Club Aspire
As I track the trajectory of my continued downward mobility, one of the many annoying aspects is my lack of flying business/first class. There was a time, years past now, when an employed Michael Ian Black regularly trundled across the nation and abroad swaddled in the comforts of a premium airline seat. Lie-flat seats. Plus duvets. Warm cookies. No more. These days, I am far more likely to be found huddled in economy class, my knees pushed to my chin, a plastic cup of warm water balanced on the thin, communal armrest.
Today, as I travel back to the United States from London, I am again relegated to steerage, this time in the misleadingly named “Comfort +,” which is neither comfortable nor adds any additional benefits to your misery. I don’t know what the “+” is supposed to stand for, unless it means “Comfort + Discomfort.” My seat for the first leg of my trip: 57k. I did not know it was possible to sit that far back in an airplane. Will I be seated on the tail? Is there extra legroom on the outside of the plane?
Because I travel a lot, I have platinum status on my airline of choice, plus an American Express credit card which secures my access to the corresponding airline lounge. Today, when I tried to access said lounge, I was redirected to a different, lesser lounge for those of us who have club access but are not flying premium. This other, secondary lounge is patronizingly called “Club Aspire.” The name suggests we are lucky to have this benefit at all, we strivers.
Rather than the arched ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows of the better lounge, Club Aspire has the look and feel of an upmarket youth hostel. Communal tables and pleather are the order of the day. The food selection is meager. The staff grumpy. One lady has been running a whining vacuum cleaner over the same spot of carpet for the twenty minutes I have been in here. Part of me suspects her assignment is to drive people so batty that they leave Club Aspire more quickly than they otherwise would so that others may enter the club and have their shot at the vat of baked beans coagulating in the buffet.
Woe is me, slightly discomfited intercontinental traveler. But if you think acknowledging my own privilege is going to prevent me from whining about its limitations, think again. No, I will whine. And whine some more. Because I have tasted the Good Life and know its delights. I once shared an airport lounge with Noah Wylie!!! There are no moderately famous television celebrities in Club Aspire, unless I count myself, which, of course, I do.
I wonder what they’re eating over at the better lounge just down the hall. Little finger sandwiches, probably. Asian soups. Thick slices of chocolate cake. Smiling bartenders offering “another prosecco, sir?” Over here, we’ve got brown lettuce and half a bowl of pita chips. Self-serve Diet Coke. Quelle horror!
They’re very smart, these wicked airlines, offering a downgraded level of comfort, “comfort minus,” for we aspirants to the Good Life. How many of my fellow travelers, like me, have been to the mountaintop and now find ourselves tumbling in slow-motion from its peak, scrambling to find any purchase at all. “Look around,” the airline is saying to me, “Imagine what further indignities await.” Soon, they seem to be suggesting, I could find myself out of the lounge altogether, sitting among the rabble in the airport’s public areas, fighting to the death for loose packets of Veggie Sticks. How did it come to this? How did I ever allow this fall from “almost nouveau riche” to “almost upper middle class”? They are playing to my insecurities. They are only too happy to remind me of my former perch. Damn them. Damn them all.
Last night we were sitting around my friend Jessica’s kitchen discussing the apparent joylessness of the uber-rich. Somebody like Elon Musk, for example, whose wealth appears lost on him since he seems to enjoy nothing much at all, save trolling. Jeff Bezos, fit now and in the company of a much younger and much more plastic companion, always seems so grim when disembarking his yacht. What is the point of all that money if it doesn’t give pleasure? None of these richy richeroos ever look happy. How miserable it must be to have untold wealth and yet not having multiple mouths to eat multiple meals at once, or multiple butts to sit in multiple chairs. We can only live in the space of our bodies and experience the world through the same limited senses as every other person. We are, in the end, the same miserable tubes of flesh desperate for anything to distract us from the meat spoiling in its case. Which is all well and good from a philosophical point of view, but does little to assuage my resentment when I squeeze myself into 57k. It better not be a middle seat. I may not be better than anybody else, but can’t the world at least pretend that I am?
I'll be totally honest. I could only read 1/2 of this because I was laughing too hard. I'll finish it later.
It is hard to think of another industry that so cynically uses its monopoly (for international travel and to get anywhere in the continental US faster than driving) to drive its customers into annoyance and outright anger. It’s a prime example of the free market not promoting innovation, but a race to the bottom.
Do you remember when airlines were considering those “standing seats” so they could justify packing in more human meat into the same cylinder? I think that’s when they realized it would cost more to fight the inevitable lawsuits from the the injuries and violence it would incur than any extra profit using such seats would bring in. I have no doubt if they found some type of immunity from legal liability, there would be a section where they could strap you down to a thin metal slab and push you back into dozens of stacks of other people on slabs like a too tightly packed morgue.