I’m back from Atlanta, everyone! [pause for wild cheering, young girls fainting]
Before I launch into my stories from the plane and airport, as the title suggests I very well may, I want to show you something. Rachel Kramer Bussel wrote a piece for Salon.com about books featuring realistic and positive depictions of abortion, wherein no one winds up with their lives ruined because of the procedure. And she included my book The Girlfriend as one of the three books profiled! You can check out the article here, and if you haven’t read the Boss series yet (The Girlfriend is the second novel and not a stand-alone, but the first installment, The Boss is free to read on all platforms), you can find buy links here.
The rafflecopter giveaway has ENDED! I’ll be selecting the lucky winners from the over 2,000(!) entries. If you’re one of them, you’ll be notified tomorrow, and winners will be displayed on the widget on the giveaway page.
I’ve written about men and how they behave on planes before. I’m certain that women behave horribly on planes, too, but I can remember one incident in all the times I’ve flown where I’ve seen that happen. I must be lucky, and all the outrageously terrible women are on different flights.
My flight home yesterday was pretty much this:
(If you can’t view the video, it’s the classic SNL sketch with drunk business men in an airport bar, sharing loud stories about a guy named Bill Brasky.)
Imagine a group of six or so drunken businessmen, who all know each other, stumbling directly from the airport TGIFridays bar to the plane. And of course, because we were sitting in first class, the drinks kept coming. They were loud and making obnoxious jokes about ordering the filet mignon. They repeatedly referred to the female flight attendant as “honey” during boarding (she ended up working the coach section while a male flight attendant covered first class after take off). By the end of the two hour flight, they were all sweating buckets down their swollen red faces, shouting to each other over the seats (because they were scattered through the cabin), and laughing so loudly I could hear them over the hovercraft episode of Top Gear I was listening to through my noise-canceling headphones. The hovercraft episode, for god’s sake. By the time we landed, the plane smelled like a still and the guys could barely stand up.
At the least the headphones blocked out the annoying phone chime of the guy who wasn’t with the group, but obnoxious in his own right. He had an iPhone and was using the “twinkle” ringtone. If you want to get a real feel for how obnoxious this was, you can listen to it here. It not only went off nonstop for the entire flight–leading me to suspect it was set as an alarm, not an actual call, since you can’t use your cell service in-flight–but for the hour or so the guy was waiting at the gate. He blithely ignored it. Now, it did cross my mind that he could have been hard of hearing and unaware that it was going off, but he seemed to be able to hear everything else around him just fine, including the flight attendant’s offers of, you guessed it, alcohol. And if it was simply the higher tone not catching his attention, he should have been able to hear the grumbling of the people around him in the seating area, as everyone kept commenting on how obnoxious it was.
Speaking of obnoxious, our flight was delayed, because the previous flight was late. When the attendant at the gate announced that the plane had arrived, she added, “In order to board your flight faster, please step back and let the passengers deplane and head to their connecting flights.” She made several announcements this effect, but right away, the path of the deplaning passengers was clogged by men with rolling bags already lining up to board the plane that they couldn’t even get on because people were still coming off it.
Like I said, I know that women can be jerks in public, too. But when it comes to taking up space or acting without thought to courtesy to the people around them, men seem to be the still reigning champions, at least where air travel is concerned.
I’m just super jealous you got to fly first class (even if the people around u were acting like 5th class morons). I’ve never done it & always wanted to see how the people with more money than I got to fly. LOL
Me, too. Me, too.
I used to travel for work all the time and really racked up the frequent flier miles for a while. I still remember the special name I had for the guys like those you describe: “alpha male business travelers.” Or, when I was feeling less charitable, “fucking jackwagons.”
Women, although rarer, do have their moments. And no, I’m not defending obnoxiousness from ANY gender. If you recall the NJ-to-Denver flight that was diverted to Chicago over a reclining seat when the woman threw water at the passenger behind her (both were in the “Economy Plus” section of the aircraft that has more legroom)
From http://www.thenational.ae/world/americas/cops-called-over-seat-recliner-air-rage
The dispute on United Flight 1462 from Newark, New Jersey to Denver escalated to the point where the airline decided to divert to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, according to Transportation Security Administration spokesman Ross Feinstein.
Chicago Police and TSA officers met the flight, spoke to the passengers — a man and a woman, both 48 — and “deemed it a customer service issue,” Mr Feinstein said. The TSA would not name the passengers.
