Beyond anything else, I write because I enjoy the act of noticing things. Above whatever pretension I have, past the ego that I’m sure I inflate by having a platform and a column, I simply like to observe, and tell others, namely anyone who will listen, what I’ve seen.
So I shouldn’t be surprised when I heard the first rumblings of “rawdogging” flights- a nearly heretical, yet courageous act in the 21st century, the choice to not engage in any sort of stimulation over the course of your chartered flight. I had first heard about it in GQ, in an article that seemed to treat the practice like the product of some Benedictine monks. Embracing the rare solitude of the plane, as told by its practitioners, led to both inner peace, and something even more valuable: a flight going by fairly quickly.
After being bumped by Delta twice the night before my flight to New York, I found myself dazed and confused hours later. In line for an acai bowl at SFO, I felt hungover, not from any alcohol, but from dealing with the bureaucratic nightmare that was wrestling with a billion dollar corporation for an ounce of sympathy. I was ready to simply kick back and enjoy the dozen or so podcasts I had saved, as well as the two books I brought along. (Laughter & Forgetting, by Milan Kundera, and Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Seasoned flyers know that the key here is to bring one book for pleasure, and one book to needlessly grapple with throughout the duration of the flight.)
As we boarded the plane however, a haze lingered over me. Time seemed to slow down on our Boeing 767, and once again, Delta did what Delta does best: announce a last-minute delay. The runway was crowded, the captain announced, and cited “an issue with a third party technical vendor” (Crowdstrike, I’m guessing) as the underlying root cause of all this. People groaned, but I thought it was pretty cool to hear a guy read out what sounded like a real life error message when your Mac shuts down unexpectedly.
Ten minutes pass, then twenty. It occurs to me that I’m actually in a great deal of danger- I am strategically placed in a Bermuda Triangle of babies on this flight. One directly behind me, one a few rows ahead, and the most rambunctious of them all to the left of me just one row over. I contemplate throwing on a podcast, cracking open a book, or maybe even seeing what Delta has chosen for my in-flight entertainment. I get distracted, the plane begins rumbling and roaring seemingly out of nowhere, and take-off begins.
As we begin gliding over the Bay Area, I’m entranced by the landscape getting smaller and smaller, buildings turning into specks, and the view eventually becoming an endless mix of blue and white. I forget about my podcasts, books, and the 12 seasons of Big Bang Theory that Delta offers completely free for their valued guests. I pull up the flight map, and turn the brightness down on the display. Subconsciously or not, I begin rawdogging the 6 hour flight to JFK.
What’s fascinating about this act is how it ramps up in ease the longer you do it- which is to say, the first 20 or so minutes of rawdogging a flight feel like pure insanity. For the rawdogger, it’s the first few steps on a staircase to some sort of heavenly zen. For fellow passengers, I assume it looks like an absolute psychopath has been placed on your flight. Why isn’t he consuming any media? Why isn’t he checking his Slack? WHY IS HE JUST SITTING THERE?
However, after the initial first half hour or so, I’m positive this wears off. No stranger is noticing you as much as you think they are, and if they are, they simply default to whatever they were doing after a minute or two. I occasionally glance at the flight map, and we’ve already left California and begin entering Nevada. That was quick, I think. And with this thought, I let my eyes begin to wander, and start to engage in that subtle art of noticing.
The woman at the window seat to my right is friendly and warm, and is wearing a weathered beige cap with ‘YALE’ on the front. We make cordial conversation near the beginning of the flight, with me inquiring if she would mind if I took pictures every now and again of the clouds. She said she wouldn’t mind at all, she does the same whenever she’s placed at the window. We chat a little more about the funny responsibility of the window seat, and decided that it is, in fact, the eldest child of airplane seating.
As the flight goes on, her phone blows up more and more, and I decide to glance over. In a groupchat, the one text I can surmise read: “Why would they gaslight us this hard? They know that this is HER bachelorette party right?” The Yale woman shakes her head, and closes iMessage. She then puts on the latest episode of The Daily.
In the row in front of me, a man with a shaved head and puffer vest types away at his laptop. It’s a seemingly gigantic, bulky Macbook Pro in a shiny, space gray color. He’s been on it since the start of the flight, and through the spaces in between seats, I decided to poke my nose into what he’s doing, just once. In that fateful moment, I see him open up a financial app, and in a big, bold font reach a page titled ‘MY PORTFOLIO.’ In a much smaller font, he hovers over the amount. It is -$600,000. He closes his laptop.
The aforementioned Bermuda Triangle of Babies has been dormant up until this point. Then, after a few minutes of turbulence over Nebraska, the babies seemingly all sync up and begin their song and dance. This includes the one behind me, who starts kicking my seat with the force of a thousand men. After a few minutes, I turn around and politely ask her mother if she could get her child to stop. I smile at the little one to assure her that I am friend, not foe. She is wearing an enormous pair of pastel pink cat-ear headphones, with an even bigger iPad in her hands. The turbulence stops, but the child continues to swiftly Muay Thai her way into my seat, and I once again ask the mom to take control of her child. Not even a minute passes and I get a tap on the shoulder from her. “Can you tell her you want her to stop? She’ll listen if it’s coming from you.”
Getting a stranger to discipline your child on a cross country flight is a bold move, and unsurprisingly, one that does not work. Every 30 minutes for the rest of the flight, I feel a size 3 sneaker digging into my seat.
The man seated to my left does not know multiple people are staring at him- he’s too locked into an episode of Gossip Girl to notice. He does, however, have to know that he brought tuna salad on a plane, and for that, the collective organism that is a commercial flight silently watches, shames, and judges. A glob of it comes out of the sandwich and onto his tray table. I’m too blown away to be disgusted, too hypnotized by this absurdity of what’s happening a few inches away from me. Now THIS is a guy who you just don’t see anymore! He smears a bit of his sandwich on his iPad as he pauses to go to the restroom. A flight attendant passes us, doubles back, and while Tuna Man is still in the lavatory, puts around a dozen napkins on his tray table. She smiles a smile that tells me this is neither the first nor the last time she will have to do this.
Turning up the brightness of our flight map, I audibly go “Wait, what?” Our plane was making its way past Scranton, PA and had less than 40 minutes to go before we landed. I genuinely felt a little bewildered…maybe those Benedictine monks were right.
I notice an elderly couple doing stretches in the back of the plane, then look out the window as we descend into JFK. In the blink of an eye, I’m 3000 miles from where I was just a moment ago. As is tradition, Delta delays our exit from the plane by about half an hour. That goes by in a flash, too. Getting off our 767, I take my phone off airplane mode, and immediately hop in a cab for the East Village. I’m meeting a few friends, new and old. It seemed as if rawdogging the flight primed my brain to make the mundane go by quickly, but all the while appreciating it, too.
I sit down at Superiority Burger on Avenue A, surrounded by folks who have been patiently waiting for me. I feel bad, I’ve strung them along with these Delta delays, pushing our dinner from 7 to 9. It must’ve felt like an eternity until I actually got there. Yet, for me, the entire day was a blur. When I see them, we forget about all that. I savor this moment.
