Somebody

     Cross-country flight.  Business class.  Business people.  The same old same old.

     Except those two scruffy twenty-somethings sitting in the middle across from me.  Matted hair, three-day shadow, wrinkled shirts, warm-up pants, clog-style sneakers, sunglasses.  Slouching in their seats, head phones dangling into a shared DVD player.

     They must be somebody, for anybody who is a nobody would present his body with more care, I think, surveying the carefully-coiffed and buffed business heads bobbing above the plush business class seats in front of me.  Nobodies who look like somebodies are common in business class, while nobodies who look like nobodies are rarely seen there.

     The flight attendants, unerring judges in these matters, cater to the somebodies who look like nobodies, laughing with them, crouching down to their level, touching them, all the while ignoring us nobodies who look like somebodies.  I can't hear them over the jet roar, but at one point I can make out a flight attendant explaining the term "hair of the dog" while pouring them more champagne. 

     An older lady stops to chat with them on her way to lavatory.  Nods and smiles back and forth.  Another passenger kneels down in front of them, an earnest look on his face while he tells them something, then they nod and smile and he returns to his seat. 

     Clearly, they must be somebody.  But who?  I have no idea.  And even if you told me, chances are I'd still have no idea, having filtered so much of their world out of my life.  And even if I knew, would it matter?  What if, for instance, one of those somebodies was Haruki Murakami, the writer of the short story I'm reading right now?  How, exactly, would my close proximity to Haruki Murakami on this flight affect my appreciation for his story?  If, for instance, Haruki Murakami drank too much and tossed ice cubes at the business heads bobbing above the seats in front of us, would that affect my appreciation for his story?  Should it? 

     I doubt very much either of these somebodies is Haruki Murakami, but you never know.  I look away from the somebodies in time to see George Lucas's head projected on the big screen at the front of the cabin.  He's talking.  Cut to a head shot of an interviewer, mouth moving.  Return to George Lucas talking some more.  Then cut away to George Lucas in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with an older female who may be his spouse.  Then to George Lucas on the lawn, tossing a football to a young boy who may be his son.  My ears are earphoneless, so I can't hear what they're saying, but I know exactly what's happening.  George Lucas is a somebody being portrayed as a nobody, a regular guy with whom I can identify, a necessary predicate, it would appear, to my decision to spend the money required to attend a screening of his new movie.

     If they instead portrayed George Lucas as he really is, a gigantic somebody who lords over a vast kingdom filled with minions who only ask how high, a man who can toss ice cubes at anyone's head with impunity and immunity, would I be less willing to watch his movie?  Should I?  Does any of this matter?  It must, or they wouldn't bother showing it.  Am I inhuman not to care? 

     And then I look away, dreaming of the day I stop shaving and start slouching, the day they dote on me in business class, the day they set up elaborate gauzy shots of me microwaving a burrito or brewing my Iced Hawaiians or reading in the bathroom or sitting at my desk mindlessly clicking and staring at the screen, my left finger occasionally picking at something on my ear or nose or scratching the stubble on my chin, the day they have to figure out the most effective way to portray me as a regular guy in order to get you to partake of that which I do.  That'll be the day.

     Until then I'll just have to do it myself. 

     Related posts: "The Jackass Effect" (Oct. 29, 2004) and "Daydream Drive" (March 7, 2005).

Comments

[Scheherazade]

Another great post.

Does this mean you are on the East Coast? Welcome. I hope you enjoy your stay....

[R J Keefe]

This is too good to be wasted on the likes of us freeloaders.

A good friend of ours, who listens to Bach in her office and retro Asian popular music at home, found herself one day sitting next to a friendly, presentable man in business class. They had a long conversation about the comeback that he was about to launch. She had never heard of him, which must have been deflating for Jim Messina's ego.

We never heard much of the comeback.

[stephenesque]

I remember recommending Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" to you in a comment some time ago. Did you ever read it? What did you make of the man's short story in The New Porker? I realize that these are questions rather than comments, but they demand answers.