WALL-E, the 2008 animated film about a robot cleaning up a post-apocalyptic Earth plays in the dark. The plane is quiet; the hum of the engine muffles the sounds of sleeping passengers all around me. I can’t sleep. This morning I got to the airport twelve hours early for a flight from Santiago, Chile to Miami, USA. The taxi driver took my last peso so my time in the airport was spent lying on the concrete floor and carefully rationing my trail mix before the flight. Now, finally in the air, I expect to feel relief. I’m going home to Alaska after a long, hard study abroad experience. I should feel excited. I’ve gotten away from the angry anthropologist in his one room cabin, from the host brother who kept trying to sneak into my room and my bed, from the people who would speak to me and then, startled by my halting response, turn and walk away.
WALL-E rolls around the smoking landscape of a devastated Earth and the man next to me opens up a book. It’s in English. He’s reading something in a language I understand. I wouldn’t normally do this, but I haven’t spoken my own language in four months. I clear my throat.
“What are you reading?” He’s taken aback. Apparently we both thought the other was Chilean. He shows me the cover of something that looks like a cross between a John Grisham and a Steven King novel. And we start to talk. No stumbling or searching for the right word or conjugation. Just easy talk, the conversation of travelers who will never see each other again.
“I was supposed to stay in Antarctica for two weeks but our ship sank.”
“You were shipwrecked in Antarctica?” I can’t tell if he’s kidding. It’s hard to see his eyes in the light.
“I swear I was, but just for a few hours. Then the Chilean Coast Guard rescued us. Now I’m going home. I’ve had enough ice and snow for a while.”
Home for him is Australia, a place that sounds as exotic to me as Alaska does to him.
“Do you ride a kangaroo everywhere you go?”
“Do you sleep in igloos with pet polar bears?”
We are both smiling as WALL-E cavorts across a barren landscape. And then we’re leaning towards each other, the plane dark except for the flashes of light coming from the movie. The passengers across the aisle asleep, the flight attendants nowhere to be seen.
I think, “Is this the story I want to tell?” And I tell myself “yes” just as his lips hit mine. I follow his lead, try not to think too much about the mechanics of making out or the fact that his beard and tongue feel like they’re everywhere.
This, then, is how I leave Chile. A LatAm Airlines flight, WALL-E discovering inter-galactic love, and Australian Pete, giving me my first kiss.