AIRSPACE — Following lifting of mask mandates for air and train travel, passengers across Canada are finally free to reemerge into the sensual garden of pleasures waiting for them on the inside of planes, unencumbered by any mouth or nose covering to ruin the experience.
“The ecstasy is… overwhelming,” passenger Ron Dreft told reporters as he slowly, tenderly removed his mask in preparation for a 5-hour Vancouver-Toronto flight, a shiver of pleasure rippling through his body.
Dreft’s profound excitement is shared by aviation authorities and airlines alike. “We are delighted to announce that passengers can once again partake of the deep and heretofore forbidden thrills of breathing the unfiltered atmosphere of an enclosed aircraft,” government spokesperson Mike Prin spokesperson told reporters.
“The crisp polyurethane foam of the seats. The carnal musk of other travellers’ clothes, seasoned by the many hours of their journeys. And what’s that? A strange, organic scent that may be a fart or may be a mysterious snack someone has brought from home. After so many years’ deprivation, the symphony of sensation is almost overwhelming.”
While many passengers have bitterly resented the “wasted years” they have had to spend not directly breathing airplane air, some felt the deprivation had only served to enhance and deepen the rapturous sweetness of their first maskless flight.
“It’s not just smell. When I took my mask off, each one of my senses was heightened,” passenger Mary Gyrlin told reporters, as she breathlessly recounted a recent flight from Calgary to Moosejaw.
“The throbbing propulsion of the plane engine at 140 decibels. The tense, urgent pressure of a stranger’s seat pressed against your knees. The tantalizing music of a parent so desperate to entertain their child they will play the same episode of Paw Patrol at full volume over and over and over again.The chips you never see in any grocery store, anywhere, but that the plane has, almost as though they don’t exist anywhere but in the sky… Almost as if they can’t.”
“Can you take in these pleasures with a mask on? Perhaps. But a mask, like the wagging finger of a chiding schoolmarm, keeps the wearer from fully surrendering to the limitless tsunami of pleasure that is contemporary air travel. Nothing compares to giving yourself over to its voluptuary thrills… without a tawdry piece of fabric or paper to come between you.”
Passengers have also expressed delight at the opportunity for civil and intellectual exchange that they will be able to enjoy on planes once mask-free.
“Without masks to create an artificial social barrier between them and their seatmates, passengers from all walks of life can talk to each other about whatever they choose,” Prin told reporters. “The weather… their work trip… their family reunion… travel logistics relating to their work trip or their family reunion… it will be a salon of discovery.”
However as joyful as their reunions with un-masked air travel has been, all interviewees assured reporters that nothing could possibly compare to the indescribable carnival of sybaritic enchantment that is breathing bus air at rush hour.
