by Joe Thomas
The Rule Breaker: This select group knows all the airline rules but refuses to follow them. If the airline requires beverage service to start at the front of the airplane, these folks will start from the back. Flight attendant suitcases go over row 10—these assholes put them over row 20. Report time to the airplane is an hour before departure, these cocky bastards show up whenever they want… with their take-out coffee in hand.
The Celebrity: Actor. Writer. Singer. Wheel of Fortune winner. Server of fucking nuts.
The Slam Clicker: It doesn't matter if they have a 10 hour layover or a 40 hour layover, this flight attendant enters their hotel room and doesn’t leave until airport van time.
The Pregnant Breastfeeding One: She pumps herself dry more often than an airplane full of high school rugby players. After she’s done, she enjoys showing you her breast milk and adding, “Would you like to try it?”
The Lavatory Napper: A quick bathroom break on a red-eye flight lasts over an hour for this guy. When he comes out—face red, eyes crusty, and hair a mess—he states, “I must have fallen asleep.”
The Work Out King: Turns the entire back galley into his own personal 24 Hour Fitness and transforms the airplane door into a Bowflex, but still looks weak.
The Non-Revenue Flight Attendant: They walk on the airplane like you are old friends but you’ve never met this person in your entire life. Dressed like they just stepped out of a threesome—hair a mess, ripped jeans—and asks you, “Can you buy me a drink? Do you have some headphones? What food options do you have?”
The Book Reader: This person only cares about one thing and one thing only and that’s how their book ends. You could be standing in the middle of the airplane screaming for medical assistance while a passenger is having heart attack and this flight attendant waits until they finished the chapter to assist.
The Sex Offender: Has the highest record of complaints from female passengers about inappropriate touching. This is the guy who “accidently” drops a cup of Diet Coke in your lap and then demands he rinses out your vagina with seltzer water.
The Almost Terminated: Brags throughout the entire flight about being on final disciplinary action but insists the airline will never terminate them. The following week your seniority number goes up by one and you never see or hear from that person again.
The Mental Illness: You believe things are going well during boarding and the second after you sit on the jumpseat the other flight attendant looks at you and says, “I’m bipolar and I’ve stopped taking my medication. Be prepared for anything.”
The Celebrator: Keeps so busy celebrating passengers’ birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, bar mitzvahs, first time periods, and sex reassignment surgeries that she has no time to do the job she’s actually paid to fucking do.
The Drug Smuggler: There’s no question about it—this girl swallows… bags of cocaine. Single, works as a part time flight attendant, and lives on the Upper East Side. If you ask her how she does it she’ll tell you her guy friend helps out, when he can. When she does work a flight it’s usually to Bogota or Mexico City and it’s always with an empty suitcase and some Ex Lax.
The Overly Excited Union Supporter: If the union pins, bag tags, and stickers don’t give this guy away—the hours of him sitting on the jumpseat explaining the pros and cons of having the union will. He eats, sleeps, and breaths the union. He’s so obsessed he made his new girlfriend sign a five year contract and then promoted his mother to union steward.
Fear Is Not An Option
In the winter of 1997, I realized I was nothing more than a chicken shit. A 25 year old chicken shit, sleeping on his friend’s sofa and working as a male nurse at a medium-sized hospital in Kissimmee, Florida. I trained myself to add the word male to my title early in my career. On more than one occasion, I walked into a patient’s room to introduce myself and they’d stare at me deadpan, “Oh, you’re a male nurse.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Like I had no fucking idea who, or what, I was.
I’d write my name on the whiteboard across from the patient’s bed and refrain from correcting them with a witty, “Actually, I am a nurse with balls. Now take your medication and go back to sleep.”
During this time I was single. Let me just state that being single, gay, and 25 was devastating. To make matters worse I was a virgin. A gay virgin. A 25 year-old gay virgin chicken shit. Teenagers had more sex before they turned 18 than I did in my entire twenties. Don’t get me wrong, the last thing I wanted was to be a virgin. Sex was on my mind constantly and I had the cum-filled white tube socks to prove it—a tradition I had kept since I was 13 years old and living at home with my mother, Irene.
