My mind returned to the unpleasant odour emanating from the chubby men: actuaries I decided, sniffing at their tell-tale stale musk as if I were some cat-sized rodent. Definitely actuaries. My stomach churned. I was sitting aft, in a middle seat one row from the rear, head bowed, smelling them, when they pressed their flabby thighs against my thighs, violating my private legroom, forcing me to squeeze my legs shut. Maybe a tartan miniskirt, anklets and gym shoes were not the best attire for short haul flying. On the other hand, as a young woman, surely I was entitled to dress as I pleased? Did male sideways pressure on my thighs constitute leg rape? I squirmed and wriggled in a grimly determined effort to make myself comfortable. In the end, I just gave up. One man was snoring stertorously, his lips oscillating like pink rubber vibrators. The other man was coughing and sneezing all over me. There were nae paper bags or inflight snack menus stuffed in the backs of the seats in front which made my unpleasant extended period of male-imposed restraint all the more unbearable.
Was there nae consideration left for me in this world? Would I catch a new variant from them? Would they leave their viral deposits embedded in the lining of my lungs? I tried not to breathe. Instead, I shut my eyes and imagined we were sumo wrestlers, dressed in only thongs, engaged in hand-to-hand combat: a fight to the death, under nae illusion that I would win. I always won in the end. Buoyed by my own self-belief, I pressed my fingertips against my temples and slept…
It happened to me while I was asleep. At first, I thought I was dreaming or imagining things. I have an overactive imagination which makes me prone to misinterpret what’s happening to me or misconstrue a person’s words or actions. This was nae dream. This was actually taking place! There was nae doubt whatsoever as to the slob’s perverted intentions. His invasive behaviour began harmlessly enough when I felt the sideways pressure on my left leg ease. The man in the window seat moved his leg, creating legroom for me. It felt blissful. Breathing a sigh of relief, I opened my legs to let in some air and relaxed. His hand gripped the soft inner flesh of my thigh. Aware that some of the passengers were children, nae wishing to cause an unnecessary disturbance, I quietly mentioned to the fat, sweaty pig that his hand was on my leg: excuse me, I think your hand is on my thigh or words to that effect. To my horror, his hand continued to caress my thigh, shaping the soft flesh in a semi-circular motion, kneading me as if I were human dough. I sat bolt upright in my seat in an effort to shake him off. It made no difference. He carried on molesting me.
‘Excuse me,’ I said quietly as I could, ‘Would you mind taking your hand off my thigh, please?’
Either he didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. Instead of letting go of me the animal pushed his soft pudgy hand further up my thigh.
I froze and screamed, ‘If you don’t take your hand off my thigh right now I’ll break your wrist.’
His hand slipped off me immediately. He shifted in his seat and stared out the window. The rear of the aircraft descended into uproar. Some of the family men, those with young children, asked me if I could be quiet, and was it really necessary for me to threaten violence in front of women and children?
A member of the cabin crew, the only male, not one of the three females, rushed down the aisle and asked if I required assistance. I held the bastard’s hairy mitt up for all to see and said he’d put his hand inside my pants. By then, he was pouring with sweat, staring out the porthole and wishing, I guess, he could be sucked outside. I thanked the steward profusely for his concern.
The FASTEN SEATBELT sign came on above my head.
There was an announcement: ‘Cabin crew prepare for landing.’
And we fell thru the dense grey rainclouds into the land of my birth.
I flew into Glasgow carrying just my ruddy leather travel bag. The three beautiful Scotch crew with wavy shoulder length hair: blonde, brunette and ginger, blue knee-length skirts, matching jackets, white blouses and gold cravats, wished me a pleasant onward journey as I left the plane.
Outside, the weather matched my mood: murky to miserable. I zipped up my blue puffer jacket, pulled on my hood, and crossed the puddled tarmac to a staircase and walkway which led to an interminably long corridor. I joined the other disgruntled passengers riding travelators, gliding past repetitive commercials and endless welcome photographs of the highlands until I reached the danger zone.
I wasn’t a mule. I hadn’t been force-fed condoms filled with heroin or cocaine. I didn’t practice body-packing: there were nae packages of methamphetamine tightly wrapped around my torso concealed under my olive green cardy. I’d been poor after mamaidh’s premature death, known poverty, lived on the breadline, at least until I met the pallid, sickly woman in the hoodie but I had never once sunk to those desperate depths of despair.
