It's in the way I look at things.
Dan jumped before I did, and right by the gaping, sucking maw of the open door as I was, I saw how fast he dropped away from the plane.
This is where most people get stuck.
I was too excited, too full of the fact that I've got 8000 feet to steady myself before I have to pull the ripcord.
Seeing Dan disappear only made absolutely certain that I was going to be displacing that very air myself, soon. Finally. After the delay because two of our party were missing, after the delay because the sky was too cloudy for the plane to take off, after the delay of somebody not understanding the briefing and having to go over it again.
No more delays.
I crawled my way into position, kneeling on the thoughtfully padded aforementioned gaping hole in the plane, threw my head back like they'd said, thrust out my belly, let go of the door, crossed my arms, and fell forward.
Out of the plane.
And tumbled, with all the inertia and momentum of the pennies we used to hurl off the roofs of high-rises.
Not the slow ultra-aware floating stuff of dreams and movie sequences - when I sucked in my stomach to flip over and realized how far the plane had suddenly become, then archd my back and stuck my belly back out and realized how much closer the fields below were...
I was very aware of falling.
Delightfully aware, that I was falling.
None of that flying stuff I'd been expecting, and I'm all the more thrilled with the discovery - thousands of years of instinct and conditioning and the fear of falling being the Last Ingrained Reflex, and there I was, concentrating on that one thing - for fifty glorious seconds.
In fifty seconds, I fell 8000 feet, and watched it all happen, plastic goggles pressed up to my face, exuberant screams lost in the rush of wind.
I was the potted petunia/whale in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, discovering wind for the first time.
I was prehistoric man, glorying in the what was supposed to be terror.
I was genuinely, unadulteradedly, unable to be anything but - thrilled.
Then the ripcord went, the guage dangerously close to 4000 feet, a shock to the harness snug at my crotch and bang.
I'm floating.
Arms stretched as far as they go to hang onto the guide-cords, a tug to the left, bank the chute, a tug to the right, bank again, everything's working and... WHOooSH, pull the left handle all the way down to my hip and the chute starts to spiral - in the briefing the instructor mentioned that people with strong stomachs can handle one, maybe two turns, three if you're made of iron.
The resulting spiral was predictable, Dan was taking bets on it.
Fours turns, the chute spinning so wildly it was nearly below me, mybody perfectly horizontal with the air.
After four, it gets dangerous, if you get tangled in your chute, the only way out is to snap your neck, so we reluctantly release the left guide-handle, and yanked down HARD on the right one.
More spiralling.
More, more more....
Until we were low enough to the ground for my coworkers to hear my exulted whooping, and to answer me with their own screams of encouragement.
To land is to experience the great human disappointment of all that is great and good coming to an end - however temporarily until you can start again - but collapsing in the grass, arms outstretched to pull the last dregs of adrenaline just a little closer...
... was the most frightening of all.
That's when realization hit. The last 20-odd hours, I hadn't slept, I had gone through the usual motions of going out to dinner, a movie, everything, with "ONE MINUTE OF FREE FALL" as the ultimate reward behind every move.
By the time it came to drive up to the skydiving school, I was a bundle of ecstatic nerves, a combination reminiscent of pure MDMA, only better.
Then bang, the shock I should have felt at seeing Dan plummet away from me, the blood-stilling terror at what I was about to do, it all hit afterwards.
I just plummeted 8000 feet. I felt every second of the fall. I played games with my parachute, I sped myself towards the ground, I embraced gravity in all seriousness... (pun intended)
Climbing the 54 steps up to my appartment, I was God. Racing inside to find my roommate at the computer, I was in possession of Ultimate Power, and completely at a loss for anything to do.
I watched the Breakfast Club, the movie that has withstood over a hundred viewings without losing face, except this time where it was petty and flat.
I ordered pizza, looked at the usually-delightful goo, and closed the box again. I lay back on my bed and felt the world spin... And couldn't lie still.
I tried masturbating, I tried taking a bath, I tried reading - but nothing could budge from the forefront of my mind that sensation of FALLING.
Not floating, like Dan, or Patrick, or Greg said.
Falling. Falling thousands of feet.
On purpose.
I want to fall again, there's no time left this season, but next summer... I'm getting my certification.
Because somersaults in the air are so much more difficult than on gymnasium mats, and because...
I don't want to fly. Flying is for the disatisfied.
I want to fall.