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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

18.(11-13) A Trip

11. A Trip

Guy and Harumi lie on the futon mat together, he on her left, shoulder to shoulder after a satisfying encountering. She says, "I want to make a trip with you. I have a fascination for American Indians so may we travel to your Winnipeg and meet your Indian friends?"
  Guy has not told her about Wenonah but he realizes now is the time. So he does.
  Harumi responds, "I am not at all disturbed you should have had a young fiance before meeting me and neither am I possessive. I am just thankful you came along because I have so little time to enjoy what you are giving. So do not worry about my jealousy. It will be well suppressed." Then she asks again. "Well, shall we make the trip?"
  Guy nods Yes. 
  Harumi then proceeds to sketch out her plan for travel. She combines it with her idea of her own soon dying, given her very advanced age. She wants to go out "cleanly", which in her phrase means sudden death and one hope is that it could come on a commercial flight. But it disturbs her that others on the flight might die prematurely Of course one cannot know when a flight will crash but it is a point of high life-risk.  She wishes to make her death into a win-win situation where she wins if she is not in a crash because she continues her happy life but she also wins in a crash because she satisfies her strong desire to go out "cleanly"and also knows her loved one will a get a huge reward out of it. So she will arrange that both she and Guy get flight insurance for two-million dollars making one the beneficiary of the other and also that they will fly separately, either by separate airlines to same destination at similar date or by separated dates.
   She explains this to Guy who says "But what if I crash?"  
   "Then I win because I get the million," she replies.
   "Well, it is really a win-win-win," he says and she laughingly agrees.
   After that is decided, she lies back on the futon and sighs "Come and get it."
  And he does. 

12. They Start Out

Following Physician's Notebooks advice on foreign travel they eat nothing at the airport both as a general technique of reducing calorie intake and to give the best appetite for eating the after-takeoff aircraft meal.
   They are flying from Narita International Airport and getting there from Tokyo Station on the Narita Limited Express; it is the least expensive way, 90 minutes for Yen 1410 in an unreserved seat for 2. Harumi prefers reposing on the moderately crowded train so she wears dark glasses and chews up a quartered Pentagin pill. Guy sits by the window and watches the land and water go by as the train heads north through Chiba City and into the farm area between Chiba and Narita, which is mainly watered rice fields. They ride in interpersonal silence amidst the normal noises and the station announcements. Near the end of the ride the train pulls out of Narita City Station, going through several tunnels and after about 10 minutes it stops at Narita Airport 2 and then their destination, Airport 1.
   They go upstairs from the platform, with only trailing a standard size rolling cart that they will carry-on and that fits into the overhead compartment. They have email boarding passes allowing quick passage through the airlines ticketing area and then they pass through the very efficient and not unpleasant Japanese body-and-luggage inspection and then downstairs where they present passports - Harumi her Japanese and Guy his Canadian one.
   "You are a Canadian!" Harumi exclaims. "I thought you were a Yankee Monkey; you look very American!" She laughs out loud and Guy says "I take that as an insult. But my mom and dad were born in USA." 

Inside the passport checkpoint they glance at the boarding passes and see "Gate 31" which is to the right. As they walk the promenade, a prettily dressed, well made-up uniformed woman offers jigger-glasses of Suntory Whiskey. Harumi declines but Guy downs it at a gulp exclaiming "Freebee for me be!" 
   "Silly!" Harumi says but to herself thinks, I love his silliness, I've had 90 years without it and do not at all mind going out on it. And she lovingly embraces his left arm.
   At Gate 31, they wait the hour until boarding and Harumi watches Guy disappear into the aircraft, and then goes to her aircraft Gate 35.

