I was on a plane. We were going somewhere or another, I don’t remember. And I didn’t really care. I was only there for the peanuts.
There is something about airline peanuts. They just hit the tongue differently than your ordinary everyday land peanuts. Maybe it’s the shiny packages they pack them in. Maybe it’s being 20,000 feet in the air. Or maybe it’s the disquieting realization that you are at the flight attendant’s mercy, and must be grateful for every last morsel they deign fit to proffer. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, you are forced to appreciate your peanut allotment.
So there I was, happily munching away at my peanuts when I noticed the man sat beside me doing the same. I ate one peanut, and he ate one peanut. And another and another and so on it went. And I am ashamed to admit that as time went on I came to notice a certain disparity…
Now, I am not one of those dreaded peanut counters, or one who would count another person’s peanuts. I don’t like to think of myself that way. I don’t believe in it. But even less do I like to think of myself as a man who will take abuse lightly salted. And the simple fact of the matter was this: the man had more peanuts than I.
ESCALATION
My hand reached up for the call button before I could stop it. Within moments a flight attendant appeared. “Yes?” the young woman said. “How can I help you, sir?”
She was brunette, and beautiful, fair of skin and full of lip, and I admit that I had to resist the urge to ask for her hand in holy matrimony right there on the spot, knowing such a woman would never accept a gremlin creature such as me… but that isn’t what this is about. Any hostility I displayed was purely on account of the nuts. I said to the woman, “Do you like your job?”
“I’m sorry?” the attendant said, mildly confused.
“Your job,” I repeated, a mite more curtly, “Do you like it?”
“Yes,” she said through a rather forced smile. “I like it fine.”
“That’s funny,” I said.
“Is it, sir? How so?”
“Madam,” I said. “There is a great discrepancy in your peanut allotment.”
“My– I’m sorry?” No, I thought. But you’re going to be.
“This man,” I said, gesturing to the fellow to my right who didn’t seem to have the slightest idea, “has been allocated more peanuts than I.”
The gorgeous but stupid woman merely clucked her tongue. “Okay,” she said, just about through with me. “So you would like another bag of peanuts?”
I blinked, confused. “What?” I said, rubbing my temples. “No, that isn’t my point at all.”
“I see,” she said. “And so… what is your point?”
It was clear to me that any pretense of civility between us had officially been discarded. No further need to dance around my rage. So I held up the bag of honey-roasted peanuts in one hand and crumpled it in my fist. I admit that this was a rather dramatic gesture on my part, but I am a dramatic boy. I opened my hand, allowing the empty cellophane bag to drop to the airplane floor… and still the man to my right chewed on, forking out another handful from his seemingly endless pouch. You could hear every tiny crunch of nut in an otherwise uncomfortable silence. I was certain the interminable racket said more than I ever could.
The woman merely sighed.
ENTER STANLEY
Now a man two seats ahead of us, gaunt and pockmarked, turned his head. “Excuse me,” he said. “My name is Stanley Stanton. I’m a reporter for the Post… the Scranton Post. Did you say you received an inadequate number of peanuts?” He was already at his pen and pad. The attendant shot him a look.
“He received the requisite number of peanuts,” she said to him. “You may return to your activities.”
But Stanley Stanton from Scranton only grinned as his pen continued to scratch.
“I see,” I said, feeling emboldened by the reporter’s attention, “So then the man sat beside me has received an inordinate number of peanuts. Then perhaps you’d like to rescind them?”
“Excuse me?” the attendant said.
“Rescind his peanuts, madam, lest I make waves.”
Now the man to my right finally took notice of the dispute. “What?” he said fatly, because he was fat, chewing many unwarranted peanuts. “These additional peanuts are no fault of mine, and I shan’t be blamed for them.” He was bald, about sixty, with beady black eyes. He popped another ill-gotten peanut into his mouth, and munched loudly. He shook his head. “No, this is merely happenstance.”
“My dear sir,” I said. “Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind sharing your peanut surplus?”
“Sharing?” the fat man said. “And shall I share with the whole plane? I don’t see what purpose that would serve. Besides, if you were in my position you would behave no different.”
I couldn’t disagree with him. But I also couldn’t let him know that. “My good sir,” I said. “Do you impugn my peanut honor?”
“I not only impugn it,” the fat man said, his grubby lips glistening with peanut oil, “I say it was never in existence! And furthermore, sir, let it be announced that I now invoke the right of airline combat!”
