Fasten Your Seat Belts and Eat Your Fucking Nuts

by Joe Thomas

  Matt finished his shower and I ushered him back into the bedroom. He hinted at having sex. I ignored him. Unfortunately, there would be no touchdowns in my end zone. Not with the chance of Mike coming home at any minute and sleeping above us. That bunk bed wouldn’t shake uncontrollably for any other reason than us turning over. I grabbed my bathroom products and headed towards the bathroom when I heard someone downstairs in the livingroom. I walked over to the top of the stairs across from the bathroom, “Mike? Is that you?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  I turned back to the bedroom and stuck my head in the door, “Schmoopie. Mike is downstairs.”

  “Ok. Is this news?” He put his shirt on, “You knew he was coming home, right?”

  “Yes. I just wanted you to know.’

  “I don’t know why you’re so worried about me staying here. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

  He was right. Worrying was oxygen for me and if I didn’t do it I would most likely fall over and die. I agreed with him and headed back to the bathroom. I closed the bathroom door and turned the shower water on. All I needed was a few minutes alone under the running water to unwind and let the hustle of the day rinse away. The bathroom door was closed for around 30 seconds when I heard a large snap—like a tree trunk cracking—followed by a hefty thud. The thud of 280 pounds falling on the floor.

  I didn’t have time to shut the water off. I flung open the door and yelled, “What the fuck happened?” I came around the corner and stopped dead in my tracks.

  The lower bunk was destroyed. Where my mattress and wood slats once sat perfectly attached to the bed frame was Matt, sprawled out on the mattress which was now on the floor. His face was hidden from view with his massive legs hanging over the only portion of bed frame that had not fallen over. My husband has massive legs but never did I think the girth of them could take down a bed. “Don’t hurt yourself,” I responded while standing over him not knowing what to do. Where did I start? Did I help him up? Did I clean up the debris? Did I start packing and looking for a new place to live? All of the above?

  Stunned he slowly pulled himself off the mattress, “Jesus Christ. All I did was sit on the bed.”

  I just stood there staring at the devastation wondering how I was ever going to explain this to Kader. He’d most likely issue a fatwa on all overweight flight attendants. My life was officially over… there are a lot of fat flight attendants. My massive husband just ignited a war in Queens. Could I blame this on an earthquake? No. That was out of the question. There was no doubt that Matt’s body slamming onto the ground registered on some seismic level but not enough to get me out of this wreck.

  “What am I going to do?” I started to panic. “Oh my god! I am going to get kicked out.”

  Thoughts of having to drag my belongings through the snow and to the airport flooded my mind. “I should have flown home. Why did I let you talk me into staying here?” I began moving pieces of broken bed out of the way. The top portion of the bed remained intact but how long that would last was anyone’s guess. All I needed was prison time for Mike falling to his death in the middle of the night. He’d most certainly be drunk at the time but I still didn’t want that on my conscience. He was also younger and junior to me so the death of a fellow co-worker without the advancement in seniority was unnecessary.

  “This is not my fault. I hope you’re not blaming me for this.” Matt grabbed the mattress and swung it around to place it against the wall. “This is a child’s bunk bed anyway. Why does this guy have kid bunk beds for adults?”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying since I moved into this fucking place. This is why I can’t sleep on the top bunk.” Kids bunk beds for adults was absurd. Everyone knows there are bunk beds constructed of steel to hold an adult’s weight.

  During my banter with Matt, Mark snuck up the stairs unnoticed and positioned himself behind us with a glass of Malbec in his hand. “Damn. That must have been some rough sex.”

  Not even the best time to joke about something I would normally find amusing. “Mark. That’s not even funny right now. Matt, seriously, I need you to fix this bed. I’m not joking.”

  “What? Joe, you are being ridiculous. I can’t fix this bed.” He picked up the longest piece of the bed frame, “Where do I put this?”

  Sticking it up his ass was an option but I kept my mouth shut. Mark walked around the mattress along the wall, “Here,” he opened the door inside our room that led outside to a portion of the rooftop, “just put it out here.” He stood there sipping his wine and laughed out loud. “You fucked that bed up! Kader is gonna go nuts.”

  I grabbed a section of the frame that Hagrid from Hogwarts could have now used as a toothpick, “Fuck Kader. He should have beds that fit normal people and not toddlers.” I threw the damaged slat onto the roof. Thwack!

  The clean up from Matt’s catastrophe went quickly with the three of us moving broken pieces of wood onto the roof. That night I stayed in one of the empty beds in the room across the hall while Matt slept on top of the mattress on the floor.

  A few days later Kader showed up for his weekly inspection. I happened to be home which meant I had to man up and confess what happened. He would find out sooner or later so I just let it out, “I have to be honest with you Kader, my bottom bunk broke the other night when I went to bed.”

  Did I say be honest? I meant get out of this without a bomb detonating in the kitchen.

  He stood at the sink checking the faucet, “What do you mean it broke?”

