The man next to me is reading Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk while listening to music and sipping the coffee he carried on.  He’s very nice looking, which was a pleasant surprise when he approached from behind and excused himself into the seat next to me.  I’m not sure what surprises me more:

I finally get a seat mate that doesn’t look like Quasimodo;

That these twin prop puddle jumpers load simultaneously from the front and rear exits;

Or that 16A is reading a book about a plane crash survivor while on a plane.

I know that that last point is what makes me want to chat him up most, even though I will probably never be able to squelch the internal “Aaagh!” I experience every time someone walks up behind me on a plane.

While I appreciate his rather overtly ironic reading material, it’s the absence of my unusual comfortable gabbiness that has actually surprised me most today.

By the way, I’m reading Chaos by Patricia Cornwell, in case you were wondering.  I know you depraved lot weren’t wondering anything of the kind, I’ll throw you the bone you’re really drooling over: no wedding band.

Happy?  Me, too.  Not that I’m apparently going to say anything to this hunk of a native son.  How do I know he’s a native? Still wearing his Patagonia hoodie on board while reading his novel by a local Portland author…and, yes it is from Powell’s, so he also recycles.

But there’s no need to dwell on a single visual point of pleasure, this pressurized little cigar of an airplane is chocablock full of attractive men…including an unusually attractive flight attendant, who clearly knows and appreciates that I know this.