Trick or Treat

When a carbon monoxide alarm goes off, I wake up.
I call 311 to ask what to do.
311 directs all carbon monoxide inquiries to 911.
911 dispatches the call to the Fire Department.
911 dispatches all carbon monoxide inquiries to the Fire Department.
I tell the 911 operator I think the alarm is low on batteries.
I hear the wail of sirens.
I see two fire engines outside my window.
I see enough firemen to man two fire engines.
My flatmates put on robes.
I meet five firemen in the stairwell.
I tell the firemen I think the alarm is low on batteries.
One of the firemen is lugging industrial fire extinguishers.
One of the firemen is brandishing a spear.
One of the firemen is holding a hand-held carbon monoxide monitor.
There are acceptable levels of carbon monoxide in the apartment.
One of the firemen suggests the possibility that the alarm is low on batteries.
The tallest fireman removes the alarm from the ceiling and removes the batteries.
A flystrip covered in tiny fly bodies sticks to the helmet of the tall fireman.
The flystrip unsticks from the helmet and only my flatmates and I notice.
We offer to make them coffee.
The firemen are on duty. They linger on the stoop.

flystrip, originally uploaded by whitney lauren.

two fire trucks, originally uploaded by whitney lauren.

What's your costume?

Al Gore Scores Nobel Nod

Sixteen Hours in the Geneva Airport (Part III)

Even in Geneva, even in the airport, the hair removal infomercial plays late at night. The one where the Before scenes are in black and white and a red "X" crosses over the pile of razors. I can’t help but cringe every time the lady nicks herself and it was at that point I decided to explore.

I felt like a mall guard with the graveyard shift. I whistled. I window-shopped. The designer sunglasses were indistinguishable from the Moscow knock-offs. The cigarette warnings, however, were very candid, ranging from “Smoking causes a long and painful death” to “Cigarette smoke will damage your sperm.”

Sleepier now, I took the escalator to the second floor and was faced with row upon row of plastic bucket chairs. One would think the Swiss could design functional, ergonomic airport bleachers, but they had opted for the oversized eggcrate, too. I walked over to where the V.I.P. lounges were but a heavy door with a keypad blocked my entrance. I jiggled the handle forcibly. I typed in some birthdays and my cell phone number. I laid my forehead against the door with my eyes closed and slowly petted the numbered buttons. No sesame.

I left the V.I.P. lounges resigned and wandered over to a sign of a stickfigure baby . Through glass windows, I saw there a romper room filled with toys and bean bag chairs and blocks and crayon drawings. It looked so cheerful I was almost happy. Almost happy until I was refused entrance into that room, too. My tired eyes disbelieved what they saw next, not trusting that something so appropriate could exist at this moment of defeat. According to the plaque, I had discovered at the end of a dead-end hallway, a self-described Meditation Room, and it was open.

I entered the wood-paneled sanctuary. The wood was particularly striking because airports are grey and metal and this room felt so warm, so upper-class squirrel family's living room. A religious squirrel family, from the looks of it. There were multiple Bibles in a battery of languages, several versions of the Torah, prayer rugs, alters and plants. Not nondenominational, but every-denominational. It seemed unceremonial, frequently used, and safe; I knew that’s where I would sleep that night.

I was sitting on the floor when I reached that decision, gazing at a back-lit royal blue screen that covered most of the back wall. I was thinking that someone must take care of this room and water these plants and also remember to not turn off the light that made the screen in front of me look downright holy. The screen was so captivating at the time, I felt compelled to stand and approach it. I padded over to one side, now in my socks, and not knowing why or expecting anything for the effort, peeked behind the screen. I was to be shocked for the second time that night.

Behind the blue there was a red and tattered mattress. Hidden from plain view but there for my service nonetheless . A mattress, of all the things to find at two in the morning behind the back-lit blue screen in the Meditation Room of the Geneva International Airport.