  “I laid on it and it broke.” I figured leaving Matt out of the scenario was for the best. He walked passed me and started up the stairs. I got off the sofa and followed. I felt like a teenager who was about to get the whooping of his life for horsing around while a friend spent the night. Kader stood in the door of the bedroom surveying the damaged bed. The jagged ends of the wood still fresh from when it snapped under the pressure of Matt’s monster legs.

  “How did it just break? Where’s the rest of the bed?”

  “It’s on the roof.” I was nervous, “I’ll be honest with you, it broke because these beds are made for kids and not full grown adults.”

  He looked at me with so much hatred I’m surprised he didn’t decapitate me on the spot. He stepped over a few pieces of scattered debris and opened the door to the roof, “How come nobody else has a problem but you? You couldn’t sleep on the top bunk. You break the bottom bunk.” He looked out at the wood strewn across the roof like a family of suicide bombers had blown themselves up after an afternoon picnic and shook his head in disgust. Slamming the door shut he said, “I will have to charge you for the bed.”

  Now I was ready to attack, “What? I’m sorry but I don’t think it’s my responsibility to pay for a bed that broke underneath me.”

  “You need to pay for the bed or you need to find a new place to live. I can’t have my tenants breaking my property.”

  I was losing the fight. “Let me talk to my partner and see what we can do.” I walked out of the room and into the one I had been sleeping in. “I will stay in this room until you replace the broken bed.”

  “I’m not replacing the bed. It still functions for the guy who sleeps above you.” He didn’t even know Mark’s name. What a dick! “When I rent that other bed out you will have to find a new arrangement.”

  My goal was to get him out of my face, “Ok. I’ll pay for the bed.”

  It worked. Kader walked down the stairs and out of the apartment; I was free for the time being. I never paid him for the bed. I figured if he was going to hate me I wanted it to be for a good reason. I avoided that dude at every turn. When he made one of his unscheduled visits I was either at work, out for a walk, or taking a shower. A few times I may have hid in the closet.

  Weeks later I moved out of Kader’s crash pad and into a two bedroom apartment in Kew Gardens. It was across the street from the airport shuttle stop and had only five crashmates. I loved it. There wasn’t a single set of bunk beds in the entir
e apartment. Matt even spent many nights there without incident. All this luxury for only $25 more per month. It was crash pad heaven and I never had to rent from the Taliban again.

  Reserve (Not For Me)

  A raised hand from the back of the auditorium caught the attention of one of our flight attendant instructors, “What’s your question, Sheila?”

  “What’s it like being on reserve? Can you give us some information on that?”

  A question like that instantly pissed off the instructors. Our focus that afternoon was learning when and where to use the automatic external defibrillator (AED) on a child, not trying to understand the myths of reserve. Sheila’s question quickly snapped the rest of us out of our emergency equipment trances.

  “You will get an entire module on how reserve works before graduation,” the instructor answered standing in front of the screen. Our class was notorious for asking the most off topic questions during lecture time. Often it was downright preposterous. If I was an instructor, I would have lost my cool a dozen times but these professionals kept their wits about them. I feared that at any moment they would snap and send us home wingless. I was hoping we’d get through graduation before that happened. She continued, “Can we please stay focused on how to properly use the AED on a child?

  She was obviously crazy. AED? On a child? Who had time to learn about that? Understanding the big reserve picture was way more important than learning how to use the AED. Guess how many times I’ve had to turn on the AED and save a passenger’s life while juggling beverages and salty nuts. None. Guess how many times I’ve had life altering shit happen to me while I was on reserve. So many I can’t even count, but if you want a ballpark figure, I’d say somewhere between 100 and… one googolplex.

  What was reserve? That was the $100,000 question buzzing around the auditorium the week before graduation. It was on my mind constantly. Not just mine—everyone’s. How many hours were we required to work? How often would we be away from home? How much money should we expect to make? Was showering in the airport restroom a possibility? If you are wondering, the answers to those questions are: many, lots, nada, and you bet your fucking ass.

  Our instructors kept their lips sealed tighter than The Go Go's. After Sheila’s outburst during our emergency equipment module, if anyone even hinted at asking a reserve question our instructors announced a pop quiz. We were reprimanded like a lonely middle school student who may or may not have let their cock flop out of their shorts to get the attention of Coach Rodriguez in the 8th grade. Hypothetically, of course.

  The day came for our reserve and scheduling module. It left us wondering what language they were speaking. An interpreter in the room might have helped because we had no fucking clue what they were talking about. Gisselle Grasa, an overweight lady from Crew Scheduling, stood up in front of everyone and rattled off so much information our pens couldn’t write it down fast enough. “Let’s talk about swapping your reserve days,” she huffed and puffed walking back and forth in front of the entire auditorium. She resembled an over frosted cupcake, “because you can do that. Many other airlines don’t allow you to swap your reserve days. We do.” Señora Cupcake was proud of that. She pointed at the screen behind her which projected a grid filled with colors and numbers from the scheduling website, “If the reserve grid is in the red that means we are below minimums for the day.”

