It was perhaps the first time in Mia Soldonis’ life that she felt judged for her passport photo in the worst way possible. Not because she looked “bad” in it (as most non-models did in government-issued IDs), but because the TSA agent actually did a double take at the sight of Mia’s younger self in comparison to the version he currently saw standing before him. Up until that instant, Mia had been quite convinced she looked almost exactly the same as she did those almost nine years ago now (in fact, her passport was a year and change away from expiring). Based on that TSA agent’s double take though (however “subtle” he thought it might have been), Mia was no longer so sure. Indeed, she was starting to think maybe she had been in a state of total denial up until this very second. Because a second is all it takes for everything to change—opinions, moods, life itself. 

Although this incident might have been inconsequential to anyone else, it was anything but to Mia. In truth, she was so affected by it that she was almost on the verge of walking back toward the officer and actually asking him point-blank if he had looked twice (once in shock) because he couldn’t believe the hag in front of him had ever been capable of looking so young. Of course, she stopped herself from doing something so embarrassing (and self-deprecating). Besides, maybe she was overreacting. Maybe his double take had been about something else entirely. Maybe he had actually been impressed with how she looked now compared to then. Maybe he hadn’t done a double take at all, and it was all in Mia’s fucked-up, self-involved head. 

Still in a frantic state over being perceived as “elderly” for what she deemed the first time in her life, Mia didn’t realize she was already creating a backlog at the security checkpoint line by not moving her things along down the conveyor belt. The twenty-something skateboarder type behind her resultantly had the gall to say, “Ma’am? Can you move it along please?”

Ma’am?! She wanted to scream, “How fucking dare you?!” All people, regardless of age and gender, knew that the wielding of “ma’am” was the universal coup de grâce for paralyzing a woman. Stopping her in her tracks and making her wonder, “Jesus, how old do I look?” Alas, just as Mia had refrained from engaging with the TSA agent, so, too, had she refrained with the skateboarder type. It simply wasn’t worth it. Plus, it would make her come across as even older, and that was the last kind of “publicity” she needed right now. So, instead, she swallowed her pride (as she had done many times before in her life) and heeded the skateboarder type’s curt, undercuttingly ageist urging. 

In the waiting area in front of the boarding gate, Mia pondered renewing her passport sooner rather than the expiration date so that she might retake her photo. Secure one that somehow made her look better—but also more like her “current self.” She knew such a thought was ridiculous, especially considering how rarely she actually traveled. This also meaning she wouldn’t have to endure a similar double take that many more times until it naturally expired and she would need to take a new photo anyway. Patience was, as it is said (though less and less), a virtue. Mia must remember that. And yes, being patient, after all, was a young person’s quality. Old people, in contrast, were notorious for having run out of patience. Used it all up on societally-backed activities like working and raising children. Mia had barely done much of the former and definitely wasn’t ever going to do the latter. So sure, one might say she had the same reserves of patience as a young person because, “life event”-wise, she hadn’t advanced beyond that stage. Why not use it to her advantage? 

It was settled then. She would wait until the passport expired to renew it. And yet, despite “settling” the matter in her head, it seemed the universe had other travel vexations to throw her way just when she had barely gotten over the double take “snafu.” The next affront came when she finally got to her seat on the plane. Mia had been foolish to let her guard down long enough not to anticipate being blindsided by the clientele awaiting her in the four-seat middle section. One must never, ever forget to anticipate the worst in this scenario—particularly when traveling alone. Everyone knows solo travelers always end up getting relegated to the most undesirable seats on planes…unless they have the good fortune to be seated next to an errant pair of fellow solo travelers. Which, of course, never happens. It is still a world of couples and families, with the “solos” on the fringe. 

