When I was leaving Rome, I happened to be checking in for my flight with a group of fifty Christian pilgrims from Louisiana. They totally surrounded me in line, and it was all I could do to push my way up so that I might get checked in with time to get one last cornetto.

I made it through, and past the guy who asks the questions like “where were your bags last night” and up to the yellow line, where I waited in the midst of all these pilgrims and their giant suitcases and piles and piles of shit (like I was any better, where the pile factor was concerned.)

So I am waiting, and there is this queenalicious priest next to me. He is one of the Christian leaders, but not from Louisiana. I don’t know where he was from, because his accent was Total Queen.

Anyhow he comes up to me, because I have somehow got to the front of the line, and says something to me in Totally Unsure Italian. He thought I was Italian! I had a feeling about him, so just to fuck with him, I replied to his Italian inquiry with a big, fat, “WHAT?”

So he says to me (after his “oh, you are American”) “um, they are checking in our group of fifty right now, so I don’t think they will check you in.”

I was like, “dude, you are fucking high, if you think I am going to wait for all fifty of you, plus your 18,000 bags to get checked in, before I get checked in.” Well not quite in those words but you get the gist of it.

He then said, all queeny, “I don’t think they’ll check you in!”

And I said, “Dude (I think I really used the word Dude this time) these people are not going to make me stand here while they check all of you in, I can assure you!”

He huffed off, I got checked in immediately (of course, what planet was that guy from?) but then I got the being-mean-to-priests affliction, food poisoning, on the plane.

But now I am home and also, recovered. It was even OK being sick, with the Santa Ana’s blowing wet, cool air through my window in the night. Fantastic.

My backyard. It’s the place for me, at the moment, I have no desire to leave.

and it doesn’t suck.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 11th, 2005 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.