Cruising Attitude

by Heather Poole

  In hindsight, I realize the problem with Gary was that there was no problem with Gary. The man was perfect in every sense of the word. But I was twenty-three, and at that time in my life, there was one thing that I really couldn’t handle. What bugged me wasn’t that he had a four-year-old son or an ex-wife who lived not too far from his parents’ house. Where he lived. No, what disturbed me were his clothes. I almost died when he showed up for our first date basically wearing his uniform. Because I knew he was on a layover, I let it slide—the first time. No doubt about it, Gary looked handsome standing in front of a cockpit door greeting passengers, but the uniform belt and uniform pants paired with a bright yellow T-shirt just didn’t cut it on the dance floor.

  It’s an interesting topic, pilots and fashion. I’m not sure I can even use the two words in the same sentence since they go as well together as orange juice and toothpaste. Ask any group of flight attendants if they can spot a pilot in civilian “layover clothes” and they will emphatically say yes. Don’t believe me? Next time you’re at the airport look for the guy wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses. If he’s also sporting pleated khakis with a powder blue golf shirt underneath a Members Only jacket, nine times out of ten his name is at the bottom of the non-rev standby list. Despite the reality, for so many women the word “pilot” conjures up images of dashing men in uniform. Think Richard Gere (Officer and a Gentleman), Tom Cruise (Top Gun), Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator), Andy Garcia (When a Man Loves a Woman), John Travolta (he owns a 707), and Jake Pavelka—ya know, Jake, the pilot from that television show The Bachelor who later went on to shake his groove thing on Dancing with the Stars. While he looked oh so dreamy dressed in a tux, I couldn’t help but wonder as I watched the women fawning in their desperate quest for a rose if they would have even given him the time of day if they’d seen him in real life—say, passing through the lobby of a hotel in his layover clothes, holding a passenger’s discarded day-old newspaper while sipping a discounted cup of coffee? Somehow I doubt it.

  In the travel section of Barnes & Noble, I once met a guy named Bob. I didn’t believe him when he told me he was a pilot. He looked too good to be a pilot! Not that Bob is conventionally handsome. He’s kind of nerdy. But he knows how to rock the dark denim without the pilot’s trademark running sneakers. When I asked Bob why so many pilots dressed terribly, he said it’s because his coworkers spend too much time looking for tools in the Sears catalog and then accidentally stumble into its clothing section. “It’s not so much that being a pilot causes one to be fashion-challenged, it’s just that we tend to be better at things like engineering, checking the car’s oil, fixing things around the house, and not asking for driving directions. This opposed to fashion design,” he explained.

  Too bad Bob wasn’t around to help my roommate Jane’s date, a 767 first officer, pick out something to wear on their first date. Hot Shot showed up dressed to impress wearing golf shoes, skin-tight acid-washed jeans, and a turquoise jacket.

  “He looked like such a nerd,” Jane cringed after the date. “I don’t think I would have agreed to go out with him if he’d looked like that when he asked me out.”

  Thank God for first impressions. And uniforms.

  They spent three weeks getting to know each other over the phone before their first date. They weren’t intentionally taking it slow, but that’s how long it took before they were finally able to coordinate their schedules. In the long run, this was a good thing since it helped that Jane was practically head over heels for the guy by the time they finally went out. Otherwise she might not have been able to overlook the off-duty fashion disaster, and he would have never made it to second base. Two months into the relationship Jane talked her man into donating the shoes and the jeans, along with a dozen or so obnoxious Christmas ties and half a closet full of college clothes, to Goodwill. Then she borrowed his credit card and went shopping. She may have purchased a few things for him, too, because after they broke up two years later Hot Shot was considered one of the best-dressed pilots in the system. Much to her dismay he had no problem scoring another flight attendant who got to enjoy the fruits of Jane’s labor. But don’t feel badly for Jane. She upgraded to an airbus captain.

  Gary and I didn’t date for long. In fact we didn’t really “date.” We went out a few times over the course of five months or so. But Gary turned into the better-looking but terribly dressed version of my mother when he began spending a lot of time talking to me about his job and why I should be doing it—or one somewhat similar to it. I never told him I’d interviewed with an airline before. Perhaps I wanted to block it from my mind. Instead I kept explaining to him that I wanted to do something more with my life than serve drinks and pick up trash. Every time I told him this I sounded snottier and more full of myself until I began to make my own self sick. I don’t know why Gary put up with me. But he did, and that’s when I started inventing reasons not to go out with him. When he didn’t take the hint, I stopped calling him back.