Mia had almost considered driving the roughly six hours from Portland to Vancouver, but thought better of it. Figured the loss of so much time to what could instead be a one-hour and fifteen-minute flight wasn’t worth it. She just wanted to arrive there as soon as possible and get it over with already. The “it” being to attend her long-ailing mother’s funeral. Ailing no more, as it were. “Gone to the angels,” as Mia’s deranged sister, Tanya, kept saying as some pathetic means of consolation. Which brought Mia back to the highly specific ilk sitting in her aisle. Not just fat fucks, but worse still, religious zealots. Including the one right next to Mia spilling out of her seat like a cupcake over the top of its baking cup and straight onto Mia’s jurisdiction. Or what should have been her jurisdiction. Alas, it wasn’t. A bleak and unjust reality that made Mia question what had ever happened to that law they were supposed to impose about, let’s say, rotund people paying for an extra seat if they couldn’t’ fit entirely into one. Mia guessed that it wasn’t really a “law,” so much as a guideline, and that airlines did jack shit to impose their strong suggestion to “purchase an extra seat.” As if the oversized denizens of the world were going to bother doing that. Especially when they knew they could just spill onto someone else’s occupied seat and, like Mia, they wouldn’t say or do a goddamn thing about it. Because, more than ever, no one wanted to poke the bear of hypersensitivity by calling out someone’s weight. In short, by stating a fact. Even though, if anyone was being honest with themselves, they could acknowledge that fatphobia was still fundamentally acceptable—you just couldn’t be overt about it.

And so Mia tried not to be. But it was really difficult as Mia none too discreetly twisted and squirmed around in her seat in a blatant bid to get Rotunda (that’s what she had taken to calling her in her mind) to notice that she was taking up way more space than was fair. Were they not paying the same price for their seats? Didn’t that entitle Mia to the same amount of space? Rotunda did not appear to think so—she was patently of the belief that the only person who mattered in this equation was her (something that, by the way, went against the key messaging that the Bible contained). 

She did her best to recall her earlier attempt at adhering to that platitude about patience, but it was quickly wearing thin within three short minutes of sitting next to this overgrown hunk of flesh. These thoughts of contempt were further spurred and justified, as far as Mia was concerned, by Rotunda reading from some jank-ass riff on the Bible called Give Us This Day. It was some New Age-y type of hooey…and then Mia noticed that the rows in front of and behind her were all occupied by people reading from copies of it. Thumbing through the pages without shame—perhaps reciting a prayer for “good luck” and “safe travels” before the plane took off. 

Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Mia was processing the reality that the duration of the plane ride (short or not) was going to consist of her making grand, over-the-top gestures and maneuvers to indicate her discomfort, only to have them go unnoticed as she did what most people do when they experience a form of rape, a nonconsensual experience: she dissociated. But that trick was only effective for so long before the trance-like spell of it wore off. This, too, propelled by the man in the seat in front of her abruptly hitting the button to make it jolt backward and give her even less space. It seemed, for good ironic measure, he was the only one on the entire plane who thought using the seat-back position made any difference in terms of comfort level. So, between his unwanted presence in her space and Rotunda’s, in the end, Mia surrendered to letting her patience wear thin—at long last harshly elbowing Rotunda in the side of her soft, protruding gut. So soft, in fact, that Mia wondered if she had truly felt the full force of her pointy elbow at all. As she was questioning this, she perceived, out of the corner of her eye, the death stare of the so-called pacifist (for weren’t all Christian-oriented religious folk worshiping teachings that promoted pacifism?). 

Before Mia knew what was happening, the previously undetected air marshal behind them intervened as the “pacifist” kept beating the shit out of Mia. And yet, the air marshal had the nerve to put restraints on her hands instead of Rotunda’s. He glibly asserted that was because Mia “started it.” Though, from Mia’s perspective, the only thing that mattered in a situation like this was who finished it (or at least tried to). Rotunda decided it would be her, continuing to come at Mia even now that she was sequestered and restrained. Funnily enough, once the air marshal had put her in a different seat in an empty row, she might have managed the rest of the flight just fine. But no, things got so physically violent that the pilot had to ground the plane in Seattle, just shy of their Vancouver destination. 

After the “proper” authorities had taken down a report and Mia was declared free to go (by that time, Rotunda had already left the vicinity, so there was no risk of running into her), she decided that not only would it be best to drive the remainder of the way as originally intended, but that she would also renew her passport photo early, as originally intended. The only thing that could have brought her a greater sense of calm and tranquility in that moment would have been to be able to sardonically shout at Rotunda from the inside of her rental car, “Love thy neighbor as thyself, bitch!” But Mia was realistic enough to know that most stories can’t end quite so happily.