This morning I awoke in a metal casket. Sunbeams muscled their way onto my face, a frame of silver sheets forcefully reflecting the morning light. The air was warm and thick.

I was curled up with my boyfriend in the tail of a Beech 18 airplane.

It all started with a party at the airport. The kind of party where everyone is drinking too much, dancing too furiously, laughing too loudly.

At some point -- possibly hours later -- all the lights were out. The music was throbbing. We spun around in circles and twirled glowsticks on strings and were transfixed by trails of light.

The morning-after wreckage looked like a rave got into a fight with a NASCAR rally. Cigarette butts peppered the hangar floor. Empty amber bottles -- once filled with cheap domestic beer -- covered every available surface. (And even some unavailable surfaces, like a high rafter on the hangar door.) Broken glowsticks had been discarded in the ashtrays, but only after leaving toxic neon splatters everywhere.

And I woke up in an airplane.

At some point, I had crawled into the plane, which had long ago been cleared of seats to accommodate skydivers. I passed out with my head toward the cockpit, my legs stretched toward the tail. A rolled-up black towel was my pillow. A Lands End coat and someone's old, stiff poncho served as bedding.

Because the Beech has large, inflated tires on the front and a tail that hangs down like low-slung pants, the plane is on a permanent slant.

Throughout my few precious hours of sleep, it was disorienting enough to find myself inside a plane. It was even more confusing to have my boyfriend wake me up every so often to say, "Honey, wake up. We're sliding again."

Eventually we gave up and balled our bodies up in the tail, just two pieces of drunk cargo.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 22, 2005 at 9:40 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.