Rasmenia

I hate flying. When I was a kid, I traveled by plane often, as many children of divorced parents do. Back then, it was a fun & exciting adventure. Because I was a wee one traveling alone, I received special attention. The flight attendant would bring me a little plastic pin with wings on it. “A gift from the captain,” they’d say.

I’d read my books & listen to my Walkman. The person sitting next to me was always nice. Or, at least quiet & polite.

Over time, things changed. I got bigger. My legs grew longer. My patience, shorter.

I take more international flights now. The airlines have changed, too. Now there’s a lot more seats crammed into a single airplane in order to squeeze more money out of every flight.

Flying anywhere — even a 2 or 3-hour flight — has become a fucking ordeal that one must survive, rather than a fun & exciting adventure. It’s no longer the happy beginning of a vacation to a new & exotic place. It’s a goddamn penance that must be paid for having the audacity to leave your home.

That’s without getting into the bullshit about customs, body scans, TSA & the inquisition of foreigners in the U.S., which I won’t get into here.

Most of my flights going back & forth between France & the U.S. have been a headache. Once, a crazy lady sitting next to me on a flight to Paris instantly poured out her life story to me & Olivier. It got to the point where we started speaking French to one another as a civil way of asking her to shut the hell up.

On another flight to Paris, the woman behind me got out of her seat & started shrieking at me in irrational hillbilly-speak, causing a scene on the plane, while her husband was scolded by the flight attendant for referring to the attendants as “honey.”

There was also the little old French lady who fell asleep on me on a flight to Paris, but she was nice to me, so I let her sleep.

All of these things were quite pleasant compared to our recent Air Europa experience.

About a month ago, Olivier & I, along with a couple of his coworkers met up at Orly airport in Paris for a flight to Buenos Aires with a stop in Madrid. We knew it would be long, but we planned ahead with snacks, gadgets & books.

Like any flight, we had to bum around the airport for a few hours before boarding. Lucky us. While waiting for our boarding time, who should walk by right in front of us with a couple of police officers but former French Presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen.

She strolled by, smoking a cigarette. Yes. Smoking a cigarette. In the airport. Because of course, the law doesn’t apply to everyone.

Paris to Madrid went smoothly. It was about 10pm in Madrid when we arrived, so the place was mostly deserted. Our flight was delayed, so we ate potato chips & Oreos as we marveled at the long line of passengers waiting to board the flight. Dozens of passengers who were using fucking trolleys for their carry-on luggage. No, I’m serious. They had too much carry-on luggage to carry.

Olivier & I, each with a single backpack, were stunned.

A little after midnight, we finally boarded our flight to Buenos Aires.

We got to our seats, which unfortunately, were located in that shitty middle section of the plane on a full flight. Immediately, I discovered that the guy next to me had already been discarding trash, blankets & pillows on my seat, leaving me with a pile of shit to deal with before I could sit down. Once seated, the douchenozzle in front of me reclined his seat. Sure, sure… you’re allowed to do that during certain times of the flight — usually once the fasten seat belt light has gone off. Reclining before take off, during the meal, or not putting your seat back up before landing is dickish. If I were boss of everything, they would never recline at all.

Of course, none of the Air Europa flight attendants seemed to be too concerned with safety regarding seat back position, or people’s garbage & bullshit cluttering up the aisles.

Not to mention the fact that Air Europa has the smallest seating area of any plane I’ve even been in. I’m 5’7″. My knees were touching the back of the seat in front of me before it reclined. Once reclined, I had about 6 inches between my face & the seat in front of me.

The trash dumper next to me was encroaching. I became enraged. Claustrophobic. Olivier switched places with me, being much larger & much better at counter-encroachment. He won the turf war, but we discovered that Trash Dumper was also a nose picker who liked to chew gum with his mouth open. I don’t know him, but I hate him.

So, I’m in my new seat. In front of me, the seat reclines. I don’t want to lean back. It’s uncomfortable to me. But I have to, in order to get this greasy, bald scalp out of my face. I turn in my seat, giving the polite, “I’m gonna lean back now” look, then slowly put my seat back… & the douchenozzle behind me tells me, “no” I can’t do that.

Seriously… fuck these people.

After 2 weeks in Argentina — which I’ll get to later — it was time to fly back to France via Madrid. I began dreading it about 2 days before we left Argentina. Incredibly, the flight & cast of characters we encountered on the way home was even worse:

- A couple at the airport in Buenos Aires, pushing & shoving to the front of the check-in line. “We have a passport problem,” they said. Really? So why wasn’t an airline employee assisting them, rather than letting them piss people off at baggage check-in?