I was carrying a banned substance in my ruddy leather travel bag though. Acts of blatant deceit brought me out in a thick sweat. My hair was dripping wet by the time I’d entered the green channel. Then the reinforced doors slid shut in front of me, a brace of smartly dressed women in white short-sleeved shirts appeared from behind a two-way mirror, and I readied myself to be interrogated by the forces of HM UK Border Agency. A plain girl with shoulder-length teak hair wearing a pink satin tee-shirt and low-slung jeans fainted in front of me, the officers moved in. My security alert over, the doors slid open. I passed unchallenged thru Customs with nothing obvious to declare.
Relieved to be freed, I headed for the café. The queue for coffees, teas, morale-boosting sugar fixes stretched metres with nae sign of any social distancing. Everyone was bunched, squashed: some wore masks at half mast, noses poking out above linen parapets, like: oh, what nae virus? Breathing in each other’s virulent airborne germs.
I asked the blonde businesswoman standing in front of me if it was always this bad? The blonde impressed me with her immaculate clothes: impeccably dressed in a navy-blue see-thru chiffon blouse smitten with polka dots flouting a low-cut front that exaggerated her small breasts. Her high-waisted leather skirt made her waist look narrow but her face intrigued me most. Her face was plastered with thick peachy powder, ostensibly to mattify and brighten her complexion?
But what did she hide underneath: spots, moles, bites? The woman couldn’t stop scratching her jaw with her lurid primrose nails. She folded her arms protectively, giving me a feigned smirk, then backed off of me as if to say: who are you asking me?
I shuffled forwards a metre, cursing her under my breath, sorry for even speaking. The woman ceased her scratching, held her hands as if she were under arrest, flashing me her wedding band, several missing citrus fingernails, and said:
‘Wait! I suffer pruritus!’
‘You mean you’ve an excessive interest in the sexual activities of promiscuous girls like me?’
‘I said pruritus not prurient!’
I shrugged my shoulders, ‘I was only teasing.’
‘Teasing?! Have you any idea how it feels for a young woman like me to live with pruritus?’
I’d nae idea how she felt, nae interest really. I just happened to enjoy teasing; it eased my stress.
‘I itch a lot,’ she continued, ‘Can’t stop scratching. Must be pregnant. It’s why I wear this loose blouse? To stop my breasts, tummy and underbelly itching?’
I felt an itch between my shoulder blades, out of reach, ‘Pruritus, really? That must feel awful.’
‘It does, feel awful,’ she spoke briskly in a lush florid voice, might have hailed from Edinburgh, Oxford or Cambridge, as she tried to control her itching by clenching and unclenching her fists.
I put on the false rich girl accent I reserved for the middle class, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I flew in from Stansted just now and can’t believe how crowded it is.’
‘They’re cancelling all the inbound flights to prevent the spread of the variant.’
Shuddering, she rubbed some compact off her face, revealing swathes of inflamed flaking skin: intimate rose petals that peeled off her epidermis and fluttered to the ground, ‘Sorry, must go, find toilets, do my face.’
Half an hour later, I arrived at the café to be served by a gangly teenage barista with acute acne. Incredibly, the boy persisted in rubbing his face. He punched my order and reached for the card reader. His blatant disregard for personal hygiene incensed me. I raised my hand admonishingly like the traffic police used to do at busy crossroads unable to refrain from passing a comment.
‘Are you nae going to wash your hands?’ I said extracting my credit card from a slit in my mini skirt, ‘I don’t need your filthy scat smeared all over my cup and glass, thank you very much.’
The cashier flushed, his cheeks flared with plooks, ‘I only take the orders here. All the staff are trained to sanitize their hands before they make your drink.’
‘Just as long as they do,’ I said.
‘Can I get you a cake to go with your coffee?’
A sugar addict, I eyed the tempting array of calorific cakes on display: chocolate muffins spiked with mallows, lemon drizzle, spiralled sticky pastries, iced buns, roasted almond croissants, his ungloved hands. I suspected Bonnie might have a treat in store for me when I reached her place.
‘Nae, you can’t,’ I said.
A used bottle of sanitiser was sitting on the counter. I squirted healthy blobs in my palm rubbing my hands all over. He shunted the reader at me thru a semi-circular hole in his perspex screen. I touched my faded card to the biometric blue light, gave him a deprecatory smile, moved along the counter, and waited for my drinks admiring the baristas’ speed, organisation and dexterity as they created caffeine concoctions by the score amidst all the hustle, bustle, hiss and heat of steam, the sharp raps of knocked-out grouts. Speed, organisation and dexterity were attributes I’d need myself if I were to stay alive.
