[Taylor514ce]

Chicago, O'Hare, Gate K11

50-something biker wanna-be with his new leather jacket, expensively faux-aged, "I wasn't there but I still care" patch sewn onto the sleeve. He dreams romanticized "Apocalypse Now" fantasies while at his 9-to-5 desk job. Life revolves around planning his next road trip to a biker rally, where he can buy shots for vets and ogle the tattooed flesh of biker girls.

The magazine-cover gorgeous 20-something, trailing designer luggage, perfume, and the hungry gazes of businessmen behind her like an entourage.

A herd of teen model hopefuls and their hovering parents, on their way to New York for their big shot, casting mock-friendly smiles while they size each other up, carefully cataloging each minor flaw in the other. They don't realize that none of them have a chance, that every 15-year old girl is pretty, so that all their primping and styling serves only to make them blend into the homogenized background. None notice the one true beauty at the gate, the middle-aged woman, a touch of silver at the temples, glasses perched on her nose, a slightly askew smile as she reads something wonderful, the heart-stopping way she dangles her shoe on her gently rocking toes. No practiced posture can match the effortless elegance of that unconscious gesture.

The couple at the bar. They've been together too long, and have settled into a boredom so complete it is nearly Zen-like in its purity. It's a black hole, and any topic tossed into it disappears without a trace. They are jaded, on their way somewhere in the vain hope that the newness of it will break through the event horizon. Even my smile, cast their way, is twisted and fractured and reflected back at me in duplex as an irritated, suspicious frown.

A row of frat boys, tight shirts, plaid shorts, open mouths, heads bobbing to their iPods, looking uncomfortable, out of place without a halo of empty PBR cans and a troupe of tramp-stamped girlfriends.