Cruising Attitude

by Heather Poole

  Georgia shook the hot rollers in her hair. “I’m sorry, but it just ain’t right we can’t travel for six months—six months! I don’t know if I can make it that long.”

  “Get used to it, princess,” Mimi said, without looking up.

  Glaring at Mimi, Georgia bit into a scrumptious antidepressant: a Twinkie from the box hidden underneath her bed. She purchased the sugary treats, along with the rest of her groceries, from the 7-Eleven located directly behind our house. No way would Georgia schlep two blocks in the freezing cold to the supermarket when she could pay a little extra for convenience.

  Mimi stood up, tossed the magazine onto Georgia’s bed, and then slid into a long black coat with a belted waist and a fur hood, wrapping a gray cashmere scarf around her neck, a recent gift from some guy she had met on a plane. She turned side to side in front of a long skinny mirror tacked to the back of our bedroom door, puckered up, and painted her lips a deep dark red.

  “Okay, ladies, I’m outta here.” Mimi had yet to learn our names. Instead she used endearments like “honey,” “sweetie,” and “ladies.” I didn’t blame her, considering the high turnover rate in our crash pad. Each week a new group of flight attendants was shipped to New York. Even though we’d only been living there for four weeks, roommates had already come and gone. Sometimes they just moved up, as in upstairs, before officially moving on. The last roommate quit three days after her first trip because a passenger had screamed at her for ruining his vacation when they ran out of eggs in coach.

  “Don’t wait up!” Mimi sashayed out the front door.

  “Don’t have to worry about that,” mumbled Georgia.

  “Do you think she’s going out with 2A?” I smiled mischievously.

  “Who cares what she’s doing?” Georgia had little patience for Mimi’s “nonsense.” That’s because Georgia had a serious boyfriend and didn’t take relationships lightly. My ex, on the other hand, was still refusing to let things go. He had yet to realize that a long-distance relationship might be more difficult than he had first imagined, no matter how many times I tried to help him imagine it. Why did he have to be such a nice guy—that got on my nerves?! So when it came to men, all I really had was Mimi’s stories of 2A, a new obsession of mine. He sat in first class on a flight from San Francisco and only ate caviar. He lived in a penthouse apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He paid for drinks, lots of them, at trendy upscale hotel bars on the other side of town, not just for Mimi, but for all of her flight attendant friends—the more the merrier. Because she never invited me out to meet him, I had no choice but to take Mimi’s word for it. According to Mimi there was no hanky-panky going on between the two of them. It was a relationship of companions only. Georgia had a hard time believing that! What man bought a woman luxury gifts and expected nothing in return? I had to agree, especially when I peeped out the window to see Mimi climbing into a swanky black town car. I made a mental note to keep an eye out for a first-class “friend” of my own. Only I preferred mine single and under the age of fifty. Life just seemed so much easier that way.

  “I’m freezing!” Georgia said, pulling tight a blue terrycloth bathrobe with little white clouds on it. Her bed was so close to mine I could practically reach out and touch her shivering hand. “Should we ask Victor to turn up the heat?”

  “You can. He’s still mad at me.”

  Victor had been giving me major attitude ever since we saw the first wad of cash lying on the floor in the foyer a few days after we’d moved in. I didn’t think twice about it until Victor introduced me to his twenty-year-old spaced-out girlfriend who was beautiful but could barely form the word “hello.” It didn’t hit me what was really going on until a few days later, late one night, when the wind blew so hard outside something crashed loudly to the ground, causing Victor to come running down the steps paranoid and naked with a shotgun. Our landlord, it turned out, was moonlighting as a drug dealer. Or maybe it was the other way around. Making light of the situation, Georgia and I had joked around about taking the money and going shopping, but when no one laughed, we decided to leave the money by the door and ignore it, like everyone else in the house. But when large sums continued to make regular appearances, I decided to confront Victor. This was the plan: I’d pick up the cash, march right up the rickety old stairs, and hand it over to him face-to-face. Just to see what he might have to say for himself. That’s it. Then I’d come right back down and report the news to Georgia. Based on his reaction, we’d figure out what to do next.

