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

by Lawrence Block

  Sometimes I would have this crazy conversation with myself where I told myself that I was destined for great things. It was just a game I played with myself. Great things, gee, I didn’t have anything great that I wanted to do. I was an average girl, you know, and I never pretended to be anything better than that, either.

  JWW: And you were still fascinated by celebrities?.

  KIM: Yes.

  JWW: In a sexual way?

  KIM: Yes, although I don’t know how completely I realized it was working that way. I had certain movie stars that appealed to me and I might have fantasies about them during masturbation, or I might even try to imagine that the boy I was with was someone in particular, some movie star. Or just that he was someone famous but not anyone specific, just that he wasn’t an ordinary nothing from my high school but someone glamorous, you know . . .

  Then the summer after I graduated from high school I met ——— and had sex with him, and you might say that was the turning point of my life.

  • • •

  The actor Kim met shortly after high school graduation was the first celebrity with whom she had sexual relations. He was the first of an impressively long line. Kim’s sexual nature is such that she seems to get at least as much pleasure out of discussing her conquests—and naming them—as she does from sex itself. Her conversation was liberally salted with famous names, many of the household-word variety, and all of which have been deleted from the material that follows. I have furthermore altered descriptions to such an extent that the reader may as well abandon the temptation to play Guess Who with Kim’s story.

  Kim met the actor backstage after a road company performance of a play in which he was touring.

  • • •

  KIM: They started the policy of stock companies with name stars that summer. Before then all we had in town was this local stock company with actors you never heard of, and I hardly ever would go, but when this man came to town I had to go. I had seen him in I don’t know how many movies and I was really excited at the idea of seeing him in person. A boy I knew was working as an apprentice, and he managed to get me backstage to meet the actor. This boy thought I was going to be his date that night, and I thought so, too, but when I was introduced to the star something clicked between us. No big love thing but a really strong attraction. I remember that I had this tremendous sexual response that almost knocked me over. I got this quivering between my legs and my heart was pounding and I felt myself getting moist in the groin. I was just standing there looking at him, at this man who must have been almost fifty years old and who wasn’t what you would call handsome, although he was very distinguished looking and so poised and all . . . I had more sexual feeling from this than I normally had in the course of a whole evening of making out.

  If you can get an introduction the way I did, a road show is a great place to make out with a celebrity. Especially in this kind of arrangement where they have a local company and the star travels doing a week in this town and a week in that town, because that way the star is really at loose ends for someone to have sex with. And he doesn’t have to worry about getting involved the way he might otherwise, because he knows in a day or two he’ll be able to get out of town and never see you again.

  This particular actor was very smooth about it, which was good, because I was so nervous and inexperienced it was incredible. But he managed things very nicely, and we ditched the boy who brought me, and we went to his hotel room. We talked for a little while and had some drinks, and then we went to bed.

  It was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me in my entire life.

  JWW: The star was a superior sex partner?

  KIM: No. That had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact he wasn’t good in bed. He was a nice man, a sincere man, and I liked him a great deal and to this day I have a great deal of respect for him, but you have to realize that he was an older man and a heavy drinker, and he wasn’t good in bed in a physical sense at all.

  As a matter of fact, he had trouble getting hard. He tried to give the impression that this had never happened before, but he was so cool about it that I knew he was acting. You might think that this would cause me to lose respect for him. Actually it made me respect him all the more, that he was so human and everything. It was, I don’t know, touching.

  He showed me how to do fellatio. I had never done this before. Boys had asked me to kiss them there and I had done this, but you know, just a brief kiss, and here I was giving him, well, I was blowing him, I guess, is what you would say. And much to my surprise I found that I liked to do this. I had always thought of it as unnatural and nothing that a girl would enjoy doing, but I had an orgasm doing it. Just from doing it, there was something so exciting about it. Because of who he was and how I felt.

  Afterward he did the same for me. That is, he ate me. A boy had done this before and while I liked it, well, it was nothing sensational. But now when this star did it I absolutely went out of my mind. Absolutely out of my mind. I came all over the place and it was so good I thought I was going to die from it. I guess it got him excited that I was so hot, and he did get an erection this time, and we had regular sex, that is, he screwed me, and I came again the minute he was inside me . . .

  For the next two weeks I was walking on air. You couldn’t talk to me. I was like in another world all by myself. I would walk down the street and all I could think of was that I had been screwed by this important man. That I was the only girl in the whole town who had been to bed with him, and that he had liked it, and remembering how I had liked it, and everything.

  I happened to see an old movie of his on television about that time and I had an orgasm without even touching myself, just from watching him and thinking how I had been with him.

  • • •

  The hour or so she spent in that actor’s bed was a turning point in Kim’s life. From that day on, there was no question in her mind as to her role. She was a Celebrity Fucker.

