The Colombian

Why am I home from the Museum of Science and Industry tonight? Why, to receive the call from The Colombian, of course.

This is getting a teensy bit ridiculous. As I texted* to Birdie, is my Fairy Godmother trying to win some kind of bet?
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I never told the story of The Colombian.

After my cousin's wedding in Miami. I got my $300 in travel vouchers for taking a later flight and hanging out in the airport. That was when I was still mostly stoned out of my gourd on migraine meds, so I couldn't concentrate enough to get a full narrative down, even when I had a fabulous one to tell.

Airport. Sunday, June 7. My parents and brother have boarded for Chicago, a few other related and unrelated wedding guests are still getting on the plane, and a man standing casually by my seat at the gate asks me if I'm on this flight or the next one. I thought he was waiting for his boarding group to get called.
"Well, I was on this one, but I'm giving up my ticket if they need it and taking a later flight."
Casual shmoozing ensues.
He's on the next flight at this gate, going to Colombia (explaining his accent).

Three hours later.
He walked me to the gate for my flight, which was at the other end of the airport and ended up leaving before his, which was repeatedly delayed due to the thunderstorm outside. He gave me 1000 Colombian peso note so I could feel rich (it's worth about 50 cents, but as he put it, "[gasp!] So many pesos!") and remember him. It's still in my wallet.

We'd exchanged business cards earlier during the "What do you do?" portion of conversation. He works with a personal injury lawyer in Houston, helping immigrants know their rights (like, that they have them) when they get hurt. And he worked for Comcast for awhile but hated the manual labor, which is weird, because he also owns a ranch in Colombia. He tried ranching in the U.S. but apparently "In Colombia, the cows do all the work, eating grass and getting fat and then you sell them. Here, the grass doesn't grow in winter and you have to give them feed and move them and it's hard work!" So every six months he goes down to his Colombian cattle ranch for a month, which is where he was headed.
He was completely impressed that I was a writer because he said he was no good with words and language. He acts like he is embarrassed about every word coming out of his mouth. He says his English is terrible. It isn't.
He said when he first saw me he thought I was really young, like, too young, but then he got a little bit closer and thought maybe not, and then when he was closer, he saw my eyes and he saw that they had wisdom and knew I was older.
A man with English as his second language was the first to express impressions of my age in a genuinely flattering and beautiful way. Bad with words my ass.

I kept saying his English was worlds better than my Spanish and somehow he got me trying to speak Spanish. I can still understand Spanish fairly well, but no hablo para caca. Rusty is an understatement. We were talking about me living in my condo with my dog and I was trying to say I love my condo, but direct object pronouns or indirect object or whateverthehell part of speech is the thing that is being loved I kept fucking up and saying "te amo" instead of "lo amo" and I knew it was wrong but I couldn't remember how to fix it (never mind living in Chicago or watching telenovelas, it's been over 10 years since I've had any formal Spanish language training) and he thought it was the best thing ever.
"You kept saying it, and with your accent! Oh, it was wonderful."

He said he made an excuse to talk to me because he thought I was beautiful and wanted to see if I was nice, since apparently I'm every guy's ideal (news to me) and that might make me stuck up. But I was friendly. He guessed I was from the Midwest by my accent, though he couldn't place Chicago. We talked about accents and the friendliness of Midwesterners. He said he hates Houston because there you're either American or you're Mexican, and if you're not American you're stupid. He wants to visit Chicago. Wants to see the lake. I told him I lived right by the beach and he couldn't believe there could be an entire beach and big waves waves for a lake.

Later, after his flight was delayed and he bought me a cranberry juice at the bar by the gate and we found new seats, he said my speech pattern reminded him of a good friend he used to have from Michigan. He (the friend) was very smart and a very good friend and things seemed to be going better for him, but he killed himself.
Great. Is my somewhat-controlled depression that obvious? Like a big mole on my face? At the same time, The Colombian's ability to draw the parallel still counts strongly in his favor in my mind. Maybe I'm reading too much into things. Maybe I have a Michigan accent. But he said I reminded him of this friend a number of times, and I feel like he had a sense of something familiar. At least I've never been suicidal...

I had absolutely no idea how old The Colombian was. His eyes creased a bit when he smiled, but just enough to rule out younger than me. He could have been 30. He could have been a well-preserved 50. You can never really tell how old anybody is.
He's 39. He didn't want to tell me. He acted like it was going to be 60. I told him 27 and he said he knew I wasn't lying. I kept threatening to check his passport. I wanted to, except it didn't matter if any of it was true. It could all be shiny fiction and then vanish at the gate. Three hours of flattery and company. I was quite content for it to be what it was.

I'll admit, I looked him up on Facebook after I got home. He was there. Full name, in Houston, Texas. One bad blurry photo as a profile picture, a list of friends, and an otherwise hidden profile unless I "friended" him. But I left it. He could find me if he wanted, otherwise, I had his peso and the story.

There's more story I could tell, but none of it involved airport bathroom sex or even smooching. Just more morsels of exchange.

But tonight, he called. He'd gotten back from branding cows in Colombia and wanted to call.


