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home again

took the redeye from oakland last night. i am not so secretly falling for cali, it appears resistance is futile…

but my plane ride was slightly annoying cause there was this Crotchety Jerk Asshole next to me with bad breath.

you know how you have to share armrests with people? but if one of the people is an old CJA then you can end up in elbow wars? that is exactly what happened last night.

i was in the middle seat, gorging on the ‘flavor of the month: after the loving’ and ‘the gauntlet ii’ reunion specials on my jetblue personal tv, but every time i put my arm on the the armrest, within a few minutes i would feel him trying to push my elbow off. sometimes he succeeded, giving me that little bounce balance moment which is always awkward, even if no one sees.

i gave him disapproving looks, but he didn’t look up from his New York Times. the next time he elbowed me, i emitted loud sighs to no avail.

then, the seatbelt sign came on right as the woman in the window seat realized she had to go bafwoom. i tapped CJA indicating we need to let her out and he leans his onion dragon breath over me to say: ‘the seatbelt sign is on.’

window woman got a look of extreme sarcasm right around her left nostril: ‘are you telling me you aren’t going to let me go to the bathroom?’

inner child adrienne: ‘mud fight! mud fight!’

instead, a burst of passive aggression took over everything and the woman squeezed out over us with lots of sighs going in every direction. then…THEN CJA DUDE followed her and went to the bathroom with the seatbelt sign on!!! hypocrite!

THEN he came BACK and commenced pushing my arm off the arm rest. now we were all seated and watching our tvs again, with him eating the Doritos snack pack as crunchily loud as possible and then sucking his fingers between bites! funky tongue medina. his remote control was in the shared  armrest, which was a small armrest, but its like take the front or the back and stop TRIPPING!!

so finally, about three hours into it, i said ‘stop pushing me!’

at which point he pulled way over on his side and was like ‘you are coming into my area every time you fall asleep!’

playing the victim, eh? i glanced over at window woman for some shared sarcastic nostrils with a little necksnapping eyebrow action too, then countered on factual grounds:

‘let the exhibit show that i haven’t fallen asleep yet once. what is happening here is that everywhere i put my arm you start pushing me and you need to stop it. which part of the arm rest do you want?’

‘none of it!’ his tone was roughly 7 year old boy saying ‘FINE!’ or ‘I Hate You Mommy!’, and i realized that most likely he had that going on inside of him. empathy overwhelmed me, and tho i spent the last hour and a half or so with the whole armrest to myself while he cringed in a repressed ball in his chair, i left the remote control area clear. he was having none of it, and was thus stuck watching and listening to the map which shows how close you are to home.

lucky me got to come home to jennifer kidwell angelically sleeping in my bed. the guy i share a bathroom with apparently spent the last week without toilet paper, or bringing it in and out when he went numero unodos…we’ve had a little note exchanging around the state of the bathroom. once i cut my hair in there drunk and didn’t clean up RIGHT away and he slipped a note under my door. i replied that we should talk about a cleaning schedule and tp-buying, he never responded. i am considering a pre-emptive strike, maybe slipping the receipt for my last 4-roll charmin purchase under the door…

all this to ponder and more!