The plane then continued to Denver without them, arriving 1 hour and 38 minutes late, according to the airline’s website.
The Federal Aviation Administration can impose a civil fine of up to $25,000 for passengers who are unruly. In this case, no arrest was made, according to airport spokesman Gregg Cunningham.
The fight started when the male passenger, seated in a middle seat of row 12, used the Knee Defender to stop the woman in front of him from reclining while he was on his laptop, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak.
A flight attendant asked him to remove the device and he refused. The woman then stood up, turned around and threw a cup of water at him, the official says. That’s when United decided to land in Chicago. The two passengers were not allowed to continue to Denver.
Both passengers were sitting in United’s Economy Plus section, the part of the plane that has four more inches of legroom than the rest of coach.
The only time I’ve ever been on a plane, there was a group of women who butted in line to get off the plane, and got in the way of a family who was trying to get their elderly father in a wheelchair. A different set of women blocked me from getting my luggage, even when I requested that they move in three different languages (it was a flight from Venice to Toronto with a stopover in Paris, so I tried English, French, and Italian). They stared at me, and didn’t move until I butted in front of them, whereupon they started muttering about me in French.
Unnngh. That sounds heinous. 🙁 I’ve never had the opportunity to fly first class but… maybe it is more prone to entitled jerks? And whatever the drinking limit is on a flight, it sounds like they should definitely cut it. (But they probably won’t, considering how much money they’re making off of people who just can’t go two hours without an alcoholic beverage.)
I’ve flown quite a bit, but the most obnoxious passenger I’ve ever seen was a woman on a flight to LA. We were one of the last boarding groups, like Group Z or something, most of the groups had boarded already. This woman came waltzing up, totally bypassing the line. She had kids in two strollers and a nanny with her. She wanted priority boarding, since she was seated in first class and had strollers. Ticket lady told her she was about twenty minutes late and couldn’t board because she needed stroller tags. Or something – we were a bit far to hear the specifics, but from what we gathered ticket lady was just politely doing her job.
The passenger began to shriek and berate the ticket lady. And then she began to rant to the nanny: “This is SO typical of Jeff! He KNEW we needed the stroller tags and he didn’t get them!!! UGH!!!” She caused a huge scene. “At least you’re not Jeff” has become a saying in our house since then.
The most obnoxious behavior I’ve seen on a plane so far was over a woman breastfeeding.
I had the middle seat, the breastfeeding woman and her child were near the window, and a middle-aged man was sitting in the aisle seat (and his wife/girlfriend/whatever was sitting in the aisle across from him so the could talk back and forth).
Anyway, this was from Honolulu to LA, so about five hours. The baby ate three times, plus she did a quickie nurse at landing and take-off (it helps with ear pressure). She was not using a cover, but her breast was still mostly covered and you could not see nipple at all. It was just a tiny bit annoying when she fed the baby from the side closest to me–I guess he only ate well in the football hold and I kept getting little toes digging into my ribcage–but he only took 10 minutes or so on each side and it wasn’t a big deal.
But the guy next to me. Holy shit, you would have thought she was naked and writhing obscenely for the fuss he made over it. His wife was backing him up, too, and they both had to lean forward to see around me and see this breastfeeding woman at all. So if they were upset, they could have just, you know, not done that. And they never said anything to her, just loudly to each other. I tried butting in, but this woman was very conflict-adverse and that made her even more upset; she whispered for me to please stop, she was okay. So I did. But I still had to listen to their bullshit every time she fed him and long after each feeding, while she silently cried next to me.
It was a horrible flight, and those two assholes had the gall to act like they were the ones who were dealing with something terrible; he loudly told the attendant on the way off the plane that they would never be flying with that airline again. Hopefully that means the next flight they take they get told off for something like that, because on this one the flight attendants just walked by without saying anything (and yes, I know they probably didn’t want to deal with it, either).
My daughter was EBF for 6+ months and weaned at 3 years.
That passenger obviously should have let her baby starve and cry for hours. That would have been sooooo much better than seeing a little side boob. (Please, note sarcasm.)
Yeah, that’s what made me the most angry about it. What exactly did they want her to do instead of feeding her baby?
I ran into this crap when I breastfed, too, but it least it wasn’t ever anywhere like a plane where I couldn’t just leave if someone was really obnoxious.
