I have never hit anyone as an adult. I decide that the right time to do it is when we are 33,000 feet in the air on a 12-hour long flight.
We smiled at each other in economy resignation sociality, as I got out of my aisle seat and she slides into the cramped space of the middle seat.
As we settle down, trying to defy physics and compress ourselves in the misleadingly called 34 inches of ‘comfort’, she makes a joke: “this is going to be Cosy!”
I smile politely and remind her we are going back to The Netherlands; gezellig (lazy) is what we live by. More polite smiles. When you have 12 hours to spend next to each other, shoulders rubbing, elbows navigating the 1.5 inches of the armrest, you learn to be polite and laugh at bad jokes.
It isn’t long before personal spaces have been established, and we are all immersed in the lulling immersion of in-flight entertainment, the sonic landscape of noise cancellation headphones distracting us from the cramps and tightnesses that are offered as a free service on long-haul flights.
3 hours into the flight, I come back from a saunter to the galley, grabbing water, when she looks up at me. “I know this is going to sound very silly but would you mind changing seats with me?”
I pause for a bit to see if this is some kind of a bad joke – the famous Dutch sense of humour that I don’t always get. It isn’t. She is in earnest. I look at her and very measuredly tell her that won’t be possible. There was still 8 hours of flight time left and there was no way I was going to subject myself to the agony of a middle seat wedge-in.
She gives a halfway smile. “Yes. I know. It’s just… this seat is so tight. “
“You can ask the cabin crew if they have other seats”. I offered cliche ridden wisdom.
“ I already did. It is a full flight. Sorry to ask you.” She tries to shrink herself in the seat as I mumble half-audible apologies and go back to watching the antics of Deadpool.
Somewhere in the riveting superhero adventures, I have dozed off. There is this back-of-mind recognition that I should try and sleep as much as I can to avoid thinking about the slow cramp building in my right calf. Even as I am ignoring the cocoon-like reborn tightness of the posture, I feel like my world is shrinking in.
The girl next to me has raised the arm-rest between us and is now spilling over in my heavily restricted real-estate. Her elbow is definitely poking against my flab, which, much as I dislike, is still mine and not used to this kind of bruising assaults. Her legs are at an awkward angle, knocking against my octopussian knees.
After 5 minutes of semi-dreaming that I had reincarnated as a scratching post, I open my eyes in complaint. I see her wide awake, not blinking, and crouching towards me, subjecting me to unsolicited reflexology.
As I turn my reprimanding eyes I notice that she is leaving precious inches on the other side. Now, I am all for people throwing themselves at me and gratified that my charms and attractions are cutting through my hobo sweater and the dried snugness of long-haul flight, but I decided it is time to draw some boundaries.
Even as I prepare to say something, ungluing the tongue which has, of course, retired to the back of the mouth and feels like sandpaper, I see her gasp and draw in a deep breath and her body flinch.
I notice that since I last talked to her, she seemed to have grown extra appendages. Or rather, there is a hand on her body, grazing the under-thigh. She squirms to get away from this mutant formation but it is right there. Insistent. Probing. Squiggling.
And I look at the man on the other side of her. The Chinese bro wearing his black t-shirt with a silverish neon ‘Ninja’ written on it, his biceps bulging with perversion, is using this long flight to catch up with his daily quota of groping women.
Even as I register all this, blinking like I am Mary Poppins, barely able to register all that I am seeing, he catches my eye. And instead of hastily correcting himself, he gives me a grin – the kind that belongs to the bottom of a pond – and winks at me as he very obviously punches her.
In that split second that he does that and she gasps, even before I can think of anything to say, some involuntary muscles take over. I lean across the person next to me, and with a wrist action that makes me consider a future career in professional golfing, I slap the bro hard on his smug face. It was a slap so hard, it hurt my hand. His designer hipster glasses fly off his face. While I nurse my aching hand and wonder if I should apply hand cream to avoid blisters, and you know, because any excuse to apply hand cream, the woman heaves in relief and starts crying.
The bro, his senses finally returning, starts raising Cain, or whatever the Chinese equivalence might be. There is an animal roar and he gets us and shouts at me, apparently wanting to punch me, but the woman was getting in the way. I get up from my seat and ask her to give us some space. In the meantime,…
