Aaahh, Fuckit

I am so not a nice guy, like Blork says. Well, don’t misunderestimate me, to quote Dubya, but I just had to lose it, it was just waiting to be lost, on my insane trip back from Japan to Montreal.

This was, hey, it’s a wrap, put it in the can, my absolute worst trip to Japan ever. I tend to downplay my little jaunts across the tiny Pacific pond but in actuality they’re quite huge. This time it was Northwest, not Air Canada. Okay, good. This time it was Detroit, not Vancouver. Good again. But I was beguiled into a false sense that all would be well on my way to Japan, and indeed it was. Then things fell apart. I stayed with my ex-wife’s parents, for about the fiftieth time in a row. But this time they were inexplicably hostile. Maybe it was the new Shogun-type beard. Hmm. Could it be that Brigitte moved in?

It was a nightmare of Monumental Deportions.

But when I got to Kansai airport, way late, it seemed that Taishi’s passport had gotten misplaced. This is the sort of thing that bureaucrats love; they kick into high gear because this is what they were created for. Thank god I had his Japanese passport but they weren’t letting me off easy. I’d made the reservation under his “me” name, ergo Taishi Robinson, but his Japanese passport had a different name, his mother’s. No matter that he was standing in front of them, his Japanese passport had been stamped a hundred times and mine too, it was undeniable that he was my son . . . they did what bureaucrats normally do and threw a shit fit.

Those motherfuckers.

I got around that with my usual cunning and we barely made the plane. But the worst was yet to come. The ass-numbing/hurting 11-hour ride was the least of my worries . . . Detroit was a madhouse. I said earlier that it was a great airport, with a million restaurants and bathrooms but I must have been in some mushroom-inspired fog when I posted that . . .

Yo, remember the days when “passing through” a one-horse town meant just that? Saddle down, feed and water the horse, no accounting to the sherriff, you has your drinks and a flophouse and you’re on your way. NOT ANY MORE.

60 goddamn minutes in line to go through customs, IN A PLACE WHERE I WASN’T EVEN GOING TO, just passing through, but get your bag, go through customs and security just to check in to go to another country . . . HOW FUCKING ABSURD IS THAT . . . no wonder the fucking world is going into global whoreming.

Fucking ONE HOUR in line . . . turns out that it was a newbie in my slot, JUST MY FUCKING USUAL LUCK. HELL—OH, ONE LINE FOR ALL BOOTHS, not one each for a million booths . . . nah, that’s too easy. Trust the bureaucrats to fuck a good idea up.

But the clinker was the ride to Montreal. Needless to say, I was not in the best of moods when I got on that plane . . . think Jack Nicholson in the Shining. “Wendy . . . I’m not home.”

So we sat. And sat. And the pilot, quite the comedian, did his best to reassure us that things were on track. There was a gaggle of Montrealers just next to me and they set up quite the back-and-forth, in Joual, about the delay. But it was clear, on this sunny windless day, that things were not on track. And when the four beefy security guards wandered into the picture, brashly swaggering as only cops can, one actually speaking in a HEAVILY ACCENTED QUÉBECOIS DRAWL, I knew our trip was doomed.

Turns out Motherfucker Four Rows Down had had a problem with our slight delay. I heard them talking, in the silence only an ear-bent crowd can provide, that the stewardess had neglected to provide him with orange juice, that it was “basic services,” that his needs were being denied. Cops saying, in the language only cops can have, in full view of the “customers” “Sir, you must calm down, the stewardess was only providing the services available” and the guy was arguing with them. Arguing with four big cops on a crowded plane.

I lost it. After hearing the conversation (in English) for about three minutes, I turned around to espy the cause of our delay. Some motherfucker, in his thirties. The plane, except for the cops and him, was utterly silent. Something possessed me, the Rage Inside, and I stared right in his eyes and said in a loud voice, “You asshole, if you lift again even a tiny pinkie to interfere with my getting home, I am going to come right over there and kick your ass so far to September you’re going to have hemorrhoids for a fucking year.”

I swear, it was not me talking, someone else took over my brain. But the cops were very alarmed and someone clapped somewhere but the motherfucker SHUT THE FUCK UP. He looked me right in the eyes and SHUT THE FUCK UP. A cop patted me on the shoulder and said “Calm down, sir” but by then my inexplicable rage was weirdly gone . . .

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. But let me say that if that fuckwad had said ONE MORE WORD I most assuredly would have painted him a brand new asshole.