No Cuts
A man suddenly showed up right next to me at the Guilin airport check-in, swaying back and forth as if something was blocking his view of the monitor that was clearly above even the tallest of Chinese. He was trying to cut the line, hoping that people wouldn’t notice his obvious scheme to mosey his way into the line. He tried to get in front of me, which wasn’t an impressive tactic, since I was practically in the back anyway. Why didn’t he just stand in the back? Does he really need those extra 60 seconds? I shifted my luggage where he was trying to step in.
“Not today, buddy!”
A young man behind me also stepped closer to me. Closing the gap and sealing that man’s fate to the back of the line (or at least behind the two of us). I looked up and noticed he was pretty cute. He wore a red Nike sweatshirt that didn’t scream “Pathetic hipster!” and was clearly under the age of 30 (I often find myself attracting the 30 and up crowd).
There was a sort of solidarity between the two of us. There was a connection, I swear! If only I high-fived him right after the blocking. “Yeah! Great job! My name’s ???; where are you headed?” Wait a second, I thought, I didn’t wear make up today. And I was also looking fantastic from a day of running up and down mountains and caves in Guilin. I looked up again. He was fiddling around on his Nintendo DS.
Anyway, first thing’s first. I got my ticket, and I headed toward security check. I chugged a bottle of water (it’s like a ritual for me. Why I always buy water right before heading to the airport is beyond me) and by the time I was done, he made it before me to security check.
We kept shooting glances at each other. “Please be going to Chongqing, please, please. We can talk. We can be friends.” We exchanged one last glance as he headed off towards Gate XX. And he was gone. I kept imagining myself posting on Craigslist’s “Missed Encounters,” but a) China doesn’t have Craigslist (that’s actually not true, but no one uses it) and b) who writes/reads those sorts of things? That’s right. Creeps.