Confessions of a Hostie (2 page)

Some crew, but not all crew, have what I have heard described as ‘Goodyear relationships': it is all over as soon as the plane's tires have touched down on the ground back home. What goes on tour stays on tour, as they say.

I usually try to avoid going out with a fellow flyer. I did have a fling with one colleague some years ago. We tried to keep it a secret, but no one really cared, except for me.

I am surely not like Mary, but I am not a prude either.

I just like to be a little more discreet. Also, I like to stick to my principles – at least, most of the time.

But I can understand why crew members are drawn to together. Someone who spends all his or her time flying around the world requires a very special and understanding spouse. Not everyone can handle their partner, boyfriend or girlfriend being away so often. Moreover, not everyone can handle a partner who returns home jetlagged or tired or sick or just wanting to be left alone.

When you are seeing someone who doesn't fly, it can be a difficult thing, asking them to respect your wishes of being a post-trip hermit. When you arrive home you want to say, ‘Hi honey, I have missed you. Now get the hell away from me.' After all, the task of being all smiles and seeming like the epitome of hospitality elegance for fifteen hours at a stretch on an aircraft will wear anyone out. The last thing you would want to do when you get home is to pretend to be Miss Congeniality. In fact, I usually wrap myself in a (security) blanket for twenty-four hours when I get off work: during this time, I see no one and talk to no one. I barely have the desire or energy to have a monologue with myself, let alone a dialogue with someone else.

Mike and Mary can share their post-work tiredness with each other, I think to myself. They can share their grief, share their built-up aggression and, finally, share their hatred. They are doomed, of course.

As Mary tells me about how she and Mike have their next trip together, and as she describes it to sound so romantic, I wrestle to push down the cynicism building up inside me. And although I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their relationship is a train wreck about to happen, I smile. I give her only replies of support and cheer.

‘You look so happy', I say.

‘You are so lucky.'

‘I'm so happy for you.'

As I walk away from the restaurant and a gushing Mary, I know it's almost time. I have to get ready for work now. I have to put on my uniform and then paste on my fake smile.

India, here I come.

I'd be wanting

The flight is full, full and full. We have just handed out our 747th special vegetarian meal, and my patience is beyond shot: it is shot, buried and already has its headstone covered in overgrowth.

I feel a tug on my uniform. I have felt hundreds of tugs on my uniform. Most tugs, I simply ignore; some tugs, I manage to pull away from, sufficiently enough to break their grip; a few tugs, however, I cannot shake off no matter how hard I try, for they hang on for their dear life.

‘I'd be wanting another Scotch.' The tug grows more impatient.

I try really hard to not give in to the temptation to grab this man by the scruff of his neck and scream, ‘I'd be wanting to take your fingers, which are so rudely pulling at the seams of my dress, and place them on a George Foreman grill!'

I grimace, and then flash him a half-smile, displaying acting skills that should win me an Academy Award, or at the least a nomination. I tell him I will bring him a Scotch soon. I have not even finished my sentence when another tug interrupts me. ‘I'd be wanting …' another man yells.

By the end of it, I have promised to serve passengers twenty-four Scotches, fifteen wines, twelve packets of peanuts and a partridge in a pear tree. I hide in the galley, take a deep breath and make myself a cup of tea.

I just can't go back out there. Not now. Not yet.

As I sip my tea and contemplate the horror of stepping back into those fires of hell, the unthinkable occurs: I get my period.

I am not due for several more days, but this job messes with every possible body function. I am not even sure I know what my actual menstrual cycle is anymore – or if I even have a menstrual cycle anymore. What I do know is I need to get to a bathroom. Now.

It feels as if Mohammed Ali and Joe Frazier are fighting inside my stomach, using my uterus as a punching bag. As I sprint to that elusive available toilet, several hands reach out to block my path and to grab my uniform, but I dodge them all with the precision of a professional footballer. One hand almost grabs my arm, but I roll my wrists and follow up with a karate chop that would have made Bruce Lee proud. Ahead of me, a large man is standing in the aisle and although the laws of physics might dictate it impossible for me to pass him, I contort my body around him, passing him without breaking stride. A steely look in my eyes, I make it to the toilet area.

