Flying Air Iraq from Tokyo to Bangkok, a few months before Kuwait's invasion,
you check in your luggage and bus out to where your bags are lying beside
the plane.
You re-identify them, they shrug, and pop into the plane it goes, you follow.
At the door a steward with a chest the size of a kettle drum searches your
scrotum for incendiaries. Then flushed and post-coital you proceed to your
seat.
I was surrounded by Japanese middle aged males, presumably off to be base
in a foreign country, well away from the moral restrictions of home.
The stewards and stewardesses don’t speak Japanese at Air Iraq and their
level of cordiality is not of the fawning type the Japanese are more familiar
with..
Those in front have tobacco and duty free whisky and are acting like the naughty
children they were never allowed to be.
Their perms and arrogance mark them as lowest level Yakuza gangsters,
selectively breed for empty craniums.
The barrel of humanity contains dregs, you take the cream of these and give
them disposable incomes and your heading in the right direction- but still
nowhere close.
Directly in front of me was a crew cutted beast, a protruding lower lip and
jowls giving him the unlovable expression of a pouting three year old.
He was also inflicted with a mole the size of a small truck in the middle
of his forehead.
He bounces on his seat excitedly, making my writing difficult, his gonads
obviously twitching. His mother might love him but the stewardess, coming
from a country where the thoughts in your head and the look on your face are
immediate family and not distant relations- rolls her eyes and curls her lip
every time she passes him.
She does this even on the rare occasions he doesn’t grunt at her and
cackle mindlessly.
She's squatly muscular, dark haired, deeply tanned with bright blue contact
lenses over her deep brown eyes, a cross between a savage, drug dry Barbie
doll, and a cross-dressing truck driver.
Every 30 mins to add to the theatre we have the security clones.
Same height, same mustache, same mirror sunglasses, standing, stretching and
swiveling, fixing each and every passengers face for signs of nervous perspiration
or fanatical resolve.
Every 30 minutes, team of three,(probably another playing possum).
They have special bullets, made for firing in planes that have just enough
velocity to penetrate your skull before exploding.
At the first sign of a stretch I deadpan, try to stare them out as the
drunken Jap in front-pants and rubs himself as he mounts his armrest.
I retire to the bathroom.
My challenge is to keep my stream of urine focused on the bowl in the
bucking 747 economy toilet while at the same time brushing my teeth.
Having spent 20 minutes for the privilege of this reeking, blindingly
bright, turbulent dunny.
I mentally count the passengers, divide by the toilets and multiply the
result by two cans of steaming output.
A couple of bathtubs of piss have poured through this bowl.
I gargle and spit, shake and zip.