It’s hard not to think that everything about flying on a plane is unnatural. Largely because, well, it is. I’m pretty sure someone once said, “We were never designed to be up there.” The Wright brothers decided we should be. Or, I suppose, Wilbur and Orville’s fascination with dismantling things and putting them back together is what ultimately determined the existence of a piece of machinery like the airplane. A fascination that first led to owning a bike shop before starting to tinker around with aeronautics. Though it seems unlikely that they thought as far ahead as an “aircraft lavatory” in terms of what any commercial flight would require. Once their invention was created, it was probably up to those who wanted to keep monetizing and monetizing the endeavor to outfit the plane with any additional necessary “comforts.” However, as I’m sure you know, there’s nothing “comforting” about an airplane bathroom. 

Walking past it on the way to my seat, I briefly space out as I stare at the lock on the exterior that reads, “Vacant” next to it. It surely won’t be for long. I guess I end up spacing out long enough for my friend, Reva, to shout at me, “Emily! Get moving!” It’s a bit embarrassing, but then, she’s been known to embarrass me in far worse ways in the past. And probably will very soon in the near future as we’re about to fly to Vegas from Chicago. She just broke up with her boyfriend and wanted me along for the ride to “blow off some steam.” Despite my increasing fear of getting on an airplane for a number of reasons (namely, “loose hardware” becoming a thing in the news), I decide to oblige her. Not really out of true friendship, but because she offers to pay for everything. 

When we get to our seat, she lets me have the aisle, knowing full well that my bladder is much smaller than hers. I wait until the seatbelt sign goes off to then immediately use the bathroom before someone else can. I am always the person on the plane who “pops its cherry.” It’s the only chance I’ll get to experience some form of cleanly, non-stankin’ conditions during the many times I plan to be in there. 

Back in my seat, I keep thinking about the Wright brothers (as I often tend to do when on a plane—damn, what a legacy to have that kind of effect on someone). And how, in many ways, they were right (yeah, I did that) to pursue their invention. If they hadn’t, how else would the masses be able to easily (well, relatively speaking) be able to visit their loved ones, friends and family alike? Except, in the end, of course, the potential of air travel turned out to be more beneficial to industry than anything else. Not just in terms of inventing an entirely new one to monetize, but for better serving the numerous other industries in existence. The better to up the ante on the supply chain with. 

At that period in history (just as in this one), little consideration was given to the implications of what such a creation might mean. Not just in the unnaturalness of it for humankind, but in the slippery slope it would continue to create for environmental well-being. So many planes plugging and chugging along up there in the sky, emitting all those fossil fuels. Ironically making life so much more complicated for people while making it more “effortless” at the same time. I wonder more and more if the “convenience” has all been worth it in the long run. A run that appears to be getting increasingly short thanks to the presence of toxic machinery (not to be confused with toxic masculinity) like planes on this planet. 

Many are still in the camp that suggests all machinery is both a sign of progress and an extension of human mental prowess. Increasingly, I find that logic to be a major instance of hubris. Because what kind of psycho would come up with the notion that humans should be capable of pissing (and yes, shitting) at thirty thousand feet? I reckon that’s the part about air travel that blows my mind the most—not the very marvel of air travel itself (while I still marvel at that, too, I’m not one of those people who claps when the plane lands). Though I rather wish it could be blown by the presence of a high-speed internet connection…or even just a regular one. Because, inevitably, it’s always a fake-out when the airline promises the presence of “onboard wi-fi” (for a price, of course—and one that consistently turns out to be a waste of money). Thus, I continue to instead have my mind blown by the cruder ability to piss at thirty thousand feet (oftentimes, even higher than that as the plane makes its way across the globe at a cruising altitude). Because, like flying itself, it really shouldn’t be happening. It is, as I said, a defiance of nature in every way possible. Another prime example of humans trying to become gods (or maybe “angels” is the more apropos term here). 

Except that gods don’t need to worry themselves over bodily functions (as far as I know)—apart from the bodily function of incestuous fucking (#Zeus). Or that’s one element that none of the myths choose to address. Why would they? There’s nothing glamorous about that. Not like there is, apparently, about a god who has sex with his daughters. Or a god who has sex while disguised as a swan (again, #Zeus). A flash of that scene briefly entering my mind as I try to finish pissing at thirty thousand feet. A steady stream doesn’t seem to come out as seamlessly at this height, perhaps some law of gravity at play. 

As I finally finish draining myself for the umpteenth time (receiving no shortage of comments from Reva about it), I realize I’ve been inside the proverbial gimp cage too long and a line has formed outside. A line of passengers who look both vexed and fearful—the latter appearance likely due to the assumption that I’ve been in there so long as a result of, let’s say, stinking up the joint. I try to look directly at each person I pass to indicate that I have nothing to be ashamed of. Let them find that out soon enough based on the garden-variety airplane bathroom smell. 

Sitting back down yet again, I vow to myself that will be the last time I’ll be subjected to the vagaries of the onboard “WC.” The way it makes me feel like I’m having an existential crisis rather than simply “relieving” myself. Because, really, there is no relief in it, only dread. The uneasy feeling you might “totter over” at any moment during a bout of unexpected turbulence. I couldn’t possibly imagine what sort of deviant freaks would find anything about an airplane bathroom appealing to bang in. Unless they had a legitimate sex addiction and there was no other means to release it during the many hours of a long-haul flight. That, obviously, would be a very exceptional reason to desire using the bathroom for that purpose. And when I looked around at the clientele on the flight, it seemed that the furthest thing from any of their minds (despite being en route to Vegas) was the idea of “bumping uglies.”

From the look of things “up top” on most of these people, that out-of-fashion expression definitely applied. I immediately wished I didn’t let my mind wander in this direction because I suddenly had a vision of all their “uglies” hovering over the toilet inside the plane. And then it occurred to me that it’s actually someone’s job to empty the “contents” of these toilets. I wonder if those people do everything in their power not to ever think too carefully about how their life turned out, to have ended up doing this job. Sure, they say “all work” is “noble,” but that’s merely the lie capitalism tells us to keep the system perennially running. Almost as efficiently as air travel itself (save for when there’s a holiday bum-rush or a pandemic prompting a worldwide shutdown). 

And what is the mark of efficiency if not multiple available public bathrooms on an airplane? Even so, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to surrender to (or accept as “normal”) the strange marvel of pissing at thirty thousand feet. Nor will I ever be able to wrap my head around the notion that the first engine for the Wright brothers’ plane was designed by a bike mechanic who worked in their shop. Or that one of the first toilets on a plane was “open air,” meaning the piss and shit just flew out into the ether of the sky, competing with the birds’ own excretions for landing on some unsuspecting simp. So at least, karmically, we can all feel better about pissing (or, for the truly uncouth, shitting) on a plane now. But that doesn’t much assuage me as the plane lurches unexpectedly and I find myself jolted sideways, bare-assed, onto the lavatory floor.