I’m going to Mars. It’s all planned out. I’ve watched some reports, checked out some websites. It looks pretty amazing. All I have to do now is convince my wife to let me go.
Elon Musk says I have to go, or that “we humans” have to go. I haven’t spoken to him directly, he seems like he might be tough to talk to, but he’s right that the mission is necessary to preserve humankind. There’s only one hitch—we can’t come back. It’s a one-way ticket to a rough and inhospitable planet, kind of like a one-way ticket to Staten Island.
I’ll admit that I’m a little worried that I’ll get there and find out that it’s not as good as the brochure and then have to stay there for the rest of my life. This happened to me once on a road trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They made it look like a quaint hotel hosted by a nice Amish family, but it turned out to be a creepy hotel hosted by a man who looked like he just got out of prison on a technicality. In that case I just got in the car and was back home in three hours.
I can’t do that on this trip, but ultimately I’m okay with that. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, and unlike being in Lancaster, however poor the accommodations, I imagine it will be offset by the fact that I’m standing on Mars. That’s pretty cool stuff. If only my wife thought the same way.
I don’t know what her deal is. She seems to think that I’m going on a golf weekend with my friends till the end of time, but I don’t think they’ll even have golf there. Now that I think of it, they actually did golf on the moon. That must have really irked the wives down on Earth trying to look supportive in front of the reporters for Life magazine.
But seriously, how can I deny all of civilization? They’re counting on me. How can I sit down here wasting time at Taco Bell and rubbing sunscreen on my belly by the pool when there are planets to populate? What if it’s my destiny? My manifest destiny?
This must be why Lewis and Clark weren’t married. They couldn’t focus on their journey out west while someone was following them around asking how long they’d be gone.
Could you imagine Clark putting on his coonskin jacket, saying, “No, I told you I’m leaving this Saturday.”
“Well, change it.”
“I can’t change it, Lewis is waiting down by the canoe. You’ll just have to go to the Bernsteins’ bar mitzvah without me.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I have to cross the Mississippi and cause problems for the indigenous people, that’s why.”
This is what I’m dealing with as I prepare for my trip to the giant red planet. I’m thinking about what to pack and my wife is acting like it’s not even happening.
I’m assuming there won’t be any training. I hope there’s not. That’s not going to work for me. I mean, I’ll go to Mars but I don’t want to have to join a gym to do it. It’s not like I’m going to have to steer the ship or anything. I see my role more as a special guest: the funny guy who makes an appearance now and again. When things get boring and people are a little homesick, I come into the cafeteria, crack some jokes, do something funny with a carrot, that kind of thing. Like one of the guest actors on The Love Boat.
And that reminds me: As a special guest, I am not flying coach. That won’t happen. I don’t fly coach to Baltimore, I’m definitely not flying coach all the way to Mars. I hope Elon understands that. I wonder if they’ll have those sleep pod things like they do on Big Planes. Those are really cool and come with a bunch of movies and a kit with a sleep mask, earplugs, and a pair of socks. The socks are always a little weird to me, but I guess with so many people out there who think that flip-flops are acceptable travel footwear, regardless of their age or how disgusting their feet are, maybe the socks are a good idea.
The best pods I ever experienced were on a flight from JFK to Dubai on Emirates airline. It was the best flight of my life. I got lucky and some company paid for the whole thing. I was waiting in the lounge with my first-class ticket on a late-spring night, staring out at the giant plane that I was going to be boarding. It was one of those behemoths with two stories. It made more sense to try and fly an apartment building.
I was trying to act like this was nothing new to me. That waiting in the first-class international lounge for my flight to the Middle East was just something that I did all the time. It’s hard not to look like a rube in a situation like this, and I was definitely a rube.
I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but everything is free in the international lounge, which is disconcerting when you’re used to having to pay for everything that you can barely afford your whole life. It’s not until you hang around the rich that you realize how much free stuff they get.