The following morning when I awoke I had no idea where I was until I blearily received the prayer rugs. The events of the previous night took shape from a very groggy place – I reached beneath me to physically confirm my bed. I then popped in gum, packed up and returned the mattress to its concealed state.

When I left the Meditation Room I frightened a vacuuming maid. She was not expecting someone to emerge from a room she had seen no one enter. My presence was noted with an intake of breath and a hand over her chest, but when I smiled, she relaxed and wished me good morning. She was pleasantly surprised when I took both her hands in mine and returned the salutation.

When I was seated, finally, I kicked off my shoes and stared out the window, wondering who had left the mattress there and who had used it besides me. There seemed to lurk some urgent, life-affirming lesson in there for one to meditate on in an airplane.

But this revelry was broken by the passenger in front of me, who minutes after take-off turned around and asked me, “Excuse me, do you speak English?” When I amiably responded in the affirmative, she announced to the plane, “Thank God, your feet stink.” Touché seat 27B. My feet were stinky. Stinky feet that were on their way back home.

What's your favorite airport?

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Sixteen Hours in the Geneva Airport (Part II)

Now crazed with fear, I raced to where the informational signs indicated I could find a fork and knife. There were eight different types of sandwiches listed on the board, but instead of the ubiquitous tomato mozzarella vegetarian option I had requested, I received a ham and cheese. It was all they had left at this time of night.

I also bought two different pouches of nuts and some paprika flavored chips, mentally remarking on the diversity of international chip flavors and their consumers. (I’d be very curious to know what demographic buys Consommé Pringles.) I also bought a bottle of water, a bottle of Diet Coke, and this is where the night starts to really get interesting, a draft beer.

I sat down at a table just outside of the smoking section and drank half the cup of lukewarm in one gulp. I removed the ham from the sandwich and ate a small portion. I saved the rest for the morning. It was then that my ears perked up to someone speaking English, the utter dearth of my native tongue in Moscow being responsible for my finely tuned ears. Turning my head, I found the source of this haughty lilt. It belonged to a man. No, even better. It belonged to a guy, a cute guy with a British accent. The clouds began to part.

I sat pondering how next to proceed. He certainly didn’t look like a serial killer. He was talking to one of his mates about when they were going to pick him up at the London airport. A backwards baseball cap sat on his head and a music festival logo adorned his chest. And like me, he was drinking alone. Feeling plucky, I right then and there I decided to pull out of my back pocket the all-time, guaranteed best conversation starter ever invented. It has worked in every country and in every language, outside every house party and at every bar. With the cool aplomb of an old pro, I solicited a cigarette.

It felt gutsy to put on my backpack and cross into his section, but then I realized he only had loose tobacco – I am terrible at rolling cigarettes. But I set to my task and got to know Todd, who gentlemanly introduced himself and offered his hand the moment I sat down.

He was an itinerant contract butcher living in a rural French village, but he was from the white cliffs of Dover, UK. He had been butchering for fourteen years, since he was nineteen, but he looked younger than that. I learned that England employs a different technique of removing bone from meat than France and he was doing an apprenticeship in the French style.

I told him I didn’t eat meat and I asked to use his lighter again because my cigarette had gone out, again. He said he just eats fish and chicken, “Because I like me chicken.” I asked him if he ever gets squeamish. He said only when he gets sprayed in the face by blood. I empathized.

Apparently, Todd’s day involved smoking pot, sawing away to rock music, and breaking for lunch, when he’d eat chicken and smoke pot again. He said that he definitely does not “eat piggsies, because,” now pausing to exhale for dramatic effect, “pork is the meat that most resembles the taste and texture of human flesh.” Which of course begs the question that given the situation I thought best to avoid: “How do you know what human flesh tastes like, Todd?”

Throughout our drunken getting-to-know-you session he dropped this adorably droll vocabulary, using words like “right diamond” and “murder” as adjectives. Eventually when I confessed to why I was hanging out in an airport, we invented an ill-advised scheme to break into duty free and drink Hennessey until morning.

