A warning is something that we must all be aware of in order to live, sometimes. A fare warning is not always given in different circumstances. Being able to detect when something will happen is a skill any human can detect when having the correct experience in a certain condition, or matter at hand. Our brain knows when to alert our senses to not complete an action and place us in harms way, or to let us know there is a a sensation and to proceed our movement towards what is generating such a great vibe. We have this same feeling when we are also talking to a significant other, or a new person you have never seen, or met, before. It is there to let us know what we should speak about to someone, and it also lets us know when we should refrain from saying something that may hurt someone else. In the story “The Girl on the Plane”, we are able to pull a few concepts from the reading and text. This is a very difficult text to break done and pull a meaning from, meaning, the story itself. In the story you can see a great amount of loss vining off, and reflecting through, the memories of the main character in the short story. John Morton is also able to present another concept that I am able to pull from the short story and that is his security, or for by any other way we lose our security and our foundation while in a conversation with someone. 

Losing anything is a tough feeling to bear by any remotely single individual. We have all encountered some kind of loss in all our lives. These losses that we encounter can have permanent affects on how we live, and how we perceive future understanding. “Whether you are divorcing or just breaking up with a partner, separating is a unique moment in time that can alter the rest of your life or theirs.” ( Lowrance) How you react is the biggest problem that a lot people face as they grow older and understand the meaning behind what has really happened is being able to move on after they have had an emotional turmoil with in their selves. How you continue to live your life is what makes the difference between what you left behind or had walk away from is a key life changer. I say all of this due to the evidence that I have researched and how John Morton had acted in the story and through out “The Girl on the Plane”. In the story we go through a lot of flash backs of John Morton. Mary Gaitskill really liked to met with John Morton’s head and have him go back in forth between the present real world, and his fantasies, and memories, and day dreams. Through out the short story John Morton would have flash backs of a lot of his previous relationships, whether they were in high school or in college. Every single loss of a girlfriend, which are now his long lost ex’s are having a very significant impact in his life all in this one moment of the story were he must speak to a girl next to him on a plane. The girl next to him on the plane does not have a clue about John Morton’s path and neither had to know, or much less even cared to know about everything John Morton has gone through to reach the moment in time to encounter her presence. We did not know a lot about John Morton starting off the story, so Mary Gaitskill did a fantastic job on keeping us in the dark and letting us get to know John Morton just the same as the Girl on the plane did. Starting at the beginning of the story we didn’t know John Morton had been through hell and back with his previous relationships and his many encounters with sex with these previous girl friends, and even weirder to say, and his friends. Sex had been a big topic that was brought up very often in the day dreams, or memories of his. When you have sex with someone, that memory is always burned into your mind and you can not get rid of it, and every time you think about doing it again or think of sex at all you will always think of the previous encounter you had, and Mary Gaitskill did this the same way with John Morton and when he was talking to the Girl. He would always flash back to an old girl that meant a lot to him. Through out the story John would be engaging in a conversation with the Girl on the plane, whose name was, Lorraine. Lorraine and He would carry on in conversation and as soon as something was brought up or mentioned about  a female of his or about his past relationships it would shoot straight to a flash back of a previous encounter he had had with his ex girlfriend, or ex girlfriends.

Each girl had something significantly different about them. Each one of  the girls that John Morton had dated had a much different back story than the the rest did. This mean Mary Gaitskill took the time into forming each ex to be a big part of John’s life. It really adds deeper meaning to the whole concept of losing something. The story had opened the reader to knowing that John Morton was indeed married to a wife at the beginning of the story when the story mentioned that he had remember something that his wife had read in a magazine before about his tardiness of getting on planes could lead to depression and it could mean that someone really does not care about their job. This all leads into how he treats the girl that got on the plane next to him, an dyes I just said her name but I will say it again in case you need to reference which girl i am currently talking about, and it is the official girl that is on the plane with, and next to him, in the middle isle, her name is Lorraine. The first girl in his loss for memories, and his loss for love in the the world is going out to his first girlfriend Andrea, whom he met in college. All of his girlfriends are just being brought up because The girl next to him, Lorraine, is always questioning to him that is bringing up his past with the girlfriends and everything she brings up is weird to him. The things she brings up in the the story are things that are indeed relevant to the story. They just don't exactly make sense to the reader in the first place the Mary Gaitskill introduces her type of short story to the readers. Mary Gaitskill uses this strategy of losing something in John Morton and it is very smart in the way that she did it. The story would continue to go on and she would soon have lorraine tell the reader finally what it is she does and where she comes from, and describes a little more of her own personal background. This is definitely a good thing to do as all the girls will come into play and tell us a little more about John each time something pops into his head. Continuing on the concept of loss in the story we soon see that John is soon communicating with Lorraine in more depth and she tells the readers and John a a little more about herself with each question John forces upon her. I say he forced upon her because a lot of the questions he asks here are not the most pleasant and they could have been deemed not very formal in a conversation. I think this is very valuable information because even though he is only asking questions he is also thinking about if she is single and if she is married and a lot of other great things that are soon to be coming up in the story. There is one girl in particular that is soon to always popping up throughout the whole story. This girl is the closest person John Morton has ever had besides with his wife. It is quite wonderful to think about how this has all come to be and this has really shaped John Morton more as a person that it probably really should have. This just backs me up on more things that allow me to say that I can prove that the past can significantly change how a human can move onward in life and expose the inner things that truly turmoil us deep down in the inter rims of our existence. The story continues on and a single girl is coming to John Morton’s mind a lot more than any other. That girl would happen to be one of his closest friends in college, Patty LaForge. This girl, Patty LaForge, has a very strong grip over John Morton’s life and it is the difference between him getting his life up to speed and not have hot flashes of what it is that every girl, or this girl specifically on the plane reminds him of Patty so much. He is away going back to the times that he had with her the most. Well this really opens up John Morton to the readers and to the girl sitting next to him on the plane and goes and says some things that should be an alarming warning. 