I wonder if you had quietly gone up to the front of the plane (or the front of your section or wherever the flight attendants were) and explained the situation to them, including that the woman was crying because those assholes upset her so, and begged the attendants to have those jerks (or just one jerk. *evil grin*) move or switch seats with someone sane, if that would have been easier on the mother.
(Also, I sincerely apologize for that horrid run-on sentence. It’s late and my brain isn’t all here, so I couldn’t think of a better way to say all that.)
I’m not saying you did anything wrong by not doing that, btw. I just sincerely wonder if that would have been easier for her.
That whole situation sounds so completely miserable.
Depending on how I’m feeling, I can be quite conflict-averse and do a really, really poor job of advocating for myself. I have a chronic pain disorder and if I’m having an especially bad day pain-wise, I just don’t have the strength or the energy to speak up when I really should. But I seem to always have the strength and energy to be hurt by the people around me. Or to become anxious, scared, etc. but in those moods I just can’t seem to get angry enough to confront someone, even if they need confronting.
I felt similarly after I had my son and was dealing with post-partum depression/anxiety.
Every so often, though, when I’m having one of those days and trying desperately to pull myself in to my shell and shut out the world (which never fully works) someone will step in and be a advocate for me. If they’d asked me first “do you want me to confront this asshole on your behalf?” I’d probably say no because 1) I don’t want to be a burden or a bother to anyone and 2) anxiety disorders have this fun way of making you imagine the worst possible outcome for every scenario. So, I’d be genuinely worried that the person being confronted would hurt the person advocating for me, or take out his/her aggression at having been confronted on me, or just pull out a gun and start blasting. Like I said: “worst possible outcome.”
But more often than not when someone does just step up and advocate for me, even if it does no good what-so-ever, I’m immensely grateful and it makes me feel better that someone would try on my behalf.
But geez, that just sounds like such an awful situation all around. People that are that much of a jackass Neanderthal shouldn’t be allowed out in society.
My gosh, my rage-o-meter is ticking up dramatically just READING that account. That poor mother – flying with an infant (or a toddler, really any small child) can be miserable enough without judgey strangers loudly commenting on your parenting behavior/choices. Were I in your place, I’d have been hard-pressed not to inappropriately snap at them – good show of restraint and consideration!
Also, thank you for being a considerate and tolerant seatmate to a nursing mother. 🙂
I like little toes, so that wouldn’t have bothered me. And since I would have been pivoted in my seat making goo-goo awwwwww noises, the aisle couple (presumably they had alcohol in their surrogates) wouldn’t have been able to see sod-all unless they climbed on my fucking head–and I would object to that. (On the other hand, the mother might have sick and tired of my goo-goo awwwwww noises and attempts to enhance naturally curly toes.)
Sadly, bringing a light shawl seems to be a requirement for some people.
Did you just reference Brave New World? If so, I love you.
Ridiculous. They should have looked away if they had such a problem.
I don’t understand people who get so bent out of shape over semi-nudity. Where I live, female toplessness is completely legal in public places. You can see far more nudity on display in any gym or pool change room. Although full nudity is not legal, you can see it at my city’s Pride Parade or at the nude bike ride event that goes through the city’s downtown core.
As the mother of a 12-week-old baby, I’m currently spending way too much time trying to plan the logistics of the 5-hour trip to visit my parents around how I’m going to feed her without getting obnoxious reactions. The fact that I even feel the need to think about that feels so very wrong. Obviously she needs feeding. Why can’t people see that’s the most important thing here?
As a trans man, this is one of the hardest things to convince cisgender men about–that yes, men really are collectively taking the prize in obnoxiousness. Sigh.
I can definitely feel you. Once I was on a four hour flight, around 10 am to two pm, seems pretty tolerable right? Well I was stuck in an aisle seat, next two these two blokes that were a few years older than me. I think they were brothers because they looked a lot alike. Anyway these two blokes weren’t nearly as bad as the guys in your stories, in fact they were positively polite by comparison, but lord were they annoying.
