abruptly left.

A year later, I decided to order some flowers to be sent to her desk. Hydrangeas, my favorite. Attached was a card; a poem from a poet I admired, actually. It might seem strange for me to do this, but the truth of the matter is, for someone who has been willing to bend my scruples over the years, I still have quite the guilty conscious, so it didn’t sit right with me. Especially, since I, too, lost my father at a young age.

Well, I didn’t hear from her the day the flowers were delivered, but the next afternoon she bumped into me while I was grabbing my post-lunch caffeine fix. I think she did it intentionally, as I saw her talking to my assistant earlier in the day, but I was slammed with back-to-back meetings and had informed him to not let anyone interrupt.

“You know, you’re the only one at the office who remembered,” she said to me, as she delicately poured just a splash of whole milk into her coffee.

“Oh,” I said, not sure what else to really say, reaching for the skim milk.

“It’s funny. Everyone sees me every day, and I’m usually cheery. I had a perfect childhood growing up. We weren’t wealthy, but we were rich with love. We had sayings like, ‘never go to bed angry’ or ‘every day above ground is a good one’ and we truly believed it. My mom and dad were enamored with one another, and they loved my brother and me, and we got along with our relatives, which I hear is quite uncommon.

When my friends came over, they’d joke that they must film a family sitcom in our house because that’s what it seemed like, and that’s not to say we didn’t argue or do all the normal things that normal families do… we did. But it just never lasted too long because we just enjoyed each other’s company so much. Those walls radiated love.

Now that my father is gone, I don’t feel happy. In fact, it takes a strong espresso to even get me out of bed these days. Either way, thanks for the flowers. My father always used to say that flowers were for the living. I mean, what’s the point of having a flower when you can’t smell it?”

Six months after our conversation she committed suicide. I didn’t even attend the funeral as I was away on business.

5000 FEET

I met a man I liked a lot at a sorority sister’s wedding. He was the best man of the groom. He gave a wedding speech about marriage being like a burrito; a bit of a weird example, but it was cute… and it didn’t hurt that he was, too.

We met up for a date, closer to where I lived. He showed up twenty minutes late. I was perturbed. I proceeded to give him the cold shoulder, but that same charm he had at the wedding permeated through, and before long we were chatting like no time had passed at all since we last saw each other (which was easily a month ago, as it’s always a hassle to navigate my busy work schedule).

He specifically told me to dress down for the date … said it didn’t matter since he already knew I was pretty and wanted to get to know me better… plus we would be doing a bunch of walking.

After a couple of drinks (I had a mojito, he had tea), we headed to grab sushi. He ordered nigiri, which I was surprised by, as I pegged him as the “special roll” type, you know the kind of stuff with tobiko, crunch, and globs of mayonnaise that would make anyone who had actually been to Japan cringe.

Over sushi (and after my third drink), I finally opened up. I talked about my mom’s cancer scare, my brother’s struggles as a single father. I even opened up about the fact that it always bothered me that I got my first chance at my job because of an affirmative action program. No matter how hard I worked and rose the ranks of corporate America, it was the one thorn in my side that prevented me from being a true, self-made success story. He told me it didn’t matter and that I could use my position of power to help others who wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity either. I liked him; he was kind. The type of kindness that didn’t need a spiritual Instagram page to go along with it.

On the way back to his car, we passed by a homeless man he knew and he quickly made us take an impromptu detour into 7/11. He purchased some coconut water, a Fiji bottle or two, a fruit cup, and two granola bars to give him. He asked me if I wanted anything as well. I politely declined.

The homeless man didn’t seem to remember my date, so being my usually skeptical self, I thought he was BSing to get some brownie points, but when he called him “Randy”, the disheveled man appeared to remember again. After that, we left and he never mentioned it again. It was bizarre and odd, but so refreshing.

When the night was over, he found out I was heading to visit my parents in New Jersey (briefly, but I hadn’t seen them in ages), and insisted he drop me off as it was on the way back home anyway. When we got onto the highway, I saw the bright lights of a Ferris wheel in the distance. The fair was in town. I told him my parents used to take me and I loved it, but I hadn’t gone since I was a kid. He cut across four lanes of traffic to make the exit in time. I almost had a heart attack.

When we got to the top of the Ferris wheel, he kissed me. Just a simple peck on the lips, but it felt magical. I held his hand and he squeezed mine back. Truthfully, I would have gone further, but he pulled back. I leaned back in my seat, exhaled slightly, and just grinned. I wondered why life couldn’t always be like this? 

Before bed, I turned on the nightly news for a few minutes and found out that a water main had burst and had blocked up the highways for hours. This was why he was late and he never mentioned it. He must have easily spent three hours in traffic. Who tries to show up for a date three hours early?

We made plans to go out on a date the following Friday, but I late canceled on him when I had some extra work come in. I also had to decline his offer to meet up on Sunday because I had to attend an event at my boss’s house. Just a small get-together, but they were important to attend. If you don’t make face time, you can’t get ahead. He begrudgingly told me he understood and then we made plans to meet up the following Thursday, but I had to take a last-minute flight to visit the UK for an emergency meeting with all the higher-ups.

When I landed back home a few days later, I received a text message that said, “perhaps we would better be suited as just friends”. It stung. I told him I was making as much time for him as I could. I had my career, I wasn’t going to give it up for someone I just met and I thought he saw that. He said he did, but that he also didn’t want to have to pencil himself in a couple of months in advance to see me. He said maybe we should just put this on pause for now, but still stay in touch.

We continued to talk for a couple more months, but this is where our difference shone through. I told him I wouldn’t want kids until I was financially stable. He told me that I already made more money than his entire family. I told him it wasn’t enough when you factor in private school, a nanny, and all the bells and whistles that come with raising kids. He told me all kids need are love, care, and quality time. I told him he was naïve. He called me callous. 

Eventually, we got into a huge argument over some alternate reality game I was playing on my phone that he had recommended and played too. One day he casually asked how I was doing in the game, and I told him I stopped playing. He asked why, especially since I told him I liked it. I told him I enjoyed it until I saw a little kid also playing it on the street and that I realized I looked foolish. He told me if I was having fun, what did it matter? I’m not sure who ended contact first, but we stopped talking. 

The last time I checked, he was still single… and I still wasn’t having fun.

0 FEET