Dulles As Dull Does, Dept.

Here's a Sobsister Tip®: If you're a germophobe, do not hang around the international arrivals area of a large airport for an hour and a half.  Because that's like Mayo Makeup!: Best Bukkake #17 for germs of every description.  As I could not slather myself in Purell like a Channel swimmer in grease, I held my breath for the better part of those 90 minutes and breathed through my skin as the dancing dots before my eyes bulged into topographical spheres.

I stood in said area and watched a number of planes' disease-vectoring human cargo stagger out to meet rushing hugging family; impassive Africans with little white signs bearing passenger names; or no one.  A few observations--

• Qatar Airways hostesses get to wear smart burgundy outfits topped with hats that look like gnocchi.
• Some people vacation with more clothing than I have in my closet, chest of drawers and, possibly, attic.
• French exchange studentesses are invariably cute.  I'm extrapolating from the one I saw being met by her new host family, but I'm pretty confident about my calculations.
• Many women arrive in the United States wearing Sharia-compliant clothing.  Like the cute 20-something whose hijab was perfectly modest, thereby allowing the gaze to slip down to the v. large T-shirted rack popping out of her gown.
• The difference in facial expression between arriving flight crews and tween travellers is like that between a cathouse madam and a honeymoon bride.
• Grandmothers of all nations have the same cheek-pinch reflex, like a primordial muscle memory or a twitch of the collective unconscious.
• If one young woman meets another who's arriving and says, "Oh my God, I totally want to murder you!," they're probably related.
• Lufthansa crews look like Mad Men in the air.  I expect the pilots still playfully swat the stewardess' asses and demand Johnny Walker, rocks, while puffing on Luckys.

So, yes, air travel.  It brings us together: humanity and the microbes.  Were there justice or even intelligent design, we would infect the little bastards with intestinal catarrh or the like.  Instead, we rely on Panthanatos: ethyl alcohol in a 62% solution sweetened by aloe or Vitamin E.  We are America battling imported insurgencies.  From some of the same countries from which these tired and grateful visitors travelled or fled.

Circle of Life! *jazz hands*