One Thing: the airport that banned love
Hugh Grant from Love Actually would HATE this
While the romantic in me is outraged at the reports of a New Zealand airport banning hugs longer than three minutes, I’ve realised that maybe this comes from a place of false premise, a misunderstanding from media-inspired insanity.
Of course I’ve been raised on stories of the airport as a place for grand romantic gestures. “I got off the plane” says Rachel to Ross in the TV show Friends, in what I consider the worst plane related tragedy to occur in the early 2000s. For a while there wasn’t a single romantic film that didn’t have some kind of run through the airport to stop someone from getting on or off a plane, all in the name of love. Hugh Grant’s voiceover in Love Actually waxes lyrical about how beautiful the arrivals section of the airport is, and how it is, love, actually.
But you see, I worked at Sydney International Airport for over four years, so I KNOW that the airport is the opposite of romantic, is in fact a stress-filled hell that will work its harder to tear you apart. Working in the Duty Free store, my weird little desk overlooked the security section, so every day I would watch dozens of people running for their planes, crying, even vomiting. I watched couples about to start their holidays backpacking around the world, already in the process of breaking up. I once saw a woman THROW her engagement ring at a man. I would regularly see people have bottles of booze confiscated, and then decide to drink an entire bottle of Johnny Walker Blue instead of having it thrown away, only to reappear an hour later, being walked past me in handcuffs by the Federal Police, ranting. Ok I only saw that once, but that’s once too many times. One time a man in Flo Rida’s posse came up to me and said “Mr Flo Rida is ready to purchase a bottle of Chanel Homme” and I said “Thats great” and walked away, because I did not work in the perfume department. That isn’t an example of horrible things that happen at airports, it’s just a story I have. Once I had a fever and thought I was serving Kasey Chambers, but it was actually just my aunt.
As a result of working in this dystopian, fluorescent lit nightmare, I’ve managed to pick up a severe case of airport anxiety when I travel. I’ve had three panic attacks in various airports around the world (a horrible Carmen Sandiego spinoff), genuine heart palpitating, black spots in front of my eyes, skin crawling panic attacks. One was when my taxi didn’t come in New York and I had to run through the airport with my shoes in my hands, only for my flight to be cancelled anyway. Another was when they loaded me, and only me, onto a bus at Dubai and ferried me around for 45 minutes before dropping me at my connecting flight. And another time was in LAX, the worst airport in the world, after a flight where I’d taken some over the counter sleeping tablets which had done the opposite and made me really hyper, and strangely removed my ability to read words. Genuinely, when I looked at signs, all I could see were sigils, that seemed to shimmer in a heat haze, and grow more blurry the harder I looked. Naturally, this was going to make navigating LAX for my connecting flight to NYC much harder than necessary.
In a panic, I saw someone who’d been on my flight that I recognised, a tall guy wearing a distinctive green jumper that I’d spent 12 hours catching out of the corner of my eye on the plane. In desperation, I grabbed him by that same jumper, and hissed “are you going to New York on the connecting flight???? Can you help me??? I can’t read!!!!”
He very gently extricated his clothing from my clenched fist, and in the same kind of soothing tones you use for a dog scared of thunder, told me that he was happy to help me. As we walked through the labyrinth, he kept up a running commentary to me, explaining the signs, pointing out weird American things, asking me questions to keep me from going catatonic. He told me he was going overseas for the first time ever, and he was so excited and bubbly, and as I started to calm down, I realised he was also very handsome, a kind of young taffy version of Jeff Goldblum.
This was many many years ago, and even then my brain was sick enough to think - oh, is this an airport meet-cute? Is this how I meet the love of my life?
He got me onto the flight, and I thanked him effusively for helping me read, for guiding me through LAX like a child lost in a department store, for reminding me that I needed to pick up my luggage. He said “hey, find me when we’re disembarking” and I nearly swooned, not only at how romantic the phrase was, but the casual use of the word “disembarking”. He wanted to see me again, even though I can’t read! That’s love.
When we got off in New York, I stood waiting for him, heart in my mouth, and gave him a shy hug as he disembarked. We walked through the terminal, and I asked him what he was most excited about to see in New York, and he rattled off some things that sounded fine. Then with a laugh, he said “I’m a bit worried I’ll meet a faggot though, I’ve heard there’s a lot in New York. Hope they don’t… you know… try one on?”
“Oh” I said.
With a nudge, he pointed at a family nearby. “Lot of black people around huh.”
“Oh no” I said.
It took me longer than three minutes to get rid of him, to give him a fake number, and pretend that I was gonna meet him in Times Square in a few days. The airport is not a romantic place.
I’ve recently been reading about the newspaper/ magazine booms of New York in the 60s and 70s, because I’m that kind of nerd, and one of the things I was feeling sad about was that I never got to write cute little “slice of life” columns. And then I remembered I have my own publication where I make all the rules and questionable decisions, so ONE THING is gonna be that.
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DYING at the conclusion of your airport romcom
Loved reading this! So funny. So REAL!