I used to really like flying. It appealed to the obsessive-compulsive part of my brain, as well as the part that finds joy in military precision. Pack, taxi, check-in, security, food and you're off. You did it. You got on the plane. Getting there is half of getting there. Pulling it off gives you a sense of satisfaction, a feeling you've accomplished something.
On top of that, airports are one of the more abject, dehumanizing spaces mankind can inhabit without serious threat to our health. You can sneer, stare, space out, grumble, stuff your face, stumble around carrying three bottles of water—you can do it all and no one can judge you. Maybe they can, but fuck it, they're invisible. They might as well cease to exist as soon as you leave the airport. Airports are the place where nobody really has a name or a face.
Believe it or not, that's a romantic's view of airports: a straightforward, attainable goal, one tripping over itself with ritual, and the reward of getting to not give a fuck about yourself or anyone around you. If this sounds like a drug, it's because that's how it works. One part of your brain gets a blast of dopamine for this false sense of accomplishment and the rest of you luxuriates in an altered state. There's a reason why people like to get high before flying (a real thing) or have sex on planes (an overstated urban myth, but sometimes intention matters more than action). Drinking on airplanes is one of the most disgusting, counterintuitive experiences imaginable and, somehow, hey, it's become almost expected for a certain kind of person.
Like all good drugs, though, eventually it comes to an end. For me, it came when flying went from a novelty to a grind. I realized that timing everything perfectly really didn't make that much of a difference. You could wander through security semi-conscious and still get through unmolested. Airport food largely sucks and Panda Express isn't any fun when it threatens to become a staple of your diet. And spoiled as this may sound, when getting to your seat becomes a regular operation, suddenly you get more and more concerned about where that seat is.
It's the monotony of addiction coupled with that last-ditch dragon chasing impulse.
You also start to notice that airports aren't wastelands completely devoid of any rules or identities. They're actually a shitty subculture unto themselves, populated by people for whom the airport might as well be home turf. Different individuals, same role, same assholes surrounding you at every stop. Airport profiling is so easy it turns people-watching into taxonomy. There's a class system, a pecking order, different ways of dressing to fly, different levels of excitement or ennui at the gate.
It's not that we get spoiled or bombard ourselves with too much of a good thing. More that, as we get older, that sense of wonder gets further and further away.
The worst part is what this shift has done to me. Instead of air travel offering up a bizarre form of satisfaction, it's become a wasteland, an ugly, scarred place where I used to see an obstacle course. That's when you start to change. You change out of necessity, out of boredom, out of nostalgia, out of the desire to feel something. And you change to avoid feeling like you are one of them, even as you drive yourself closer and closer to that rotten designation: Business Traveler.
I can't tell you what's in the heart of anyone else who travels regularly. I like to think I'm slightly less irritating than the guy who, just now, scolded me in the security line for not following proper bin etiquette. There's no way I'm the guy who I sat next to in first class last week. He downed four glasses of wine on a 10:30am flight and somehow gave off this moral superiority vibe. But I'm getting there. I do shit like check for upgrades. I worry about making MVP status for 2015. I don't even like traveling anymore. It's exhausting and keeps me away from my family. But there's a side of me that still regards it as an opportunity to get some sort of rush. When the fantasy is gone, all that remains is commerce and competition.
I suppose there's a way of reading this and deciding that I'm obscenely spoiled or privileged. I could have pretty much the same train of thought regarding hotel life that's pretty much devolved into passing out to SVU marathons and waking up every three hours to catch a few snippets of Benson and Stabler arguing over victim's rights or whether evidence really matters. Maybe I take everything for granted and deserve to die.
Or there's another way of looking at it, at me and, charitably, at everyone who travels way more than human beings were ever meant to. We all start out with a childlike enthusiasm for new experiences. Remember getting wings pinned on you as a kid? There's still a trace of that left, somewhere in us, even for people cynical as fuck about the current state of airlines. You get to go up into the air like a giant bird. The same goes for getting to stay in a hotel and not worry about having to maintain your life. That shit's great until it becomes oppressive and disorienting.
It's not that we get spoiled or bombard ourselves with too much of a good thing. More that, as we get older, that sense of wonder gets further and further away. It may even get buried. It gets harder and harder to imagine air travel or hotels as anything other than what they are. They become less about the stories we tell ourselves and more about the boring, often grim reality of getting from Point A to Point B, or standing around in a loud, empty palace. You reach a point where you're grasping at feeling. Then it's time to admit that the final destination has to be its own reward. You lose the ability to lie to yourself. And that's where it gets hard. Because, if you don't care about where you're going or where you came from, you've got much bigger problems than whether or not you're getting upgraded.
Bethlehem Shoals is a writer living in Portland. You can follow him on Twitter here.