  A year after he disappeared from my life, I became a flight attendant with the same company Gary worked for. Needless to say after I graduated from flight attendant training I began thinking about him again. More than anything I wished I had handled things with him differently. All I could do was worry about running into him again! It was inevitable. It didn’t matter if the airline I worked for was a big company with almost twenty thousand flight attendants or that flight attendants worked with different people all the time. The interesting thing about being a flight attendant is that while we may not see a person we’ve worked with for years after a trip, out of nowhere they’ll pop up on the other side of the cart, as if no time had passed, other than that person gaining a little weight or losing a little hair. Just when we begin to feel comfortable and think that maybe, just maybe, the one we’d like to avoid has quit or retired or transferred to another base, his or her name will appear on a crew list. One minute we could be working with a flight attendant on the prowl, and the next time we see her she’s the mother of three, sharing sippy-cup tips on the jump seat. Or even worse, one minute a pilot is dating a regular girl with a bad attitude on the ground, and the next time he speaks to her, she’s wearing a matching uniform—but lying about it.

  I had just moved into the crash pad with Georgia and Victor, the mankini-wearing, drugged-out landlord, when out of the blue Gary called to “check in and say hello.” Too embarrassed by my past rants against the airline industry to tell him the truth—that at that moment I was laying over at a Holiday Inn not too far from the airport in Oklahoma City—I did the next best thing. I lied. I didn’t want him to know I had just finished eating breakfast for dinner at a Denny’s across the street by myself as I was the extra flight attendant on a trip and therefore on my own for the next three days, so I told him everything was great, life couldn’t be better, and yes, I was in fact still working for the watch company. I went on and on about a life I no longer had or even wanted. I was on a roll, describing in detail things I hadn’t done in over a year with people I no longer worked with, and Gary quietly listened. I don’t remember how the conversation ended, but it’s safe to assume that it did and when it did I was relieved. After that I dreaded flying the Miami run even more than I had before, which I didn’t think was possible.

  If I did find myself walking through the Miami airport, the most chaotic airport in the world and home of the most amazing people-watching on Earth, I did so briskly and never stopped for anything other than what was absolutely necessary. Rice and beans at La Carreta and a café con leche from Café Versailles. While I’d nervously wait in line for the most delicious Cuban takeout food, I’d scan the horizon for a familiar face, always scoping out what I could duck behind, maybe a magazine stand or group of passengers, in order to avoid an unwanted run-in. At some point I knew I’d have to face my fears, but I kept hoping that day would come later, not sooner. While I waited for the inevitable to happen I imagined all the different scenarios that could possibly occur—well, all but the one that actu
ally did occur.

  I had boarded a flight in Dallas with my crew. The plane was in the process of being catered and cleaned when I spotted a pair of aviator Ray-Bans on the galley counter. Naturally I picked them up, tried them on, and walked into the lav to check myself out in the mirror. As I stood with the door open, reapplying lipstick, I heard a familiar voice behind me say, “Excuse me. I think I left my sunglasses on board.”

  Oh boy. I swallowed hard and slowly turned around.

  “I guess these are yours then.” I took the shades off and handed them back to Gary. “Long time no see,” I said, cringing as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I didn’t know what else to say!

  “W-what are you . . . when did you—”

  “Last year.” I didn’t want him to know I had been lying the last time we spoke, so I did it again. I told him exactly what had happened, only I shaved off a few years. Then I did what any other flight attendant would do when a person dares to step onto the precious galley floor. I offered him a drink and prayed he’d go back to his seat, which turned out to be the left seat on a flight to Palm Springs. Gary had been upgraded to captain. I congratulated him and wished him the best.

  “I can’t tell you how odd it is to see you here, on an airplane, in uniform. You really look great!” he said.

  I blushed. “Thanks. You do, too.” He did. Even better than before.

  When he took off his hat and scratched his head, I caught a glimpse of a young boy holding a bat and wearing a red jersey in a photograph tucked inside the clear plastic pocket on the underside of his cap, which is where single pilots keep their business cards and the others keep family photos. A way to distinguish one hat from another since they all look alike hanging on the back of the cockpit door during flight.

  “So . . . why did we lose touch again?” he asked earnestly.

  “Umm . . .” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I stared at the oven door for a count of three, as if seriously pondering the question, and then looked directly into his beautiful brown eyes and lied again. “I don’t remember.” What can I say? I was on a roll.

  “Would you like to get together . . . again, sometime?” he asked. I couldn’t believe it. I’d said terrible things about flight attendants, stopped calling him, become a flight attendant, and lied about it, and he still wanted to see me again.

  Of course I said yes. Because I knew Gary was a great guy! I could only assume I’d grown up over the last three years. Surely I could appreciate all he had to offer this time around now that I was in a completely different place in life. Now that I was older and wiser and well traveled, I figured Gary and I had to have a lot more in common. So I scribbled my number across a beverage napkin and told him to call me for a second time.

  Midway through round two of our first date, it was clear that we had a problem. Gary was, well, not very exciting. But he was thoughtful, in that he brought flowers and always opened doors. He was the kind of pilot that would grab crew bags out of the first-class closet and line them up on the jet bridge for a quick escape. But if I wasn’t talking, we weren’t talking—talk about stressful! At least with the CEO I could share funny stories, but if Gary hadn’t already heard my funny stories, he’d heard of ones just like them. I knew he was a catch, so I tried not to let that deter me. But as he walked me to my hotel door at the end of the night I found myself dreading the kiss good night. Determined not to let a little thing like chemistry come between us, I kissed him anyway! I felt nothing. Really putting my all into it, I tried again. But we just weren’t meant to be.

