Melissa D. Burrage's "Flying Business Class to ‘Paradise’"

  

      

Bio: Melissa is the author of The Karl Muck Scandal: Classical Music and Xenophobia in World War 1 America (melissadburrage.com). She is a member of the Westwood Poetry Group, the Marge Piercy Poetry Group, a 2022 winner of the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest. Her work can be found in Wood Cat Review, Poetica Review, Foyer Magazine, Syncopation Literary Journal, Smoky Quartz Tenth Anniversary Literary Anthology and Southern Arizona Press Anthology: The Poppy: A Symbol of Remembrance, all forthcoming. The Karl Muck Scandal was the winner of the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY) for US History; BBC Music Magazine’s Best Classical Music Book Release of 2019; Best Book Award Finalist in 2019 in History and Performing Arts categories. In 2020, Melissa received the Charles A. Hildebrandt Award for Excellence in Holocaust and Genocide Studies by the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Long lines. Crowded seats. The man’s shoulder next to me can’t fit within his space. He elbows my breast. I need to pee for three hours but can’t figure out how to escape my chair. Someone farts and we all endure the odor. Someone coughs, another sneezes. We take masks off to eat and drink wondering how safe recycled air is.  

My husband remembers flying in the seventies. Spacious leather seats. His parents climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor bar for complimentary cocktails. Today, they pack us in, our knees jam up against the seat--the person-- in front of us. The airline brags about great service.  They send emails after our flight seeking rave reviews.  

In Vegas, we see cement, lots of it. We drive the Strip, see the Statue of Liberty, a Coney Island coaster, the London Eye, King Arthur’s castle, an Egyptian pyramid. The Bellagio fountain is synchronized to the music. Giant Chihuly glass flowers decorate the lobby. We see Caesar’s Palace, Trump Tower, the Sands. The Stratosphere Hotel rises to the sky. Seems odd that Encore Beach Club is in an urban desert. Must be a mirage on this hot day.

We smell weed everywhere, see a cannabis superstore ad on a passing van. McDonald’s marquis announces that you can buy mixed drinks with your Big Mac and fries. A neon Donny Osmond dances past our car on the side of a truck. So many amusements entertain our eyes—an ‘adult’ playground, we’re told.  Come and Shoot a .50 Caliber Gun for Only $29.  A ‘Gentlemen’s’ club banner says: Out With The Old In With The Nude where Women 18 Plus are Fully Naked.  We see groups of men pouring out of pink limos in club parking lots. Sparsely dressed women in heels walk up and down the Strip handing out carte de visites, explicit boudoir pictures, ladies of all shapes and poses, ‘their’ phone numbers on the back.  

A painting of Liberace adorns the lobby wall at our hotel. He’s wearing a sequined red and gold jacket. His sterling silver piano, candelabra, and blue velvet stool, are roped off. A first-floor casino is filled with colorful games: Jolly Eights, Buffalo Gold, Invaders of the Planet, Willie Wonka’s Dreamer of Dreams, Dean Martin and his Dancing Girls. Patrons play Craps, Texas Hold ‘Em, Roulette. They sit in plushy leather chairs and throw their credit cards down, watch their money disappear in seconds. A nearby maskless guest hacks, smoke from his cigarette rises in circles above his ashtray. I walk through the cloud.

On the way out of town, a billboard near the overpass reads:  

Turns Out, You Can Buy Your Way into Paradise  

© 2022 Melissa D. Burrage