A plane ride with Mr. America

I had the worse plane ride ever. It wasn't because it was a particularly bumpy ride. I didn't have some fat tub o' lard sweating on me in the seat beside me. There were no crying babies. None of that.

It was a spacious flight -- about 40 passengers on a 140-passenger plane -- it was fairly quiet and a relatively smooth ride.

But I was sitting in the Emergency Exit row, which attracted the biggest idiot ever.

There are things in this world I hate. They range from the nefarious: murderers, pedaphiles, Southerners; to the trivial: bad blue cheese, people that chew with their mouths open, the fact that I can't dunk.

Somewhere between those two extremes, on a scale tilting toward the wicked side, are super-duper-extra-nationalistic Americans. They get under my skin like nothing else. They're so blind, so closeminded, so arrogant, so stupid. The Big Ugly American is worse than any other country's steroetypical citizen -- even the Snobbish Parisian, the Brit with teeth that look like peanut-brittle or the Smelly African.

Me, being a black man and Jehovah's Witness that doesn't entirely promote or support many things American (like many of this country's blind faithful), the super-duper-extra-nationalistic American tortures me.

So wouldn't it be so appropriate for one of those people to sit next to me on a 2-hour flight.

And this dude was the pennacle. He was Mr. America.

Mr. America's Here
I was exhausted when I arrived to the airport, thanks to two days of interviewing with the St. Petersburg Times. I was up at 8am each day and repeating the same stories to multiple people for at least 7-8 hours each day. It was a welcomed chore, but tiring none the less. All I wanted to do was get on the plane, zonk, get home and watch all the HBO i missed over the weekend.

I flew Southwest and Southwest doesn't have prearranged seats. As most of you know, the early check-ins get a ticket with an A on it...which means you get seated first. Usually, I'm like a ZZYXZYZ, since I'm checking in 30 minutes before take-off. But this time I got the ticket with an A on it, since I was dropped off early.

So, I strolled on to the plane and headed straight for the Emergency Exit row, so I could stretch out and close my eyes. But, here comes Mr. America before I could even get situated.

Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem. There's a seat between us, so I could stretch out and sleep, read my Esquire, look out the window...whatever..and the other passenger could do his/her thing.

But, I knew Mr. America was gonna be a problem the second I saw him.

Maybe you don't like being prejudice and stereotyping people, but I do. So I was automatically thinking Mr. America when I saw: RayBan sunglasses, orangey-bronzed skin, Coors tank-top, cargo shorts, Cape Cod baseball cap, flipflops with no socks. Just like I'm sure he saw me in a shirt and tie and thought, "He must be one of the good ones."

True to form he was American in every way. America has this thing about her where she lets the world know that she's here and there. She can't help it. Whether it's occupying military, McDonalds or hiphop music -- America's presence is felt...sometimes it is welcomed, other times it is forced, but it's there. She comes banging in a country, smiling with a huge GAP between her teeth, often not even aware that she's "making an entrance."

Mr. America was no different. He didn't just sit in his seat. He PLOPPED down his seat so hard that his peticured feet flew off the floor due to inertia. The he slammed his feet on the floor, let out a sigh, smiled and looked sideways in both directions. I wasn't scowling at this point...but I wasn't exactly smiling.

"Hey dude. What's up? Looks like we got the primers!"

The primers? Oh he meant prime seats.

"Yeah. Gotta go for the leg room."

After that I quickly stuffed my face back in my magazine, hoping he wouldn't continue the conversation. Miraculously he didn't. But what came next let me know that I was dealing with a hardcore Mr. America.

Mr. America LOVES His Country
Moments later the flight-attendant came over to do the whole Emergency Exit routine. You know: are you capable ad willing to do blah blah blah in the event of a yada yada yada?

"Yeah, why not?! I'd do anything for my country!" He was dead serious, too. He even asked her to repeat the instructions again. I gave her a 'Yes' and not much else. Mr. America must've thought I was being a little to nonchalante for his liking, so he taps me on my shoulder and said, "So, I guess it's you and me brotha! Don't worry, we're big guys. We got it covered. I dare someone to F#$% with this plane on my watch. I was a hero on the football field and I'll be a hero in the skies. Hahaha, Yeah!"

I don't know what I did afterward, but it is entirely possible that I was shaking my head in disbelief and wincing, without even knowing it.

So we take off and Mr. America has managed to get an older man involved in some conversation about pilots. I don't know if the subject was airplan pilots, stove pilots, Stone Temple Pilots or UPN sitcom pilots -- I just kept hearing pilots. And he was leaning all the way over the arm of his chair so that his posterior was hiked in the air like he was gettin it in jail. Plus, he laughed a couple times, sending his body into convulsions, each time inching his cargo shorts further up his gorilla-hairy thighs.

Of course, when he sat back down, he did it with a thud.

After some time, I was ready to get some sleep. So I pulled my hood over my eyes and tried to zone out. All of sudden, "WOP!" Mr. America slams the middle seat tray down. It hit my leg, which was sitting a little high since i had propped my feet up. He was totally oblivious of where he was or what he had done, so he didn't apologize and I just set my feel on the floor, repositioned myself in the chair and ignored it.