- The couple to our right on the airplane, wiping the little plastic dishes from their meal with their tiny napkins, shoving them into her purse. They cleaned all the plastic cutlery & took that, too. And she kept stretching her legs out, putting her feet on every chair they could reach.

- The lady sitting to our left who kept crying, bouncing around hysterically, opening several boxes of creams, perfumes & bullshit, rubbing them all over herself, stinking up the plane & tossing the empty boxes everywhere. Oh, yeah… then she blew her nose & collected her snotty rags on her tray table.

- Whoever shit all over the toilet seat in the airplane lavatory.

- Whoever pissed on the floor in the airplane lavatory.

- The dozen people who were having some kind of party, drinking yerba mate in the aisles, being loud, sitting on other people’s armrests while they were trying to sleep & preventing anyone from going to shit all over the toilet seat.

Yes, it’s delicious, but no excuse to be a tool.

- The chick in front of me who kept reaching back & hanging her hands behind her head so that they dangled in front of me, covering the little movie screen that was too close to my face when I was trying to watch The Words, forcing me to flick her fingers out of my face.

- The weird & very large lady sitting in front of Olivier who decided to stand next to my seat, her body oozing into my tiny bubble of personal space, hovering close enough for me to smell her weird large lady scent, leaning one hand on my headrest & the other hand on my fucking movie screen while I was trying to watch The Words.

Bradley Cooper is terribly overrated, but I prefer him to the hands of weird, rude strangers.

When we caught our sunrise Madrid-Paris flight, I thought I’d finally get an hour or two of sleep. Wrong. We were sitting right in front of the shrieking, seat-kicking kid whose parents did nothing except attempt to placate their howling larva with loud, musical toys.

And I didn’t even mention how the baggage handlers like to go through the side pockets in your luggage to steal shit.

Luckily, the two weeks we spent in Argentina were nothing like the flight there & back. Quite the opposite. But, like I said, I’ll get to that. This is enough for one day.

You have two ways to know right away if someone is an asshole; two infallible personality tests that can tell you right off what kind of a person another human being is.

The first one, as you already are aware, is how they treat the waitstaff in a restaurant.

The second is how they behave on a plane. If they respect personal space, use some common courtesy & have a modicum of common decency, they’re all right. There’s still a chance that they’re shitting on the toilet seat when no one’s looking, but, hey… at least they don’t interrupt the movie.

I am not going to wish you a Merry Christmas. I am not going to wish you Happy Holidays, a Happy New Year, or even Happy Ass Slap from an Expensive Hooker. No matter what we say anymore, someone’s out there to complain. So, I won’t offer you Xmas cheer, a Happy Hanukkah,  Joyeux Noël, Feliz Navidad or a Happy Solstice.

I wish you more than this. So much more.

When someone says to you: Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Have a nice Tuesday or a bitchin’ Saturnalia, I wish you the clear-sightedness to see when another human is saying something just to be kind, affable & cheerful. I wish you enough common decency to choke down your pettiness, smile & respond in your own kind, affable & cheerful way. I hope you’ll be reasonable enough to comprehend how one person phrases something shouldn’t diminish your joy; that most battles never need to be fought & that being offended is a meaningless thing.

I hope that in the coming year, you’ll have at least one pair of really comfortable shoes & that you’ll wear them on many long walks outdoors, with the sun and wind on your cheeks while holding hands with someone you really like holding hands with.

I hope that this year will be the year you get a grip on the fact that you will never get any free shit from anyone simply by liking & sharing photos of jewelry or lottery tickets on Facebook.

I’m wishing very hard that this year will be the one where you start saying “twenty-thirteen” instead of “two-thousand-thirteen.”

In the new year to come, I hope you will go to a doctor, or visit a drugstore when you are sick instead of asking me to pray for you. If you are a believer, then believe, but please… believe that God(s) work through people. This year, when a catastrophic event occurs (& it will), I hope you will donate your time, food or money rather than making public announcements informing the rest of us that you are sitting on the couch praying for the grieving, wounded & hungry.

I hope that when you do feel the need to pray, you will pray to your god(s) rather than Facebook. (Matthew 6:6, anyone?) I will do my part by not making you listen to me talking on the phone. Yes. It is the same thing.