Irene found more tube socks under my bed than in the hamper. When she unearthed them she did nothing to help with my embarrassment, “What the fuck is in this sock?”
Looking up and removing my headphones, “What?”
“What’s in this sock?”
“Glue.” I’d immediately go back to my Walkman.
She quized me again,“Glue? Are you telling me glue is cementing this sock together?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” she started out of my room, “Please put your glue in a tissue or towel next time.”
It was humiliating, but it didn’t keep me from filling up my socks well past my mid-twenties.
I had no sexual companionship. There were nights I contemplated turning a bar stool over and humping one of the rusty metal legs. I may have been desperate for sex, but I was not crazy enough to destroy my chances of ever having another healthy bowel movement. Being single was equivalent to being diagnosed with cancer. With cancer there were options: chemotherapy, radiation, smoking copious amounts of weed. My only option was my right hand, or my left when I wanted to feel the touch of a stranger. I spent hours searching for the love of my life in the AOL Instant Messenger “M4M” chat rooms. I even visited chat rooms of other countries: M4M Mexico, M4M Canada, M4M England. I visited so many of these rooms I needed a new passport. The single life hung over my head like storm clouds over someone without an umbrella.
When was I going to meet the man of my dreams? Was he out there? What was I doing wrong? I couldn’t see through the thick fog that surrounded my life. When we put our energy into focusing on what we don’t have we forget everything we do have. I forgot what I had while spending countless nights working the graveyard shift concocting a plan to escape my dreadful single life. I was blind to the rich opportunity laid out in front of me. My checking account was overdrawn but what I lacked in dollar bills, I made up for in a different kind of fortune: freedom.
I had the freedom to do anything I wanted and go anywhere I deemed acceptable. I was single, which was something my coupled friends envied and never let me forget. They reassured me how lucky I was to be single but I refused to believe them. I took their words as pity for my situation. I knew a change was on the horizon but I was afraid of what that meant. After months of dread and feeling sorry for myself I concluded it was time to revise my life in a drastic way. That revision included a one way ticket out of Central Florida.
During countless hours working the night shift at the hospital, I created a plan and set it into motion. I looked after my patients but every free second was centered on this project. I picked up extra shifts so I’d be forced to sit at the nursing station and plan my relocation. I was so preoccupied that one night I gave a patient too much insulin and spent the rest of the night vomiting and praying to Madonna that this old lady made it out alive. She did. Don’t judge.
I was easily distracted at home but during the late hours at the hospital, when sleep wasn’t an option, I found my creative side on how to plan an ambitious move. I did this while eating Filipino food and shooting up patients with too much insulin. It was challenging but I managed. Whenever I had doubts, or fear crept in, I reminded myself I had planned a large move like this before. It was actually an escape.
When I was 15 years old I worked part time at Th
e Grocery Barn, a small grocery store in East Hartford, Connecticut. After months of saving, I collected $400 to secretly purchase two one-way tickets on a Greyhound bus so Irene and I could liberate ourselves from my alcoholic and abusive father. If I had devised a plan then, when my life depended on it, certainly I could do it when I was 25, had a career, and owned my own car.
On a warm early morning in April, right before my shift, I completed the first draft of my plan: a fresh start in a new city. It had to be the perfect city, with a lively gay scene and lots of activities. After laboring over my decision for weeks, I narrowed it down to four cities: Denver, Boston, Phoenix, and Seattle.
Denver offered the Rocky Mountains. I could take up skiing, find the love of my life, and enjoy romantic evenings with him beside the fire. Boston was familiar because I was from New England. I spoke the language and it would be like returning home. Phoenix had beautiful desert landscapes and my relatives lived in nearby Mesa. And then there was Seattle. I had never been to Seattle. I hadn’t been to Denver or Boston either, but every time I uttered “Seattle,” it rolled off my tongue like I was meant to say it often. I imagined myself telling people, “Hi. I live in Seattle. Where do you live?”