That is, until he slams his super-super-extra-huge laptop on his own tray (the middle tray must be what he plans to use for his drink and snack), rustles theough his bag and pulls out earphones the size of them huge joints my father used to listen to John McLaughlin and Mahivishnu Orchestra on. It seemed like he was getting ready to watch a movie. And he was. So, he slips the DVD in the disc drive and I see a black background with a globe spinning clockwise with UNIVERSAL imposed on it. What would Mr. America be watching?

What A Cliche
My mind was racing through every stereotypical americanjacka$$ film ever produced. Which would it be?

He didn't dissapoint. It was "First Blood", better known as "Rambo"...RAMBO?!...how appropriate was that? I almsot sharted.

The only thing that would've made that moment better was if he'd have popped in a Sally Field's Lifetime movie or a Julia Roberts flick. Or something very dramatic like "Schindler's List" or "The Hours".

Mr. America actually made me smile with that one. It was such an americanjacka$$ move.

As a matter of fact, GQ ran a piece last year about American Jacka$$es. Here's an excerpt:

"You know who they are. Every city America has them. Maybe you are friends with one. Maybe you are one. Maybe we’re one. Some nights we definately are. Jackasses.

We’re not talking about Johnny Knoxville and his skateboards ruffians. We’re talking about real Jackasses-the kind of guys who think nothing of bellying up for a $14 cocktail, a $75 seafood grand plateau (actual value of seafood: $9), or throwing down the platinum Amex for the spontaneous $13,000 weekend in Vegas. They wax their hair, wax their chests, and throw down $2,000 a night for that stretch Hummer you wonder who the hell ever rents. They helicopter to the Hamptons, hit the dance floor even if they can’t dance, and swing form the back tees at the golf, even if they’ve only played three time in their entire lives. And they enjoy every second of it...when going out always a striped dress shirt. Always untucked"...college breeding grounds for the jackass ass..."cornell, michigan, tulane, duke, american, usc, miami, arizona, dartmouth, penn and any state college--especially wisconsin."

Mr. America was that dude.

He was also very hungry, apparently. Because, when the flight-attendant stopped at our row she handed me a bag of Chex Mix and a bag of peanuts and then handed Mr. America the same, then started to head to the next row, only to be yanked by the elbow. Mr. America wanted some more peanuts, so she gave him about five extra bags. He piles his stuff on his side of the middle tray, I put my two bags on the other side. A couple minutes later, I go for my two bags and Mr. America flinches and hovers his left hand over his stack of goodies. I guess he thought I was gona get him for one of his bags of peanuts, so he automatically went to protect his next. He knew that was the most sophomoric and childish move ever, so he sort of frowned and readjusted his hat.

However, as enthralled as i was with how cliche' this dude was, I was that much more exhausted. So I slipped back into some Zs. I awoke unassisted about 45 minutes later.

The first thing I noticed was that my peanuts dissapeared. I kid you not. So I quickly glanced over at Mr. America, just as he was sliding a bag of peanuts back over to my side.

"Dude, my bad," he said with an embarrassed smile. "I thought you were KO'd for the flight and I needed some munch, so..."

"Nah, it's OK man. Here, you can have em. I'm not a big fan of airline peanuts anyway. I'm a honey-roasted fan and these are the plain kind. Go 'head."

"Awesome!"

Meanwhile, as I glanced over at his 70-inch screen, it seemed that he had finished Rambo in less than an hour and moved on to another flick. Apparently, he must've skipped the scenes with dialogue and storyline progression and hopped from punch to explosion to machine gun gundowns...and so on. So, having had his fill of violence, he was onto...

"Tits."

That's what he said, at a barely audible level, several times. It was his knee-jerk reaction everytime Halle Berry was on the screen in that James Bond flick, "Die Another Day."

"Tits...Jezus effing Crist, look at those!" That's what he said, in an undertone to himself, when Halle had on the slinky gown in one scene. I didn;t wake up in time for him to see her get out of the ocean, in that two-piece, water cascading down that oh-so-sweet figure, but I imagine his reaction was something like, "Tits...Twix-n-Snickers I'd like to melt that chocolate!"

He didn't know I was watching him watch Halle, but he had that look in his eyes. That wanderlust look. White men would peer at black women like that back in the day on the plantation and them bring them in the house and masturbate inside of them. It's a unique look: one-half awe, the other half carnal/animal lust.

One time, his upper lip actually quivered, he was in heat.

Rough Landing
Finally, we were nearing BWI and it was time to land. But, somehow, I had managed to fall back asleep.

That's when someone yanks the tip of my hood. I awoke with a perturbed scowl, flipped my hood back and saw a wide-eyed Mr. America leaning over to tell me that the pilot got on the speaker and said we were going to have a rough landing and everybody should stay clam. The pilot was right, though. The air was very choppy and the descent into Baltimore was a little topsy-turvy. The pilot, however, managed to land the plane on the ground as smooth a Freddy jackson tune. This prompted the flight-attendant to ask the passengers, "What do we think about that landing folk?" So we clapped, a couple people yelped -- we appreciated the pilot's skills.

Mr. America took it too the next level, as always. He got all gung-ho America on us.

This was, perhaps, his last time to show his fellow passengers how much he loved being an American.

"Woohoo! I love this country! Did you see that landing?!"

Then he looked at me, actually put up his hand for a high-five. I reluctantly obliged, blushing becuase I was so embarrassed for him.

"Dude. I don't care what anyone says about the US. Best beer, best chicks, best pilots!"

One question.