I wish that this year, you’ll tell someone a story. A happy story. A painful story. Any story at all. The story you’ve never told, but always wanted to. That story you’ve kept stuffed down deep inside you like a dirty, embarrassing secret. Write it down. Tell it in a song or a painting. Whisper it to the person next to you. I wish you the courage to give someone that piece of you.

May you develop an awareness of how deranged you sound when referring to yourself not only in the third person, but as “mommy” to other adults & may you keep this bizarre habit among the sewing circle of mommy bloggers who find this to be normal & healthy. The rest of us are not toddlers. You are not our “mommy.”

This year, I hope none of you will have to listen to any ignorant old white men publicly going on about rape. But, if you do, I hope a massive army of angry vaginas finds a way to shut that whole thing down.

I wish you the pure, unconditional love that only comes from a special bond with a creature that isn’t human. Spooning with a big dog & rolling around with them on the carpet. Cradling a purring cat while sharing a warm rotisserie chicken. Holding hands with a monkey.

I wish that when you check your Twitter feed, you will be informed & amused; that you will engage in entertaining & interesting exchanges with people all over the world instead of being spammed, trolled, or shouted at to buy something, or have to sift through an endless stream of retweeted fragments of someone else’s book reviews.

I truly hope that in the coming year, you learn that Internet memes & macros will give no one the impression you are witty, informative, funny or entertaining. These things are to comedy & communication what lips, hooves & assholes smooshed together & stuffed in packages marked “bologna” are to kobe beef.

May you find yourself able to look at two people, & truly see them… the emotion in their eyes as they gaze at one another & only see the love that one person can for another instead of two men, two women & the limitations of your own ignorance.

May you finally come to the understanding that other countries & other people are not failed attempts at being you; everyone does not want what you want, or what you have. In fact, most people probably don’t. Try to be happy knowing you’re a successful attempt at being you & everyone else is quite successful at not being you.

In this new year, I wish that you will take a few goddamn seconds to think about #thirdworldproblems before making #firstworldproblems jokes because – & someone needs to tell you this – you are not funny. You might even be an asshole.

I hope you will better yourself. Learn a new language or an instrument that you’ve never touched before. Study a craft unknown to you. Try a strange new food before saying you don’t like it.

I hope whenever someone says to you that you can’t do a thing, you find yourself able to laugh at them, then do that thing better than either one of you had imagined.

I hope you’ll stop worrying about your thighs. You look fine.

May you remember in this year to come & all the years to follow that when you choose a side in a war & root for them to win, that these aren’t sports teams. These are real people who feel pain & laughter just as you do… that when you pray for one side in a war to be victorious, you pray for others to suffer in torment, to bleed, to cry screams of grief & agony. You pray for them to die.

I wish for you to be moved to tears by a piece of music, shaken by someone’s story of survival & punched in the gut by another’s suffering. I wish you tears of empathy.

I wish you anger. Rage. Enough dissatisfaction to pull your ass up out of your chair & throw you into something constructive besides pissing & moaning about the unfairness of the world.

I wish you all this… & so much more.

“Religion is like a pair of shoes: find one that fits for you, but don’t try to make me wear your shoes.” – George Carlin.

“Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I’m concerned–I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.” – Frank Zappa

“One’s own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one’s Maker and no one else’s.” – Kahlil Gibran

***

This is something I don’t enjoy writing about. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth; leaves me feeling dirty, like I need a Silkwood shower & a couple of shots of Jameson to burn it all away. In fact, while I was planning on sitting down today to write a blog post, I had a completely different & unrelated topic in mind. Something a bit lighter. Something less aggravating & polarizing.

That’ll have to wait for another day.

I changed my mind this morning because I received an email. I read it & vowed that I would bark about it to the Internet while shaking my fist & using lots of profanity. Because I love you, Internet. I want to share these things with you. Also because bickering with the sender of the offending email is pointless (I don’t speak much to them, anyway) & would be less entertaining for the rest of us.

So… what did it say? What was so annoying that it warranted a rant?

This: “I forgive you.”

This came as a surprise, since I’d never asked to be forgiven. The message went on to say that even though they don’t condone my “life of ungodliness”, they forgive me; that while they do not have a relationship with me since I “have denounced God” & am “not a Christian,” that they still had to forgive me. Because the pastor said so.

A few words jumped into my mind as I read: arrogant. Condescending. Self-righteous. Judgmental. Stupid.

This wasn’t a sincere message. This was an “I don’t really forgive anything” message. A “What you are just chaps my ass & just wanted you to know” message. For a message of forgiveness, it was one of the most insulting, blindside emails anyone’s ever sent to me.

