Coffee, Tea or Me? (19 page)

Occasionally, we receive a complaint from a male passenger who claims another man is making propositions to him. In these cases, we try to switch his seat. When that isn’t possible, we ask him to grin and bear it, a difficult request to make of any virile man. It’s bad enough for a girl to be stuck next to a guy who makes unwelcome advances, but it must awful for a man to be annoyed by a member of his own sex.

We can see only one solution. We advocate the offering of half-fare tickets to all homosexuals. Why not? They give reduced fares to everyone else. By doing it for homosexuals, we could at least pinpoint them and assign seats accordingly. Of course, this would bring up the problem of whether to seat them together and put up with a nonstop flight of male hanky-panky, or intermingle them with normal passengers and suffer the consequences. Either way, we know there’d be trouble. But you have to admit a half-fare for perverts is an interesting concept, no matter what its pitfalls.

“Please take your hands off me . . . I said
stop it!
I’ll punch you . . . I really will . . . Don’t do that . . .
Watch it!”

Was this Rachel in the backseat with a boyfriend? Me in the backseat with my Braille-reading buddy?

No.

It’s what you might have heard had you eavesdropped on the two occasions when Rachel and I were confronted with lesbians.

Sure, we’ve had those women who come aboard, their hair done up in a butch haircut, wearing no makeup, and dressed like any normal, virile man. But they’re no problem. You know who they are and therein lies the safety factor. The same goes for the asexual type. They are, according to what we’ve read and observed, above sex of any kind. Obviously, they pose no problem to anyone.

It’s the seemingly feminine, pretty, sexy girl who really throws you when she pinches your leg or makes a habit of pressing too close when there’s room to avoid contact.

My particular confrontation was with an Olympic swimmer. I met her at a party while living in the stew zoo. It was a good party in that it attracted many people from outside the airline business. We get tired of talking airplanes all the time.

Gretchen was a lovely girl. She’d competed in the Olympics, was currently a swimming instructor, and was constantly surrounded by men at the party. All that swimming had given her a lean but muscular body, her shoulders larger than most girls. She had a radiant smile and short but carefully styled blonde hair. You couldn’t help like her, man or woman.

She seemed to be enjoying and inviting all the male attention that was directed at her. There she stood, a drink in her hand, smiling broadly, as each guy tried harder than the other to impress her. Toward the end of the party I was in the kitchen with a few people when Gretchen came in for a drink refill. The others left the kitchen soon after she arrived.

“It must have been fun traveling to the Olympics,” I said as she prepared her drink. “I’d love to hear more about it.”

“Yes, it was fun,” she said without looking up. “It was a marvelous experience. Do you live in this building?”

“Sure do. I call the stew zoo home.”

“When do you fly again?”

“Tomorrow. A noon flight. I’m going out tonight after the party to stay with some friends in Rego Park. It’s close to the airport. Besides, I always enjoy getting out of the stew zoo for a night.”

She looked at me and flashed a broad smile. “It doesn’t seem so bad here. Lots of friends with common interests and all that. Say, I live in Huntington. That’s on the Island. I have my car in town. I’ll be happy to drive you out after the party and drop you off in Rego Park. I take the expressway anyway.”

“You’d still have to go out of your way.”

“So what? I’d love to drive you. Count on it, OK?”

“Gee, that’s fine. Thanks. Anytime you want to go.”

“We’ll stay another hour if that’s all right with you.”

“Perfect.”

We left the party together and climbed into her Mustang. We were at the Midtown Tunnel in no time and, once through it, Gretchen pushed the car to about sixty-five. Long John Nebel was on the radio, and we laughed at the debate he was having with someone over whether Catholic priests should be allowed to marry.

“I don’t think anyone should be allowed to marry,” was Gretchen’s remark, a throaty chuckle punctuating the comment.

“Why not?” I asked, laughing with her.

“It all seems so silly, really, I guess I’m just a little drunk.”

She pulled off the expressway at the Rego Park exit and followed my directions. It was a gloomy night, and a few drops of rain began to pock the windshield.

We were proceeding down a dark street when she pulled to the curb, cut the engine and the car’s lights.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. I assumed something wrong with the car had prompted her action.

“Nothing, Trudy,” she answered. She sat passively behind the wheel and watched the raindrops as they ran together into tiny rivulets on the glass.

“Don’t you feel well?” I asked. I didn’t sense anything to be afraid of, and was expressing normal concern.

“No, I guess I don’t feel well.” With that, she reached over and took my hand from my lap. “Would you understand?”

“Understand what?” I still didn’t get what was happening.

“Understand someone who looks at things differently from you. I am different, Trudy.” She slid across the seat, neatly sliding over the console. Then she kissed me on my cheek, letting go of my hand as she did and letting it drop back into my lap. Her free hand clamped on my breast.

Now I knew what was going on. I always feel a little silly in retrospect admitting my slowness in the situation. But once I knew, I acted quickly. I jumped out of the car and stood there in the rain.

“I’m sorry, Trudy. I’m sorry,” Gretchen pleaded out the open door. “I’m sorry. Please get in. I’ll drive you to your friend’s house.”

“You seemed so, so normal—” I stuttered at her.

