The Gatekeeper

This post is paid. Enjoy.

The Gatekeeper

About a week ago I took a redeye from Sacramento to JFK and landed around 8 a.m. I had a flight to Sarasota around nine a.m.

I was exhausted. I went to the bathroom, splashed my face with water and looked in the mirror. I felt crazy and lost but reminded myself that this was no time to assess my position in life.

I drank from a water fountain and, moderately revived, began to grasp that most of the reason I felt so weird and upset was that I couldn’t decide if I was going to get coffee or not. 

If I had coffee I’d feel better immediately but tired again when I landed in Florida. If I didn’t have coffee I’d feel terrible until I fell asleep again on the next flight but would have a tough hour ahead of me. It was a real dilemma. 

I needed to sit down, rest, and game this out.

I found my gate. Who flies to Sarasota from JFK on a weekday morning in March? I can’t say for sure. I didn’t look too hard. What I can tell you is there were a lot more people than available seats. I counted five, most of them were in the middle of families lunging at each other’s snacks or similarly suboptimal.

Finally I saw an empty seat at the end of a row and headed over to it, relieved. I don’t want to make too much of how tired I was because other people in history have been more tired for longer and for more depressing reasons. That said, I was pretty fucking tired. I was on the verge of sitting down when a man a seat away from my intended seat said, “My wife is sitting there.”