Closer to the Sky
Looking back on it now, I’m not entirely sure which part of this story is the strangest. That I asked. Or that they said yes. This was 1998. I was flying out of Gimpo, headed for Thailand, and for reasons that seemed entirely justified at the time, I had decided to upgrade myself to Business Class using Star Alliance miles. This felt like a small personal victory—one of those moments where you convince yourself you’ve figured something out about life. Or at least about airline seating. The aircraft was a Boeing 777, still relatively new then, still carrying that faint aura of the future. As we lifted off over Seoul, I settled into a seat that was wider than anything I had any business occupying, accepted a glass of red wine, and did what anyone in that situation does: I relaxed into the illusion that this was how I traveled all the time. Lunch arrived. It was better than it needed to be. There was more wine. At some point—somewhere between the second or third glass, the exact number no...