For four months I studied everything I could about these four cities. I spent hours researching online, talking to anyone who had ever visited these cities, and flipped through travel books at the local library deciding which city would welcome me with open arms. I knew the answer. My soul had already moved there even though my body was thousands of miles away.
I had fallen in love with Seattle without ever stepping foot in the state of Washington. Denver was too cold, Phoenix was too hot, and Boston was way too expensive. Seattle, the furthest city of the four, was just right. Seattle had the perfect location between the sea and mountains, but I quickly forgot how far it was from everyone I knew.
When I announced in mid-August that I’d be moving to Seattle, the rest was easy. During the next few months I found myself hired on at Seattle Children’s Hospital without ever visiting the hospital for a face-to-face interview. I rented an apartment via fax machine and registered my new Seattle phone number with the telephone company. It was official: I was moving to Seattle. All I had to do was pack my car and drive.
The night before I started my drive to Seattle, I loaded up my black 1997 Kia Sportage, leaving barely enough room to shift gears. I spent my last night on a friend’s sofa and told Irene I’d stop at her house before I left so we could have breakfast and say our goodbyes.
Irene was not happy with my decision to move so far away. She confessed later that she spent many nights crying herself to sleep over it. Even though she shed a few tears over my decision, she never stood in my way. I give her credit for that type of control. She encouraged me the entire time even though she never fully understood why I wanted to leave.
That last night I was struck with insomnia. I lay on the sofa and my mind raced faster than a car around a track. Nothing brought down the checkered flag. I gazed at the clock underneath the living room television for hours, watching the minutes creep closer and closer to my departure time.
I finally fell asleep, because the alarm woke me at 5 a.m. After taking a quick shower and packing up the few items I brought into the house, I snuck out unnoticed. When I arrived at Irene’s house I honked the horn but found the kitchen windows were devoid of light with zero movement in the house. She always sat at the kitchen table drinking her coffee and enjoying her morning cigarette, so I figured she was still sleeping. I shut off the engine and walked up the sidewalk to the front door. I knocked. Nothing. I wouldn’t put it past her to throw a wrench into my plans 20 minutes before my scheduled departure. She had been so cooperative and understanding; this made perfect sense. Her method of destroying my happiness came when I least expected it—the moment I was leaving. I considered turning around, getting in my car, and driving off without saying goodbye. Fuck her and her games. As my mind ran through all the devious things she was doing to me, the door unlocked from the inside and she opened it. Standing in the doorway in her robe she said, “I’m sorry, Joe. I just woke up.”
I am such a dick. “That’s ok,” I walked passed her into the living room, “We don’t have to go to breakfast if you don’t want,” she closed the door and walked over to me, “I’m kinda running late anyway.”
She wrapped her arms around me, “I’d really like to go. Let me get dressed,” and hurried off to her bedroom.
I meandered around the living room. After a few moments staring at a picture of my grandparents from their wedding day, I moved over and sat on the golden sofa that was once white. The feel of my grandmother’s crocheted afghan blanket against my hand soothed me. It made me feel loved, made me feel warm inside. Warm inside? Why was I warm? Did I have to pee? The discomfort came on stronger and stronger until a heavy pain camped out in my stomach. Anxiety had to be normal during a time like this, right? I attributed the feeling to my lack of sleep and that I was already past the time I had allotted myself for breakfast. When I heard Irene’s bedroom door open I let go of the afghan and stood up to walk to the back of the house. While she sat on the edge of her bed putting on her shoes I plopped myself down on the other side.
“Are you excited?” She asked cheerfully even though I knew she was miserable that her only child was moving across the country. To her, another planet.
“I don’t know. I guess.” What was happening to me? Sweat started collecting on my brow and the first drop made its way down the bridge of my nose. The pounding in my chest beat with the force of fifty drums while I fought back the urge to empty the contents of my stomach on her bedspread. A feeling of loneliness took hold of me.
