Order me? “Who the hell do you think you—”
Glunkkkk! On went the plastic zap-strap handcuffs from behind and, ghufghghghg!, a steward’s hand went around my neck and, within a constellation of pain, I was marched back down the bubble’s stairs to 67E. I was furious, but it was also (if I’m honest) a bit of fun having everyone I passed looking at me and thinking I was violent and dangerous.
Once I was seated, the steward hissed into my ear, “Mr. Gunt, you can stay there and behave, or we can manacle you to your seat and make an emergency landing in Reykjavík, where you’ll be jailed and made to pay a fine that will bankrupt you. Am I clear?”
Dick. “Yes.”
“Good. We have approximately nine more hours ahead of us. Behave like an adult and we’ll be fine.” He removed the zap straps with a small pair of scissors.
“What about my seat up in business class?”
The steward and McRazorpanties eyed each other. “That’s not your seat,” he said.
“It fucking well is.”
“Sir, you’re terrifying the children,” McRazorpanties chided.
“These tards would be frightened by a paper napkin.”
In unison: “Sir!”
“I want my seat!”
“I warned you, Mr. Gunt.”
From nowhere came six arms, and zap, zap, zap, zap—I was bound onto 67E while a Buñuel child sniffed my hair and began shrieking into my right ear.
I sat there imprisoned, deprived of meal service, unable to comprehend what had just happened, while the Buñuels caterwauled and the drunken yobs voided their bowels in the toilets that sandwiched my ears.
And then Neal came down the aisle towards me. “God, Ray. You must have been pretty out of control.”
Words failed me, though I hope bulging forehead veins conveyed what words couldn’t.
“Cammie was worried about you and asked me to bring you a flute of champagne, but I thought it might get you in trouble, so I didn’t. She’s amazing.”
Dumbfounded, I stared at Neal.
“Can I get you a pillow or a snack?” he offered.
“Neal, when you were waiting for the car to pick you up, you were sitting on the curb and those two teenage birds came up to you, and I could see that in their minds they wanted to shag you on the spot, and you did, too. I saw it. How the fuck did you do that? I mean really … you look like shit. You smell like shit. You have nothing going for you outwardly … and yet you’re like Jimi Hendrix with a never-ending rotisserie of pussy circling his dick.”
Neal knelt in the aisle beside me. “You know, Raymond,” he said, “I’ve been homeless for years, but not a week’s gone by where I haven’t had two or three unique encounters, all of them instigated by women—in their cars, in their offices, in alleyways, once even inside a police van. I just sit there on a curb, like, needing to be fixed, and these ladies come along thinking they know how to fix me.”
If pathos and uselessness are somehow erotic, I ought to be the Leonardo DiCaprio of the new era. And yet I end up zap-strapped to seat 67E.
Neal looked at me. “Ray, open your mouth.”
“What?”
“Just open your mouth. Trust me.”
And so I did, and Neal stuck something in it that felt like a Tic-Tac, and that dissolved on my tongue almost instantly.
“What the fuck was that?”
He smiled at me. “Something to make the flight bearable. By the way, John Taylor of Duran Duran is in the inflight movie. Fucking brilliant. See you on the ground in Los Angeles.” And with that, he was off.
What the?
When next I opened my eyes, the plane was empty and a team of swarthy-looking people was vacuuming the seats. Grim-faced McRazorpanties walked past carrying a pile of paperwork. “Oh, Mr. Gunt,” she said. “You’re awake. Good. I think you’ll find your party waiting for you at gate two. Have a lovely trip to Honolulu.”
Twat.
But a doable twat.
08
I had the delight of visiting Los Angeles International Airport in the mid-1980s, when I was beginning my career as a cameraman. The London production company I worked with was treated to a god-like junket: five of us were sent to California to learn about new lines of increasingly digital cameras and new techniques for lighting and sound, as well as to grind our schlongs to the bone on an endless roller coaster of pussy. Enormous meals. The best booze. Women hurling themselves at us. Palm trees. Freeways. Fuck, it was easily the highlight of my young life, and it ended with a farewell shag in the business lounge loo with young Shelley, who worked for Panavision or Kodak or something like that. Returning to London felt like going back to a Dickensian orphanage. Grimness. Clouds. Soot. Diesel fumes. Labour unrest. I mean, it really was an eye-opener to see how Americans lived back then.