Please Help Me I'm Falling

Here is something that's going to come as a real surprise- I hate to fly. And not in a "oh, this is such a drag" kind of way. It's more like a "get me off this fucking thing" kind of way. The first couple of times I flew (which was very, very recently) the flights were really easy, and I was like a little boy looking out the window and asking Baby what was going to happen next. Then we flew to New Orleans this summer, in a thunderstorm, and It Happened.

We had a layover in some place in Tennessee. Nashville? Memphis? I don't know, some place. And as we were landing, a storm was coming in. We barely beat it, which was a relief. We had a tight window during the layover, but the storm delayed our departure. With nothing to do for two hours, we drank beers. By the time our plane finally took off for New Orleans, I was fucked up on Ativan AND drunk. It was not enough.

We're climbing through the clouds left over from the storms, and we'd maybe been in the air for twenty minutes. We hit turbulence and the plane starts to shake, but I'm okay because I'm all banged up. Then, suddenly, the plane literally FALLS! out of the fucking sky. Straight down, and BANG! at the bottom of the air current or pocket or whatever the fuck it was. It was terrifying. People on the plane were screaming. I look over at Baby, and she's white as a ghost. But we're okay, right? We lived! Not ten seconds later we're falling again, straight down, PLUMMETING! toward the earth. Everyone on the plane is screaming, everything loose is flying in the air. My iPod, which had been resting in my lap, lands two rows in front of us. BANG! we hit the bottom again, and level out. I cannot believe I have not pissed my pants at this point. The captain comes over the intercom and says, "Sorry about that, should be okay now." And that was that. No problem, right? Not so much. We land, we go to the hotel, we go out on Bourbon Street, we get drunk again. We get back to the hotel, and I can't sleep that night, because every time I close my eyes, we're FALLING! again. The next day we go to my friend's wedding, we get drunk again, and I can't sleep again because always always always with the goddamn FALLING!

We flew to LA last month for Baby's sister's wedding. Nonstop. I whiteknuckled my seat the entire way. There are not enough drugs around to make flying any easier for me. I just have to get on the plane and take it like a bitch until we get there. I'm hoping I get used to this shit. We're flying to the West Coast again for the honeymoon in the fall. I might take a train.