  “I had never heard the term, of course,” she told me. “I never heard it until much later, after I had become a stewardess and had a lot of experience with a great many famous people. And at the time, you know, I never thought of myself as being a particular type of girl. Before when I was in the teeny scene I thought of myself as one of a whole crowd of girls who were turned on by this particular music and this particular kind of mob scene. But when I made it with the actor, and afterward when I started to seek out other celebrities and have sex with them, it never occurred to me that I was doing a thing that other girls also did. There was no label for it in my mind. All I knew, really, was that I could really feel alive when I was with someone famous. I know it sounds absolutely perverted to put it in cold words like that, but that’s how I am. I dig celebrities and I feel my whole self come alive when I’m with them, and afterward I feel completely great. I have this feeling of pride after I make it with someone famous whom I respect and idolize. I have a real feeling of accomplishment, and forever afterward I have the feeling, oh, that this particular celebrity belongs to me in a kind of secret way.

  “Not that I’ll ever try to get in touch with the person again, or that I would make a pest of myself in any way. I never did that, not even at the very beginning. And I never built up any garbage in my mind about being in love. I know it’s sex, but sex all by itself can be very groovy.

  “I’ve met other girls now who swing the same way. As a matter of fact I really enjoy talking to other girls in the same boat because you really can’t open up to other people or you get this very strange reaction. But with other girls I will compare notes. Some of them, frankly, are pretty disgusting about it. They’ll get very physical in their descriptions, more so than I would care for. For instance, they’ll say that so-and-so has a very small penis, or something like that, which may be so but it isn’t something to mention to anyone. I might tell what a certain person likes to do in bed but I wouldn’t tell this to just anyone, only to somebody who I knew wouldn’t spread it around . . .
/>
  “Some girls, you know, have very different reasons for getting together with celebrities.”

  For example?

  “A large number of them are nothing but opportunists. They’re trying to get something for themselves out of it, some advantage. I mean beyond the kicks that they might get. For instance, they might want a career in show business and they think that if they sleep around enough someone will give them a chance. I don’t know if this ever does them any good or not. I don’t think it does, to tell you the truth, because celebrities, well, they don’t have trouble finding someone anxious to sleep with them, and in that business they aren’t going to pass out important jobs to incompetent people just for the sake of a little sex.

  “Others have come right out and told me that they don’t get anything out of it in a sexual sense. They get a kick out of adding another celebrity to their collection. That’s exactly what it is with them, a collection. As if they were collecting autographs, except with a penis instead of a pen. That is really what it amounts to. And the actual sex for these girls is just something to go through in order to add the person to your collection. It’s a compulsion, really. I think that’s the word for it.”

  I asked Kim if she always enjoyed sexual relations with the men she slept with.

  “Well, not absolutely always,” she admitted. “I have to say that I have a certain amount of the collector in me. You start doing something, you know, and it becomes a thing in itself to the point where you almost forget once in a while why you got into it in the first place. So there are times when I meet a guy on a flight and I recognize him, say he’s an actor, and he isn’t a person who particularly turns me on. Not my type for one reason or another. Maybe it’s something physical about him that turns me off or maybe, you know, his image is just not the kind that I groove on. He’s not my idol, you might say.

  “I have to admit to you that I’ll generally go with him anyway, and I’ll be more likely to do this the more prominent he is, so it’s a case of adding him to my collection at least to a degree. When this happens I usually don’t get any particular kick out of the sex part, but sometimes there are surprises. One character actor who I thought of as a major turn-off wound up being so really groovy in bed that he got to me in spite of myself.”

  Kim had begun to establish a pattern for herself as a Celebrity Fucker when the opportunity to enroll for stewardess training first presented itself. As far as she was concerned, there was one reason and one reason only for taking the position. She felt it was the best possible way to meet interesting men—i.e., celebrities of one sort or another. She was accepted for training, did well at stew school, and went on to get her wings.

  • • •

  KIM: For a girl like me, you couldn’t possibly find a better way to make a living than as a stewardess. It’s really the perfect career for a girl who wants to meet prominent and influential people. Even the off-beat flights get a good share of VIPs, you know. Show business people are always going off to location work in some strange area, or playing some out-of-the-way night club, or you’ll have professional athletes competing in the smaller cities—what with one thing or another, you always encounter celebrities wherever you go.

  JWW: Of course you’re in the best possible spot to find them.

  KIM: Oh, no question. New York and Los Angeles are the two places where everything is happening, and everybody who is anybody spends his life flying back and forth between those two cities. A girl who crews regularly on a New York-L.A. flight is going to meet almost everyone sooner or later. I guess there are still a few cranks who refuse to fly, the Super Chief set, but how many of those are there? No more than a handful. Everybody else flies, and any stew who wants to can meet her share of them.

  JWW: Do you actually seek the men out?

  KIM: You have to, John. Well, that’s not always true. Some men in the world of entertainment are absolutely compulsive about making a pass at every halfway attractive girl who comes near them. A certain comedian is notorious. He can’t see a skirt without putting his hand under it. And because he’s so famous and such a funny man he gets away with things that an ordinary man would get his face slapped for constantly. With men like him, you don’t have to be aggressive. All you have to do is be alive, and when he makes a pass you let him know you’re game, and he’ll take it from there.