Thank God! There is a toilet free here. I push open the toilet door with the urgency of a fireman.

‘Stay dry. Stay confident' claim a popular tampon brand. I'm now dry, yes. But confident? The only thing I am confident about is that the next six hours are going to be the longest of my life.

Flying at 35,000 feet, cramping and sleep-deprived, with craters on my face from falling asleep on peanuts, I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus. Don't kill someone, don't kill someone, I keep repeating to myself.

I was sure that jails and detention centres around the world were full of women that suffered from severe menstrual pain, lack of sleep and jetlag.

God help the next passenger who gets on my wrong side.

As I slink back toward the galley, someone grabs me by the arm. ‘I'd be wanting some potato crisps.'

‘Don't kill him, don't kill him,' I tell myself again, although I am ready to scratch out his eyes and force them down his own throat.

He lets go of my arm.

I take a deep breath and reply, ‘We don't have crisps, only peanuts.'

He doesn't give up. ‘Do you have crackers?'

‘No. Peanuts,' I repeat myself. I'm convinced that he is the subject of some sort of experiment for Artificial Stupidity.

‘Cashews? Do you have cashews?' he persists.

‘No. Peanuts!'

‘Are they roasted?'

At this point I could do one of two things. I could attack this man with a verbal machete, and risk losing my job, or I could do the smart thing and get even with him.

‘Of course, we have roasted peanuts. I'll roast you a fresh batch now. It might take a while though.'

He nods, smiling. I go back to the galley, fill a foil tray with peanuts and then place them in the oven: I roast the nuts on high. Only when I am sure that they have been burnt to a crisp do I take them out of the oven.

When I serve the piping hot peanuts to the man, he immediately attempts to grab a few nuts eagerly, only to immediately drop them back, his fingers burnt. I walk away with a satisfied grin on my face.

I hide myself in the galley again, but only moments later find the same passenger standing before me; he has opened the curtains to the galley and is looking inside, at me. ‘Oh God, what does he want now,' I groan to myself.

However, he takes my hand in his own and shakes it, repeatedly.

‘Those are the nicest peanuts I have ever had.'

I feel terrible. All the poor man had wanted was a little attention, and all I had done was screw with him.

I sit down in the galley with the curtains closed and have an attack of hormone-induced cry.

curry in a hurry

It is now called Mumbai, but most locals still call it Bombay. I must say that I love India. It is a fascinating place; however, as crew, we don't really have enough time or the energy to leave the confines of the city areas. On my first five or six trips to Mumbai, I was the definitive tourist there and did everything a tourist would most surely do, from seeing where Gandhi had lived to treating myself to high tea at Taj Mahal Hotel. Later, in 2009, that same magnificent hotel would become a shooting gallery for radical extremists. Luckily none of our crew was there at the time, although the terrorist attack did open our eyes to some of the dangers that lay out there. Most of the countries I fly to are caught in some sort of political or social turmoil: some of them have the usual security issues that can be negotiated with a little common sense, while some countries are just downright dangerous. Such incidents made me realise that we do not live in a perfect world.

Such incidents also made me realise that I had a knack for escaping trouble.

In 2002, I was in Bali only a week before the bombings there. I was in Jakarta in 2004, only a day before a bomb had ripped through the foyer of the nearby Marriott hotel. In 2005, while I had been on my way to London, the tube bombings had occurred in the city. During another one of my trips to Mumbai, in 2006, a series of bombs had gone off on local trains, killing hundreds. This had happened only hours before we had arrived there, and our crew had been instructed by our company's security to not leave the hotel. I had left Narita only an hour or so before the catastrophic earthquake of 2011. I've just narrowly missed riots in Bangkok on two occasions and became stuck there during major flooding. I have also been in other cities badly affected by monsoons, typhoons, cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes. I saw massive destruction caused by a series of twisters in and around the Dallas area, Texas. Our hotel in Brisbane, Australia, was once inundated by flood waters while I was there, as were hotels in Manila, Bangkok, as well as Mumbai. And I was in New York only days before 9-11; I had then flown back into the city on one of the first flights that had been allowed in.