  “Come in!” Victor yelled when I knocked on the door. That’s exactly what I did. Then I screamed.

  “What?” He said it as if I were the crazy one, not him, a naked old man standing in the middle of a bear-skin rug just staring at me. I looked away and laughed nervously, then apologized, which is what I have a tendency to do in awkward situations. Like, for example, bare-skinned landlords on bear-skin rugs. Turning my face to the door, I extended the arm holding the cash to him. He said something, but I have no idea what it was, since I was out the door and sprinting down the stairs the second he snatched it out of my hand.

  Now I’m not exactly sure what it was that pissed Victor off: the fact that I had delivered the cash personally, thereby acknowledging I knew exactly what he was up to, or the fact that I had screamed bloody murder upon seeing him in the nude (shiver), indicating that I did not find him attractive. I guess it could have been a combination of the two. Whatever it was, I soon found myself paying the price. The evil stares were easy enough to ignore sometimes, but soon my roommates began accusing me of things I hadn’t done, like eating their labeled food out of the fridge even though I hadn’t even stepped into the kitchen! (It was filthier than the bathroom. And why cook when Dani’s House of Pizza and Austin’s Steak & Ale House were within walking distance and Golden Fountain Kitchen delivered the best spareribs and eggrolls in town?) But when a pilot I had just met for the first time confronted me about accusing him of sexual harassment to Victor—something that had never happened!—I knew something had to be done about my lying landlord, and quick!

  Georgia and I had been hitting the pavement all month looking for someplace else to live, but other than an illegal basement apartment inside a house that should have been condemned, there was just nothing available that we could afford nearby. After chasing down yet another lead that had already been rented by the time we finally got there, we decided to call it a day and find someplace to eat. The sun was setting. We were hungry. On our way home, we stumbled into the first place we found, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant, to grab a bite to eat and study the subway map. That’s when we spotted New York’s finest seated at a tiny table for two against the wall. We had never been happier to see undercover cops in our lives. (Button-down shirts not exactly hiding their guns had given them away.) Right after our waitress had placed a basket of stale chips in front of us, the boys not in blue introduced themselves. It didn’t take long before we were ratting out Victor. The cops agreed it couldn’t be a safe situation for a house full of women and suggested that they stop by the following day to check things out. Well, check things out they did. But instead of investigating Victor, they made themselves comfortable on our beat-up couch nursing the last of Georgia’s Dr. Brown diet cream sodas and gawking at our roommates. So that was a bust.

  That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands. I called Kew Gardens.

  Eddie answered the phone. “Going to work, sweetie?”

  “Not today. But we do need a car to take us to LaGuardia Airport. Georgia’s boyfriend is getting into town.” Then I added innocently, “Think you can send over Kent?” EMT worker by day, cab driver by night, Kent was a nice guy with not-so-nice looks. He could have been Chewbacca’s cousin. “And can you tell him to park the car and ring the bell . . . in case Georgia isn’t ready. You know how she is!” I gave a fake laugh.

  After an emphysema-like coughing fit, Eddie cleared his throat. “What the hell are you two up to now?”
<
br />   “Nothing!” I’d have to work on my fake laugh.

  When we first arrived in New York the significance of Eddie’s job didn’t mean much to us, but soon we discovered that drivers come and go. It’s the dispatcher who sticks around. Much like gate agents, dispatchers have power. They make things happen—like cars come quicker to the airport when a dispatcher likes you! This is a huge deal when it’s snowing outside, you’ve got an early sign-in the next morning, and you’re eager to get home because it’s been a long day and your feet are killing.

  Always, always make friends with the dispatcher.

  Little did we know that our awkward encounter with Eddie on our first night in town would become a life-changing event! Here’s what happened. After he drove off he went back to base and reported what had happened to the other dispatchers, who got a good laugh at our expense. This is how Georgia and I came to be famous in dispatching circles around Queens. At first the dispatchers were on the lookout for us, wanting to meet us, but after meeting us they actually started to look out for us. If I couldn’t find Georgia, I called Kew Gardens. They could always be counted on to know where she had flown to and how many days she’d be gone. If Kew Gardens wanted a case of beer from, say, Germany, they would call us. If we weren’t flying there we’d find someone else who was and ask them to bring it back so we could pass it on. When we needed to know which subway line to take to the city in order to meet a date at a certain location, we asked Kew Gardens. If they wanted a duty-free bottle of vodka, they called us. When we wanted to know if it was safe to go to a certain place in the city to meet a date, we called them. It’s no wonder they came to know our comings and goings better than we did. And when one of our favorite drivers, also a dispatcher on the weekends, went to prison for robbing a bank after writing a ransom note on the back of a Kew Gardens time sheet, Georgia and I were just as upset as the rest of the guys. For Christmas we gave each of them a pack of smokes and a gift card to Dunkin’ Donuts. They gave us a free ride to the airport. We became one big happy, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, coffee-drinking family, even though Georgia and I didn’t curse, smoke, or drink coffee—yet.

  Perhaps most important of all, Kew Gardens Car Service turned out to be all that stood between us and the Q10 bus stop. In our opinion, the Q10 was a nightmare. It was bad enough just trying to have exact change in quarters on hand at all times to ride the bus, let alone dealing with bus drivers who screamed at us to move our bags out of the way before we even had a chance to actually sit down and do so. To make matters worse, the driver with the bouffant hair would glare at us in the rearview mirror as she pressed the pedal to the metal, sending us stumbling down the aisle trying not to land on anyone. It didn’t take us long to realize that work was stressful enough without the added stress of the Q10. So while the majority of our colleagues chose to take the bus in order to save money for more important things like manicures and alcohol, Georgia and I learned to paint our own nails and take advantage of places like Brother Jimmy’s BBQ, a place in Manhattan that offered airline personnel with crew ID buy-one get-one-free drinks, so that we could afford the $8 Kew Gardens Car Service ride to the airport.

  When Kent the driver knocked on the door, I quickly let him inside. We stood in the foyer making small talk while Georgia finished “fixin’ ” her hair. My plan was for Victor to see the kind of posse I ran with. That way he’d think twice before playing dirty with me. Two seconds later, a pair of gold silk slippers came padding down the stairs. Victor took one look at my friend and kept on walking.

  By the time Georgia and I arrived at baggage claim, suitcases were already circling the carousel. I wouldn’t normally have tagged along, but Georgia had demanded I meet the future father of her children before they checked into a hotel in the city. Jake, John, Jack, whatever his name was, was the manager of a bar—or maybe he owned a restaurant?—but, either way, as soon as he heard Georgia sobbing over the phone about how much she missed home he immediately decided to book a flight to New York and arrived the following day.

  “Oh my gawd, I’m so nervous,” purred Georgia as she eagerly scanned the lingering crowd. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she let out a shriek and ran toward the baggage carousel. I craned my neck to see, but a skinny guy with long greasy hair was blocking my view of Mr. Wonderful. Only because he smiled at me, I smiled back at him, but I stopped smiling when Georgia jumped into his long, skinny arms.

  I was doing a little better in the man department. My boyfriend finally got the hint and broke up with me. Thank God! It took him long enough to realize that we wouldn’t see each other any time soon. I really had to emphasize the “any time soon” part quite a few times before he actually understood that it was me, not the airline, keeping us apart. Men!

  A relationship with a flight attendant can be tricky, because being a flight attendant isn’t just a job, it’s a lifestyle. No matter how many times we try to explain it, most people have a hard time really grasping that the only thing consistent about our lifestyle is just how inconsistent it truly is. Our schedules are always changing, making it difficult to create long-term plans with loved ones. We work odd hours and rarely get holidays and weekends off. We’re away from home for days at a time, and a lot of that time is spent at hotels with colleagues of the opposite sex. There aren’t a lot of people who can handle that. This is especially true for those involved before their flight attendant career began. It’s just too different for most men to deal with. Nine times out of ten, imaginations get the best of those left on the ground. They think all pilots look like Hugh Jackman instead of Danny DeVito, and that all the passengers seated in first class are trying to lure us onto their private islands with promises of champagne and caviar. Soon loneliness turns to jealousy and jealousy leads to frustration or anger. In the end, a person can only take so much and eventually someone will break up. It’s either break up or quit flying.

  This is why the people flight attendants get serious with must be confident, independent, and capable of making do for days at a time without their loved one. No one wants to spend an entire layover dealing with an insecure partner. What we really want is to be left alone—we’ve just spent the whole day taking care of needy passengers. A flight attendant also needs a partner who can make spur-of-the-moment plans, as well as deal with last-minute changes that involve backup plans A, B, and C, because when you work for an airline something is bound to go wrong. Jake, Jack, Jeff, whatever his name was, promised Georgia that he could do just that. He swore he’d be there for her through whatever tough times came their way. That he was in it for the long haul and that she had nothing to worry about, at least not when it came to him.

  But she did worry—she wanted him to know he was still a priority.

  A few weeks later, she walked through the front door of his apartment and yelled “Surprise!” Only it was Georgia who got the surprise of her life when a naked lady hiding in the closet sneezed. Jeff tried to distract her, but a woman knows another woman’s sneeze! Devastated, Georgia flew right back to New York and cried on her twin bed for three days. I bought her endless pints of cookies-and-cream ice cream from 7-Eleven, and rented movies like When Harry Met Sally and Thelma & Louise. The last thing I wanted Georgia to do was quit. Not over a guy. A shitty flight, maybe I’d understand. But a dick, no way, not going to happen. I’d make sure it wouldn’t happen. Especially because I didn’t want to get stuck in New York by myself!

  Chapter 7

  Cruising Altitude

  YOU’RE ON A flight trying to get a little rest when the kid who’s been kicking your seat for the last half hour suddenly begins to scream. Your head spins around like Linda Blair from The Exorcist and you give the parents an evil glare. When that doesn’t work you ring your flight attendant call light and ask the attendant if perhaps she can help, all the while counting down the seconds to landing.

  The likely culprit? It’s not bad parenting—it’s blocked ears. As the plane lowers, altitude changes increase air pressu
re, which pushes the eardrum inward. Because children have relatively narrow Eustachian tubes, they’re especially susceptible, particularly if they’re clogged by an inflammation or an ear infection. In the air, blocked ears can cause severe pain and dull hearing, and it can occasionally lead to hearing loss. What can parents do? Don’t allow the child to sleep during descent, find something to suck on—a bottle, pacifier, gum, or hard candy—and postpone air travel if a cold, sinus infection, or allergy attack is present. Oh, and just ignore the jerk seated in front of you.

  Blocked ears don’t just affect kids. I’ve seen grown men get teary-eyed in flight. Most people know that chewing gum helps, as does constant swallowing or yawning during descent. This allows the muscles in the Eustachian tube to contract and open, equalizing the pressure. When you hear a clicking sound, you know it’s working. Using a nasal spray or decongestant several hours before a flight is always a good idea when feeling congested. Steam can also help to ease the pain. Many passengers knew this and would ask for wads of hot wet paper towels stuffed inside Styrofoam cups to place over their ears. The steam seeped from the cloth through the cup and into the ear. (Unfortunately, because so many people have been burned using this technique we are no longer allowed to do it. Sorry!) But the best method for clearing ears is to use the Valsalva maneuver as soon as you begin to feel your ears starting to close. Pinch your nose, close your mouth, and gently exhale through your nostrils. Blowing too hard may damage the eardrum. Continue to do this periodically until landing. On the ground, try taking a hot steamy shower and drink plenty of hot tea. If you’re frequently plagued with ear pressurization problems, invest in a pair of disposable ear plugs called EarPlanes. And don’t leave home without them.

  Blocked ears can ground a flight attendant for days, even weeks. We may feel okay on the ground, but once up in the air the pain can become excruciating, especially when working a trip that hops from city to city, taking off and landing several times in a day. One flight attendant I knew continued to fly instead of calling in sick, and ended up losing not just her hearing in one ear after her eardrum erupted in flight but also the job she loved. Crews must be able to communicate quickly in dangerous situations. If we can’t hear a passenger calling for help, a coworker screaming for a fire extinguisher, or the captain giving us the secret code over the PA to initiate an evacuation we’re useless. It’s not all about serving drinks—we’re also in charge of saving lives. So, no eardrum, no job.