Standing up from the bed she walked around to face me, “Are you ok?”
“I can't go.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m afraid.” I looked up at her. I wanted her to smile and be excited but she looked confused and ready to attack—like a burglar broke in to steal her cigarettes and beer. I quickly looked back down to the floor.
“What do you mean you’re afraid?” Her agitation rose which made the volume of her voice increase, which ignited her smoker’s cough like a raging forest fire. “You’ve been planning this all year!”
“I can’t do it. Something is telling me not to go.” I avoided making eye contact again. My own disappointment was too difficult to face, and seeing my reflection in her eyes would have destroyed me.
Always the master at making everything about her, she became enraged, “How dare you put me through this shit for months, and now you don’t wanna go?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was ready to go this morning but now I’m scared.” I stood up from the bed and slowly moved to the full length mirror draped in front of her closet door like a starched housecoat. “Maybe I’m not ready to be so far from home.”
“Joe, I’m pleased you don’t want to go but I’m shocked.” She grabbed one of her Winston 100’s—pausing for a moment to light it and inhale smoke into her lungs. She looked over at me, “Look at me.”
I did as I was told.
“Did your friends put you up to this?”
“They have nothing to do with it,” I responded, “I don’t know why you always have to bring them up in my shit.” My fear of looking at her directly in the eyes faded. I stepped away from the mirror and walked back to the bed and sat down.
Irene took one last drag of her cigarette and choked out, “They are always involved in your shit. That’s why I fucking bring them up. You moved out of my house to live with them.” Hacking on her last puff, “Now see what you’ve done. Goddamnit. You’ve worked me up and I’ve smoked my cigarette too fast!” She moved to her bedside table and extinguished her cancer stick in the ashtray.
“I gotta go. I’ll see you later.” I started towards her bedroom door making my way by the nicotine-yellow walls and stained carpet that matched the sofa. The smoke-filled haze lingered for days a
nd attached itself to every stitch of clothing and follicle of hair that entered the house. It was disgusting. I felt bad for her cat, Maggie.
“Run to your friends. You always do,” she spit out. I thought she might have been pleased that I chickened out of moving to Seattle, but instead she turned the morning into a war that I was not ready to fight. Irene was always ready to battle with me and I hardly ever backed down. Emotionally drained, I decided to postpone our argument for a later date. There were more important things going on at that moment. I had whiplash from my life doing a complete hundred and eighty degree turn in the past fifteen minutes. I needed Advil and a neck brace—not a knock-down, drag-out fight with Irene.
I walked out the front door and never looked back, but I knew she was behind me. I felt defeated and she wanted me to feel even worse. I climbed in my car and quickly shut the door. Without looking up I turned the key to ignite the engine and backed out of her driveway. Irene was standing in the door yelling something but I already drowned her out with the stereo. After driving a few blocks down the palm tree-lined street with the cookie cutter houses, I pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine.
Tears flowed down my chin. As soon as I wiped them off, more followed. My first instinct was to go back to her house and finish the battle. I may not have been prepared to win but I was ready to tell her the fuck off. That was the exact reason I always went running back to my friends, because she was a lunatic. She was a manipulator who made me feel horrible about myself. Irene was never there for me and she never could be. Irene didn’t know how to truly love me because she couldn’t even love herself. I wanted to turn my Kia around and go back and share all this with her but I chickened out.
The next morning I couldn’t shake the pain that crushed my heart with the force of a hundred pound weight. The emotional dam had broken, flooding my entire body with disappointment and regret. My perfect new life was only a three day drive away, but here I was, right back on my friend’s lumpy sofa with way too much dog hair. By lunchtime I had reclaimed my old job at the hospital and my familiar life was restored. Seattle was already a memory. Irene ignored my phone calls, which was probably for the best. We both needed time to heal from our dramatic outburst.
