Classy

What a funny travel day. Some number of hours ago I woke up at Jane’s house in Cambridge, ate yummy breakfast with her, and sat on her sofa and talked and talked. Then it was off to do a couple of errands, culminating with a trip to the Nerbury Street consignment shops I love so much (heaps of stores out of business on tony Newbury street, but the second hand stores seem to be feeling no pain). One pair of pants and a cushy purple cashmere sweater later (total= $40), we were off to the airport to get me there 2 hours ahead of my flight. But why oh why do we have to be there two hours early? Checked the bags, made it through security, bought lunch to eat on the plane and still I had 90 minutes to wait. So I watched the travellers and searched for a plug and tried to psyche myself up for work. And as I wandered around the full waiting area, I saw a very large woman in bright clothes with magenta hair, talking loudly on the phone and smacking her gum,. Perhaps even her size and sound would have escaped me until my eye lit on her forearm which was almost completely covered with a huge and hairy mole. Because I am not as good a person as I would like to be, I became aware of a wish that this woman would not be seated exactly next to me. I, who have often been the dreaded seat companion, baby in tow, knew this was unkind, and I tried to not think it, but the karma had been spent and, upon boarding, I found myself snuggled up next to the only person I had meant to avoid.

And snuggled we were, as she overtook her seat and came into mine. And there I wrestled with myself, feeling irritated because the loss of a couple of inches of my seat is actually a fairly large percentage given how tiny these seats are; feeling guilty because these are uncharitable thoughts and I am very lucky not to wrestle with my weight as she might and while my movement was restricted by the size of the seats and the size of my companion, she was wedged into the seat so tightly that she couldn’t even cross her legs. As she jiggled in her seat to the very loud music on her headphones, I tried to squash my tiny laptop in the only open space available and hope that the woman in front of me wouldn’t suddenly recline even more, further reducing the square inches available to me. And so I argued with myself in my mind over the course of the trip, my seatmate's arm pressed to mine, her leg hard up against my leg. I imagined how one might ask to be reseated under these circumstances. I watched the various ways I am not as nice a person as I’d like to be.

Finally, six-hour flight over, I had the merciful release of freedom of movement again in the wilds of the LAX airport. I dodged puddles walking from one terminal to the next in the drizzly fog (who ever heard of such weather in LA?) to get to the Air New Zealand terminal and the last step to home. There, I heard the most beautiful words, “Your upgrade has come through,” and I took from the hands of the angel behind the counter the business class ticket I had purchased with my many frequent flier miles.

This ticket is like crossing a portal into another world. My experience in the cattle class of the first flight, my body intimately pressed against the stranger next to me, my laptop screen dipped to a nearly-illegible angle, is a different world from this, my first foray into the world of the business class traveller. The pod from which I write, 10 hours into the flight, has walls on either side, keeping even my eyes from alighting on another passenger. I have woken from a 7.5 hour sleep which I mostly did on my stomach and side on these flat beds. This is as unlike air travel as anything I’ve ever experienced. The attendants trip over each other in the aisles, so eager are they to attend to our every need. I can watch any movie I like, keep my seat back reclined during take off and landing, and basically act like the queen of the world which, right this moment, I am.

Now I know that the ticket for this seat, should I have paid cash rather than frequent flier miles for it, is between five and ten TIMES the cost of the seats I have always ridden in before. And in some ways that makes sense as I’m taking up the room on this flight into which several very large women could squash themselves. And I feel ambivalent here too, thinking about the carbon miles that go into this luxurious ride, about the unequal and disturbing class distinctions that I am enacting—this time from the position of power. And I also know that the arguments I’m having with myself and my values in this seat are less passionate than the arguments I was having with myself and my values in the last seat. Why would I be less worried about my movement into the unfair upper class rather than my oppression by the size of my large neighbour? Mostly because I’ve been too busy eating lovely food, drinking fine Pinot Noir, and sleeping on my stomach for the last 10 hours. With so much to do, how can a girl fit in a push for social justice as well?