Perfectly Normal
An account of what passes for normal
I’m 32,000 feet above the Earth’s surface. I’d be dead if I wasn’t sealed inside this pressurized metal tube. I’m up here with 116 other people, and we are safe as long as we maintain enough speed, or avoid bumping into any of the other metal tubes streaking through the stratosphere. There are about 40,000 flights every day. Currently, we are hurtling through the clouds at 500 miles per hour. It’s not easy. We have to burn tons of fuel, which spews out of the engines in giant clouds of toxic gas, but as I said before, we are safely sealed inside. Outside the plane is a different story. The fuel is poisoning the air which contributes to rising rates of cancer, emphysema, asthma, and a variety of either fatal or debilitating illnesses, but as a society, we feel as though it’s worth it. The carbon in the exhaust is also contributing to climate change, which will eventually overheat the entire planet and destroy almost all life on its surface, but for now, the tube we are in is well air-conditioned.
I don’t know any of the people who are stuffed in and strapped down around me, but I am reasonably sure I am safe. Everyone had to be x-rayed to get past the gate. The x-ray techs have seen a computer rendering of what each of us looks like naked. The x-rays cause cancer, but again, we have deemed it a necessary inconvenience.
Soon, it will be time to eat. A woman dressed in clothing made from plastic threads will walk down the aisle on shoes with little stilts on them. The stilts are only on the back end of her shoes, so she has to walk on tip-toes wherever she goes. This makes her appear taller, but it also curves her back, which makes her breasts and buttocks stick out. It puts unhealthy stress on almost every part of her body, but it makes her look more like the women on TikTok.
The shoes she is wearing may be damaging her body, but they are expensive. They are wrapped in the shiny processed skin of a cow that has been dyed bright blue to match her outfit. As a species, we have been wearing the skins of other animals for millennia. Our skin is not sufficient to protect us from the elements, so we cut the skin off of other animals and slide ourselves inside theirs to bolster our protection.
The stewardess’ breasts are tightly bound, squeezed together, and pulled up by a sling containing metal wires for reinforcement. It’s not comfortable, but it makes her look more like the women on TikTok. She also has a sheen of atomized silicon glue in her hair to keep it in place. The glue is thinned with a toxic chemical that causes cancer and lung disease, but she holds her breath when she sprays it on. It is very flammable, but only a few people have their hair burst into flames every year.
Some of the hair on her head is not actually her own. It is someone else’s hair that has been woven into hers. It was shaved off by a woman in India and sold to an American company that sells third-world hair to first-world consumers.
There is no hair under her arms. She fastidiously shaves it off, along with the hair on her legs. She believes that her lack of a Y chromosome makes it necessary for her to remove the hair on her body from certain areas. Those with Y chromosomes can grow hair wherever they wish.
Under her arms is a paste made from aluminum. She has rubbed it into the pores of her skin so that it blocks her body’s ability to sweat. The paste also contains the secretions from the sebaceous glands of sheep. The secretions are called lanolin and help protect her skin from drying out.
The aluminum leeches poison into her blood, but she doesn’t want anyone to be able to smell her. She also has a variety of paints and powders on her eyes and face. The red paint on her lips contains fish scales and lead, which can lead to mental illness, but it makes her look more like the women on TikTok.
She has pierced the skin of her earlobes and placed tiny golden plugs in the holes. Around her neck is a gold cross. The cross is a representation of the device that the Ancient Romans used to torture and kill people. She wears it to symbolize her belief that an all-powerful invisible man is controlling the (Earth) plane, everyone on the plane, and the entire universe. She believes this invisible man sent his son to Earth to be nailed to a cross and murdered so that all of humanity could be saved. According to the story, the son will return to Earth later and kill everyone.
When she gets to my seat, she will hand me a small plastic tray with food on it. She will have to be careful because she has small pieces of painted plastic glued over each of her fingernails. It hinders her dexterity, but it makes her look more like the women on TikTok.