   Let us view each one's separate flight to see the affects of individual personality on travel habit in an aircraft.
   Guy, preferring a basically English-speaking flying environment chose a major American international flight. Having flown now for 30+ years he cannot help noting the change in air attendant appearance. Thirty years ago it was all coffee, tea or me beautiful slim women who could have stepped out of or into a modeling career, which they often did. And the service was superb. Today, they were still mainly women but rather fat, virtual old hags while the males were all obvious homosexuals. Service was middling: the stewards often huddling in the rear cabin over food and drink.
   Having avoided airport eating, Guy enjoys the post-take-off dinner greatly. He has reached a stage in his good health practices where he only drinks alcohol beverages if they are free of charge, and limits himself to white wine, or as noted, the rare jigger of whiskey offered free at airports. Beer, he knows has too many calories, too much salt and is too irritating in its bubbly acidity to his stomach's lining. Red wine, he avoids, despite its being highly touted by ignorant internet advice for its antioxidants, because he is worried about the deep red staining that he visualizes is going on in his body after imbibing.
   So he limits the before-dinner drink snack to green tea and non salted peanuts. Also he has an easily handled small book on the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie that he can read with his dinner.
   One reason for economy preference that Guy and Harumi exercise, beyond just saving money, is healthier food service because upper class seating overfeeds with unhealthy gourmet food. Now, the attendant comes up the economy aisle with the dinners, as usual on an international flight, chicken or red meat. Today, Guy chooses the meat, which is a small steak well cooked. He does not normally eat red meat but when he flies he indulges his appetite for it.
  "The beef, please," he says, and since he has chosen an aisle seat for a general convenience of getting out of it or being served in it, the dinner does not need to be handed across and in front of another passenger's face.
   Guy spends a moment opening and viewing the neat little aircraft dinner.
   It is a 20- by 10-cm rectangle tin foil tray with main compartment on his left for a fresh salad of lettuce, tomato, carrot, and cabbage and on his right another for the steak and potatoes in a kind of quiche. Also a brown roll and a butter square, a brownie cookie, salt and sugar in very small paper containers and plastic knife, fork and spoon in package, and white paper napkin. He chooses green tea to be poured in cup. 
  Guy uses chopsticks instead of knife and fork because he finds he can eat smaller bits of food at a time by using the chopsticks and thus it prolongs the pleasure of his meal and his reading time. He normally does not salt his food but on a flight when it is supplied he uses it just to change his technique and be a little different, a practice he calls doing a broken field run or having a Flitcraft moment. He likes to pepper his food if the pepper is supplied free.
   Now he starts his eating slowly with opening his book. He tries to pace his reading and eating, synchronizing each paragraph with bite and swallow. He may stop the eating at points to appreciate a difficultly understood paragraph. Usually he is able to skein out his eating 30 to 45 minutes by this read-and-eat technique. And it does not at all subtract from his joy of eating; au contraire, his concentration makes the eating less mechanical, less like feeding time at the zoo. Also to note that at the end of the inflight dinner as the attendant collects the trays, only Guy's tray is fully eaten to emptiness. Actually, had he been alone, Guy would have licked to tray dry because he alone of the passengers had not come on the aircraft with airport or other recent eating in the stomach and had the necessary hunger to do it.
   His eating completed, he reaches into a side pocket and pulls out a quartered 25 mg pill of pentacozine, or 6 mg dose of the opioid, and puts it under his tongue, noting the bitter taste to which he has become conditioned as a marker of the start of the pleasant hour to follow. It takes about 5 minutes for the molecules to get absorbed through the moist tongue into the small blood vessels just beneath the surface and passed to the brain where the molecules, now converted to morphine-like structure, unlock the anti-anxiety, light pleasure synapses in the brain's Limbic lobe. What Guy feels is not so much pleasure as a lightening of the unpleasant load of the small paranoias that every human adult has; these are summed up in "Something bad is about to happen to me" This removal of paranoias opens the mind to creative thinking, and to thinking related to survival and happiness: How will I guide Harumi? What shall I tell Wenonah? Where will we go and what shall we do? What about stopover in San Francisco to sample Bay Area life?
   The rest of the flight for Guy has him reposing, which means light sleep to light awakeness for several hours at a time and in between strolling the aisles 30-minutes at a time, a technique to prevent deadly economy seat syndrome, the blood-to-lung blood clot seen in too-long-sitting air trippers.
   A mid flight snack of ice cream and roast beef sandwich is served: Guy demurs on the ice cream and puts the sandwich in the seat pocket bag to eat later. Similarly with the before-landing dinner. He has found that landing on an empty stomach prevents jet lag and the depression suffered too frequently after arrival.

Now let us visit Harumi on her parallel ANA Flight. She chose a Japanese flight because despite her adequate English she is more comfortable in Japanese. She selects a sushi dinner for low calorie and convenience of eating with one hand and reading with the other. Then after completing her dinner she puts a half pill pentagin under tongue and experiences an hour of pleasant thoughtful repose. This she repeats several times during her flight.

13. San Francisco International Airport 

They breeze through passport and customs check. Guy, who is much more the experienced traveler, is not worried by his carrying a supply of opioid pills through customs check. He carries them as already quartered pills in his pocket which is off bounds for the customs inspection.
   Guy does not make reservations ahead of time unless absolutely necessary; rather he prefers the freedom of choosing where they stay and how long. That includes getting tickets that allow for changes. But he also values the economy ticket and the compromise is a ticket with a moderate penalty for change that forces him not to make promiscuous changes. And on a direct flight into the US from Japan, the stopovers at major cities in route are allowed without penalty and with free, unfixed times of stay.
   "Hows about we stopover for a few days here? I know a guy who can show us the place, which everyone calls "The Bay Area" and also includes the city of Oakland and the area just north of Golden Gate Bridge?"
   "Yes, I should like that," Harumi says and Guy thinks Boy! Does she talk upper class or does she?
   Guy has already checked and decided a nearby motel called "The Dylan" looks interesting. So they call for a complimentary ride and 15 minutes later they are checked inside a 2-bed room for two at the said Motel.

