Falling Up

I have never ridden in a hot air balloon. The very idea of such a ride sounds, in theory, exciting. I have always been enthralled by the notion of flying unrestrained through the open air like a superhero. Of course, I over-think even my own fantasies and begin to worry about getting bugs in my teeth, whether or not I should wear goggles to keep the wind from making my eyes tear up, and should I put one hand out in front of me in a fist or should I have both hands in front palms down, or should I have my feet close together and arms at my sides like Iron Man?

I imagine flying in a hot air balloon to be very little like flying like Iron Man but, the fact is, that I would be dangling below a flame thrower that is shooting fire up into a large, albeit colorful, sack in a woven basket that looks like it would be more at home holding eggs on some giant’s dinner table. I mean, how much control can you really have over a hot air balloon? It seems to me that you’re pretty much at the mercy of the wind while constantly fighting against gravity to stay aloft.

All of this was racing through my mind as Davis and I drove to the field where we were to meet the Aeronaut who would be taking us up into the sky. The whole thing was Davis’s idea to begin with. He said that he was sick and tired of me moping around and wallowing in self pity over Kylie. I hadn’t done much of anything in the six weeks since she had left. Yeah, I missed her, but I wouldn’t say I was wallowing; it was more of a sulking depression. I know, I know: semantics, right?

So, Davis and I were driving to some farmers back field out in the middle of who-knew-where so that we could experience the thrill and adventure of soaring like a bird through the vast open air of the In Between. We had ridden for the past twenty minutes in silence because, though neither of us would admit it, we were both a little scared.

Davis put up a good front when he was trying to sell me on the idea, but I could see that he was biting the inside of his lip fervently, the way he only does when he’s nervous about something. I decided to break the silence and hopefully alleviate some of our fear.

“Why a hot air balloon, dude?”

“What?”

“Why a hot air balloon? Why not skydiving, or bungee jumping, or kayaking?”

Davis barely repressed a laugh.

“You’re thirty-four years old and you have the physique of a sixty-year old. Your parachute probably wouldn’t slow your fat ass down, the bungee cord would probably snap as you reached the apex, and you’d get stuck in a kayak, roll over, and drown. This was the only way I could think of that didn’t involve you getting flattened or drowned.”

“You’re a dick.”

He was right, though. I never was very much in shape, even when Kylie and I started dating. I was always surprised that someone that looked like her would have even been interested in me. She was model hot and I looked like John Goodman. Okay, I wasn’t that big, but you get the idea. It was like when you watch sitcoms on TV where they have some hottie playing the wife and some chub rock dude playing the husband. Jim Belushi and Courtney Thorne-Smith; Kevin James and Leah Remini; Mark Addy and Jamie Gertz. Just to name a few.

Kylie was always the outgoing, experimental type; I was the one who was mired in tradition. She always wanted me to go out with her friends and do exciting, adventurous things that I was convinced would end with me being taken to the emergency room. I guess that’s what happens when you date a woman twelve years younger than you.

“So, Davis,” I asked. “Where did you find this guy?”

“What guy?”

“The guy with the balloon? Did you just open up the phone book and look under hot air balloon, or what?”

“Uh…no. It’s…well, an old friend.”

That was an odd answer. Davis and I had moved in the same social circles for nearly two decades. We had been friends since high school and had always lived near each other and had even worked together for the past ten years. Who could he possibly know that I didn’t know?

“Who could you possibly know that I don’t know?”

“Ummm…you do, kinda, know ‘em…sort of.”

“Who is it?”

“Just wait until we get there. It’ll be better if the Captain explains everything to you.”

“Captain? I didn’t know balloons had captains. I thought they called themselves Aeronauts?”

“They do. And…they do. You’ll see.”

Davis went back to nervously biting the inside of his lip. He refused to meet my gaze. I stared intently at him as drove, trying to decipher his enigmatic behavior. He avoided my gaze even harder. I don’t know why, but I suddenly remembered the last time Davis had acted so strangely around me.

It was one year ago at a Halloween party. We had been invited to the party by some younger girls that we worked with. Davis had been chatting these girls up for a few weeks before the party, flirting with them in that way that came so naturally to him. I had tried talking to them a couple of times, but they were kind of standoffish. I wrote it off to their surly, Eastern-European demeanor.

So, all of Davis’s flirting resulted in them inviting us…well, him really…to a Halloween party they were having out in the boondocks somewhere. I wasn’t going to go, but Davis talked me into it. He has this natural charisma that makes it hard to refuse him. I tried begging off at the last minute that night, saying that I didn’t have anything to wear. He had anticipated my attempted boycott and came prepared.

He said that he had hit up the local thrift shop on the way over to my house and grabbed some random bits and pieces. The result was that I looked like a dandy pirate. I mean dandy in the truest sense of the word. Individually, each piece of the clothing Davis brought looked like something hauled from the back of someone’s grandfather’s closet. There seemed to be articles of clothing that represented many different eras.

I had knee high leather boots, the kind that fold down at the top; pants that were a hybrid of cargo pants and parachute pants: they had lots of pockets and zippers, but were made of a supple, suede-like leather; a puffy vintage white shirt like the one Kramer tried to get Seinfeld to wear; a three-button, leather vest; a large belt with an even larger belt buckle that looked like it may have belonged to Mr. Kringle himself; a three-cornered hat adorned with large peacock feathers; a couple of vintage looking pirate pistols (Davis assured me these were inoperable models); and an ornate sword that hung from the belt. Davis suggested that I not “unsheath my sword” lest I frighten the ladies.