Your body is an amazing instrument that is used to help us function in life to the fullest of our ability. It comes with pleasure senses which John Morton soon tells the readers and Lorraine which gets him into a big mess. It also is setup in the human brain system to help us know when something wrong or bad is about to happen. We also have a storage compartment in our brain that processes unbelievable amounts of data, and these can be filled with pointless things we do not have to know or it can filled with very important information about yourself that should probably be kept under lock and key. “A study in Science in May bolsters the claim that awareness emerges when information travels back and forth between brain areas rather than from ascending a linear chain of command.” (Peck)  This is the information that is crucial to keep only to yourself unless you really, really, trust someone or whom you absolutely love that will still like you after you tell this part about you to them. The girl on the plane is something that should have produced a warning in the human brain system to not tell her. The thing he told her was that he was an alcoholic which is not that bad compared to what he says later. John Morton shows us a great way of letting your guard down to easily. You have to hold the important things about you inside. If you notice the way John Morton talk to Lorraine he seems very open when he says everything that he does and it must mean that Mary Gaitskill is trying to let us know that he does feel very comfortable because this girl reminds him so much of his ex’s that it makes him feel in a secure safe zone with her. The facts that we pull from his memories of other girls shows how he will be with Lorraine if it reminds him of Patty and this makes  him open up her to very well and easily unfortunately. Doing this allows her to see what kind of a man he truly is and to show that he is not afraid also to tell anyone that he is an alcoholic as well which is very defining of someone. This is very bold by Mary Gaitskill because she is trying to help others in the world to also realize that it is possible to open to other only if you feel comfortable. Do not go around saying things that are very deep and personal about you. This is no the way to go with it. We all have things about ourselves that we feel very insecure about. Being concerned about your own status and how people look at you is also not a bad thing. You are trying to fit in, when in fact we do not fit in at all. Nobody is close to what they want to be and they are nowhere close to what we can potentially reach in our lives. It is catastrophic what someone can also do to another if the security network to their life is destroyed. John Morton did something, in this case said something, that completely killed his chances to talk to Lorraine or make it possible to get to know anyone if he told anybody this deep secret that he has, and the problem is he told a random woman on a plane next to him this. John Morton apparently was arrested for raping his best friend Patty LaForge, and he wasn’t the only one. John Morton confesses for no reason to Lorraine that he is an alcoholic, or was one. "How come you told me that about yourself? It seems kind of personal." He attached his gaze to hers as he said this; sometimes women said personal things to you as a way of coming on.” (Gaitskill) In the story Mary Gaitskill tells us about John Morton’s past and memorial moments that he had held with Patty. They were at a party and he wasn’t too drunk and he saw Patty there as well. She stumbles over and confesses to him while she is drunk that she wants to have sex with him. John refuses and soon after she ends up heading into a room. The room is full of other guys and this is considered a gang rape. John saw that she was too drunk to probably do anything, but he joined with the other guys and continued to have sex with her just like everyone else did. John Morton really like Patty LaForge and having sex with her at the time was not bad and he deemed it reasonable to do at the time. Well, John was very wrong for what he did. He was arrested, and when he was arrested was charged with rape.  This has to stick with him and is not exactly something you have to tell anyone, or much less want to tell anyone you do not know. John Morton with no hesitation as the plane had landed proceeded to tell the girl on the plane next to him, Lorraine, that he had raped a girl before. "If you want to talk about mistakes-shit, I raped somebody. Somebody I liked."Their gaze met in a conflagration of reaction. She was so close he could smell her sweating, but at the speed of light she was falling away, deep into herself where he couldn't follow. She was struggling to free her hand.” (Gaitskill) John tried to clear up exactly what he had just said to her, and he did a very poor job of this. This completely scares away Lorraine and she scurries off the plane and is very disgusted with what just happened, and how the conversations went on the plane ride. Everything she knew about John Morton went out the door and all she could focus on was that he had raped a girl. This is very tragic, but the part of mind that is suppose to tell you this is not fit to be did not kick in to help John Morton out. We are to help open up our securities and become a little more vulnerable, but to the extent that we will always ruin our own individual self image. This is just tragic on how the short story ended. 

The short story of, “The Girl on the Plane”, is a very good source of how our losses in the past can greatly impact our future. You should be aware of your surroundings and understand the situations that you are placed in to know what you should say and tell others about you. You must know the balance between sharing things with others about your self and knowing what is good information to tell others that do not know you about your self. Look at what you have you done and what have lost and look to make sure his doesn't have a major impact on how you live your life. I know your personal boundary that way you are not always open and free to everyone. This was a short story about someone opening up too much and blowing there own securities and going a little too far. We are not be like this and be careful of how much we really open to others that do not know us. 
