pointing with glee… Chris is the only one balls naked, he’s been had. It turned out all right he shyly smiles, finishing his story.
Last time I saw Chris, he and his very Baptist wife, Kathy, visited me and Geri at our apartment in Honolulu. While the girls were shopping, Chris and I walked along Kapiolani Park, up the trail to Diamond Head. Chris was real upset as he told me the latest,” and I could tell he had been holding back, wanting to get me alone for this. Seems he had taken up with a Flight Attendant who had her home in Atlanta. On layovers in Atlanta, schedules permitting, they would shack-up at her house, a few bedrooms of which she rented out to two openly gay, male flight attendants. She was a “liberated, sex-loving lady,” he says.
One morning he wakes early in her bedroom suite. He’s got an early morning show, she’s got the day off. So as not to wake her, he’s quietly using her master bathroom, going through his routine… he shaves, showers and dresses in uniform, “all real quiet like, so as not to disturb her rest.”
As he re-enters the bedroom, he is instantly repulsed. She is doing the two gay male flight attendants in her bed, the bed Chris crept out of only an hour earlier. She’s taking them both at the same time, one in the mouth and the other in her pussy.” The guy whose dick is in her mouth, is deeply tongue-kissing his buddy, the other guy, “over the top.” Chris wants to puke.
This is the age of AIDS, it’s 1987, and his lady friend never felt it necessary to tell Chris that she was also fucking the two gay guys. Chris is crying, sobbing now in my arms, as he finishes his story. He really loves his wife. They have been married eight years, have two young sons, and she’s a devout Christian woman who attends church regularly, in Charlotte, their home town. “I know,” he says through his tears, “I did it to myself, but God, I don’t want to do this to her!”
I hold him around, comforting him. He doesn’t know if he’s got AIDS, worse, he doesn’t know if he has passed it along to his wife. There are no quicky tests as yet, and prevailing wisdom is that at least five-years must pass before you’ll ever know. He is wracked with guilt, faced with indecision. Should he tell his wife, or not?
God, I feel for him, another pecker-induced mistake, common to the airline industry.
Marcos
While still based in Honolulu, former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, his shoe-loving wife, Imelda, and their son, Bong Bong were living in splendid exile on Oahu. When Marcos died, the Philippine Government refused Imelda’s requests to allow her, and the family, to return to bury Ferdinand in his home island city of
Responding to accusations of larceny on a grand scale (the Marcos’ were reputed to have looted the Philippines of about $35 billion), Imelda would gather the reporters together on the porch of the mansion in which she was forced to live, and tearfully protest their innocence, their poverty, and the injustice of it all. “They were getting along,” she would declare, “due to the handouts from, and kindness of friends.”
Imelda, never underestimating the stupidity of the masses, kept Ferdinand’s body on ice at a fancy cemetery near Kailua Bay. Once a year, on Ferdinand’s birthday, his body, cryogenically convenient in it’s crypt, would be brought to her Hawaiian mansion-prison. She would invite hundreds of
Five years after Ferdinand’s death, the Philippine Government relented to the pressure of the masses. It was announced that Ex-President Marcos would be allowed burial in
I was taking Willy and Silly, good friends for many years, on “buddy passes” to Bali. Buddy Pass trips are on a space available basis, and this trip required a flight from HNL-Guam, then from Guam to Denpassar, Bali. Calling Continental reservations, I confirmed that tomorrow’s DC-10 flight from HNL-Guam was “wide open.” Good, tomorrow’s first leg had plenty of empty seats.
Next day we check our bags at the Continental ticket counter, produce our passports for verification, and proceed to the gate. It is cordoned off. Hundreds of passengers are being herded back, kept at a distance from the gate. We move to a waiting area one gate over, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.
Television cameras are trained at the ramp area, focusing beneath our flight’s DC-10. Honolulu’s local Jane Pauley approaches me, microphone in hand. Her cameraman, shoulder-cam rolling, brackets us. “Jane” asks me: “What do you think of Ferdinand Marcos’ body being returned to the Philippines for burial?”
Oh shit, as fate would have it, Marcos’ body, now being belly-loaded (in an ordinary baggage container), is heading to Manila via Guam, on our airplane. Worse, hundreds of
I respond, “I can’t believe that after twenty-years of fucking over the Philippine people, now five-years after his death, Ferdinand Marcos is going to fuck me and my friends out of our trip to Guam!”
“Cut!”
We make it onto the airplane after all, but it was close, with only a few seats remaining. Celebrating our success, Willy and Silly break out the Evian water bottles they’ve filled with Stolys. We drink for the first half-hour of this eight-hour leg, ordering only Bloody Mary Mix, and ice from the flight attendants.
My mind begins to wander. We are sitting on an airplane carrying Marco’s body, his son and hundreds of their corrupt cronies who have sucked billions of illicit dollars out of the country, all of them on board this airplane. A niggling thought creeps and grows in my head…How many Filipino’s out there would love to see this airplane blown out of the sky?
“Willy,” I say, “More vodka!” I suffer through the remainder of the flight, trying not to dwell on the worst case scenario.
Our fellow passengers are partying hearty, standing up all over the plane, smoking, schmoozing and completely disregarding seat belt signs or instructions to put out their cigarettes. These are rich, happy campers, at a party.
Silly is seated next to the only dour gentleman on the airplane, and she begs me to change seats with her, and I do. After perhaps an hour of silence, the seventy-ish gentleman turns, and introduces himself to me, “Father Gomez, at your service,” (do I hear boot heels faintly clicking?). He hands me a business card, as well. It seems the good Father is also a General of the Philippine Air Force, and he has a Canadian address.
Are you part of the group accompanying ex-President Marcos for burial?”
“Yes, I was his priest.”
Never shy I ask, “Did you used to take former President Ferdinand Marcos’ confession?”
Pause… “Yes, I did.”
“Did it take a long time?”
The remaining five hours of the flight were spent in silence.
The five hour flight from Guam to Bali was uneventful, and Willy, Silly and I were anxious to meet up with our old comrades at the
Balinese, by tradition, are only supposed to have up to four children. They name the first born
Silly surfaces, insisting we join her in the pool. “Wait till you see the colors and textures underwater,” she insists, and disappears to the bottom, again.
