Is it wrong to have fallen for my travel agent? It was love at first sight as they say when I sat down in Student Flights opposite him a few weeks ago as rain poured down outside. I gushed over him as he tried to sell me travel insurance, a diamond stud on his nose, just visable as it glints and gleams in the light as he tilts his head thoughtfully, to the side and back, comparing flight prices and destinations and taxes. The wooden brown-beaded necklace that is suspended amongst his fine sandy chest hair, peeping through his v-neck and open clean white shirt. I drew in his fresh smelling cologne, imagining my fingers moving, exploring through his fine fair chest hair.

However it is as they say "against the bylaws of the International Order of Travel Agents [which I assume he is a member of] to get involved with clients." Yes rules are rules, says Mr Lies.* And besides I think he's straight.

Well forget my sad attempts at flirting with a straight man, my ticket is now confirmed and my leave is approved so goddamn it, I guess I'm going to South America.

****************

Standing here, at Jewel train station, waiting for the 9:05 city loop, late for work again, I stare into the sky: a blue cloudless dome. In the distance I see a lone Qantas bird climb steadily on its way to thirty-thou.

I buckle my safety-belt and look through the plexi-glass and think: who's really leaving whom? Maybe I'm here just sitting still and the city of greater Melbourne falls away below, leaving me and I am hit with a wave of loneliness.

I turn back, fighting off the melancholy for just a while longer. Glad I suppose that something's moving, changing at least and I settle into my economy class seat, letting the g-force take hold, the jet engines roaring outside, waiting for the safety demonstration to begin or an inflight movie to come on. Soon the boosters cut in, not really a standard feature on your average seven-four-seven, and with my insides wrenching back and my face forced into some awful grimace we accelerate towards the forty thousand clicks an hour required to break orbit. My vision shakes and blurs but still I can see out the corner of my eye, blue thinning to black and more diamond studs blinking into existence.

There is a point where earth's gravity will cease to pull me down, with all my earthly problems and my earthly dreams leaving my tired little shoulders but not yet, no. As this baby continues to accelerate like this, the inertia keeps me stuck here, heavier than I was back on earth. After all it takes a lot of energy to escape and be free.

*Angels in America (HBO)