Never Talk to Strangers in Airports

Frankly, I Did Not Mean to Predict the End of the World

Back in the day, before I embarked upon this mad, optimism-fueled misadventure we call Parenting, I had something called disposable income. And how I miss it!

I had spent my childhood in hand-me-down clothes, and occasionally there was not quite enough food. In consequence, I became a naturally frugal individual. As a teen, I was often destitute, if not actually unhoused, which by the way explains my tendency to treat car ownership as an extravagance, akin to owning a yacht or private jet. So, when I did eventually become gainfully employed, saving my money was, for me, an effortless procedure.

When I worked in a Harvard library, I had a friend, whom I shall call Keith; a mad Irishman with a keen instinct for festivity. Having lunch with Keith was always eventful. He liked to order us each a Guinness. Of course, because I’m frugal and generally uninterested in alcohol, I drink only water with a meal. But I drank a Guinness to Keith, so as not to upset him. And soon, we’d finish our beers and Keith would gently remind me that I was morally obliged to buy us two more beers, because that’s how the world works, you see.

Later, while we were waiting for the check to arrive, my friend would reliably order a third round, though only by accident. I’d have to swig that beer down in a hurry, else we’d be late getting back to work. Then I’d head to the bathroom, leaving Keith to flag down the waitress for our check. But when I returned to our table — and it always happened this way, for some odd reason — there’d be a fourth round of Guinnesses waiting for us. Keith would be muttering something about not wanting to disappoint the waitress and so forth.

By now, we’d have been at lunch for almost two hours, and people would be wondering where we were, so Keith would call his boss (who, by the way, is the scholarly friend of mine who I mentioned a few newsletters ago, the one who reads Karl Marx) and this is what Keith would say to him:

“Man, listen — Kris has gotten me drunk. Yes, he lacks all human decency, does Kris, but I’ll tell you what, instead of yelling at me over the phone, why don’t you come across the street and harangue me here, in person? I’ll have Kris order you a Guinness — no, no he’s just ordered you a Guinness — shut up, Kris, yes you have! — and anyway, the essential point is there’s three Guinnesses on the table and if you don’t drink yours, I’ll have to drink it for you. Yes, yes, see you in a few minutes...”

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I do not drink alcohol unless I am compelled by one or more of my lunatic friends. Lunch with Keith typically started at midday and finished at approximately ten in the evening, with me arriving home, singing at the top of my lungs and absent of any knowledge or memory of my past eight hours, whereupon I fall asleep on the kitchen floor.

Sometimes, when Keith invited me to lunch, I would turn and sprint away from him, almost in fright. And sometimes, if I heard he was looking for me in the library, and it was just before noon, I would hide in a bathroom. I recall calling my wife and apologizing to her in advance, just in case Keith found me, because I knew that if he did, I was obviously going to have lunch with him, because it was always too much fun. Fortunately, my wife, bless her heart, understood that.

So what I’m saying here is that, apart from not owning a car, I generally abstain from alcohol unless I’m with an Irishman or a Spaniard, and this, Reader, is how I save my money. Why am I explaining this? Well, I want to tell you how it came to pass that I have so many stories that take place in airports. You see, it turns out that if you don’t own a car, and can somehow duck my mate Keith, then you can save quite a bit of your paycheck. You just need to know how to hide, I suppose.

Also, I seem to be extraordinarily lucky when it comes to finding inexpensive plane tickets.

One year, I flew back and forth between Boston and Madrid for roughly $350 return, about four times. This, again, explains why I have so many stories in airports. The trouble is that whenever I go somewhere, I find myself, through no fault of my own, alongside the strangest people imaginable. This can be a good thing, I’ll admit, but today, for a complete change of pace, I intend to describe two conversations that were not, for me, thoroughly enjoyable.

The first occurred on the return leg of a trip to Spain. I was slouching about in Madrid airport, looking disreputable, probably, when a fellow Australian sat beside me and started yapping to me about Donald Trump. It was odd. Apparently, he quite liked this new American president because, as he told me, he was going to do something about this godless same-sex marriage issue.

Yes, apparently, my new friend was profoundly opposed to same-sex marriage. He explained his reasons. Or, at least I think they were reasons; whenever people start quoting the Old Testament at me, my mind goes wandering off in every direction. I haven’t actually read the Bible yet, though I did see the movie with Charlton Heston. My favorite part, without a doubt, was the chariot races.