Treating myself to a healthy grape and pomegranate juice, a mineral water and skinny latte, I stole a clutch of saccharin sachets from the condiment dispenser and found a clean table to sit at. The beech dryer wood of the seat felt smooth on my bare skin, sensuously rubbing the backs of my thighs. I unclipped the lid on my coffee cup, mildly amused to find the baristas had left me their hearts inscribed in the cocoa-sprinkled froth. I tore at the sachets, sprinkled saccharin over their hearts, took the coffee to my lips, and sipped its creamy foam.
When I looked up, I was surprised to see two more baristas standing next to me. The girl had dusky tanned skin and fine shoulder-length black hair. She was wearing an immaculate black t-shirt, an apron and a copper bracelet on her left wrist. He had a bushy brown moustache flecked with grey on his lean face, sported a baseball cap, and hadn’t shaved. His creased white shirt and greige apron were sadly spattered with coffee but I was captivated by the dark tattoo of a native American chief in full headdress etched into his forearm. The pair of them looked sensational. My tummy quivered the moment I heard the girl speak.
‘I am Nyati,’ she said, hints of sensuous lilt permeating her loving tone, ‘This is Mihalis. I gave you my heart just then. You’re a very pretty girl. Will you give me your heart tonight?’
She dropped a tattered buff business card on the table in front of my fist. The front face said:
An Invitation
Impressed with the print quality, I flipped the card, took a cautious sip of her latte and read:
To Have Sex With Me
Other than Nyati’s name, address and mobile number plus Mihalis name, there were nae details. I digested the address in the poorest area of Scotland picturing the shuttered windows, wire-meshed signs, barbed-wire spirals on shop rooftops, and protective steel bollards. How ironic that the most deprived part of the country, with its high incidence of substance deaths, was only twenty minutes away from the most affluent leafy Glasgie suburb. I imagined the damp, flea-ridden, mattress spread out on the bare floorboards of their squat. The girl’s lithe, tanned body intimately entwined with mine. The fragrant aroma of burning incense, mixed with our sweats. Me, the rich girl, and my pauper, making out by candlelight, then…
Today wasn’t the first time I had been approached by a girl for sex in a café, airport, station, bus, tram, or train. I had to admit though, Nyati was original. I casually turned my head towards her swarthy, emasculated, mate.
‘Will he be joining us?’
‘He can if you’d like him to. I should tell you that Mihalis is mute. He can’t speak. But he does make great coffee!’ the girl smiled affectionately at her silent friend, ‘I speak for you, don’t I?’
He hung his head as if ashamed, reluctant to draw attention to himself. I felt immensely sorry for them both, and yet.
‘Are you clean, Nyati?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I’m clean. I test myself every day before I go to work, and as soon as I get home. I’ll take precautions. I promise not to put you at any risk if you sleep with me and I am very good value.’
As if to prove herself, she dipped her hand in her apron pocket, drew out a satin mask and put it on. She sounded desperate, ‘I have to go back to work. Will you give me your heart tonight? Please tell me you will.’
‘What about him?’ I asked, jerking my head at the discomfited male barista, ‘Is he clean?’
Her face fell. I stuffed the invitation in my mini skirt slit and shook my head, ‘Can’t tonight, I’m afraid. I’ve a train to catch. Maybe I’ll give you my heart next time, Nyati.’
She wilted like a dying exotic marigold, ‘If there is a next time.’
Wearily, Mihalis bowed his head, strapped on his disposable mask and followed her to the café.
The other customers watched me anxiously from behind their fattening cappuccinos wondering why I was born so different from them, maybe? How could I look so well? An atmosphere of resignation wafted around the place: parents, partners, asking after loved ones, studying the growing number of cancelled flights which dominated the indicator board like killjoys. The deadly rho variant had taken the scientists by surprise coming so soon after omicron last November, pi in the Spring. Coming just as life had begun to return to normal. The majority of customers were petrified, donning grease-smeared masks between intermittent sips of fizzy red slushes, hearty bites of fatty junk food.
Not my problem, I told myself, feeling smug and very well-protected: not my concern or risk. Content to let them suffer, I licked the tepid froth off my skinny latte with the tip of my tongue and dipped her in my granny juice.