I rarely leave the hotel room these days when I travel to cities like Mumbai. Apart from the safety issues, there's another reason for this: I have had horrible gastro-experiences in India.

Before taking this job I could never have imagined the amount of strain my poor bowels would have to endure. Flight attendants talk to each other about things that I am sure no one else would ever discuss with their work colleagues. We freely discuss our toilet habits and about the ill-effects of a hostile vindaloo. I've suffered food-related bugs that I didn't even know existed. The worst of these was giardia – it basically stripped out my insides and made me feel like I wanted to die.

I now carry around my own pharmaceutical dispensary. I have tablets for diarrhoea, and I also have tablets for constipation – I have never needed the latter in India. I've made sure that I will never eat food off a Bombay street vendor's cart ever again, but rather stick to the dining room of my hotel. My decision to stay in the confines of five-star luxury really doesn't need justifying after all: the hotel has clean kitchens, outstanding food, comfortable beds, a magnificent pool and drinkable coffee. What more do I need?

Ironically, poor countries like India have the grandest hotels. In fact, I have found that the poorer the country, the better its hotels. In Mumbai, the magnificent hotel I usually stay in is surrounded by slums. Every time I order a gin and tonic there, I know the drink costs as much as what it would take to feed a whole family in the slum. For a month.

Well, I can't cure all the world's problems, can I? I am just being saucy, of course. Flight attendants are some of the most generous people I know. The involvement by some crew in fund-raising and charity work is outstanding.

One of the better things about travelling and seeing so much is that it gives you perspective, a chance to see the bigger picture. Not everyone who travels opens their eyes wide enough to see that bigger picture, but the opportunities are certainly there. As I lie by the hotel's pool, contemplating the world, contemplating my life, I can't help but realise that my period cramps, jetlag and lack of sleep are all inconsequential in the larger order of things.

However, along with the bigger perspective, travelling can also give you a bigger sense of denial.

So, I deny all the trouble and chaos I see around me. And I simply order another gin and tonic.

sometimes the greatest experiences are giving something back

‘I bet you have had some great experiences on your job,' people usually tell me. And then they ask about the greatest and most memorable experience I've had.

They probably expect me to talk about the great places I've travelled to – perhaps the Great Wall of China, or the Great Lakes of Northern America, or the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

However, the greatest impression left on me during my flying career was my trip to New York, only six days after 9-11. As we travelled on the crew bus toward Manhattan, the sun was setting behind the island. There was not a cloud to be seen in the sky. It should have been a beautiful sight, but it was not. The familiar shapes of the World Trade towers were missing from the city's skyline. There was only smoke where the twin towers had stood. When we had arrived at our hotel, just around the corner from Times Square, you could tell that things were different. Gone were the friendly smiles of the hotel staff. Gone were the big city noises usually associated with New York. I couldn't even hear the impatient horns of taxis. People had come out to the still-blackened streets, but the atmosphere was still quiet, somber.

When we arrived at our hotel, we really didn't know what to do. It was inappropriate to party, but some of us felt we should do something. But what? I suggested we go to a little bar called ‘Don't Tell Mama', only a short walk away from the hotel we stayed in. According to the concierge, all of the city's theatres and bars had been closed for days, but some bars were reopening that night.

‘Don't Tell Mama' is a bit like a karaoke bar, but with live music. The inhouse pianist knows every Broadway tune ever written, and most of the bar staff are performers, some even understudies for the local Broadway shows, and they sing show tunes on stage between serving drinks. The bar is also a meeting place for producers, actors and a few Broadway stars, who sometimes drop in for a drink after a show. On any given night, you are likely to hear some exceptionally talented performers there.