He was an airport. His veins were terminals, twisting and cold, leading to his mind locked, and restricted. His smile was a runway, leading me all sorts of directions.
He was an airport in the sense that I never felt completely comfortable while around him. His beauty, the slant of his eyes, the swell of his knuckles as he walked his bike with one hand and held mine in the other, kept me sitting a little too straight, speaking a little too quietly. He was an airport while I was a passenger. He was my vessel of transportation, of exploration, of fear, and happiness, and anxiety.
He seemed to always pay for things, movie tickets, bottles of cheap liquor. This may have been out him being a gentleman, but most likely it was out of convenience. He always paid for the hotel rooms we stayed in when it was past the time for the subways to run to take to his place.
“Yes,” he would say in his native tongue to the seedy man who handed him the key to what would be “our” room.
“Yes,” again as he handed him the money.
I always loved listening to him speaking his language. The meaning I didn’t know, the words blended together like wet newsprint, but sounded like poetry to me. Not often was I allowed to hear it (he was far more proud of his English skills,) but every so often it would slip, and I would hear his poetry once again. He was an airport terminal board filled with many words, only showing me a select few at a time.
Those nights he never kissed me until we were on that elevator, cramped and painted purple. By then I was two nerves from a panic attack, thoughts of I told you he never liked you, and, did I pick the right outfit? swam around my body and out through my cuticles I forced myself not chew.
Then he would press Floor 8, a pilot starting his engine, and the door would creak shut. He studied me, he touched my hand and pulled my wrist and kissed me.
Endorphins calmed my brain. I didn’t think much anything then. Including, walking around a foreign city, with a foreign boy met only weeks ago, and checking into a foreign hotel with him could be considered the topic for the next day’s Dateline.
He was airport, meaning there was a specific seat for all passengers. This included me. He sat me on the bed after a “take off your shoes!” misstep I made, leaving me feel both extremely stupid and extremely American. (I wasn’t sure which one I hated more.) He kissed me again, and again.
“I think you are pretty and cute,” he said in a much more sing-song way that any twenty-five-year-old guy would ever intend. His accent pushed through each morpheme, just as the blood pushed through my cheeks, causing them to turn warm and flushed.
He was an airport meaning he left me there to get water like a family leaves their traveler alone. I didn’t move, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, I don’t think, but I looked around. Music played through the television, a pop song, I remembered hearing in some overly crowded club a few nights before. There was a heart shaped lamp on the bedside table, my stomach lurched a little. I was embarrassed of where we were, and how everyone knew why we were there.
I longed for the comfort of his apartment, of the low-rise ceilings, of the mattress simply placed on the floor. He came back in the room and sat beside me. Moments later I took off his glasses from getting in the way, and seconds later he put them back on and looked at me.
I think that meant more than any words could.
He was an airport; he took me away from so much. He was an airport where foreign languages spoke intermitted and intertwined. He was an airport, unintentionally intimidating. He was an airport, even though I spent all that time in them, spent all that time with him, they are temporary. He was an airport, though stressful, and tear filled, the happiest I have ever been.
He is an airport; I can’t wait to get back.
Keep Me From Crazy 