I walked away from the car. Fortunately, Gretchen pursued me long enough to hand me my overnight case through the window.

The last thing she said was, “I’m sorry, Trudy. Really sorry. Please don’t tell anyone.”

I didn’t answer. Long John’s voice could be heard through the open window saying. “I don’t care what a man is. If he’s got needs, he’s got ’em, collar or no collar.” With those apropos words, she drove off. I’ve never seen her again.

 

Rachel’s run-in with a lesbian was more bizarre than mine. Rachel always does things on a big scale. She infiltrated a whole den of them quite innocently.

She’d become friendly with a department store buyer on a flight from New York to Salt Lake City. The buyer, a stunning woman, invited Rachel to visit her in New York. A few weeks later Rachel received an invitation to a dinner party.

At the party were five others, including the hostess. There were two men, or, as Rachel put it, “sort of men.” The other two guests were both women, “sort of women,” in Rachel’s words.

After dinner, during which all of New York’s artists, writers, and politicians were analyzed in terms of their phallic symbolism—a train of conversation Rachel simply accepted as sophisticated—everyone retired to the living room.

An hour later, the hostess asked for silence, opened a desk drawer, and brought out a large, gray envelope. She took from it what appeared to be photographs, and without a word handed the pictures to Rachel.

There were seven, eight-by-ten pictures, each showing the hostess and the other girls in the dinner party in various poses of lovemaking. Everyone giggled as Rachel perused the file. Anyone else, as shocked as Rachel was, would have quit with the first one. But that’s Rachel. Her philosophy dictates that once something bad has begun, you might as well take it all in before you react. She studied each picture, aware of the eyes intently studying her face for signs of a favorable reaction. After looking at all seven she put the photographs down and turned to the hostess.

“I have to leave, now,” she announced flatly, “I have a lover who gets very mad when I’m late. She really gets violent.”

Rachel took her coat from the closet and walked out of the apartment. Once outside she pressed her ear to the door. Inside, someone was saying, “She
is
one of us. Let’s invite her again.”

The hostess could be heard replying, “Don’t be an ass. She made fun of us. I hate her.”

“I hope she gets pregnant,” one of the gay fellows threw in. They all giggled and Rachel walked away.

Passengers come in all styles and types. But as long as they buckle their seat belts, observe the No Smoking sign, and don’t pinch us as we pass, we couldn’t care less.

No matter how long a stewardess works at her job, she never becomes too jaded to feel a little twinge of excitement when a celebrity comes aboard. Meeting celebrities was something we all expected would happen when we decided to fly for a living. And we’ve met them, all in the confines of an airplane where there’s no makeup, scriptwriter, or out-of-focus photography to cover the blemishes, both physical and personal.

Taken as a group, celebrities are usually more difficult to handle than normal, everyday passengers. Their lives are lived in expectation of attention. Why not? They usually receive the attention they look for.

Naturally, we have favorite celebrities with whom we fly. These are some of them.

 

Arthur Godfrey
—A charming man, and one who knows as much about flying as the captain up front.

Henry Fonda
—As easy to get along with as pie. Married to a former stewardess, which might provide additional understanding.

Al Hirt
—Loads of fun and will even take out his horn and play a few notes if you’ve served him a few times before. He once ran that whole jam session for us on a flight.

Bob Hope
—Funny, considerate, and easily pleased. “Why aren’t you in pictures?” he asks the stew every time she goes by.

Van Cliburn
—A very quiet gentleman.

Lee Marvin
—One of the most regular-guy celebrities we’ve served.

Eddy Arnold
—Never fails to thank us and tell us how nicely we did our job. Drinks the airline dry on every flight, but never anything stronger than milk.

Robert Kennedy
—Nothing political in our praise. Good sense of humor and will ask for a direct line to the White House.

Jack Jones
—Very nice, and a good cardplayer.

Ford
&
Hines
—Nutty but nice. Gave a friend of ours a trip into New York City from JFK in their black limo.

Joan Rivers
—Her routines about flying are favorites of the stewardess corps. We tried not to steal anything from her for this book. She can steal anything she’d like.

Duke Ellington
—“We love you madly,” Your Highness. We go to see and hear him play in cities all over the country. We always give him first-class service.

Phil Harris
—Just makes us feel good.

Jack Sterling
—A most amazing man when you think of his getting up that early for so many years and still being pleasant.

Skitch Henderson
—A good pilot himself. His giggle can perk up many a dull trip.

Chet Huntley
—Doesn’t frown as much on an airplane as he does on TV. Delightful man. No matter how busy he is always takes time to tell the stewardess it was a great flight.

Mike Douglas
—Never really feels secure when flying but covers it up pretty well. We’ve never met a star who’s more sincere and easygoing.

George Hamilton
—Sits quietly in his seat and says Thank You for everything. Always a pleasure to have on board.

Jonathan Winters
—So funny . . . he’s in character for every mile of the flight. Once did for us his episode about the oldest airline stew in the world. He hobbles down the aisle, talking about the days of the Wright Brothers when he was first a stew and complains that the jet age has knocked him out. It’s hard for him to compete with the beautiful twenty-year-old stews on the new jets. We break up every time we hear him.