The Writing Urge and Upskirt View

It can happen anywhere, anytime, a breeze of an idea, and the mind goes to work

I walk into an airport lounge, and it happens. It’s like magic, or taking narcotics so that everything else I was thinking drops away like an expensive shoe slipping from a woman’s toes. She looks at me and bites her lip, thinking me strange. I’ll wager she’s wondering what brutal wishes are going through my mind.

I would happily spend my life in train stations, harbors, or airport terminals, kissing my goodbyes or hugging new hellos. Instead, the woman wearing one shoe smiles at me points to the corner of her lip, then discreetly turns that finger in my direction. My discolored Kleenex tells me I have mustard in the corner of my mouth. I toss it to the bin beside me and return a glance of grateful eyes to the woman sitting across from me.

Such a woman, in one night, would make me a poet.

These places, the people, make me hold onto lies, and only the whiskey makes me spill them. Airport terminals show us the strange qualities of human nature. The mother trying to quiet a rumbunctious child, the elderly man, slyly picking his nose and cannot resist looking at what he has mined, and the man with the exaggerated limp to the desk to ask for early boarding.

An overweight man, who would claim his weight to be a manifest injustice, drags his bags behind him, ignoring a line of empty seats until he reaches those where his back is against a hard wall. Seating in airports is like a game we are all playing. Some keep frowns on their faces, others a bag on the next seat, or the fake cough, sneeze, or student sleeping across three of them.

I believe the woman wearing the one shoe has spied me ogling at other people. I casually glance across at her as she turns to go into her bag, widening her knees just enough. I will go to confession later. If I tried to speak, I’d stammer.

Damn. I’ve been caught. The shoe on the floor has gone.

Airports have huge egos, out there, flamboyant, sending or bringing someone from all parts of the globe. I know nothing about these people, and they know nothing about me, turning our necks only to appreciate public displays of happiness.

It’s hard to write everything in five minutes, wondering whether the man with a pencil between his teeth, thinking about the next clue, is a math teacher?

My cell phone vibrating calls for my attention. Hi honey.

Hi, I’m at the gate. I bought water and a snack for the flight, Jenny says.

Oh, great, okay, I’ll bring the bags over. Honey….

Yes…

Are you wearing those pink seamless panties, the ones I like?

I think we both know the answer to that, don’t we, she says.

I collect the bags and walk over, thinking that most husbands don’t spend every waking minute hoping for a chance to see inside their wife’s legs. I know I could quit if I put my mind to it.

Such secret views do not make for words; they create writing urges.