The chicken dinner she hands me will be warmed using microwaves that rattle the water molecules in the butchered lump of flesh until they are hot. If let loose, the microwaves would kill us all, but they are sealed inside a box while the food cooks.
The chicken was raised on an industrial farm. Its body has been injected with growth hormones, steroids, and antibiotics, all of which will affect the functioning of my body when I ingest them. In particular, they will weaken my immune system, but I can take more antibiotics in pill form to counteract the antibiotics in the meat.
The slab of muscle is moist because the chicken carcass was injected with water before it was sold. It tastes good because it has a piece of yellow fat melted on it that was extracted from the milk of a cow. The milk was mechanically sucked from the cow’s teats and shipped overnight to a dairy, where it was churned and then turned into butter. The butter is then shipped all over the country, sometimes in airplanes like this one. The butter I am eating may have already taken a plane trip. It may have even come from where I am now going.
The chicken comes with a piece of bread that has been made light and fluffy with a chemical called L-cysteine. L-cysteine is made from duck feathers and human hair. It’s in the cookie they gave me, too. The cookie is chocolate with vanilla cream inside. The vanilla cream doesn’t actually contain vanilla from the vanilla bean. The manufacturer uses a cheaper substitute called Castorium. Castorium is made from beaver anus, which happens to taste like vanilla.
The chocolate part of the cookie is flavored with cacao beans, which were picked by child slaves in the Ivory Coast. The cookie is sweetened with sugar grown on a slave plantation in the Dominican Republic. To make it even sweeter, there is also high fructose corn syrup, which traveled to the factory in a long line of tanker cars attached to a freight train. The wheat comes from Russia. The oil comes from Malaysia. The cookie also contains iron, which was made in the exploding heart of a distant star.
I’ll eat my dinner with a plastic fork made by exploited workers slaving in a factory in China. In 1949, China had a revolution to save the people from being exploited in factories. It didn’t work, but no one in China is allowed to say so, or they will be killed or imprisoned.
If my stomach is unable to digest this mixture of chemicals, oppression, and flavor enhancers, there is a bag especially designed to receive my vomit. It’s placed within easy reach with a set of instructions explaining how to use it. It’s tucked in a pocket with a catalog of things I can buy right from my seat. Using a plastic card that represents a promise to change a set of numbers in my bank account, I can buy an inflatable waterslide, a hydroponic growing system, a stainless steel food dehydrator, or a robot that will feed my dog dried pellets of corn mixed with meat that has been rejected for human consumption.
Even though dogs were bred from wolves, we have trained them to eat processed pellets because we want to keep them in our houses. In order to live with us, they have to be conditioned first. We cut out their reproductive parts and force them to hold in their excrement until we take them outside. Once outside, we can safely scoop up their feces and carry it in a plastic bag to another location, where it will be added to a giant mountain of feces. America adds approximately 89 million pounds of dog waste to landfills every day.
There are probably a few dogs on this plane. People sometimes tie themselves to animals to make themselves feel better. Some people, after having their dog’s testicles cut off, pay to have prosthetic silicon testicles inserted in their stead, but I’m not sure why. Some people have plastic bags of silicone inserted into their own bodies. This can often get them free drinks at a bar, or increase their likelihood of getting a job. It’s dangerous, expensive, and painful, but it makes them look more like the women on TikTok.
If, while I sit here, I get restless, I can buy a miniature bottle of poison made from the juice of rotten fruit. If I drink it, it won’t kill me, but my body will signal to me that I have ingested poison by making me feel a little dizzy, unsettling my stomach, and slowing my heart rate. If my body tries to eject the poison, which is a common side effect, I have that vomit bag close by.
I’ll sit here for a few hours until we land. It’s good to know that everything is perfectly normal and there is nothing to worry about. Of course, if I do feel panicky, I can drink more poison to calm my nerves. Either way, I’ll be just fine.
