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Stephan sits back in his chair and tries to make his head comfortable. The muscles on the right of his neck ache slightly, it’s impossible to get comfortable back here in cattle class. Stephan had asked them what the “current economic climate” had to do with his nine o’clock tomorrow, but to no avail.

He tried to move his head again, nothing, this was hopeless. He looked out the window and there, to his immense surprise, he saw a man. A man in a business suit flying next to the ‘plane, his legs and arms out in a star shape. Was he flying or falling? A lurch in Stephan’s stomach told him that the plane was falling but had recovered. Out the window the man fell under the cloud cover.

Did he have a parachute on? Was he fine? Why hadn’t Stephan shouted out? Why had he remained silent? But what could he have done? Was he still asleep? Was it a dream?

He turned to the guy next to him… Or rather he turned to where he had been. The words, “did you see that…” just kind of petered out. He must have gone to the bathroom and missed it. He thought about telling somebody, but had he just imagined it?

He picked up the glass of Vodka tonic on his tray table and drained it. He closed his eyes and thought about what he just had seen. Surely if he just opened his eyes everything would be back to normal. But he didn’t re-open his eyes, he fell asleep somewhere over Connecticut.

The shake on his bicep gently waking him didn’t seem to him to be as gentle as he, as a seasoned traveler, was used to.

“Excuse me sir, sir…”
“Sorry, I must have dropped off. Have we landed?”
“Sir…”
“Excellent, sorry I…”

Stephan looked up and noticed that the face of the stewardess was not fixed in the fake kindly gentle face he was used to but instead looked rather concerned.

“What’s the problem?”

Stephan looked around and decided that they were certainly still flying.

“Sir, we are about to make our decent and we have been unable to find your… Well the gentleman who was sitting here.”

She pointed to the still empty seat.

“Sir, do you know where he’s gone? I know it’s a funny question.”
“Um… I… I assumed he had gone to the bathroom.”
“They are all empty.”
“Well, um, well… Honestly, I thought I had been dreaming, but…”

Lucy sits in the bar watching you talk. Each time you move your hands, I see Lucy’s eyes flick to your fingertips. She looks as though she isn’t looking, you won’t notice. But she keeps checking. You push your right hand through your hair, and I see Lucy sigh and look away. What does she think about you? I don’t know if she’s even been brave enough to see you properly. Lucy can’t even know the colour of your eyes, she’s never let herself get close enough to you for that. She’s not brave enough for that, no, she’s had the look of a frightened animal since you walked in here. What’s she afraid of? You? The idea that anyone would be afraid of you? Crazy. It’s not you that she’s afraid of, I guess. I would guess it’s the idea of the two of you. You are oblivious to all of this, as usual. You just keep talking, laughing, having a great time and pushing your hand through your damned hair.

Liz didn’t want to go to gym, not after last night’s conversation with Barbara. Liz had mentioned Jim, hadn’t she, but she hadn’t meant to. It was… It was just an idle thought that crossed her mind. Why she had voiced it to Barbara last night, she would never know.

Liz had simply asked, “so, do you think we’ll see Jim at Gym tomorrow?”

The problem wasn’t in the question. The problem was that she had no reason to ask it. Well, no reason she could say to Barbara.

Barbara had immediately wanted to know why Liz thought he might not go. And Liz couldn’t think of anything to say. She needed something snappy and quick and convincing. Something like, “well last week he was saying that the instructor had bad breath and he might not come back because of it”. That would have worked because the instructor did have bad breath. Breath bad enough to stun an Eskimo at five paces. Or probably an Inuit these days.

But Liz didn’t think of that. All that kept popping into her mind was “well, with his piles”. Which wasn’t fair because, as far as Liz knew, he didn’t have piles. It was just the only excuse that she could think of. So she didn’t say that. She just left it hanging.

She just wanted to see Jim at Gym. That was all. And he was on her mind. That was all it was. But why did she have to let it slip to Barbara of all people? Did she want everyone to know? Or did she?

Well, that was something to think about.

Sitting at my dining table, on a cold December morning. My padded dressing gown keeping the chair and the cold away from me. How did I get to this moment? This melancholic, brain-deadening moment?

I suppose it is from a peek, the merest glimpse, behind that old Wizard of Oz curtain. A slight view of what it is that drives and makes us. A person should never know who they really are, because to know makes you into an actor. It makes every action filter through that part of your brain which asks, “is that what I would do?”. You shouldn’t need to ask, you should just do.

The gnarled knobs of grey gunk that electrically control our lives don’t seem to know what they want. And neither do I. The animalistic core doesn’t so much confuse the cerebral total of the mind, as pretend it doesn’t exist and forget to forward its mail. And the act is reciprocal. “Oh no,” we all say, “we don’t have animal urges”.

It’s an uneasy balance. A tightrope we each walk every day blindfolded. We don’t fall off the rope into those easy rages of childhood as often anymore. So we are tricked into believing that it is not a rope we are walking on. It’s a normal path. But don’t take off that blindfold, oh no. There’s no need for that. No good will come of that.

Then you see yourself. You are walking past a conversation about you. A mirror which is a window. And you see in. You see how you are seen and it makes it hard to remember how you are, how you behave, who you are, who you present yourself as.

What you do is who you are, to other people. Remember that. They can’t see the parts inside your brain. They can’t see what you really think. It’s only what you present that makes up your character for them. What you present consciously and unconsciously.

When I saw into myself, I saw that I forgot to tell the world something. I was screaming something in my head, that I didn’t know you didn’t know. I want to be famous.