Sex and the Stewardess (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  “My problems, though, have let me take dates or leave them alone depending upon whether or not I feel like going out and whether or not a guy seems likely to be good company. And when I make this decision I leave sex strictly out of the picture. To be honest, I have to admit that now and then the ultimate consideration has been my desire for a good steak dinner without having to pay for it. Most of the time, say ninety-eight percent of the time, though, it’s just do I want to see more of this fellow or don’t I. Not because it might lead to something, sex or love or marriage or whatever, but just for the pleasure of his company.

  “Whether he’s married or not I don’t particularly care one way or the other. All in all I would say that married men make nicer dates, unless their marriage is too confining and they are fighting back, in which case they come on a little too aggressive. A lot of married men, though, are really only looking for somebody to talk to. I’ve turned guys down sexually one way or another and they have actually told me that the pass was secondary, just part of the game for them, and all they really want is pleasant company. It’s funny—I think a lot of man feel sex is expected from them, the same way girls feel this, and a lot of times a couple will wind up in bed when both of them would be much happier sitting over cups of coffee and telling each other their troubles.”

  When a date does lead to sex, Rona finds a way out that won’t disappoint her date or frustrate either of them.

  “Every once in a while, every few months, I decided to try for the brass ring. I suppose one of these times I’ll have combined tranquilizers and alcohol in a sufficiently persuasive way so that those muscles down there will forget to go into their act, and then the old virginity will be a thing of the past. Or someday I’ll get mad enough to go to a doctor and find out a way out of the problem. I know it’s psychological, that’s pretty obvious, but there still could be a pill that would cure it. Something like a muscle relaxant, I would think that might do it.

  “Meanwhile, I’m in no rush. Except for those rare occasions when I do decide to give it a try, I just go out and see what happens. A surprising amount of the time men don’t make a pass. I don’t honestly know whether this is me, that they sense I’m not interested, or what. Most girls will say that every man they go out with is after them sexually. It’s almost ego-destroying to face the fact, but damn it, this is a problem I don’t have all that often. Most men may make some sort of a pass, or be sort of waiting for an invitation to your apartment if you’re in your home town, but this is often perfunctory on their parts.

  “When I do find myself in some sort of sexual situation, I find a way to cool things without having intercourse. There are all sorts of ways.”

  Often all that is involved, Rona says, is letting her date know that she does not want to have intercourse with him.

  “But sometimes this is awkward. I’ll do this if I’m out with a married man, for example, and I can sense that he’s going through the motions and will be relieved that I don’t expect him to go to bed with me. I told you about that type of situation. Other times I manage to get across the idea that I’m having my period. This will cool some men off completely. I don’t know why, but they don’t even want to neck with a girl at that time of the month. Or maybe they don’t want to start anything that won’t end in intercourse.

  “But if I do like the man, and I’m enjoying myself with him, well, there are all sorts of ways to have sex without having intercourse. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about when I say that.

  “Well, oh, what’s the deference, I can say anything, I’m past the point of embarrassment now. Isn’t it funny how words are sometimes more embarrassing than facts? But I’m sure you’ve heard all the words in the world by now, haven’t you?

  “I guess I’m something of an expert at satisfying men extracoitally. That’s the word, isn’t it? With my hand, or by going through the motions with our clothes on, or with his penis between my legs but not inside of me. Or, well, you know. Orally. After all, old Greg taught me, and it seems silly to fail to put that learning to good use. No, seriously, I don’t like to do that but I’m—God help us one and all, but I was starting to say that I’m beginning to develop a taste for it!

  “Seriously, I can do it now without getting sick about it, and I don’t really mind. And one thing that I’ve found out, and this is interesting, and you would maybe understand more about it than I do, John, but it’s that a lot of men actually prefer this to intercourse. The first time I realized this I thought they were homosexual like Greg, and maybe they didn’t know it, but it seems that a large percentage of men are like that. To the point where they’re not remotely disappointed that I won’t have intercourse with them because they would rather that I blow them.

  “I used to worry that it wasn’t normal, but that doesn’t bother me anymore. The only thing is that I really have to like a man a great deal to do it. Unless I feel strongly about him I wouldn’t do it at all. I suppose you couldn’t name a more intimate act than that, could you? I don’t know why it is, but taking a man in your mouth in some ways is far more intimate than taking him into your vagina. You wouldn’t think of it that way, but you can understand what I mean, I’m sure.”

  • • •

  Although she may not realize it, Rona is a variety of virgin who is not so rare as she might think in the age of the sexual revolution. While virginity of any sort is rather unusual at her age, and especially so among outgoing girls like stewardesses, the particular adjustment which Rona has made is not at all uncommon among girls a few years younger than herself, especially college students.

  Rona and girls like her are, essentially, coital virgins. On the one hand they have maintained technical virginity, whether because of fear of pain or pregnancy or some more profound reason one need not inquire. Their hymens remain intact, their vaginas inviolate.

