By Amanda Knox
 
It was partly travel fatigue, but mostly the placement of the the TV screens. Splitting huevos rancheros for breakfast at the airport, Chris and I kept catching ourselves trailing off in conversation and looking over each other’s shoulders. A game show called “Let’s Make a Deal” was on. A pretty woman wearing a midnight blue gown, a pageant sash, and a tiara was debating whether to risk her winnings in order to go for the dining room set. In the background, the rest of the audience was in costume too—there were cowboys, clowns, robots and Peter Pans. I gave myself over to it.
 
“It’s remarkable how much people in costume look like people in costume,” I said.
 
“You mean, instead of looking like thing they’re dressed up as?” Chris said.
 
“Yeah. Like that Roman gladiator in the back row with the plastic shield and helmet all askew.”
 
“Is this a Halloween edition? They probably just gave all the audience members cheap costumes as they walk in the door.”
 
“Yeah. Like, that guy does not look pleased to be wearing those pink bunny ears.”
 
“What’s this guy supposed to be? Hip-Hop?”
 
The next contestant, a pudgy man wearing a large, cardboard boombox around his neck, was jumping up and down about winning a BRAND NEW motorcycle. His red T-shirt was decorated with the round heads of famous rappers with stems sticking up from them, like musical notes.
 
---
 
In the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time slumped in the seats of airport terminals. Those seats, by the way, are just comfortable enough for sitting, but are strategically impossible to lay down on—which is, of course, what I really wanted to do. I ate bagel breakfast sandwiches which didn’t taste like they really made of bagels and eggs. I drank too much coffee and not enough water. I zoned out—too tired to even browse through my phone. My brain was fuzzy. Slumped in my chair, feet resting on my luggage, I felt myself slip into a two-dimensional reality, where people were not so much people, but ideas of people.
 
For instance, I imagined the woman sitting across from me was a blue-collar, southern-bell bombshell in the 70s, but now, she hid the softness and slack of her body in drapey clothes, bling jewelry, and heavy makeup. Her hair—which was cut short with feathered layers, dyed dark brown and streaked with highlights—made her feel young. She liked to drink Orange Julius and watch interior decorating game shows on TLC.
 
On the flip side, in two-dimension-land, Chris and I were the impractical hipster couple. We disguised our sloppiness with gender-bending, thrift-store style. We talked too loudly and theoretically about things we only superficially understood. We shopped at Trader Joes and didn’t have real jobs. We liked to Netflix and chill.
 
Ha. It was funny, because no one can be so simply reduced. It was interesting, because in allowing myself to inhabit that two-dimensional space, I discovered what characters—like ill-fitting costumes—were lying dormant in my mind, picked up from sloppily-written cultural narratives. Back in three-dimension-land, a facade is so obviously just a facade. I feel curious about what lead a person to cross my path in just such a way, even if only to share in the passing of time at the gateway between one place and another. Friend, where are you coming from? I wonder.