  Also there are celebrities who aren’t quite so prominent, guys who don’t always get recognized when they go out in public, and they may be more willing to make a play for a girl who attracts them. You see, most of the really top-ranking stars won’t do this. They don’t want any bad publicity and they don’t dare take chances; in fact many of them would rather pay money to a call girl than take chances by picking up a non-professional.

  So what you really have to do in most cases is let the guy know you’re available and that you know what the score is. Now here is where it really helps, being a stew and all. Because suppose you were walking down Sunset Boulevard and you ran into ——— and decide, wow, you’d really love to ball him. Well, what could you do? Run up to him on the street and tell him you were hot for him? You couldn’t do this, you see, not only because it would be awkward to begin with but because he would just turn tail and run away from you ninety-nine times out of a hundred. He would be afraid of getting involved with a lunatic.

  But on a plane it’s a different story. In fact the reason I mentioned ———’s name is that I had him on a flight to JFK just a couple of weeks ago, and believe me, that was just the reaction I had, that I wanted to ball him. He looked absolutely gorgeous in person. But as luck would have it he was flying with ———, and according to the fan magazines and columns she’s his current girlfriend.

  JWW: A tough break for you.

  KIM: You haven’t heard the whole story yet. Now I knew it wouldn’t be worthwhile trying to date him in New York, not if he was with her. But he had a reputation for being quite a stud, so I decided to give him a play. First of all I spent a lot of time giving him and his girl really good service, and letting him have a little body english in the process. I did this to find out if he was interested in me, and he was. He didn’t make it too obvious in front of her, but I could tell from the way he was looking me over that he liked what he saw. So I waited until the girl went to the head. I had been watching for an opening, and as soon as she was in the can I dropped into the seat next to him. I figured the hell with subtlety and I just grabbed right for his crotch and gave him a feel. This took him completely by surprise—

  JWW: Yes, I can see where it might—

  KIM: —but he was pretty quick on the uptake. I snuggled up to him and let him feel me a little. There was no tremendous rush, because she figured to spend a couple of minutes in the can at the very least. He felt my breasts and underneath my dress and evidently he liked what he felt.

  I told him to go to the john himself after his girl came back, and to lock the door but to open it when I gave a knock. He just nodded, and I got up and went back to the serving galley and waited. I figured it was about a fifty-fifty chance whether he would go for it or not. He could decide it would be more of a kick to tell his girl about it and have a good laugh at my expense. But somehow I had the feeling that the whole sneaky quality of it would turn him on. I knew he liked me, and from what I knew about him I suspected this might happen.

  Sure enough, his gal came back, and the two of them sat and chatted for a while, and then he excused himself and went up the aisle to the john. I was careful to notice which one he went into. Then without being obvious about it I went to the door and gave a little knock, and he opened it and I ducked inside and he closed it and locked it. He already had his penis out of his pants and he was already hard as a rock.

  JWW: And you had relations in the lavatory?

  KIM: It’s not exactly the first time it’s ever been done that way. We had a quickie standing up and he took my phone number for future reference, although I’m sure he’ll never call me. Why should he when he
’s got a girlfriend like her? A quick screw in a toilet is one thing, but he wouldn’t bother to call me. We made it, though, and it was very kicky to make it right in the middle of a flight like that. I’ve done it in mid-flight before. You hear about girls balling pilots up front, and this happens, but that’s not my scene. I’ve made it with passengers, though. At their seats, usually. There’s plenty of room in the first-class section, and with the lights out, you know, on a night flight, it’s no real problem. You can do it sitting on his lap or you can give him head or any number of ways. This was the first time I ever did it in the toilet, though, although I’ve heard of it being done from time to time.

  Then he let himself out and went back to his seat, and I waited a few seconds and went back to my station, and that was that. He and I hardly looked at each other the rest of the trip, and I’m sure that girl of his never had the slightest suspicion of what went on. Here he had excused himself and knocked off a piece and come back and sat down next to her and she never knew a thing about it. In fact, from the way we didn’t look at each other you would think it didn’t happen, that it was a dream.

  But when he deplaned at JFK he gave me this secret little wink, a quick secret wink, and I got this feeling that went all through me. Like the two of us had a little private secret that the rest of the world would never know about. It was a very warm feeling, very exciting and satisfying for me.

  • • •

  As a general rule, Kim’s conquests involve a less aggressive display on her own part and proceed with rather less direct sexuality. Her overtures are more apt to be verbal than physical and her objective is generally a date on the ground instead of a quickie in the air. The usual pattern runs along the following lines: Kim sets the stage, letting the celebrity know she is ready and willing to play; the celebrity asks her to have dinner or a drink with him after landing, and once the plane is on the ground the two of them go as quickly as possible to her room or his, where sexual relations occur almost immediately. At times Kim likes to give the impression that she and her dates take time to establish emotional rapport, talk things over, and get to know one another. This is actually rarely the case. Kim’s special charm, the charm of any Celebrity Fucker, is her delightful availability and the disposable nature of her charms. She is to be used for the specified purpose and then sent home as quickly as possible.