There was a full bar with bottles of expensive liquor just sitting out for the taking without a bartender, hostess, or police officer anywhere in sight. There were giant buffets of food that looked like a spread for some oil tycoon or a drunk Warren Buffett. I wonder if Warren Buffett is aware that his name is one letter away from being Warren Buffet. Someone should tell him, it could give him some good material when he’s at brunch.
I felt like I was stealing and didn’t want to get caught. I’d sneak up to the bar, take something, and scurry back to my seat like a squirrel who sees a pile of nuts and doesn’t trust that it’s not a trap. I nabbed a beer and ran back to my seat. When no one came to arrest me, and I felt safe again, I bolted back up, grabbed some sushi, put a few in my cheeks, and ran off like a child who comes across candy he’s not supposed to have.
This lounge was so fancy that when it was time to board my flight, a woman came and whispered in my ear and walked me to the gate. I did my best not to spit out the giant wad of cashews in my mouth.
When I boarded the plane they led me up a spiral staircase to the second level. Stairs on a plane are not normal. A lot of people don’t have stairs in their home. I was expecting a nice seat, but what I discovered was pretty much my own room. It was gigantic. I poked my head up from my pod like a gopher and looked around, but I was completely alone. It was just me and seven of the most beautiful female flight attendants I had ever seen, and their entire job on this flight would be to do nothing but wait on me.
They brought out steaks, salads, asparagus in hollandaise sauce, ice cream sundaes, exotic chocolates, entire bottles of Bordeaux, and a coffee service that seemed to combine all the knowledge of all the coffee that had ever been made. All I had to do was sit in my nest with my mouth open like a baby bird.
I didn’t want to sleep and miss any of it, but I was only able to hang for so long. I fell into a long, deep sleep as the plane flew over the top of the planet, straight above the North Pole. I dreamed vividly about the Middle East, a place that I knew very little about. This was a part of the world that I had constructed in my mind from slanted news stories and public school geography classes that taught us to be afraid.
I remember waking up, not understanding how long I had slept or how many time zones I had crossed. I stood up and stretched. There’s something about waking up in a place that gives you more ownership of it. This plane was now my domain, and as I made my way to the back I discovered a full round bar. I startled the staff, as if the captain had just made an appearance on deck unannounced. I gave them a little smile to put them at ease and, again trying to act like I did this all the time, ordered a gin fizz.
I’ve never had a gin fizz in my life. I don’t even like gin all that much and have no idea where the fizz comes from. I wanted to sound like James Bond but ended up sounding like James Bond’s silly gay cousin. But after two or three drinks and some free bar snacks, I regained my mojo and chatted them up and got some good solid laughs. Just like The Love Boat.
I ate some more, drank some more in my pod, and watched a bunch of movies as the flight attendants came by every three minutes or so just to deliver another smile. It was a twelve-hour flight and one of the nicest times I could remember on sea, land, or sky. I didn’t want it to end.
The rest of the trip I was in Dubai and Beirut, and as you can probably predict, I met beautiful people and learned that they were just like you and me.
As great as the Middle East was, I did start to miss home after a while. I was with people, but not my people. I don’t mean my countrymen, I mean my loved ones. My wife. My family. My dog. My car. My TV.
That’s always the way. It’s always fun to travel, but if you don’t have your family with you at a certain point, what are you doing? At a certain point you’re no longer traveling, you’re running away from home.
I guess this is what my wife is thinking. I mean, I don’t want to leave them forever. A one-way ticket to Mars is like announcing to your family the exact day that you’re going to die. While it’s somewhat convenient and allows you to get all your paperwork in order, it’s probably better for them to be surprised. It’s better to get a call from the hospital than know he’s out there playing gin rummy on some other planet.
But I have faith. I have faith Elon will figure out a way to make it a round-trip ticket. Lewis and Clark eventually went back home and got married and had nice, normal lives. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll go, hang out for a couple of years, boost up my social media, and eventually return safely home.
As a gesture, for my willingness to cut my trip short, I would like to request that my wife and kids throw a nice ticker-tape parade or at the very least have a WELCOME HOME banner over the fireplace and a big bowl of Butterfingers.
There’s no way she can say no to that. Right?