I must admit I was taken aback. I hadn’t considered things reaching this point so soon. And if I’m being honest, I was a little nervous. It had been three years since my last airline combat, and I worried the rust would do me in.
But I had a score to settle that day. And I was still a man.
“I accept,” I said.
The attendant rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Would that a single flight land without someone invoking the right of airline combat.” But her annoyance meant nothing. Once the right had been invoked there was only one course of action left to any of us. Without another word the attendant moved toward her nearest station and picked up the receiver, and her deadened voice announced over the intercom, “Attention passengers, the right of mortal combat has just been invoked. Live feed of the battle will now appear on your seatback screens. Tune your headphones to channel eleven for sound. And please keep your trays and seatbacks in the upright position for the duration of the fight.”
AIRLINE COMBAT
We were led down into the baggage hold. Every transatlantic flight has an octagonal fighting pit, and ours was no exception. She was an eight-sided dungeon of steel cage and mayhem. Old and browned bloodstains adorned its rough canvas floor. The captain of the plane stood before us, lean and tall and silver of hair. He removed his hat. “I will be your Judge,” he said.
“Who’s flying the plane?” I said.
“New guy,” the captain said. “I think his name is Chuck.”
I nodded. “I accept you as Judge,” I said, and my opponent held no objections.
“And who shall bear witness?” the pilot captain said.
It was the voice of Stanley Stanton from Scranton that answered the call. No one had invited him down here, but I was happy to see him.
“Very well, gentlemen,” the pilot captain said. “I trust you know that there are no rules here, and only one man may leave this cage alive.”
In unison we spoke the words, “This is the way.”
We were ushered into the cage.
The metal door slammed shut behind us. The lock was bolted. We removed our shirts, comparing general girth and body weight. I was in considerably better shape than my opponent, but still managed to look absolutely disgusting. I have never had luck with my love handles. My body just tells fat to go there.
The pilot rang the bell.
The old fat man howled, “To the death!” and he threw the full force of his body at mine.
We slapped together like wet seals, repeatedly, our grasping hands attempting to find purchase in our many fleshy folds. Flop sweat sprayed the walls and luggage.
Before I knew it the man had me in the air in a vertical suplex. My back slammed into the canvas at warp speed, the wind knocked out of me. Lucky him, I thought at first.
But it was no luck. The man was a suplex machine. He suplexed the shit out of me, nearly every suplex known to man…
There was a belly suplex. Then a back suplex. He threw in a couple of Germans for good measure, accompanied by a Fisherman and a snap. Then he hit me with a delayed vertical, followed by a three quarter nelson, and capped the whole thing off with a pretty sweet pumphandle into a beauty of a Northern Lights. After that he seemed pretty tired, probably because he was so fat.
My plan had worked flawlessly: Let him kick the living shit out of me until he ran out of breath. I think it was a strategy called the Grope-a-Dope. I heard about it once from sports.
I saw my opportunity and took it. While the old fart was wheezing and desperate for air, bent over with his hands on his knees, I took out a box cutter.
It was hidden in my ass. It is surprisingly easy to smuggle a box cutter onto a plane if it’s inside your ass. The pilot captain wanted to say something, I even heard him gasp, but he was bound by the holy laws of combat. The man had said it himself: there are no rules.
Dizzily I stumbled over to that fat coughing bastard. He took a swing at me. It was slow and sloppy but it still collided with my head. “Fuckkkk,” I said in an idiot stupor, and began to swipe at him with my blade.
“Oh, you dirty piece of shit,” the fat man said, keeping himself just out of range of my razor. “You think you’re the only one with an asshole purse?”
And that’s when he brought out the tire iron.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, moments before the thing clobbered me across the jaw. I saw birds and sunshine. I saw magical and angelic creatures. All of them were nude.
I wanted to stay there, in that place. Forever. But reality pulled me back. And I saw the great fat beast standing over me, the great club of steel reeled back and ready behind his head. Had I been brought back to life simply to watch it end?
No.
With a vengeful energy I didn’t know I possessed, my nearly unconscious brain came to terms with the razor still gripped in my right claw, and like a puppet on strings my hand sailed forward and sliced the fat man across his big round gut.
Red blood and pink intestines rained down upon me. Their heat was comfort. Their warmth was victory.
The fat man, whose name I never got, fell to his knees, slouched forward, and died.
