2001-05-23 - 11:06 p.m.

I flew out here this afternoon for a meeting tomorrow morning - flight was delayed, but the woman next to me was watching Coen Brothers movies on her laptop, so that was good. I've been in travel mode today - I hate travelling for business but I've grown so accustomed to it that I find myself lulled by the shiny aisles of Newark Airport, somehow comforted by the array of ATMs and dataports and fast food and overpriced tshirts, the constant announcements and the noise of people. I realized today that it is, in fact, possible to get on a flight without having any human contact. No luggage to check, e-ticket boarding pass machine - the first person I deal with is taking my ticket at the gate when I board.

I don't want people talking to me on the plane, either. Well, sometimes I do. But not usually - I get on armed with walkman, books, and laptop to give off clear leave-me-the-hell-alone vibe. I make exceptions for old people and little kids travelling alone, though. And earlier this year, on a flight to Miami, a 60ish woman from Staten Island, with a studded sweatsuit and too much gold jewelry, asked me, in her thick accent, if I'd hold her hand during the landing, because she was deathly afraid. She won me over, saying " My husband, he told me, Sheila, don't be bothering people on the airplane. But I just can't help it, I've been saying Hail Marys since we left LaGuardia. My grandson lives in Florida, it's the only reason I'll get on a plane." She was adorable - and gave me a big, uninhibited hug at baggage claim, for talking her through the landing.

But when I was younger, I talked to everyone. And I told lies, y'all. All kinds of lies. Not mean ones, but I'd make up a whole new persona for myself - silly things, like that I was a gas station attendant from Ocala, Florida. It originally started as a defense mechanism, after a guy I met on a plane turned out to be a low-level stalker. But then it became fun, so I kept it up. I guess I'm too firmly entrenched in my life now. I can no longer imagine what a gas station attendant from Ocala would be like.

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