  But at the same time they have participated in sexual relationships which an older generation often regarded as beyond the realm of possibility even within the context of a marital relationship. They practice at an early age, these virgins, sexual techniques which their mothers may never have employed throughout their lives.

  In other words, the openness of contemporary sexual standards, the increasingly widespread realization that all roads lead to Rome and that any technique is permissible among consenting adults, has created for a minority of young people a detour around the ancient roadblock of virginity.

  To return to Rona, it seems likely that she will before very long find a way to put a technical end to her state of technical virginity. It is certainly evident that her experiences as a stew are developing her personality and opening her up in any number of ways, and one can only hope that she will be opened up sexually to the necessary degree.

  “One thing that comforts me,” she said, grinning a bit wickedly. “And that’s the way everything is relative, problems included. From what I understand, after a few years of marriage and a kid or two, my problem will be just the opposite. So which is worse—too loose or too tight?”

  As far as I know, Rona was the only virginal stewardess I met; she was certainly the only one I interviewed. Yet this is not to say that she is the only undeflowered stewardess in the skies. While I am certain that girls in her position are very much in the minority, I am equally certain that they very definitely exist.

  It is an interesting aspect of our times, I feel, that girls of Rona’s age are apt to keep their virginity a secret. (Only a few of her closest friends, she told me, were aware of her precise sexual status.) It was not too many years ago when girls were more anxious to conceal their sexual experience than their lack thereof. Girls who once feared that their peers would think they were promiscuous tramps are now as concerned that they will be thought frigid and inexperienced.

  Bambi—The Old Maid

  “Men are always marrying us. Everyone knows this. It’s a joke, actually, the way the airlines have to keep recruiting and training like mad because they pick such beautiful girls and
train them to be such ideal mates that we all marry right away and keep the circle going. You know, you no sooner get to stew school than you’ll be talking about the man you might marry some day and how long you expect to be flying before you find the right guy and quit.

  “I was like that. I mean in terms of what I expected from this life, from being a stewardess. As a matter of fact I would go so far as to say that my major reason for becoming a stewardess was to find a good husband. Most of my friends had better reasons than I did. Some of them were just in love with the whole idea of flying. If they had been boys they would have wanted to become pilots, but they weren’t, so being a stewardess seemed like the next best thing to them. Others of us thought it was a glamorous occupation. And with others there was this need to get away from a certain family background or a home town. God knows the average girl has plenty to get away from by the time she’s grown up.

  “I would give reasons like these myself, but looking back on it I have to admit that I never really thought about them that much. Now in a way this was sort of realistic on my part. Because if you stop to think about it, the girl who regards this profession as a career is making a big mistake, because in one way it really isn’t a career at all. I mean, there is no place to go from here. There is no room for advancement except that you could perhaps become a stew supervisor, but after all what percentage of stews could ever hope to go on to become a stew supervisor? Actually just a very small percentage of them at best. And outside of that there is really nothing. After maybe ten or fifteen years in the air you are just going to be out of a job with really nothing to show for it. And unlike modeling or athletics where you make a lot of money in your prime years, a stew earns enough to get by on, so when we talk about giving up the best years of our lives, that is honestly just about what it amounts to.

  “In my own situation, I had very little chance where I was to make a good marriage. My home town had less than twenty-five hundred people in it. Unless you’ve actually grown up in a place like that I don’t think you can possibly appreciate what it is like. I think small towns like that can be a very good place to live. I think when you’re a small child it’s absolutely wonderful, everybody knowing everybody else and a generally friendly feeling all around, and no pressures on anybody. And once you’re settled in life a small town is also ideal. But in the middle—well, the thing is that it’s a very bad place for a person who is trying to find herself.

  “I went to school with kids who were just right for that town and who never had a moment’s doubt one way or the other about who they were or where they were going or what they wanted to get out of life. My best friend all through grade school and high school was a girl like that. She was just absolutely confident about herself. She knew who she was and where she was going. She decided when she was a little girl that she wanted to live on a farm outside of town and that she never wanted to be far away from our town for her whole life, and when we all started dating she began going out with a good steady boy, and she never dated anyone else and neither did he, and sure enough he wanted to work on a farm, and two weeks after high school graduation I went to their wedding.

  “When I tell my friends about that girl now, they’ll shake their heads and shudder and talk about how horrible it must be to be trapped that way. Well, it’s not horrible at all, of course. Not for Jennifer, because it’s exactly what she wants and what she has always wanted. It might be a trap for someone else but not for her. Girls have said that some day Jennifer will wake up and realize what she’s been missing. That she’ll realize there’s a whole world out there that she never saw, and she’ll start wondering what it would be like to sleep with other men or go to other towns or all of the rest of it. I don’t think this will happen. Maybe I’m wrong, but I know her, and I think she knows herself pretty well and that she’s got just what she’s always wanted and she’ll be happy with it . . .

