leave the cockpit, I carefully straighten my tie, put on my pilot’s jacket, and adjust my hat.
“Very pretty.” D.B. says.
“Thanks,” I agree, leaving the cockpit.
Everyone’s asleep in First Class, including His Royal, snoring Majesty. Decision time….Fuck it….I tug gently on his sleeve… nothing. In for a penny in for a career, I pull on his cuff more insistently. His poached egg eyes roll down, focusing on me as he comes awake. Sticking out my hand, I say, “Hi, King.” Graciously, the mountainous Monarch shakes my hand.
As I reenter the cockpit, D.B. looks back at me. Giving him the thumbs-up, I say, “Thanks, D.B.”
“Hey.”
Initiation
“Oh my God, he came in my ears!,” screaming, she rips off the headset, the sticky, white fluid dripping from her ears, and down onto her collar. In a panic, Cyndie runs from the cockpit, slamming the door behind her.
D.B., Jerry Lovell and I were crying too, hysterical with, laughter.
Cyndie, the new-hire airhead, was thus initiated to aviation on the last leg of our pairing, Guam back to Honolulu. The rest of our flight attendants were in on this bit of mayhem.
We had recently received a series of memos concerning the “do’s” and “don’ts” of sex discrimination, written by our in-house Sex Cop, Vice President of Sex, or whatever her politically correct title was. Pilots, being the most irreverent of God’s bastards, say whatever they want to say, whenever they want to say it, political correctness be fucked.
Cyndie was a newbie, a brand-spanking new flight attendant. Working first Class, she had come up to the cockpit a number of times over the past week, bringing us our meals, and our coffee. It didn’t take long to discover the empty universe that lived between her ears.
“If’n that little girl tried to blow her brains out with my pistol, the bullet would travel in endless circles forever, looking for somethin’ to hit,” declares D.B.
“Hell, D.B., she sticks her head out her moving car’s window to get herself a refill,” I add.
“I don’t get that,” D.B. says. What’s that mean?”
“You know, refill, air in the ears, ‘airhead’ …” I stop myself seeing him grin at me, he’s got me again.
“We got to do her!” Our Captain has made a command decision.
D.B. concocted some gizmo in his room during our last day in Guam. Taking a headset from cabin class, the old-fashioned kind, with the rubber-tube ear-pieces, he cut off the last couple of inches. Filling a balloon he bought at Gibson’s with just enough milk, creating a little bladder, he inserted the end of the headset into the neck of the balloon, and secured the whole apparatus with a rubber band.
Now, we’re established at altitude, on our last leg, the flight home to Honolulu. D.B. carefully tucks the entire affair down his uniform pants, and puts the phony headset on. He’s sitting in the left seat, a very still spider in it’s web, waiting patiently.
Cyndie, the fly, finally buzzes into the cockpit, and starts chatting with me and Jerry Lovell. D.B., all the while, remains studiously uninvolved, monitoring the instruments, seemingly oblivious to us. Eventually, Cyndie eyeballs the tube running down the outside of the Captain’s black tie, and disappearing into his trousers. Fascinated by the cabin-class movie headset on D.B.’s head, Cyndie flys into the spider’s web. “Captain Swayde, what are you listening to?”
D.B. blushing, shyly looks over at her, and says, Its kind of embarrassing to talk about, but my wife Lois and I have been trying for kids for a number of years now. We’ve gone to all the doctors and the specialists, you know. This last specialist, he’s come up with some new technique, and he’s taught me how to listen to my sperm count, to see if it is ‘proper.’ So, on the last leg of every trip, I listen to my sperm count. If it’s a good count, I go home and we try to make a baby. You wanna’ listen to my sperm count?”
Cyndie, saying yes, leans her head close, as D.B. now gently places the headset over her ears. When he’s done, and she’s concentrating, he gives the bladder buried in his pants a little squeeze, and the milk squirts out of her ears.
“Oh my God, he came in my ears!” Cyndie screams, ripping the headset off, charging from the cockpit.
“Mission accomplished,” D.B. says. “I sure do hope we’re in compliance with the Company’s policy for…”
“We’re in real fuckin’ trouble,” is my only response.
“Hey, Chubby,” Lovell asks, “Why do women fake orgasms?”
“Okay, why?”
“Because they think we care!”
“Lovell,” D.B. asks, “you know why the bride’s smilin’ as she’s walkin’ down the aisle? It’s ‘cause she knows she’ll never have to suck his cock again. But, why’s the groom smiling?”
“Because he doesn’t know it yet!” I beat him to the punch-line.
A male flight attendant, with severe female tendencies, brings us up our coffees, and quickly minces out of the cockpit.
“Fuckin’ fudge-packers!” says Jerry Lovell, We got more fuckin’ fagots then girls on this crew.”
“That’s the industry,” I say. “They hire their own, the guys with cock-inmouth-disease… they’ve killed sport- fucking, that’s the problem.”
I have always sold myself out for acceptance, and I’m still doing it. I actually consider our group of gay males to be some of our best workers, conscientious, and dedicated to giving fine service.
D.B. says, If we all just woke up everyday and shot a faggot in the face, wouldn’t be no more problem.”
“Didja hear about the ground controller in San Francisco who asked the Southwest guy on ground frequency “what that animal was painted on his plane’s tail?”
“No.”
“Southwest pilot says ‘I dunno’ then thinks for a second and says ‘I guess it’s a gerbil.—
“Yeah,” Jerry adds “the City of Brotherly Love, it used to be Philadelphia, must be San Francisco now.”
Janet from Another Planet
Captain Jimmy Walken, is a florid-faced, bow-legged stump of a crazy Irishman. The name Walken doesn’t sound very Irish — but he’s as Irish as you can get — maybe he’s German! Anyway, Jimmy is always in a good mood, walking around with his head and hat both cocked to the side, eyes flashing.
Came a day when we were paired together as a crew. Continental flew two flights from Honolulu to Los Angeles and to San Francisco, both departing at 8:00 AM. Our DC-10 had pushed back from the gate, and we were heading out to the active runway, the “reef runway,” in Honolulu, which is quite a long taxi.
This plane is packed, every seat and every flight attendant jump-seat is occupied. There’s a knock at the cockpit door. It’s the Flight Service Manager, the chief flight attendant. He asks if we could allow “Janetfrom- another-planet,” one of our spaciest flight attendants, to sit on a cockpit jump-seat. In her ozoned condition, Janet had gotten on the wrong plane. She was supposed to be working on the San Francisco flight. Now, mistakenly on the Los Angeles flight, there was no seat for her anywhere in the cabin. To be legal for take-off, she needed a place to sit, and with a seatbelt on.
We are cleared “into position and hold” on the active runway, about to take off. Jimmy turns and says, “Janet, so long as I have a face, you’ll always have a place to sit.” A typical Walken remark, as he grants her access to the cockpit. She sits on the jump-seat and buckles herself in. Jimmy has saved her job. We take off, and the rest of the flight is routine.
It turns out that “Janet-from-Another-Planet,” offended by Jimmy’s remark, writes a letter to the FAA and to the Company, accusing Jimmy of some kind of sexual infraction. We are called in to see the Honolulu base Chief Pilot, Brock Pyle, a typical “office-puke.” He’s an ex-marine, with a close-cropped buzz cut, and that anal, meticulous nature with the personality of a dial-tone.