My new Australian friend hadn’t watched the movie, sadly, but he had read the source material, including all the bits where Jesus warned everyone not to do any same-sex marriages. I waited for him to finish speaking. Then I told him that, in my opinion, he must never, under any circumstances, marry a man, because — and this was clear to me — he was much too conflicted about his own sexuality for the relationship to work.

Then the bloke got all nettled and cross with me. He told me he wasn’t conflicted at all about anything whatsoever. To reassure him, I said, “Well, if you really want to pass yourself off as a heterosexual Australian bloke — you know, like myself — then the first thing you gotta do is stop thinking about gays, because none of us do that. We’re more, like, hyper-focused on what the ladies are doing, see?”

I was feeling expansive, I suppose.

“But if you really must pretend to be one of us,” I told him, “then the first thing you need to do is go out and buy yourself some cargo shorts. Then, the next time you’re invited to a wedding, turn up wearing those cargo shorts. Trust me, after that, nobody will doubt your heterosexuality ever again.

“And it goes without saying,” I added, “that if somebody asks you about gay marriage, act like it’s almost impossible to remember gay people even exist. Because that’s what we’re like.”

He sat there, speechless and stupefied. I nudged his shoulder in a friendly sort of way.

“Here’s another tip. If you ever do get married, try to get married in cargo shorts. Or even sweat pants. You know, I actually own sweat pants which I only wear on special occasions? I didn’t know that was strange. My wife pointed it out to me the other day. Apparently we’re clueless, or so she maintains.

“So, I guess my point, here, is that you need to stop noticing what the gay blokes are doing, because that is possibly the number one mistake a closeted bloke like yourself will always make.

“Also, your hair looks fantastic. Look at mine — notice how my hair does not look fantastic? I don’t even own a hairbrush. I just own baseball caps, and I wear them every day, until the hat begins to fall apart. And I keep on wearing it until one day, my wife throws it away when I’m not looking. She doesn’t tell me, of course. I have to waste a few days looking for it before I eventually figure it out. Then I confront her, and then she brings up something I did wrong the previous week and we argue about that for a while. Finally, I wind up apologizing, even though I don’t even remember the incident in question, and walk away from the conversation more confused than ever.

“See? If you really want to pass yourself off as a heterosexual bloke like myself, just do the stuff I just told you. And stop caring that other gay dudes are getting married, because — and I mean this sincerely — we’re all too busy looking for our baseball caps to notice. Or else, we’re shopping for cargo shorts, or ironing our sweatpants, or trying to decipher our last conversation with our wives or girlfriends. We don’t care about same-sex marriage, man. Most of us don’t even care about basic grooming.”

So, this Australian bloke said something about how he’d pray for me, then haughtily picked up his luggage and went and sat somewhere else. I didn’t really blame him.

Something similar happened in June of 2021. I was in Detroit airport, that time, waiting for a flight to Los Angeles. I was traveling with my kids, though my wife had taken them off to feed them somewhere. I elected to stay behind with our hand luggage, because — have you seen the price of food inside an airport?! I was sitting there, by a window near the departure gate, gazing upwards and, I somehow remember, counting all the surveillance cameras I could see. I do that sometimes. Another traveler sat down across from me.

I gave him a friendly nod. Our eyes met. He was a few years older than me. He looked me up and down in an appraising, amused sort of manner, and my heart sank. You know, sometimes, how you can just look at a person and know they’re spoiling for an argument?

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said, after staring at me for several seconds, “why are you wearing a mask?”

Now listen, we were in the middle of a pandemic, and we were flying to Los Angeles. Actually, we were flying on to Australia where (we knew) we faced two weeks in mandatory quarantine. That stay in quarantine, I already knew, was going to cost me approximately $5000AUD. Of course, if we arrived with Covid, we would be compelled to stay in quarantine for much longer than two weeks, and that would obviously cost us quite a bit more money. But besides all that, why would I want to catch Covid, anyway?

I could have explained it, of course, but again, he clearly wanted an argument. Why should I waste my time, giving him the essential facts as they pertain to my circumstances, when I could make up a whole lot of nonsense instead?

“I’ll tell you why I’m wearing a mask,” was my reply. “It’s to mess with their facial recognition algorithm.”

I gestured discreetly upwards. “They’re watching us, you know. They never stop watching us. And you know why they don’t want us wearing masks, even in a global pandemic? It’s because the Elites have spent billions of dollars building this massive surveillance infrastructure to watch us every moment of our lives. Then Covid hits. Now we’re wearing masks covering our faces. The Elites must be going crazy!

