This One's For The Girl...Or Two

By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?

Yo! It’s been a long time. I almost forgot I had this, and then I was pondering the other day and was like “I should write this somewhere, but where?” And then my laptop grew a pair of baby arms, opened itself up, clicked on this tab, and said “here silly” in the cutest little voice you’ve ever heard. And then I threw it out the window. So here I am typing on a brand new, non-possessed laptop and so far so good.

Anyway, how have you been? How’s your heart? Has this hot vax summer been everything you thought it would be? If you’re new here, welcome to the trippy, trappy, trauma-bonding love fest. I’ve been taking some time away for blah blah reasons and blah blah mental health blah blah anxiety blah moon wobble but fuck all that! Why? Because I think I’m happy, at least I was.

I recently took a trip down to the sister cities of Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. And in a sister-sister face-off, I have to say Savannah wins by a long shot. First things first, why do they call them sister cities? I looked it up once but I forget and can’t be bothered to look again. Seriously, having a week off to do nothing but eat, drink, and divulge deep thoughts to strangers knowing I’ll never see them again is what makes my heart go boom boom. It was scrumptious.

So why Savannah > Charleston? I mean they both have dark histories related to the oppression of Black people and still have a long way to go in terms of acknowledgment and repair, but they’re different. If both cities are guests aboard the Titanic then Savannah is definitely the more raucous, fun, rough-around-the-edges guests of the lower decks while Charleston is the prim and polished residents of the upper deck. But at the end of the day, they both share the same potential to go down if they don’t open up their scope a little wider. With that being said, I still prefer the former to the latter because I just don’t belong in Charleston. I need weirdos in my life. I need people of color. I need queer people. I need people who don’t think khaki is a year-round fashion staple (no shade, it’s for someone, just ain’t for me). In Savannah, walking around felt like I was seeing an incredibly diverse representation of locals and tourists. And you can drink on the streets in Savannah, and nothing screams my kind of place, like a city that encourages me to walk around with a pina colada in a to-go cup with absolutely NO REGRETS. Anyway, I say all that to say I felt at home in Savannah. Oh and hot! For real, I had all kinds of boys and girls checking me out, even when I was walking arm and arm with Barry (my boyfriend). And I gotta say, it had me feeling pretty righteous. But if I’m a 10 in Savannah I’m a 2 in Charleston. Hahahahahahahaha *she typed maniacally laughing while a deluge of tears violently fell from her face*

Charleston, though fun, is just a little too white for me. And I know this because I talked to other white people who live in Charleston and think the same thing. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 500 days, it's that white people LOVE complaining about other white people. Why is that? Like cool, I get it but like you’re…and you’re saying…like how do I respond? Also, there’s something weird about being in an incredibly white city where the only unhoused or hungry people I see on the street are Black. It’s not to say there aren’t white homeless people in Charleston, I just didn’t see them. So even though Sav is my girl, I still made amazing connections and had delicious memories in both places. Actually, I would go as far as to say that I had a better culinary experience in Charleston while Savannah kept my bottoms up if you know what I’m sayin. In both places, we had amazing conversations with randoms at a bar or in a restaurant. Oh, and there was this one night in Charleston where I thought I was going to get propositioned by these two super hot girls at a dive bar. One of them approached me with a compliment and a little while later her friend said to me, “you’ve got the look,” and then her friend said, “right, isn’t she great.” Then they looked at each other and back at me. But like ships passing in the night, we continued on our respective voyages.

Our week away was so incredibly perfect that I think it was a little too perfect because on our last day, everything went to shit. We were driving to Tybee Beach in Savannah because everyone said we should. On the way to the beach, I got an automated call from JetBlue saying, “Your flight to Newark International Airport has been canceled.” And that was it. Then the robot hung up. If the airline industry wasn’t the heartless, capitalist monster that it is, I would have thought that call was fake. But it wasn’t. I checked my email and I got the same message in text form. And forgive me but I’ve never had one of those horror stories of a flight being delayed 8 hours or canceled. So I guess I was expecting a little more…literally anything! I mean, it's not like they are canceling my haircut. If someone is flying, it typically means they are going somewhere far and likely need to get there by the date they chose. Eventually, I was on an instant messenger with a “JetBlue Representative” who is definitely not an AI. They told me my flight was canceled and the next flight out is Tuesday. Which would have been great if it weren’t SATURDAY! Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who could post to Instagram “flights canceled, guess I’m extending my vacation,” but I’m not. I will never be one of those people. Who are those people? Do they just walk into hotels and free suites are just sprung upon them? Do restaurants see them walk in and go “quick, make one of everything on the menu and make it look damn good for there is…an influencer among us!”