I cannot comprehend the misguided piety that motivates a person to sit down at a computer & compose an email that basically says, “I forgive you for living differently than I do. I judge you. I’m better than you & will not associate with you because of it, but I forgive you.”

Then again, I have hobbies.

Of course, they could never understand the most important thing, here: I am not seeking forgiveness. I don’t hand much of it out, either. Telling someone that you forgive them for something they were never, ever sorry for is one of the most obtuse & audacious things a person can do. Forgiving me for living my own life the way that I see fit? A terse “fuck you” just doesn’t seem appropriate here, even if it might be satisfying.

Perhaps it’s because a false & self-serving message of forgiveness is so pathetic that it doesn’t even merit the wrath or disdain of a “fuck you.” Jumping up on the dinner table & dropping a deuce in my soup is deserving of a “fuck you.” Passing judgment on my life, my belief system (essentially, who & what I am) & sending me sanctimonious bits of bullshit is much worse.

Please don’t misunderstand the meaning of my tirade: this is not a criticism of anyone’s faith. It’s about hiding behind faith as an excuse to be an asshole. If you’re going to be an asshole, be one, but find a better reason & be honest about why you’re being an asshole. Don’t throw heinous insults at someone & then say that it’s because some pastor or other nameless religious authority told you to. That’s a fucking cop-out. It’s cowardly.

Forgiveness is something that you do for yourself, to heal, to move on, or whatever you need to do. In many cases – such as, forgiving someone for being different than you – you can probably just keep that shit to yourself. Or keep it between you & whatever version of God you’ve chosen.

Many of my close friends & relatives are believers of some kind or another. I sincerely don’t care. They don’t judge me. They don’t get all up in my grill about it & I don’t get up in theirs. We have a firm grasp on the basic concept of mutual respect, so there’s no problem. We have millions of other things we can talk about. We can still enjoy conversations with one another, in spite of my godlessness. We care enough about one another to maintain a relationship, to nurture it with civility & laughing about stuff, instead of acting like dicks.

I’ve heard a lot of complaints about what big bullies atheists can be. Maybe there’s some truth to it. It seems reasonable to say that both sides would have their share of asshats. While it’s poor form to send someone a blindside email criticizing their godless existence, it would be equally wrong to spend your free time composing & sending insulting emails to a christian because you’re pissed off about their ignorance of Christopher Hitchens & rejection of science.

No matter how much science you can throw at them.

And what about my godlessness? What’s the big deal?

I spend a lot of time reading the works of prominent atheists, but I’m not an atheist.

I might burn some sage to clear out the bad vibes, but I’m not a pagan or wiccan.

I’ll meditate & do some yoga, but I’m not a buddhist.

I grew up Methodist, but I’m definitely not a Christian. I’ve never tried to hide this, because I’m not ashamed of it. But I don’t run through the streets shouting about it & rubbing people’s noses in it. The reason being: it isn’t anyone’s goddamn business what I do or do not believe. I don’t have to pick one thing & one thing only to believe. I can do whatever I want. So can you. We all have the right to think, feel & believe as we see fit. However, you do not have the right to bother anyone else with it & use it as a reason to insult or belittle another person, regardless of what the more extreme members of various religious groups & political parties say or do.

Trust me. She doesn’t make a lot of friends.

I never asked for forgiveness. Because I’m not sorry. I am not sorry for who I am, for the kind of woman I am, or how I live my life. That is not something I would ask to be forgiven for. If you don’t like the way that someone lives their life, then don’t be a part of it. Move on. Do your own thing.

When someone offers forgiveness that wasn’t asked for, it’s false, smug & selfish. They’ve lost the meaning of “Christ-like”. They’ve warped the concept of forgiveness. Worse yet, they could end up as blog fodder for some bigmouth on the Internet.

If you enjoy fighting with people on Facebook, or elsewhere on the Internet in those boring religious debates, that’s fine. But, when you start sending people direct messages disguised as normal correspondence with the sole intention of knocking their lifestyle & inflating your own self-righteous delusions, it’s harassment. It has all the assholery of leaving someone a flaming bag of poo, but without the comedy. When your bigotry drives you to do something like this, when you can’t find anything better to do with your time than to antagonize the people in your life, it’s not forgiveness that’s important.

What is important is something simple. Something basic that you’ve now abandoned: kindness.

***

“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.” – Charlotte Brontë