...[gasp]... holidays?....

Indianapolis, Indiana: 5:30 PM: 12/22/2006

The elderly gentleman checking me in at the Continental counter tutted softly under his breath and slowly shook his head, as one might when watching a news special about a promising teen football star who, on his senior prom night, managed to impale himself with the steering wheel of his brand-new Impala while swerving to avoid a tot who'd lunged into the road after her lost puppy. He picked up a red phone that didn't, to the best of my knowledge, have a dial, and began to speak softly into it in what I must assume was Khmer. He grew quiet then, and resumed the tutting and the head-shaking, his jowls jouncing under his chin. He handed me my boarding pass as if he were handing me a Mason jar filled with warm, freshly-expectorated brownish-yellow Skoal sputum.

Continental Ticket Man: I'm sorry to have to do this to you, buddy. I'll say a prayer for you.
Me: [taking boarding pass] Why?
CTM: [eyes widening slightly] Just one word, bucko: Newark.
Me: What's wrong with Newark?
CTM: [laughing like a diseased bonobo on crystal]
Me: Alrighty then.
CTM: [hands over a rosary] For the dead travel fast.

Four hours later

Three rows in front of me came the sound again, and this time I was able to hear it well enough to clearly discern what it might be. We'd been planted firmly on the tarmac of Indianapolis Airport for forty minutes at that point and, as I watched an elderly woman in the seat next to me begin to pleat a noose to hang herself with out of holiday-hued yarn, I began to envy her. The sound was - oh yes, I couldn't make this up if I tried - a tiny "dog" approximately the size and weight of the cotton ball to be found inside a new bottle of aspirin.

Some woman.

Thought it was a good idea.

To bring her Mexicali Special dog.

On the plane.

In a carry-on bag.

It was at this precise moment that the eighteen-month-old in the seat behind me came utterly unglued. Lunging-out-of-caregiver's-arms, foaming-at-the-mouth, soiling-foundation-garments, shrieking-at-a-threshold-just-below-supersonic unglued. A woman in my row across the aisle began to then speak directly to the Lord and Savior then, addressing him casually as though they were eating at an impromptu cocktail brunch. In unison, they formed the Symphony of Abyssal Insanity, which went something like this:

Unhinged Toddler: MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO

Obscenely Fragile Fur-Bearing "Pet": Yipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyip
yipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyipyip

Potentially Speaking to Jesus Lady: Lawwwwwd Jesus, I'd lahk to take this oppahtunity to thank you for Your graces. But hey, who am I kidding, a'ight? Can you just make it so that the wings on this thang don't fall the hell off, y'know what I'm sayin'? C'mon: help a sistah out; it be Your burfday.

The flight attendant winked at me and disappeared behind that Limp Blue Curtain of Abundant Apartheid that separates the haves from the have-nots to serve the first-class "guests" their highballs and their milk-fed veal cutlets. The postage-stamp-sized bag of mini-pretzels went down a little more bitterly than usual.

And the woman with the "dog?" As she was getting off the plane, I noticed that she had some weird wirey thing jutting out of her hair - a wirey thing that was ultimately attached to one of those devices that allow to deaf to hear from their skulls. Yes. She was deaf.

That lucky bitch.

Newark, New Jersey: Two Hours Later

What the kindly wattle-necked gentleman in Indianapolis had been alluding to when providing me with my star-crossed boarding pass was that Newark, NJ, had become - in the span of several hours - the Airport Where Flights Go to Die. With Denver almost completely unusable in the wake of a giant Mother Nature slow-sheet-snow and sleet-enema and what with everyone in the Northern Hemisphere, you know, wanting to go home to awkward family gatherings lubricated by gossip and Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum, nothing was moving out of the self-proclaimed Armpit of the Northeast without at least a nominal delay.

I, however, did not know this. When I got off my plane, I looked at my Newark-Bangor boarding pass and saw that I had less than twenty minutes to get from point A to point B.

For those of you who have been to Newark International Airport - in the hallowed shadow of the Big Apple herself - you know that, at any given time, more people are in that airport than the entirety of one of those former Soviet republics. None of them know where they are going. None of them speaka-da-English. And all of them will, if need be, tackle you to the ground rather than allow you to pass them on the movey-sidewalk things. Since I know that only two flights go to Bangor from Newark a day, and since my flight was to be at 8 PM, I was pretty well certain that I was going to either have to catch that flight or spend my night trying to avoid holding a conversation with a schizophrenic Orthodox Jew with a dolphin sock-puppet named "Schlomo." And, if this meant that I would have to elbow an elderly Cambodian woman in the face, I was willing to risk the karma.