Davis was dressed in a strange array of clothing that looked like a mixture of Victorian Era formal wear and World War I pilot. His top hat had a pair of aviator goggles strapped to it, he wore a heavy white scarf wrapped around his neck, and he had these strange brass and copper elbow and knee pads as well as various cogs and gears that festooned his clothing.

Properly attired for a costume party, we headed out. We drove for nearly thirty minutes out into the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but Davis was biting his lip nervously then, too. He suddenly turned the truck down an apparently overgrown two-track and we bounced and banged our way over the washboard terrain. Just when I thought we couldn’t get any deeper into the woods, we emerged from the thick foliage into an open meadow.

The whole place was lit with what looked like gas lanterns that marked out a large perimeter. Inside this perimeter there was a huge throng of people dancing and revelling to some sort of techno-electronica. Davis maneuvered his truck along the tree line and parked it amongst a few other vehicles a ridiculously long ways from the party. Even from that distance, as we got out of the truck and walked back toward the party, we could hear the thrumming music and laughter that ebbed and swelled.

I was struck by the absence of any traditional Halloween decorations or costumes.Everyone seemed to be dressed in a vaguely similar fashion as Davis and I. There were an inordinate number of pirates, and a large number of men and women wearing some variation of the Victorian garb that Davis wore. I saw a lot of brass and copper, a lot of antique looking weapons with subtle hints of futuristic anachronisms, and a lot of corsets. More to the point I noticed what the corsets enhanced.

The whole field seemed to have a lot of strange apparatuses that had lots of hoses, piping, and gauges. Most of them were steaming, clinking, or chugging. Even the DJ stand where the strangely hypnotic rhythms emanated from was an intricate study in metal-work and electronics from a bygone era.

As Davis and I neared the center of the party, the girls from work came rushing up to us all giggles and jiggles. They brought with them several other girls and they began dancing and gyrating to the pulsing beats while pressing their bodies to us.

Someone pressed a bottle into my hands full of a shimmering green liquid. Davis had a similar bottle thrust into his hand, and with one hand on the hips of the closest girl to him, he tipped the bottle up and drank deeply. I followed suit and was surprised by the slightly bitter, licorice flavor of the liquid. Suddenly the bottle was pulled from my lips by Davis and it disappeared into the crowd.

“Take it easy, Man. Absinthe is some potent stuff, especially if you’ve never had it before. You’re not even supposed to drink it straight.”

I wanted to be puzzled by Davis’s inexplicable comfort at this party where he was supposed to be as much a stranger as I was, but I found that it was difficult to concentrate. It was not at all unpleasant, it was just…different, new. I felt very comfortable and at ease. I could feel my inhibition slipping from my shoulders like a heavy coat.

I looked around and saw that the small crowd that had been surrounding us had parted and that everyone was looking over my shoulder at something behind me. I turned round slowly to see what it was and my breath caught in my throat.

The most beautiful woman I had ever seen was walking toward me. She was tall, nearly six feet; of course, she wore thigh high boots with tall heels. Her costume was a cross between the Victorian, corseted garb most of the women wore, a Revolutionary War officer, and some sort of pilot. All of these styles, on her, converged into a glorious vision of beauty and power. She walked deliberately up to me and held out her hand.

“I’m Kylie.”

Her voice was like that of an angel.

I was snapped out of my memory of the first time I met Kylie by the sudden lurch of the truck.Davis had turned sharply into an apparently overgrown two-track. We began bouncing and banging our way down a washboard trail into the green folds of the forest. Just when I thought we were as deep into the woods as we could go, we emerged from the thick foliage into an open meadow.

It was the same meadow as that night of the Halloween party, but it was nearly empty. Suspended by a large, shimmering air bag was what looked like a small pirate ship, floating some thirty feet above the field and secured by guy lines to thick wooden stakes pounded deep into the earth.

Davis pulled the truck over along the edge of the woods, cut the engine, and got out. Without a word walked toward the airship. I jumped out of the truck and ran up to him, grabbing his arm and spinning him around.

“What the hell is that thing, Davis? You said we were going for a balloon ride.”

“It’s got a balloon on top of it.”

“It’s a ship. Like the kind that’s supposed to be in the water. Why is it floating above the field. And why this field, Davis? Why did you bring me here, of all places? If you wanted me to forget Kylie, why did you bring me to the very place that we met?”

Davis sighed deeply and shrugged his shoulders.

“You should probably let the Captain explain everything.”

“What Captain?”

He pointed at the ship. I turned and saw that someone had walked out on deck. The figure swung their legs over the railing, grabbed hold of one of the guy lines, and deftly slid down the rope to the ground. The Captain, I presumed, walked purposefully and deliberately toward me. I quickly realized, from the shape of the body and the movement of the hips, that the Captain was female.

She was tall, enhanced by the high heeled, thigh high boots she wore. Her outfit was a cross between Victorian Era, corseted garb, a Revolutionary War officer, and some kind of pilot. All of these styles, on her, converged into a glorious vision of beauty and power. She stopped just in front of me and held out her hand.

“Kylie?” I said, failing to restrain the sound incredulity at what I was seeing.

“Actually, it’s Captain Kylie.” She turned to Davis. “Get out of those ridiculous clothes and get into uniform. Then get the ship ready to sail. I want to be under way in five minutes.”

Davis snapped off a salute, said, “Aye, Cap’n!” then ran toward the ship and shimmied up one of the guy lines to the ship.

Kylie…Captain Kylie turned to me and said, “I think I need to explain a few things.”

~ by jaekido on September 15, 2008.