Did I slip into a coma two months ago and my life since then is entirely in my head? Maybe I'm watching too much LOST, but my life seems more and more like a lighter, funnier drama done by the same writers.


*txt'd? wtf. I didn't say it to her. I didn't quite write it to her. Once again, technology and semi-anal accurecy chew away at prose.

Miami International Airport

I went to my cousin's wedding in Miami. The plane in which I was originally scheduled to fly home arrived at the gate as a 737 instead of the planned 757. They offered $300 in travel vouchers and a guaranteed seat on the 8:15 PM flight to anyone willing to trade in a boarding pass.

I was at the podium before they could finish making the announcement.

It's not like I had anywhere to be, and many of my best friends live in far away places. $300 of airline travel for four and a half hours of hanging out in the Miami airport is far better than my usual pay rate.

The rest of my family opted to stay on their original flight. They all worried about working Monday morning and general life obligations and hassle and whatnot. The other wedding guests, too, refused a $67/hour waiting incentive and boarded for Chicago.

I had the two most recent issues of the New Yorker, the Sunday New York Times, and a cell phone with two virtual pets, a virtual farm, a virtual pyramid, and a virtual mine, plus the will and ability to nap in strange places and positions.

Instead, there was The Columbian.

and then it was 2008

I spent New Years in a ballgown* in the international terminal of O'Hare airport. On purpose.

After three weeks with his girlfriend in Florida, NBF's flight was scheduled to arrive at 11:25 PM on New Years Eve. Had I not seen the sign for the airlines when I dropped him off, I wouldn't have believed his domestic flight was really going in and out of the international terminal or that this "discount carrier" actually existed.
With all my recent migraine hell, I wasn't going to make any big booming New Years plans, and my one other big non-booming NYE possibility fell through, so I agreed to pick up NBF so long as I was physically capable of driving. A week of my family mostly behaving themselves and then an energy jolt from being back at my apartment again put me on enough of an upswing that I even drove to Target in a snow storm hoping they had better evening gloves.
I put on my funky Jessica McClintock ballgown and did my hair and make-up and packed a bag with:

• cheap champagne flutes and cheap champagne to match
• sparkling blood orange cranberry juice for my new booze-free self
• marijuana as my partying alternative, packed neatly into my first aid kit because I think it's both appropriate and funny
• cherries, because I had them in the fridge and they were portable and delicious
• these Trader Joe's raspberry brie filo appetizer things that taught me 1) my oven has no temperature numbers on its knob 2) it still works and 3) so does my smoke detector.

I checked Imaginary Airline's Website before I left and discovered NBF's flight now wasn't getting in until 12:12 AM, so I took my time. My dress fell all the way to the floor and I thought about wearing my best snow boots, but ended up in my black dress boots as a compromise between form and function. I drove through what was crappy driving weather, but I was in no hurry and my new car is super comfortable with its seat warmers and anti-lock breaks and Garrison Keillor the radio and hardly any other cars on the road and everything so beautiful and still and white. I could have been miserable and cranky, but instead it was one of those strange moments of pure joy where you just have to laugh at the beauty and perfection and ridiculousness of it all.**
Garrison and I counted down at midnight on the exit ramp to Terminal 5. In a ballgown. In the snow.
Terminal 5 parking is entirely outdoors. I found a spot right by the entrance, grabbed the champagne and food, lifted my dress above the sludge, and went in.
The terminal was warm and almost empty. I put my coat and purse and food down on some seats near the middle and wandered back and forth within 20 feet of my little "base camp." The monitor still said the flight was due in at 12:12. A man slept on a few seats nearby. I wondered if he'd missed the new year. A man and a woman stared at me. I smiled. After all, I was wearing a ballgown. Another man walking passed, also staring, said, "I'm sure whoever you're here to meet will be very happy; you look wonderful." I thanked him. I wanted to say, "Yeah, and the dickwad isn't even my boyfriend!" but I didn't.
I called my parents to wish them the obligatory Happy New Year. They were having fun with their annual party and my dad as drunk as he ever gets. We hung up and it was 12:24. I noticed a bunch of people over beyond where the bar was. I thought it was just restrooms back there and the bar was closed, but maybe there was something going on. A champagne toast? People coming out of the flight?
I picked up my stuff and walked over. Heads turned. I felt like a warped version of Cinderella walking into the ball, except this turned out to be a solitary "domestic baggage claim" in the international terminal and the closest thing to Prince Charming didn't even notice until I was right next to him.
We waited at least half an hour for the bags to come out. Another hour driving home in the snow, counting down with NPR to New Years on the west coast. Then I ate all but one of the brie things, we drank our respective sparkling beverages, smoked a bowl, and he and the dog fell asleep while I lay awake and convinced myself I knew what he was thinking and overthought every turn of his head and move of his arm for at least an hour before finally passing out myself.



*Ballgown is now one word because I think it should be.
**C.S. Lewis talks about those a lot in the appropriately titled Surprised By Joy. They're like microbursts of happiness. When I try to explain them, some people know exactly what I'm talking about, some smile and nod, and others think I'm crazy. I consider them much more logical than and a welcome balance to bouts of depression and sadness. Why is unprovoked sadness common but unprovoked happiness crazy?