  Years later, during a vacation in Puerto Vallarta, my mother turned to me and announced, “There’s something I need to tell you.” When my mother starts a conversation like this, what follows next is guaranteed to be frightening.

  “Dad’s dead?” I said half-jokingly.

  “Worse.” My mother covered her face with her hands and I could have sworn I heard her say something crazy like “I wrote Gary a letter.”

  “You did what?!”

  “Right after you completed flight attendant training and moved to New York. You just seemed so sad and lonely. I was worried about you. I thought maybe if he knew you were a flight attendant he might call and offer to take you out.”

  I leaned back in my seat and adjusted the air vent so I could breath. I wanted to kill her. The fact that Gary had acted surprised to see me on the airplane and never even let on about the freaking letter just proved to me that he might be even crazier than my mother! Or one of the nicest guys in the world. Either way, it meant that he lied, too, kind of, so in a way we were even, sort of.

  I haven’t seen Gary since, but my mother has. Twice. The first time he was the captain on one of her flights. After years of staring at that stupid photograph, she recognized him right away. She almost died when he walked on board and stowed his bag in the first-class closet. The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass me, so she never told him who she was, but she does think he may have known based on the way he lingered around in the galley a lot during the flight. The second time she ran into him—a decade later!—he knew exactly who she was and told her so in the rear galley as she was setting up carts. After she was through telling me all about how great he was, and how he had nothing but nice things to say about me, and how he’s moving to New York and is engaged to a girl who looks, based on a photograph, kind of like me, she exclaimed, “I swear, Heather, you’ll never do better than him!” And she turned out to be right . . . at least as far as pilots were concerned.

  Chapter 12

  Marry Me, Fly Free!

  EARLY ON IN my career, my roommate Tricia took me to a trendy bar in Manhattan, and a guy sporting Buddy Holly frames and electric blue Puma sneakers leaned over and asked what I did for a living.

  “I’m a flight attendant,” I yelled over the pulsing beat of the music, and then I took a sip of my apple martini.

  Buddy Holly straightened himself up and walked away. I watched in shock as he crossed the room and made a play for another blonde. I guess she had a more respectable job, since he spent the rest of the night conversing with her.

  “Asshole!” Tricia exclaimed. A group of guys who’d gathered around vying for her attention laughed. I pretended to care less, but, really, I was pissed! If I had told him that I was a watch designer, would it have made a difference? Probably.

  Being a quick learner, I told the next guy I worked for an airline. That’s it. End of story. When he pressed, I said I handled baggage. (Well, I do—during boarding!) Not only did he stick around, he bought me drinks. Unfortunately he turned out to be a FO-FO. This is what I call the first on, first off. FO-FOs are easy to spot. Like gate lice, they’ll line up against the wall in front of the boarding door in the airport terminal, impatiently waiting to get on a flight before the flight attendants have even had a chance to do so themselves. They’re also the ones that stand up before the seat belt sign is turned off in order to grab their bags out of the bin, crushing anyone who dares to get in their way as they sprint to the deplaning door. I hate to admit it, but I kind of like it when the captain slams on the breaks, sending a couple of FO-FOs stumbling down the aisle. Once I realized I was faced with a FO-FO, I did what any other flight attendant would do: I channeled my inner Buddy Holly guy and walked away, but not without politely excusing myself first.

  People like Buddy have formed very strong opinions about flight attendants based on things we have zero control over, like a lack of drink choices or a used crossword puzzle inside the complimentary in flight airline magazine. Stuff like that can make some passengers nuts. Mix in a couple of hours with nothing to do but to sit and stew over the matter, and we’ve got a very unhappy passenger on our hands. And we’re not the Royal British Guard. Sometimes, every once in a while, a passenger pushes us too far and we react. This usually happens around day 4 of flying several days in a row after having to deal with the same complaints over and over again. One frustrated flight attendant I know finally exclaimed, “This is a
n airplane, not a 7-Eleven!” after a passenger became irate that the airline didn’t carry soy milk. Of course, it’s always the passenger with the problem who will have to be reminded later on in flight that the seat belt sign is on. These are the same passengers who will then come to the false conclusion that we’re picking on them. It never fails: whatever they ask for next, we won’t have, which will lead them to the false conclusion that we’re lying. It doesn’t matter how many great flight attendants this passenger may encounter on future flights, from here on out, we’re all liars and nothing we do or say will change that. If Buddy Holly was one of those, I guess I dodged a bullet.

  The other danger of admitting you’re a flight attendant to a potential date is finding one who is now more interested in your job than you. You’ll be asking about them and all they’ll want is to hear about the mile-high club. (To be fair, many people who are not trying to take me home also want to know about the mile-high club.) The not so sexy answer to this is that most people eager to join the club usually fail, because it’s my job to stop it from happening as soon as I become aware of what’s going on. This usually happens after an impatient passenger has complained about waiting in line to use the lav for a long period of time.