  “In a way I’m a lot like Jennifer, but I’m also a great deal different. I wanted to get married, too, and I would ultimately like to live in some out-of-the-way place, I think. Maybe even in the town I grew up in, or if not the same town then in some place a lot like it. I know it’s terribly trite to say that New York is nice to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there, but the reason it’s so trite is that everyone has that reaction to it. In the long run, how can you live someplace like New York? Living, to me, means everything you associate with a small town, the bad as well as the good . . .

  “But if I had never left where I was, I don’t think I would have gotten married, or not to anyone very exciting. I dated during high school, but no sparks flew with the boys I went out with, and it was just . . . well, it was a lot of nothing as far as I was concerned. There just weren’t many boys to choose from, and in a small town like that, you have to hit the right combination right off the bat or you’re completely out of luck.

  “After high school, the time seemed to go by all in a rush. I don’t know exactly how to explain this. It seemed as if time crawled by, all those years until then, with each year pretty much the same as the one before it and everything fairly safe and predictable. And then all at once everything was moving much too fast for me to keep up with. Before I knew what was happening, my friends were either married or engaged and some of them had gone off to college and some of the boys were in the service, and what with one thing and another, it was as if overnight I had changed from another fairly popular high school kid to a girl who was on her way to becoming an old maid. And it wasn’t a case of me doing anything to bring this about. It just happened.

  “So when I heard about interviews with representatives of the various airlines, I just jumped at it. What it meant to me, the first and foremost thing in my mind, was that here was a chance to keep life from passing me by. And by that I mean a chance to find a decent man and get married, because my whole outlook and the way I was brought up and all, what a woman was supposed to look forward to was marriage and a family. That was the ideal role for a woman, the only role she could have and feel she was fulfilling herself as a woman, and it was what I wanted for myself. Actually, it never occurred to me that there was any other kind of a life for me to want, that I might have interests in any other direction.

  “And here I am, twenty-eight years old with almost eight years in the air behind me, and no closer to getting married than I was when I started. I’m just about old enough to start getting desperate.”

  • • •

  I found it hard to take Bambi’s last statement seriously, although in retrospect there’s no doubting she meant it. While her problem was real enough, it was difficult at first to attach much significance to it. One reason for this, I’m sure, lay in the fact that Bambi herself, in both appearance and personality, was not easily reconciled with the notion of a girl over the hill in her profession and becoming desperate over her failure to have landed a husband.

  At twenty-eight, Bambi could readily pass for five or more years younger. Her features, closer to cuteness than to beauty, are always animated in conversation—even when the content of her speech is serious or depressed in nature. There were moments during my interview with her when I had the feeling that I was watching one movie and listening to the sound track of another—i.e., at the very moments when Bambi’s words indicated the most acute depression over her failure to get what she wanted out of life, her flashing smile and bright eyes carried another message entirely. Because of these qualities, and because of her name itself, with its overtones of cuteness or what one might call a “toy” quality, it was hard for me to appreciate Bambi’s difficulty.

  As readers of the foregoing few pages may note for themselves, it was also difficult to understand Bambi’s problem because Bambi herself had so much difficulty in articulating it intelligibly. On the one hand her mind is not the sort to grasp a problem logically and present it in an orderly fashion. Furthermore, I suspect that the habit of introspection is not a longstanding one for Bambi. She does not seem to be accustomed to very metic
ulous analysis of her situation, and thus does not really know what went wrong for her.

  Perhaps before we pick up the interview with Bambi once more, it might thus be worthwhile to make some specific observations that might cut through the vagueness of her words. To come directly to the point, Bambi is a girl who aspires first and foremost to marriage. There is no alternative for her, no other manner in which her life could resolve itself which she would not regard as a failure on her part. It was a desire for marriage which led her to become a stewardess in the first place, and it has been this desire which has sustained her in her occupation for the past eight years.

  But in spite of her own goal, and in spite of the fact that she is an outgoing and physically attractive young lady in an occupation with extremely high possibilities of marriage, Bambi has remained resolutely single. It is by no means difficult to realize that this is not merely a matter of coincidence. For one reason or another, Bambi has unconsciously striven to remain single. I could advance several theories for this behavior on her part, and I suspect I could do a fairly good job of armchair analysis of her unconscious motives, but I feel this would be largely a waste of time and effort. Bambi interests us, after all, primarily as an example of the way life as a stewardess lends itself to certain behavior patterns. Thus we are less interested here in the why than in the how of her actions.

  In this sense, I submit that Bambi’s years as a stewardess have done a great deal to determine the manner in which she has avoided marriage. Another girl with much the same psychological background could easily have remained in her home town, where Bambi had readily achieved a situation in which marriage—or, really, any sort of sexual or emotional involvement—was improbable at best. The small towns of America are replete with women, old and young, who for one reason or another found marriage an undesirable end and drifted easily into the life of an old maid. The heroine of Rachel, Rachel is by no means a rare bird.