The flight to Colombia leaves JFK around noon and arrives at Bogota Eldorado at five in the evening, Between takeoff and landing, the crew comes through the cabin several times and offers up a cocktail hour followed by a small spoof of a meal. The meal on the flight to Colombia is almost always inedible, star-lighted by the “main course;” almost always some sort of mystery meat shrouded in an unintelligible sauce. There are cat food commercials that present their food better than this.

There are generally two main options in terms of seating on the flight to Colombia: economy, which makes me feel as though, at $600, I’m actually saving money, and first-class which is disturbingly pleasant. I would never opt for a first-class flight to Colombia ticket, but on this one particular occasion, the cabin had been overbooked and the attendant asked if I wouldn’t mind moving up front.

“Well,” I said. “I was really getting settled here, but if you insist.” I had been wedged in between a walrus of a woman (seriously, someone who should have purchased two seats) and a smaller Asian man who I envisioned was traveling to Seoul to visit his family. Via a flight to Colombia of course. While it’s never a matter of choice, choosing to sit in economy class on my flight, I try to convince myself that it’s somehow better for my character that way: a balanced effort of mingling with the peasants of the world. When I got up to accept the first-class invitation, I turned and shrugged to my former neighbors as if to say, someone’s got to do it.

Now en flight to Colombia, I had made myself at home in the oversized seat with complimentary glass of take-off champagne, something I never knew existed in the airline industry, and something that I'd desperately yearn for in the future. I was offered the option of warm nuts or a fresh cookie and noticed immediately why people fly first-class. It’s the adjectives. In economy, you could get nuts, but they weren’t warm. You could ask for a cookie, but they certainly wouldn’t be fresh.

Beside me in first class sat a man in something of a mink fur coat. I would never usually speak to strangers on the plain but, seeing as though we were common bourgeoisie, I decided to compliment him on it. “That’s nice fur,” I said. “It is jackal?”

The man didn’t know what kind of fur it was but introduced himself as Louis and proceeded to tell me how he was wearing it for his spectacular Colombian girlfriend who'd be waiting when the flight landed. “She’s got tits,” he said, “and not just any tits. Giant triple C tits. Boy I love those tits, lemme tell ya.”

Call me naïve, but I never realized the entertainment I’d been missing in first-class. It’s like your own private show. With warm nuts.

“May I have some more warm nuts?” I asked the stewardess in passing, trying not to lose track of Louis’ story about how he met his girlfriend in a strip club and how she didn’t originally want to go out with him but, “a fifty dollar bill did the trick, if you know what I mean.” Louis then whipped out his laptop and proceeded to open the encrypted folders on his desktop, accessing the pictures of his girlfriend in compromising positions. If this wasn’t the luxury and comfort they talk about in riding first-class, I didn’t know what was. They even showed a movie during that flight to Colombia: Rush Hour 2, during which I laughed harder than I ever have before. It’s as if the thin air in the first-class cabin makes you lightheaded.

Our flight to Colombia arrived and I felt like the time had literally flown by. Normally, I’d be just waking up from a coma-like nap to have someone next to me collecting their trash off my lap. I’d be scheming to beat the other inmates to the exit gate and shouldering off people from the overhead bin. But up front, things were somehow more civilized. There was no shoving or scheming or cleaning or coaxing. Our row exited the plane, Louis in deep explanation about how to decipher working girls from normal ones, as I contemplated first-class for my return trip home.