I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. Honestly, I’m not sure what came over me. I was just sitting there when they announced it, just minding my own business, just being a fun lovin’ lesbian activist, just waiting my turn, like everyone else. Well, not everyone else, but most everyone else.

Look, this blog was supposed to be about my adventures in The Hamptons and how I won over the uptight shop ladies with my quick wit and faux hawk, how I paid $14 for two small swirl frozen yogurts and mostly how badly The Hamptons need lesbians. This was supposed to be a lighthearted blog about money and generosity and lessons learned and emotional growth and spiritually satisfying conversations. This is not that blog. Everything has changed and there’s no turning back.

Before I go any further, can I just tell you how much you mean to me: a lot. And when I think of you, sitting there in your blue jeans and warm smile, it makes me feel like I failed you. Like I failed us. Please, I’m asking for your forgiveness before I go any further. Please. I promise I will never do it again, okay? Yeah? Come over here, give me a hug. Thanks, that felt good. Okay, I’ll tell you, but please don’t share this with anyone we know, okay? Okay.

I’m sitting, waiting for my flight from Phoenix to Seattle where I’m going to work with my director to restage Saving Tania’s Privates for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The $3.60 plastic bottle of water I purchased after making it through security feels like a reward as I tilt back my head and squirt the cool liquid down my throat. My airport-related OCD kicks in as I double-check my man-purse for passport, credit cards, candy, passport, credit cards, candy... I scan the crowd wondering who will be my seatmate. Will it be the man with the camouflage baseball cap and handlebar mustache that can’t stop picking his nose? The man who looks a little bit more animated than a wax figure sitting next to me? The young girl glued to her cell phone moaning loudly, “What a freaking A-hole!” As I size up who I’m going to spend the next two hours and 32 minutes of my life with, the Alaska Airlines intercom switches on, “Good morning, Alaska Airlines customers. For those of you heading to Seattle on flight 87, we’d like to offer you an opportunity to upgrade to first class. We have one seat available and…”

I’m up. I’m walking fast, almost running toward the ticket counter. My right eye catches a man in his 80s walking fast too, heading toward the same ticket counter. I think about ageism in this moment. I think about values. I think about fairness and opportunity. I think about sexism, and that’s when I realize that this old white man doesn’t deserve my seat in first class! My well-oiled joints allow me to run faster than the old guy with the Teflon hip, sliding easily in front of the ticket counter, pulling out my debit card and saying, “I’d like to be upgraded please. That’s T-A-N-I-A K…”

I’ve never flown first class, business class or premium economy. I’ve never been upgraded. I’m always in Group 6 or 8 or 28. I’m the one who sits scrunched in between your estranged mother and my junior high science teacher shutting my eyes in hopes of avoiding conversations about weather, airplane food and grandchildren's accomplishments.

When the flight attendant tells us proletariats that we cannot, under any circumstances, use the bathrooms in the first class cabin, I drink extra water and beeline for the front of the aircraft. I believe in the wise words of Ruby Dee: “Classism and greed are making insignificant all the other kinds of isms.” I believe that first class should be done away with; no more free cocktails or fancy magazines or piping hot cinnamon rolls. Wait. I didn’t know about the cinnamon rolls. Nobody told me about these gooey fat rolls on a glass plate with low-fat yogurt from Japan and bottled water that raises money for breast cancer research just by me drinking it! I am the airlines aristocracy, and I’m loving it!

Here’s how it goes, economy people. I’m gonna tell you what it’s like, not to rub it in your face, but so you will know the secret world of first class. So, the next time someone announces, “We are offering customers an opportunity to upgrade,” you will out-run the elderly gentleman to get a sweet seat in the only cabin acceptable for a woman on the go like yourself: first class.

As we ascend to 10,000 feet, the fasten seatbelt light still on, the first class flight attendants allow us to freely roam about the cabin. We are encouraged to stretch, order a cocktail and make big decisions: Would you like a piping hot cinnamon roll with yogurt or a fresh blueberry muffin with cantaloupe? Once the plane is at cruising altitude of 40,000 feet, that’s when the benefits of rirst class really take off.

On this particular flight, the lead flight attendant, a sexy Dana Delaney look-alike, brings out her guitar and treats to us to an acoustic medley of Le Tigre songs. After the impromptu first class concert, another flight attendant asks if I want a massage. She’s so instant that I say yes, but I really want to take the swimming lessons instead — I’ve never been able to get my breast stroke down, and we have a flight time of 2:32 — but I get the massage, with release, of course. In business class you have to get yourself off manually. Can you believe that?! So uncivilized.

OH, and the best part of first class: No turbulence! Because I’m usually the one in economy with my head stuck in a small white paper bag puking my way through the landing, I am elated to learn that turbulence isn’t even a real thing. That’s right. The airlines just made up all of that air current mumbo-jumbo to keep the prols in line. What really happens is a flight attendant from economy comes into first class and says, “It seems like the economically challenged passengers want more than one ration of peanuts. Do you think that’s fair?” First class shouts, “NO!” “If you think that those econos are being uppity and need to choke on their peanuts, stomp your feet now!” And that’s how turbulence is made.

Really, the only part about flying first class that I’m not too keen on is the smoking. But after I finished my joint, I felt relaxed and thankful for the second massage, with release. I have to go to the bathroom, which is always an exercise in squatting, hovering and hoping for no bumps; but in first class, the flight attendants urinate for you! I’ve never seen anything like the Friendly Skies Funnel. Well, I guess I have in movies when someone’s siphoning gas from a car’s tank with their mouth on a straw.

As the flight comes to an end, my “happy endings” come to a close. I am reminded of how this journey began: just a poor lesbian activist, sitting near Gate 11, waiting for a vessel to transport me from my existence in Arizona, as a low-key freelance writer to the life of a solo performer in Seattle and on to Edinburgh. If nothing else, I have learned that when you have economy expectations, everything feels like first class.