Everyone knows the first seat on a plane is a throne. Ass space for miles. A footrest to ensure your feet are never dirtied by the floor. The sterility of the whites and grays of the trays, pillows, and headrests clinical and clean, but none of it makes you think about dying. It makes you think about kingdoms. How possible it is for someone to stand before the rest of the population and call themselves ruler. How easy it is to think I am more deserving than you.
As a 24-year-old lesbian with a shit-paying job, you definitely do not feel deserving. You look down at your boarding pass and realize that 38C—the economy seat you meticulously picked because of its proximity to the bathroom—is not written. Your agonizing entirely replaced by two figures: 1A.
You arrive at your seat but don’t sit down. Instead, you look around, waiting for the flight attendant to stop you. To swat you to the back of the plane. But when she arrives, she addresses you by name and asks if you’d like sparkling water, flat water, or champagne.
You say, “I’ve never done this before.”
She says, “Picked a beverage?”
You say, “Oh! No…I’m sorry. I’m just a little confused…is this…” You hold up your boarding pass. “…my seat?” Her lips turn down, fingers brushing yours as she looks closer.
“This is your seat, Miss,” she says. Your lips open in awe. Someone probably called you miss before, but it never felt like this. Like you’d been dubbed worthy.
“My father surprised me,” you say. Then you’re grimacing. It’s the first time he’s tried to apologize for not loving you as you are in such a grand way.
The flight attendant laughs out loud.
She says, “My father used to beat me as a child.”
Your hand crumples the boarding pass in your fist as you watch the woman’s eyes widen. She apologizes. More times than is comfortable. After the fourth profusion, she starts sounding like a peasant begging a government official for mercy after committing the small crime of stealing extra rations of rice. You start apologizing just for existing. You think that will make it better, but you both get lost in a tornado of feeding into each other’s unworthiness until her mouth stops moving.
She looks ready to get down on her knees, but her long skirt and suit top combo are not flexible enough for kneeling. So, she bows her head, brings her hands together in prayer, and calls you blessed. You imagine turning yourself into a man. Holding her in your arms when she cries over little things like tripping up the stairs or forgetting to brush her teeth. Wiping her tears when she cries over big things like the hand of a person who is supposed to love her smacking her cheek or the rejection she received when she came out to her father on an unnamable summer’s eve.
You don’t do any of that.
You sit down. Buckle yourself in. Lift up your feet. Eat the duck she serves you. This is your first time eating duck. You thought it would taste better. The neurosurgeon next to you seems to be enjoying it fine. He raises his piece of duck on his fork, asks to clink it with yours, and the flight attendant lurks near the jump seats. She watches your forks hit each other. Flinches at the collision of metal.
About the Author
Gina Martucci (she/her) is a New Jersey-based writer, poet, English teacher, and director at a school for students with learning disabilities. As a queer woman, Gina writes about stigma, family, friendship, gender roles, religion and how our lived experiences impact identity and self acceptance. Her mission as a writer is to normalize experiences of otherness and give voices to parts of people not widely accepted by society. She has been published in Humans of the World Blog, The Red Wheelbarrow Literary Journal, The Zine-Machine, and 7th-Circle Pyrite Online Literary Magazine.
