009-Bender.txt

009 - Bender.txt

A self destructive act. Generally one in which an individual, though sometimes multiple, engage in alcohol and/or druge abuse for several days or more. This was the beginning of becoming unteathered.

You are not in the present timeline. You are in the past. Was any of this ever in the present? Is any of what you're reading even true? Am I who I say I am? You don't even know my name. Maybe I'm AI? Maybe this is fiction.

I had been on a three-day bender.

"You're getting on that plane" said a stern sounding Sheryl.

Sheryl was one of my best friends. She had to periodically listen to whatever crisis I was dealing with at the time, existential or not. This go around a particular brutal rejection by a woman set me off onto a long bender. Most of my drinking was confined to more reasonable lengths of time, a few hours here or a half day there, and generally only on weekends. I couldn't really tell what happened over those days. I'd wake up still drunk and immediately start drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. The behavior was clearly self destructive.

Muddled in foggy images, degraded synapses informed me I may had been at hole in a wall bar. Other misfires lead me to believe I was smoking pot with some youth in their early twenties, followed by chain smoking cigarettes and passing out on a balcony. Alcoholic gravity collapsed in on itself. A singularity of six-point-fives, eighty-proofs, and medicinal marijuana.

I had never traveled much before, especially outside of the United States. I was considering purposefully missing my flight. However, my conversation with Sheryl had bootstrapped me into shape. I never believed I would travel outside of the United States much. I figured I'd own my house and eek out a flavorless existence. Slowly adding more elaborate titles to my resume and related corporate flesh-lighting. I always said that when I purchased a house, I'd buy heavy, expensive stuff, and die there. But people change.

I was living in Costa Mesa, California. A benign suburbia that I had no intention of staying in. The flight from LAX to Shanghai alone was about fourteen hours, with a three hour layover, and another five hour flight to Bangkok. Thailand was about twelve hours ahead of the United States. The jet lag required to visit this part of the world was insane. Amazingly I didn't sleep the entire flight. I just sat there, thinking about utter rejection.

I was seated in a Boeing 777. A long-range international flight was a new experience for me. I was a bit astounded that an aircraft of this size could get off the ground. I read all the flight material. The triple-seven is the world's largest twinjet aircraft. It has a seating capacity of up to 400 passengers, with a range of around 8,500 miles. Nine seats per row with what seemed like an infinite number of rows.

I had once been flying into Baltimore to visit my Father and Aunt. I had a connecting flight in Atlanta. As we began to descend for a landing, an immense amount of turbulence engulfed the aircraft. The plane seemingly dropped fifty feet as a gust of wind struck the fuselage. Panicking, I reached to the arm rest, but had infringed on the hand of the passenger next to me. The stranger was a grisly looking fifty-to-sixty year old man. A gray beard who had seen his fair share, perhaps a Vietnam vet. His eyes informed me that I was not of his thread. I was a quivering bitch who wouldn't last a minute during the Tet offensive.

"I've been flying for a long time and I've never seen a pilot pull out of a landing like that" said the Grizzled man.

Since then, I had gained a slight fear of flying, mostly during the landing phase. So this being a 777 was calming. I assumed only the best and most experienced pilots were allowed to fly such a massive aircraft. To my left, there was no GI Joe, to my right only a window, and beyond row after row. Thought after thought.

We landed in Shanghai. A tiny clear in the clouds broke through for me when I discovered a vending machine for beer. I noticed a Caucasian buying one and happily assumed he was an English speaker.

"Hey, how much do those cost?" I asked.

"I don't know mate, whatever six is" he replied.

It accepted credit cards and I didn't care to do the Yuan to USD conversion. I bought six, loaded up my back pack and waited for boarding while sipping on the most watery beer I had ever tasted.