It was an honor, I suppose, to be drinking Johnny Walker with a military official on Alaska Airlines' red-eye flight to Portland. "After fourteen flights in ten days," the top technology officer for the Army said as a way of introduction, "you'd figure I'd get upgraded to first-class." I explained to him the benefits of coach class. "I'll take crying babies over internet executives any day," I said, and I explained to him the story of the youthful Brazilian woman who sat next to me on a flight to Frankfurt ten years ago.
"She was this really rare type of person, engaging, filled with stories. But that was all before the plane took off," I said. "The stewardess told me that coach was full, and something to do with my air-miles, I was welcome to sit in first-class."
"And?"
"It wasn't really a welcome. The stewardess insisted. I was devastated. And the kicker is that up there in first class, I was sitting next to this guy that stunk like he was pickled in liquor and cologne.
He was awful, a lawyer I think. He spat when he talked"
"Well I guess the experience can go either way?"
"I don't think so. Call me jaded, but I've never had a good experience in first class. Sour grapes. People get obsessed with flying first-class. But it's a waste of money, even for rich people."
When I told him that I loved flying in airplanes, he twitched his moustache. "I get to meet people like you. And I get to catch up on reading."
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I'm going to Monkey Face, I think. Wherever my brother takes me."
"Where is Monkey Face?"
"In the desert. Did you know that most of Oregon is a desert?"
"But why is it called Monkey Face?"
"I don't really know. Because it's a giant rock that looks like a monkey god."
The officer was uninterested. He wanted to talk about war. "I can't really tell you this," he said, before going on about war technology.
I said, "did you know there are only two places in the world that have a monkey god?"
"Two more Johnny Walkers," the officer said to the stewardess.
"In India, the Hindus call their monkey god 'Hanuman.' But actually, before the city was abandoned, there was a actually an entire city that worshipped monkeys in Honduras. It was called the White City, but some people call it the Lost City of the Monkey God.'
"Why the lost city?" he asked.
"Because nobody can find it."
"So it doesn't exist."
"Absolutely," I said. An American explorer found it in the twenties, and took pictures. Nobody has the coordinates, and the Mosquito Coast forest is too dense to walk through.
"Technology can take care of that. Fly a plane over it," he said.
"Its been tried. Discovery Channel is looking for it as we speak."
"So it doesn't exist," he said.
"It's well documented in Mayan tradition. But everybody has it wrong. There is only one way to find it."
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