“Not that we’re supposed to know any of this, of course, because in the past decade, hedge funds and private equity, and every billionaire on the planet, has been buying up all the newspapers and media outlets in America. And suddenly, what are they saying on the news? Take your masks off! Ignore the advice of your doctors!”

The man blinked slowly. He hadn’t expected to hear anything like this. But before he could say anything, I continued:

“You never thought it strange that a pandemic kills a million Americans, and we’re supposed to pretend it isn’t happening? Also, what’s with all these surveillance cameras? Why do they need to know where we are at all times, what we’re wearing, what we’re looking at, what we’re doing and thinking?

“I’ll tell you why. They want to know who’s compliant. Who’s going to give them trouble, when they flip the switch and start the Culling.”

“The what?” said the man, speaking for the first time.

“The Culling, dude. Think about it. The world is overpopulated. The Elites don’t want you and me here. They want this world to themselves. They want the entire planet, with maybe fifty-thousand support staff to serve their needs. The rest of us can go.

“Look around, man! Covid-19 was a dry run. A test case. A mysterious virus comes out of nowhere, kills millions, and the Elites, through their media empires, tell everyone to take their masks off. Show your faces to the surveillance cameras. Don’t take the vaccines. They want everyone dumb and obedient and docile.

“Because we outnumber them, you see. We’re a threat. We can rise up and take the power back. They know that, hence the surveillance cameras everywhere. But mark my words, dude, within ten years another virus will turn up as mysteriously as Covid-19, and it will kill just about everybody except the Elites. And they’ll tell everyone not to wear masks then, as well. And everyone who trusts cable news will be the first to die.”

Meanwhile, I’d been fishing around in my bag for my wallet. Somewhere, tucked behind an expired credit card, I found my old Harvard Medical School staff badge. I removed it and held it up for him to see. “But what would I know? I just used to work in a scientific lab, researching all this. But not anymore, obviously.

“Yeah, man. We’re all quitting. We’re disappearing. Buying land in the mountains near a good water source. We’re arming and preparing ourselves. Getting ready for the Culling, like I said.”

Let me be the first to admit it; I’d outdone myself. Utter shenanigans, plain and simple. This is practically what gets me out of bed each morning. I don’t honestly know why I’m like this. Maybe I was neglected as a child? In any case, I don’t care because ultimately, it was worth it.

And in my defense, this guy probably thought George Soros was poisoning his breakfast cereal, or that Bill Gates was putting mind-control chips into the 5G network. It’s the sort of thing that irritates me because, if you’re going to be paranoid, you might as well do it with some panache.

Anyway. When I concluded my rant, the man didn’t say a word. He just sat there looking troubled and subdued. Quite likely, he’d decided I was utterly out of my mind, and quite rightly so. On the other hand, perhaps my words had sparked a darker realization. Possibly he saw in my paranoid ramblings a satirical reflection of his own, and the realization had struck him dumb.

Unfortunately, before he could reply, Hattie and Boudica returned from lunch with their mother, with all their usual noise and boisterousness, and I promptly forgot all about the anti-masker. I just remember him, sitting there, silent and reflective, and looking worried about everything.

I have a bad tendency to forget much of the mischief I wreak in this world. But I did recall the incident with startling clarity just the other day, while watching an episode of Fallout. It’s a television series based on a video-game franchise. I’m watching it because Walton Goggins is such a fine actor. Without giving away too many spoilers, Fallout is set in a distant future, after America’s wealthiest billionaires decide the best way to consolidate their own power is to nuke their own country.

In comparison to this, my own hastily-conceived conspiracy theory about elites culling the poor looks a bit tame. Still, I didn’t give it too much credence; I just felt a pang of guilt towards that poor, hapless anti-masker who’d tried to start an argument with me in Detroit airport, years ago. I sometimes think I should wear some sort of warning label.

Nonetheless, I put it all out of my mind until two days ago, when I received an email from a friend. He’d been poking about in the recently-released (but still heavily-redacted) Epstein Files, and had stumbled upon something especially troubling. For two days, now, I’ve been thinking about what he sent me. I still don’t really know what to make of it, but ultimately, I decided to write this newsletter, and paste it below without further comment.

You know, I like to end newsletters on a cheerful note …. but this, clearly, is not the way. But the reason we all find the ruling class to be so cartoonishly depraved and evil is because we, ourselves, are not. I’ve been all over this world, and most people are kind and good. And also somewhat wonderful, if I’m being honest.

Anyway, thanks for being here, and thanks for subscribing to my newsletter.

With chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel