Like most people, I don't like being touched by strangers at the airport.
Now, I'm sorta 50/50 on striking up a conversation at the airport. Like, if you're interrupting my iPod listening to ask a silly question, I'd rather you kept it to yourself. But if you want to chat about, say, how cool iPods are, then, by all means, I'm TR, nice to meet you! Do you live in Vegas or are you just visiting? Some election, eh? What's with the rain? Hey, man, Happy New Year!
And so it went the day before New Year's Eve, a bunch of us grumpy travelers waiting to board a Southwest flight to Oakland. The flight was already half an hour late, and we had just been moved across the terminal to a new gate. We were eager to get on our way.
That's when I felt a hand gently touching my shoulder. I turned around, surprised and staring at a youngish man with a camping pack and a day's stubble. He didn't look like he was trying to pick my pocket. He didn't look like he was trying to pick me up. A stale liquor breath wafted unmistakably off him.
"Dude, what are you doing?" I said, irritated.
He kept my gaze. "Nothin', man. What's your problem?" A moment later he'd taken his hand off my shoulder.
"You have to humor him," said another man, who I assumed was the drunk guy's companion. Fine, I thought, that'll be the end of that. Until a moment later, when my new pal put his around my shoulder again. The first touch was gentle; this one was firm.
He said nothing—in fact he continued chatting with the other guy. I didn't want to make a scene in the crowded gate. I figured I'd let him keep his arm on my shoulder for another moment, then we'd be board, and that would be the end of that.
And so a strange minute or two passed with a perfect stranger's arm around me. Then he gave me a robust slap on the back, and so I turned back to him. Loudly: "Would you take. Your hand. Off my back. Please."
"Really?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, as crisply as a starched shirt.
And he left me alone again, though I began to fear I'd wind up sitting next to this yahoo on the plane—Southwest Airlines has open seating, after all. Other passengers and I began to listen in on his conversation with his companion, which was getting louder. It first became clear his companion was nothing of the sort, just a poor shlub who happened to be waiting at the wrong part of the gate. Then we learned Drunk Boy's ticket was for San Diego.
The other man tried to be helpful. "You're going to go to San Diego through Oakland? Are you sure this is the right flight?"
"Wherever, man. I'm not worried about it."
Then we boarded. As I entered the jetway, the woman behind me tipped off the ticket agent collecting the boarding passes. "The man behind me," she said, in a low tone more of alarm than aggravation, "has been drinking."
The ticket agent, she told me a moment later, evidently didn't need the tip. He phoned for security, and that was the last I saw of the guy. Drunk travelers are probably more common in Las Vegas than elsewhere. I wondered where he was going—he was blitzed, sure, but it wasn't like he'd be flying the plane. According to Debbie Millett, spokesperson at McCarran International Airport, the airport does not have a detox room. Individual airlines set their own policies about determining whether passengers are fit to fly. When Metro officers are called—the police keep a substation at the airport—they determine whether to arrest a detained passenger or simply put him or her on another flight.
If only he'd asked me about my iPod—I'd have gotten him on that plane.