At this point we were about five beers deep each, all of the rounds he paid for. He had also given me all the Swiss currency he had and his Virginia Gold and rolling papers. When I asked him why he was being so nice to me, Todd responded, “Because I feel sorry for you.” And when an itinerant pothead butcher feels sorry for you, you tend to agree with the sentiment.

Our restaurant started shutting down so we kept moving over in sections until we were just drinking in the terminal. I knew that his plane was taking off soon and began dreading the night in earnest. In a fit of desperate hope, I asked him if there was anyway at all he could stay with me and leave the following morning. His company bought his ticket; he couldn’t.

He told me I was going to be alright, kissed both my cheeks, and was gone. I watched the bill of his backwards cap blur in the distance, only then realizing I had learned much more about Todd in our three-and-a-half hour exchange than I have with people that I’ve known for much, much longer than that. He was the best friend a stranger could ever hope to have and now I was alone.

Boomer Sooner

Texas/OU!, originally uploaded by whitney lauren.

two-headed albino snake, originally uploaded by whitney lauren.

, originally uploaded by whitney lauren.

sunset, originally uploaded by whitney lauren.

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Sixteen Hours in the Geneva Airport (Part I)

It was shockingly stupid. It was alarmingly blockheaded. It was dumbfounding. To discover at the age of twenty-three that one has not grasped the difference between noon and midnight is a sobering revelation indeed. It was like forgetting how to tie a shoelace, stumped right after you form the two bunny ears.

I had arrived in Geneva at 8:25 p.m. After a quick trip to the ladies I walked to the monitor to find my gate, one hundred percent expecting to find a plane bound for JFK. I scanned. I searched. I fine-tooth-combed that screen. No New York.

Wrong terminal? No, Geneva International Airport only has one terminal and in what seems like a historically typical Genevan design, only one large runway that all the airlines share. Wrong country? No, no, I can smell chocolate and everyone is speaking French. “Well Whit, let’s go find a friendly face to ask,” intrepid Whitney said to herself. Intrepid Whitney always speaks in third person.

“Do you speak English?” “Oui, I speak English,” responded the Swiss customer service representative. She seemed radiant, like she had gone skiing before work. I mumbled, “Where’s New York.” She responded with a prim, “Pardon?” but I was dauntless. “The plane to JFK that is leaving tonight? Where is the gate for that plane?” She firmly explained that the soonest plane bound for New York City was tomorrow, at twelve thirty-five, and I gasped.

Most of Europe enjoys the twenty-four hour clock and just for good measure, the metric system, too. Leave it to the USA to be unique and stubborn and insist on using ambiguous, arbitrary units like a “yard” that is three “feet” that is twelve “inches.” The plane is leaving at 12:35 “p.m.” not 12:35 “a.m.” “Planes” don’t leave airports “after midnight.”

Fat tears sprung to my eyes. That mixed with a penchant for black eyeliner made me look like a raccoon that had just lost a fist fight. I was mentally, physically, and alcoholically spent. I was wrapping up a week drinking so much vodka with my old college roommate that I was forced to switch to these pink, flavored malt beverages hysterically named Tequila Sombrero and Sunny Beaches. Basically they are the Russian equivalent of Smirnoff Ice, but taking into account how Moscow is five years behind the rest of the world in terms music, movies, and chick drinks, I’m going to have to say they are the Russian equivalent of Zima.

Through the fog of this interminable hangover I struggled through some mental math until the truth of my situation hit me like a kilogram of Swiss watches. I was starting a sixteen hour layover and walking away from the counter, I did what anyone in my position would do. I said “Aw, man c’mon” aloud to no one in particular. I tilted up my face and shook jazz hands in front of my eyes because I was embarrassed I was crying. I irrationally panicked I was going to starve to death. That a security guard would find my lifeless body, all skin and bones and whisper, “After the food court closed at ten, she just gave up all hope. You can’t live without hope.”

What did you eat the last time you were at the airport?