So, I am seated next to a Zombie!

The Traveler: 

AA Flight 2382 DEN to DFW  Seat 4B.

I have OCD. It’s a fashionable neuroses to have among adults, sort of like ADD is for kids. I am Obsessively Compulsively Aggressively Polite for example.

I am also a germaphobe. For real. I wash my hands like 20 times a day. It’s bad… When a dude tells you he’s a germaphobe… give him the stripper test. If he can get a lapdance, he’s not really a germaphobe. I can’t even let a stripper rub her boobs in my face, because unless I’m the first guy, she’s basically rubbing some other dude’s face on my face, and that jack – ain’t gonna work for me – but I digress.

So I’m sitting here waiting for the plane to take off, and this guy is picking at his face.

Okay so what.

But I really mean picking at it. And doing it ritualistically. I know the signs of bat-shit-crazy, I do. This isn’t merely some random itch this cat is satisfying. He is scratching one specific part of his face for like thirty seconds… then he looks at his fingers to examine the results. Then licks the fingers. Then whipes his nose. Then back to the face again.

Motherfucking seriously.

Scratchscratchscratch… … scratchscratchscratch

Look.

Lick.

Nose Wipe.

Scratchscratchscratch… … scratchscratchscratch

Look.

Lick.

Nose Wipe.

I cannot motherfucking abide.

What started off as a zit is now the size of a quarter… a open seeping wound. This is too much. I can’t fuck with him though, he’s not really hurting anyone else or being especially rude… I mean LETS HOPE that nobody rules that bat-shit-crazy is the same as rude… that could trigger a real identity crisis.

So I do the next best thing. I drink. A lot.

Scratchscratchscratch… … scratchscratchscratch

Look.

Lick.

Nose Wipe.

Scratchscratchscratch… … scratchscratchscratch

Look.

Lick.

Nose Wipe.

--45 minutes later—

This mother fucker will not stop and if I drink anymore… I will lose what loose grip I have on social mores and actually say something to or worse yet ABOUT this poor bastard to everyone in first class.

I wonder what the fine is for leaping out of your seat on an airplane in flight and shouting ‘ZOMBIE!’ At your seat mate?  If smoking in the Lav will set you back a year in jail and a $5000 fine… I imagine post 9/11 shouting ZOMBIE! On a crowded airplane will like to get you capped by an enthusiastic air marshal.

But I have got to do something, because that is exactly how this scenario plays out if I shotgun another Jack rocks – and I can not abide his doing this any longer.

I do the next-next best thing… I reach down into my bag and pull out one of my few remaining emergency Xanix. They're from a prescription that my stupid hippy doctor refuses to refill, and that she only gave me in the first place when we both found out that my girl at the time was banging her boss. We mutually agreed to put our love of holistic medicine aside in favor of the therapeutic benefits of high quality narcotics, on account of the idea of me not stoned out of my mind scared the shit out of both of us.

So I pull out a Xanix, and set it gingerly on the armrest between us.  I make sympathetic eye contact with the Zombie, and nod towards the pill. “It will make you better.” I say quietly and with as much caring and empathy in my voice as possible. 

For his part the Zombie looks at me wide eyed like I’d just tossed a cobra in his lap, he doesn’t say anything, but he scrunches as far away from me as possible, he’d be leaning out the window right now if he could.

The scratching goes double time.

Scratchscratchscratch… … scratchscratchscratch

Look.Lick. Nose Wipe.

Scratchscratchscratch… … scratchscratchscratch

Look.Lick.Nose Wipe.

I try to soothe him, “Dude, seriously.” I say super quietly. “It’s okay, I understand… I’m just trying to help you, I'm a --" What, I think, mister smarty pants, what exactly are you that you can say that will make this guy take the pill?

Zombie is having none of it. He, obviously the victim of too many 1980’s PSA’s on the topic, is reacting exactly the way they say a crazy person should when a total stranger offers you narcotics of an unknown dosage and character.

Scratchscratchscratch… … scratchscratchscratch

Look.Lick. Nose Wipe.

Scratchscratchscratch… … scratchscratchscratch

Look.Lick.Nose Wipe.

He goes to town furiously on his face now, looking at me wide eyed and craaaaaaazy like a horse in a burning barn… and I look down at the pill…  I wonder what the effects of Xanix are on top of four shots of Jack Daniels, all within an hour?

We are about to find out… I jot a quick email to the girl telling her to have a car pick me up from the airport… and I do the next-next-next best thing.