The hot guy in the middle seat ✈️

love at 30,000 feet

Friends, I am re-sharing this essay because itʻs June and love is in the air. Or not really, actually precisely the opposite - hate is flying and itʻs extremely disorienting and disturbing. So I thought Iʻd share my love story with you. Because here in 2025 my husband and I are celebrating 27 years of knowing each other and I was 27 when we met and that is TOTALLY CRAZY kookoopants to me. Iʻve been together with this amazing man more than 1/2 my life…..!

It all started on a plane to New York City.

~ 🚕 🗽 🏙 🍎 ~

Did I fall in love with him, or New York City with him in it? We descended into the city that never sleeps on a sunny, Friday afternoon in June.

I love that city. It’s so loud with love, it’s crashing and clashing and honking with love.

I love the people, they are so committed to joy and they exhibit power and courage along with charming, old-fashioned feistiness.

I love the smell of it.

Roasted nuts then occasionally the terrible trash smells but walk fast like all New Yorkers and you’ll be rewarded by the glorious smell of garlic in oil or a deep dunk of fried something, anything. Sugar flying.

The monochromatic landscape is so dreamy, it features pops of people in vivid clothing, their figures sweeping around on a runway of a dirty sidewalk. 

Everywhere there is the glaring and blaring of art, in every corner is the palpable feeling of creation. The town and the wide stripe of green in the center is full of birds that fight their way through the noise, grit and cars to find flight, soar and song.

How could I not fall in love with him there?

Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash

But. I’d already fallen in love on the plane.

Back it up, I’d fallen in love in the terminal.

I saw him sitting there in the Denver International Airport, his back against the glass of the people mover, mine was too. I glanced over my left shoulder and saw his tan legs sticking out of khaki shorts. His face was like a Greek god, carved out of stone or maybe wood, so beautiful. There was peace emanating from him.

And he ate a giant sandwich. I am not kidding, it was a very big sandwich.

I was trying to play it cool as I watched, but I couldn’t believe how cute a guy could still be while wrestling a sandwich down to the wax paper with his face. I mean, if you can fall in love with a face losing to a sandwich, you know, there is literally no hope for you.

And so it was.

I was enjoying having an open middle next to me as the doors closed, but down the aisle he came, plunking his handsomeness into that middle seat. Can you believe it? The hot sandwich guy, the guy I wrote about in my journal, in my hand painted “Where is my soulmate” journal.  When I wrote about him I nicknamed him the cowboy poet. Maybe ‘cause he lassoed that sandwich? Or maybe because he had the fine features and beautiful energy of a poet.

Flying at 500 miles per hour our legs touched a few times, spark spark spark, a wow, a flush, a hush. I knew something was changing. My whole body was swapping out cells for the new life before me. The scientific magic was running the show, I was unable to stop my eyes from widening, my lips from parting, and my neck on display for him in case he had missed my youthful, pretty neck. Later he confirmed he hadn’t. Missed it, I mean.

And I asked him out to the Museum of Modern Art, I did the asking. I was like. Dang. Hot, sandwich, poetry man with a sweet laugh and a fun brain, what do you think? I mean. I couldnʻt let him off that plane without a plan.

We had a whole day before we went to work, randomly, strangely we both were flying to New York to do the same gig which was to be actors at a trade show presenting software. So weird. So random. So awesome! Who knew tradeshows could be so sexy?

So we met that early Saturday and the day was like a Dali painting come to life. The energy was so intense, so brilliant, the sidewalks dripped like clocks, his face kept disappearing before my eyes. I was drenched in it, everything I saw appeared altered and undulating - like those wavy lines that come up from a hot city street.

We went to the MOMA and wandered in that glory. Jasper Johns flags and Monet’s Lilies, and then we stopped, and stood transfixed at Klimt's The Kiss. Its spectacular gold tenderness was shining and glinting at me, blinging under my eyelashes while the full length of his body leaned into mine like a puppy.

I couldn’t catch my breath all day.

And my feet were so hot, I thought my little purple slip-on sandals might melt. Afterward, walking onto 53rd, we saw a parade happening on 5th Avenue, and walked to over to see if they were celebrating us. Nope, but we still took it a bit personally, it was Puerto Rico Day. Which meant beautiful men dancing, gorgeous women kicking every color into the air above the streets, the glitter, clang, and celebration almost too much to bear.

But we stood there together, holding hands, watching wordlessly. 

My hot feet wanted hot coffee, he ordered decaf. I thought, ‘Uh oh. Decaf? Why does he drink decaf?’ I looked closer into his face, finally being able to see it a little bit. There was an extra line or two that I hadn’t seen in the blur of the sweet icing on the cake day thus far.  But I’d always dated older guys, so it wasn’t a worry for this girl.

And before we kissed in a reenactment of the painting, while we waited for our coffees, I turned to him with an important question. This man I met on the plane the previous day. This man lived three states away. This man I was suddenly convinced was my soulmate. Sure he bore no resemblance to the soul mate I’d conjured in my mind for the long years prior to this moment; but I knew something, even though I didn’t know how I knew.

“What do you think? Which one of us is going to move?” He smiled, he nodded, and he didn’t look surprised. Twenty-seven years later we argue about which one of us said that line.

But, I can confidently tell you it was me.

*In the cab on the way back to the airport a few days later…early days of the selfie and hilariously with one of those panorama disposable film cameras (It was 1998)

----a poetry version of our meeting!

I am falling, falling, falling from 30,000 feet up
You are cute, cute cute
And you smell good
I like your face, it’s friendly
I like your hair, it’s been cut lately and it’s a bit fussy
I like your laugh, it’s big and generous
Oh your eyes
Wow
They are lakes of blue
I could swim swim swim in that lake
Float in that ocean
Dive into that deep end
It gave me no warning
Well, maybe a small one
A little tug on my loins
A little pull of the cosmic whoa
A little hey howdy how are ya
In my 19C seat
With my fizzy drink perched
I laughed again and again and thought
Golly
Wow
Huh.
Are you the one?
I’ve known you all of 2 hours but
You might be the one
Weird, I never thought I’d be with a blonde. 💚