   The scene is they are both sitting up in adjoining beds talking.
   Guy starts: "Do you know the significance of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay area in today's culture?"
   "Are you referring to its being a center for homosexuality?"
   "Yes, and what do you think about that?"
   "My elder's wisdom? Is that what you are fishing for?"she says and continues. "Well, you know I am a long time lesbian, or was till I met you but I was never political about my sexual orientation; it has been something that developed out of my childhood and the tenor of my life."
   "Now you met me, do you regret you never went hetero before?"
   "No. My life is of a piece and I am not regretful over it? I enjoyed love of a few women and did not wish to have children because I am not suited to raise them and feel no pressure to add to the obvious overpopulation. Your coming along before I weaken from aging is very nice but not something I missed."
   "What do you think about the current Gay movement?"
  "It is clearly a phenomenon of the overpopulation combined with the triumphalism in the U.S.A. that seeks to spread its ideology and social norms over the world. Animal experimental observations with rats show male mounting male behavior increases as the population number passes what is a normal sustaining level."
  "You mean the closeness of bodies of horny male rats causes them to hump on any-gender nearby body?"
   "Yes although said crudely. But I forgive you because you are American."
   "I'm Canadian."
   "North American. You are dominated by U.S.A. But also I want to add that the present Gay movement is really about male homosexuality. Lesbianism has too many different aspects to fit into the Gay movement. And it's not responsible for the worst effects - the great increase in sexually related sickness including cancers that have increased the mortality of the Gays. But beyond that it is intellectually dishonest, anti scientific and intrinsically capitalist."
  "Oh ho! Now we get to the beef, with apologies to the late presidential candidate Senator Mondale."
  "You have a picturesque way with words. You should have been a writer."
   "My momma always said that when I was a kid."
   "Your momma was right."
   "But not blues in the night right."
   "There you go again."
   "This Guy can't help it". He pauses to laugh at his joke, then: "You said "intellectually dishonest." How?'
   "By claiming they were born with the sexual orientation. I am not a practicing scientist but I think scientifically, and I have studied the literature on the subject.  There is no data that shows that anyone is born with a particular sexual orientation - gay or straight or bi. We are each born with an external gender representation and also seen in each person's male xx or female xy gender chromosome pair. But at birth and during infancy everyone is asexual."
   "So how do we get the way we each are?" 
   Harumi likes the question because she had spent years studying and was ready with an answer. "Even though the homosexual community today hates any research on sexual orientation because they fear the results will lead away from their theory that informs them I was born that way, much animal research has been done and, actually, some of the result might back their argument."Guy is surprised, having expected the opposite from Harumi's previous tone. Then Harumi adds to her caveat: "But, actually, it turns out not genetic but epigenetic, which means a nongenetic effect that appears inborn."
   "So tell me."
   "Pregnant rats and mice, experimental of course who receive female hormone during pregnancy produce male offspring of the pregnancy that when they are mature sexually mount only males; that is, they are male homosexual rodents. Furthermore, the female offspring of these pregnancies act like males in courting and sexual behavior; in other words lesbian rats."
   "Wow!' Guy exclaims. Then after thinking a minute. "And I understand why the gays do not like the results of this research even though it seems to show homosexual preference as innate behavior. It is not genetic; and it can be manipulated to cause persons to be non homosexual; that is by being careful that a pregnant animal is not exposed to an abnormal amount of sex hormone. If this is true, homosexuality could be virtually eliminated by just paying careful attention to the pregnant animal's hormonal environment - what it eats or breathes - to be sure no sex hormone effecting substance is present." 
   'Precisely."
  "So that is the intellectual dishonesty! Using a genetic excuse for born that way which is the main raison d'etre for legalization of gay marriage and other inroads homosexuality has made in our equal treatment society; and using it in the name of human rights but at the same time trying hard to prevent scientific research that will test the hypothesis and perhaps disprove it or else used to reverse it. You are brilliant, Madame.  And a lesbian yourself."
  "Until you came along" 
  "OK. That also covers your anti-scientific claim but what about the worst rep you give them from your Communist standpoint - being intrinsically capitalist?"
   'Well, Gays are basically libertarians - they believe in the freedom to do exactly as they please no matter the consequences to themselves or others. This is the antithesis of collectivism which typifies the communist idea." 

The conversation ends here, they make love - in a most romantic rather than sexual way - and sleep.

End of chapter  For next chapter, click below.  

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