Anyway, to make a short story long, I had to cancel my flight and rebook a different flight in the parking lot of a beach gas station. Then we went to a beach bar and had extremely subpar calamari that came with the pizza sauce dip one may find in a Lunchables. But hey, I guess that was on us. Then we walked the beach and got caught in a lightning storm. We were probably in the most unsafe place to be but if Mark and the kids can stay out in the water during a storm, then damn it, so can I! Then on the drive back to the airport we got caught in both terrible weather and traffic. Then we got to the airport and our flight was delayed. So then I got drunk. Then it got delayed again. So then I got more drunk. And there I was, tired, sweaty, and inebriated at a terrible airport (no shade, I know Savannah is a small city, but it’s not the type of airport where you have a Tom Hanks in The Terminal style adventure).

Eventually, we were on the plane, but still waiting on our captain who was somehow more delayed than us. *cue scenes from Airplane* Before I knew it, we were flying through a storm, so I started watching this Netflix docuseries called This Is Pop to keep my flying anxiety as tame as possible, which this show did. It’s an interesting examination of pop music throughout history which each episode focusing on a different pop phenomenon, whether it be boy groups, Swedish pop influence, brit-pop, autotune, country pop, etc. And I find it incredibly fascinating. I used to hate on pop music so hard. I used to be like I’ll listen to anything besides pop and country. And though I don’t listen to pop music regularly, I do have more of an appreciation for the genre and its evolution. Country music I still don’t fuck with. I don’t vibe with the music and the country music industry has been so terrible to Black people, women, and anyone who they deem not worthy (see the Dixie Chicks oh wait they are just The Chicks now or see Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” or see any of the Black musicians in the Blues and Roots circuit who inspired and essentially created so much of what we know as country music today who don’t get any type of recognition by the genre). There was this one time in my life where I rode the school bus and my driver only played country music stations. So for a good two years, I knew every lyric to every Top 40 country song. And sometimes I randomly recite them. Like this song that goes “I want to talk about me, want to talk about I, want to talk about number one oh my me my, what I think what I like what I know what I want what I see. I like talking about u-u-u-u-usually. But occasionally, I want to talk about meeeeeeeee.”

Whose song is that? I don’t know. What’s it called, I could take a guess but don’t really know. Or that song that’s like “where I come from, it’s cornbread and chicken, where I come from lot of front porch somethin (swingin? kickin? pickin?), where I come from trying to make a living, working hard to get to heaven, where I come from.” Again, I have no idea who thats by but I will carry those lyrics to my grave. And even with that being said, there’s still something about songs with lyrics like that just don't make me want to go, “hey turn that shit up!” Except for Concrete Angel by Martina McBride. That song slaps. It’s EXTREMELY sad and the video is even more depressing. But she’s got the pipes and she’s telling a real story, albeit a tragic one.

Anyway, I think that’s all for now. I don’t even know why I started writing this. I had something to say but I took one left turn and now I’m up here singing “but her dreams give her wings and she fliiiiiiies to a place where she’s loved.”

This was all over the place. But I enjoyed it. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. You know this episode. You have to! William Shatner actually appeared in several Twilight Zone episodes but this is the one everyone knows. The one that has been memed and recycled many times throughout our zeitgeist. It’s the one where a young and dapper Willy Shat is on a plane and sees a monster on the wing. Everyone thinks he is crazy, but it turns out he wasn’t. I don’t know why everyone talks about this one so much. It’s fine, but it’s not like whoa crazy metaphors and allegories. What we SHOULD be talking about is how William Shatner is a racist. I mean maybe not but he was a guest during the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen and said all this super racist stuff about the late comedian Patrice O’Neal (who absolutely slaughtered everyone on that stage with an off the cuff set, check it out). And I don’t know, there was something about Shatner’s delivery that made me wince.