Удушье (Choke)

Something else you learn is when a flight attendant comes knocking, you can wrap things up fast with the Florentine Method, where the woman grips the man around the base and pulls his skin back, tight, to make it more sensitive. This speeds up the process considerably.

To slow things down, press hard on the underside at the base of the man. Even if this doesn't stop the event, the whole mess will back up into his bladder and save you both a lot of cleanup. Experts call this 'Saxonus.'

The redhead and me, in the big rear bathroom of a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 Series 30CF, she shows me the negresse po­sition, where she gets her knees up on either side of the sink and I press my open hands on the back of her pale shoulders.

Her breath fogging the mirror, her face red from being crouched down, Tracy says, 'It's in the Kama Sutra that if a man massages himself with juice from pomegranate, pumpkin, and cucumber seeds, he'll swell up and stay huge for six months.'

This advice has a kind of Cinderella deadline to it.

She sees the look on my face in the mirror and says, 'Cripes, don't take everything so personally.'

Somewhere due north above Dallas, I'm trying to work up more spit while she tells me the way to make a woman never leave you is to cover her head with nettle thorns and monkey dung.

And I'm, like, no kidding?

And if you bathe your wife in buffalo milk and cow bile, any man who uses her will become impotent.

I say, I wouldn't be surprised.

If a woman soaks a camel bone in marigold juice and puts the liquid on her eyelashes, any man she looks at will become be­witched. In a pinch, you can use peacock, falcon, or vulture bones.

'Look it up,' she says. 'It's all in the big book.'

Somewhere south-southeast above Albuquerque, my face coated thick as egg white from licking her, my cheeks rug-burned from her hair, Tracy says how ram's testicles boiled in sugared milk will restore your virility.

Then she says, 'I didn't mean that the way it sounded.'

And I thought I was doing pretty good. Considering two double bourbons, and I've been on my feet for three hours at this point.

Somewhere south-southwest above Las Vegas, both of us our tired legs flu-shaky, she shows me what the Kama Sutra calls 'browsing.' Then 'sucking the mango.' Then 'devouring.'

Struggling together in our tight little wipe-clean plastic room, suspended in a time and place where anything goes, this isn't bondage, but it's close.

Gone are the golden old Lockheed Super Constellations where each port and starboard bathroom was a two-room suite: a dressing room with a separate toilet room behind a door.

The sweat running down the smooth muscles of her. The two of us bucking together, two perfect machines doing a job we're designed for. Some minutes we're touching with just the sliding part of me and the little edges of her getting raw and pulled out, my shoulders leaning back squared against the plastic wall, the rest of me bucking forward from the waist down. From standing on the floor, Tracy gets one foot up on the edge of the sink and leans on her raised knee.

It's easier to see ourselves in the mirror, flat and behind glass, a movie, a download, a magazine picture, somebody else, not us, somebody beautiful without a life or a future outside this mo­ ment.

Your best bet on a Boeing 767 is the large center toilet in the rear of the tourist-class cabin. You're just plum out of luck on the Concorde, where the toilet compartments are minuscule, but that's just my opinion. If all you're doing is peeing or doing your contact lenses or tooth brushing, I'm sure they're roomy enough.

But if you have any ambition to manage what the Kama Sutra calls 'the crow' or 'cuissade' or anything where you'll need more than two inches of back-and-forth motion, you'd better hope you get a European Airbus 300/310 with its party-sized rear tourist-class toilets. For the same kind of countertop space and legroom, you can't do better than the two rear toilets in a British Aerospace One-Eleven for plush.

Somewhere north-northeast above Los Angeles, I'm getting sore, so I ask Tracy to let up.