Over the course of a two hour flight, each ordered and consumed two meat pies, three cans of bear, two cans of rum and a two cans of coke, to mix with aforementioned rum, and then they had vodka shots, because why not? This, alone wasn’t so bad, even if having to duck under the flight attendant all the time was a little irritating. What was awful is that they both had piss poor bladder control (pun intended) and since we were were in economy I had to unbuckle, pause my game (and I was playing monster hunter, it’s not a good game to pause!) and get the hell up every fifteen minutes just so that one of them could go pee, and then do it again so that he could get back to his seat. I mean I could understand once an hour, but they didn’t even have the courtesy to coordinate their bathroom breaks, so I had to get up and down at least 64 fucking times over the course of a four hour flight.
Seriously men, if you don’t have any bladder control, maybe don’t drink so much when you’re in a confined space. Just a suggestion.
Or they could have offered you the window seat so that, at worst, if one of them had to go pee, he’d only be bothering his brother.
Ugh, the blocking-the-exit people. When I used to travel by train a lot, I had to witness this constantly. Yeah, there’s a limited number of seats and nobody wants to stand, but it’s so fucking rude. Just let people disembark first. You’ll still be the one of the first ones inside. Don’t be an asshole.
I wasn’t watching SNL at that time, so I never saw a Bill Brasky sketch before. I have now watched more than one, and thank you for enlightening me.
This–and ONLY this–explains Donald Trump. He’s Bill Brasky: so rude, crude, flashy, trashy, and incapable of shame that you think he must be a myth–until there he is. The people supporting him are also rude, crude, tacky, flashy, trashy, and incapable of shame EXCEPT for being ashamed of the fact that they can never be as rude, crude, tacky, flashy, trashy, and incapable of shame as their idol–though they never stop trying.
1st class? Sounds AWESOME.
But don’t I know about Men on Planes. For me, it was a flight during Christmas time back home (flying economy) – where the guy next to me decided that since he used up all his under-the-chair space, he would use MINE for his FEET. (And since I am meek and conflict-adverse, I sat there silently, STEWING IN ANGER.) Like, dude, I’m sorry you brought so much shit with you that you have no leg room but that is YOUR PROBLEM and not MINE. (And he took up BOTH arm-rests because if you’re going to use up other peoples space, might as well use up ALL of other people’s space). I really should have stomped down on his feet. (Though I did passive-aggressively use my VERY pointy elbows to elbow into his arm.)
Lord, maybe they’d never been on a plane before because all the frequent business travellers I used to see when I was doing my frequent business travel were so utterly bored by the whole thing you never heard a peep out of them.
(sarcasm because I’m sure they had travelled before but what a hillbilly way to go about it)
Men on planes are the worst. I have seriously never understood why people gripe so much about babies on planes, because the worst a baby is likely to do is cry (and, I mean, it’s not like they’re crying on purpose to annoy you). Babies have never fallen asleep and flopped their arm into my lap, then called me a bitch when I gently tried to remove it. Babies have never spent an entire cross-country flight demanding that I talk to them even after I’ve said that I really just wanted to read my book roughly 25 times. Babies have never stomped on my feet without so much as an “oops, sorry,” or climbed over me and stuck their crotches in my face without so much as an “excuse me.” Babies have definitely never gotten really, really drunk and then started creepily petting my hair and making moaning noises. Given the choice between being stuck next to a baby and being stuck next to one of those dudes, I’ll take the baby every time. At least the baby will be cute.
My mom once had a guy make a sandwich on her leg during a flight.
WHAT?!?
I was not on this flight with my mom, but apparently, this guy put bread on my mom’s leg and then proceeded to pile on the rest of the ingredients. My mom was too taken aback to say anything.
I was flying back and forth between Oakland and Orange County for awhile on Southwest where there’s open seating, and I typically pick window for the view. A handful of times I had the middle seat next to me open and an aisle passenger. Whenever that passenger was a man, they’d lay claim to the middle seat and middle under seat storage in addition to their own seat and throw all their crap on it like I was invisible. The third time this happened I went, “Fuck that noise,” and threw my stuff on top of theirs, which was most satisfying.
Only had one obnoxious lady with a little dog who would. Not. Stop. Talking. For six hours straight. Not conversation, (because that requires two people) just a constant stream of chatter aimed in my direction. The dog may have sat on me for 1 or 2 of those hours, and he was *still* more considerate than his owner.
And then there was the guy who took his socks and shoes off and stuck his bare foot between my armrest and the window. I just… WHO DOES THAT?!
Someone who doesn’t expect you to spill your hot coffee on it. 🙂
Am I the only one that’s more interested/confused/worried that there is a youtube videos with all the iOS 7 ringtones?