And as I sat there, bathed in his blood, I realized I did not hate him. I pitied him. I pitied us both.
For we were both pawns.
The pilot captain hovered over me, his hat tucked under his arm. “You’ve won,” he said. “What is your wish?”
“I would have your fealty,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” the captain said. “But that is against the rules.”
“I am the rules!” I shouted. But this was emotion getting the better of me. I quickly relented. “Very well.” Flat on my back on the canvas I told him through a mouthful of broken teeth, “Then I wish to speak to the passengers.”
Biting his lip, the captain nodded. A moment later a microphone was in my face. I reached for it, and I spoke.
“Ladies and gentlemen. This now-rotting corpse before me was not my enemy. The truth is we were both wronged, made enemies by peanut circumstances we did not control.” I spit up some blood, wiped my mouth with my wrist. “This is what they do to us: keep us fighting amongst ourselves while their peanut crimes go unpunished. Well, I say no more… Join me now brothers and sisters. Let us take over this plane and forge a new world. Death to the unbelievers!”
I dropped the microphone. By the time I was back on the main level the uprising had already begun. There was blood on the walls and several passengers were dead. The attendants had holed up with the remaining pilots at the front of the plane, adorned in riot gear and firing shotguns indiscriminately into the onrushing crowd.
But they had only so many bullets. By the time the smoke cleared the plane was ours.
A NEW HOPE
In the aftermath of the chaos a summit was held, between myself, the surviving pilot, and that beautiful flight attendant. I was carried to the meeting on a makeshift palanquin of luggage, a set of complimentary headphones for a crown. The cabin wasn’t high enough and my crown scraped against the ceiling, but I didn’t make a big thing of it.
The captain, chastened, cowed, led the procession. He was now my bitch. He could hardly look his attendants in the eyes, or his passengers for that matter. And they couldn’t look at him. The stench of failure, or submission, was about him. Unconsciously my new rule had already been accepted.
I rode this wave all the way into the cockpit, where negotiations for the staff’s unconditional surrender were handled over tea and crumpets. “Frankly I should execute the lot of you,” I told them. “But I don’t know how to fly a plane. It’s shameful, but it’s true.”
“Then it is we who have the power,” the beautiful attendant said. She still naively believed that this situation could be salvaged.
“Don’t get excited,” I said to the council. “I am no terrorist, but I would sooner join al-Qaeda than accept a single less peanut in my pouch.”
“One who can destroy a thing controls a thing,” the attendant said. “Is it not so?”
“And would you destroy all aboard as well?” She snapped her mouth shut. “I only wish for the plane to land safely for the sake of the passengers,” I said. “I myself am perfectly at peace with dying screaming into the ocean.”
“Enough,” the captain said, still very morose, staring off into some impossible distance. “Janice, you know the safety of the passengers is paramount. Haven’t you seen our commercials? It’s like our whole thing.”
“Well, what would you suggest?” Janice said. “My girls will never accept your rule.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But if the passengers out there were to discover how lax you are about their safety… things could become very ugly. Very ugly indeed.”
“A wedding,” the captain said. “Janice, you will marry our new king. You will bear him a son. Only then will there be peace.”
Janice gritted her teeth; her knuckles went white. Her mouth became very small as she said, “We will never bow. And I will seek every opportunity to murder you.”
“I expect nothing less,” I smiled.
“This is gold,” the newsman said, scribbling away. “Dynamite gold…”
THE HONEYMOONERS
The wedding took place three days later, in the cargo hold.
I bedded her that night, somewhere in coach, across many laps. She twice tried to stab me in the kidneys. Went straight for ‘em. If it weren’t for my love handles I might have seen some real damage.
Several months later Janice bore me an heir. We named him Joe. He was premature, and turned out to be a real bummer. “I don’t know,” I said to my new wife, trying to figure it. “I thought he’d be cooler.” Nevertheless the boy would one day rule this plane, a plane that had since been split into several opposing factions.
Beneath my very nose a rebellion had been brewing. I’d initially been too busy with wedding preparations to secure my hold on the ship’s remaining peanut supply. “How ironic,” I said to my wife on our honeymoon as I pulled out of her. “This whole thing was about peanuts, and now here I am having sex.” I guess time really does change a man.
But peanuts have always equaled power, and even a king cannot change this simple fact.
The Great Peanut Wars had begun…