20 Minutes Later

While attempting to extract half a Cambodian woman's dental arcade from one of my arm's many fatrolls, I breathlessly scampered up to the counter of my flight and attempted, through the wheezing, to ask if I was too late. "Honey-baby-chil'-o-mine", the woman said, straightening her h'ar with a single, seven-inch polyresin jungle red talon, "Yo flight not goin' till eleven. Go getchoo some." She motioned to a smallish bar near the gate with another talon as she braced herself to deal with yet another self-righteous, travel-weary, hang-himself-before-fifty, chancrous businessman who was hell-bent on making a woman cry. From the looks of those hooks, bud, you'd better move on this fine evening.

As the three hours crawled by - punctuated every ten minutes with "helpful" service announcements that warned us to, oh, I dunno, not take packages from people we didn't know or leave our bags for any length of time lest they be taken out to an abandoned runway and detonated - I became slowly aware that one of the people in the waiting area was a forty-something Mainer man who had become irresponsibly drunk. I know this because he began to argue VERY LOUDLY with the voices coming over the PA system.

PA Lady: This will serve as the final boarding call for Flight 2506 to Tegucigalpa. All ticketed passengers should now be on board the aircraft or risk seat loss and baggage removal.
Drunken Mainer: OH- YOU THINK YOU'RE SO FRIGGIN' SMAAHT LADY, DON'TCHA? WELL LET ME TELL YOU SUMTHIN'. BACK HOME UP CALAIS WAY, WE DON'T NEED TO GO TO THEM FANCY TEGOOSEE-WHATEVER PLACES, NO WE DON'T, SO SHUT YER FRIGGIN' CLAMHOLE.

The rest of us were Mainers-in-exile, returning home for holidays from the wider world, and we cringed a little every time he drunk-dialed one of his buddies ("FRANK, YOU AIN'T GONNA BELIEVE HOW MUCH A FRIGGIN' BEEYAH COSTS OUT HEEYAH"; "WHEN I GET HOME, SWEETHAAAAT, WE CAN WATCH THE DUCKS COME IN F'THE NIGHT AND GET HAMMAHD"). However, the part of us that pines - no pun intended - for our little Northeastern corner of paradise knows that we should be so lucky to once again fall alseep with the loons crying over the lake - or to watch the ducks come in with someone we love, beer or no. Because each time I go home, coming back gets a little harder. Don't get me wrong: I love the corn, and I have no intentions of leaving it at this point in my life. But Maine is a beguiling enchantress, and she has her ways of making even the most hardened return, aching for her sweet succor.

And by "succor" I mean "a decent bowl of clam chowder."

***

As for the holidays themselves, they found my sister producing volutes of mucous out of her tear ducts from some raging sinus infection, my mother with laryngitis and me, attempting to battle a crippling addition to Grey's Anatomy *, which I'd never seen before I went home. Pretty much on par with the usual Tinsel and Tears festivites. Before getting on that Bangor-bound tin-goose, I'd made my mind up to spend what little time I had in Maine with my family instead of making my usual 10,000 social calls to friends who'd stayed in the area. So, if you are one of those friends and you read this, I am sorry. What? Do you want to make my mother burst into ragged tears about seeing me once, maybe twice a year, you monster? Do you?

It was the best trip home I'd had in years. When I was tired, I napped. When I was hungry, I ate something. I got a Coffeepot sandwich and chowder and yes, I got to fling myself into the icy North Atlantic (pictures to follow). I did some shopping and, yeah, did I mention that I got to sleep? Because I did.

And not once did I think of my still-unfinished thes*s. That in and of itself was priceless. But the end of that goddamned document - and that particular chapter of my life - is in my grasp. I won't tell you what I fantasize about after my thes*s is done, but rest assured, it involves a whole lot of deep-cleaning, a gigantic box of old pictures, and learning how to tan a cat's pelt.

Until later, I remain,

Domonic (twentypagesisnothing) Potorti




* I am not a vagina.