  Paul interrupted, “What are minimums?”

  She frowned. We could all tell that being interrupted was not something she was fond of, “The number of reserves we have scheduled for the day,” she went right back into her rehearsed speech, “and you can’t swap out of that day. If the day is in the black you can’t swap out of that day, either. You can, however, swap a black day to a red day but not a red day to a black day. Look for the color green. You can swap from a green day to a green day and a green day to a red or black day.” She continued, “But never a red or black day to a green day.” She finished with an enormous smile, “And that’s how you swap your days on reserve. Any questions?”

  Hands went up like a Nazi salute. Cupcake spent the next hour explaining the differences between red days, black days, and green days. I imagined she was talking about food coloring. My head hurt. I took four Advil and chased it down with a Bud Light when I got back to my hotel room.

  It didn’t take us long to understand everything we needed to know about reserve. It’s easy: reserve sucks. Sucks more than a Mormon teenage bride on her wedding night. Masochists couldn’t handle the pain that comes with being a flight attendant on reserve. I would rather be whipped with chains, fisted without Crisco, and left hanging upside down while someone pissed on me than spend a month on reserve. Actually, scratch that last part, that sounds kinda fun.

  Reserve flight attendants act as the airline’s safety net to cover for flight attendants who call in sick; that was what the airline told us in training. When we graduated and made it to our base city, we quickly realized the truth: we were airline bitches. Whores to be exact. Filthy whores pimped out by Crew Scheduling telling us where to go, what time to be there, what to wear, when to take a shit, and when we could leave the airport to go home.

  On reserve you had to be ready to answer your telephone the moment it rang. No exceptions. There was no turning off the ringer and avoiding your calls like you do when your parents or in-laws call. Crew Scheduling was big brother, watching from a hidden camera, awaiting the most inopportune time to call. If we were shitting and missed the call we had a total of 15 minutes to call them back. If we miss that window the airline considered us AWOL. If that happened, we might as well keep running.

  After training I received my first reserve schedule and cried like I had a hemorrhoid flare up. That was reserve for me, a hemorrhoid flare up that a Tuck’s couldn’t cure. I immediately began counting down the years until I was a line holder. I concentrated on nothing else. I fantasized about lines more than Whitney Houston. When my days off were over and it was time to head back to JFK for a block of reserve days, Matt literally had to throw me and my luggage out of the car on the departures level. He sped off and was lucky I couldn’t run fast in my uniform. Before he dropped me off at the airport, I always suffered from excruciating abdominal pains and swore I had irritable bowel syndrome with the need to stay home.

  “You don’t have IBS. Go to work.” Matt said annoyed.

  “I do too have IBS. I’m literally about to shit myself right now. Why else I am in so much pain?”

  “Because you’re crazy?”

  That argument ended quickly.

  Everytime my block of reserve days were over and I was released from the painful grip of Crew Scheduling, I jumped on the first flight back home. When I left the crash pad my mind played tricks on me telling me I never had to return. My mind loves fucking with me. Going home made me so happy I worked myself into a frenzy whenever Matt picked me up from the airport.

  "How was work?" he'd ask after I closed the car door.

  "I'm never going back. I can't do this anymore."

  As he pulled away from the arrivals curb he'd somberly say, "If you are that unhappy then quit,” then he added, “but you need to have a job first."

  “Why do you hate me?” I was convinced that he enjoyed my misery.

  He’d look over and put his hand on my leg, “Joe, I don’t hate you. I love you. But if you are unhappy you need to do something else. I hate to see you this upset because of your job.”

  There was no denying I was miserable. Reserve. Commuting to Queens. Being away from home. I was pathetic with my complaining. There were thousands standing in line wanting to become flight attendants, and here I was crying about every aspect of it. While I moaned like a little bitch, some of my flight attendant crashmates loved being on reserve. I did not understand them. I thought of them as sick and twisted fucks who tucked away a shitload of medications under their bunk bed. If this was true I never benefited from any of these meds. They either forgot to share them or I was working when they hande
d them out. Whatever the reason—they were a bunch of selfish bitches.

  My prize was not a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but the thrilling moment when my seniority allowed me to say goodbye to life as a reserve airline bitch and become a line holding bitch—that was pure gold. There was a difference, an important one: the ability to know what flights I worked that month instead of blank days on a calendar. Where I would go on overnights and what time I started and finished each trip. Knowing what kind of clothes to pack instead of throwing my winter sweater in my luggage along with my white thong. Simple things that normal people take for granted when working a 9-5 job in the suburbs. And before you stop reading and ask for your money back—I do not own a white thong.

  Being years away from the line holder prize was brutal for me. Not everyone felt that way. Evan bounced around cheerfully preaching. “We just have to do our time. Our day will come.”

  Really? That’s what convicts say after they get 60 years behind bars for murdering a family at Disney. This actually was prison and Evan confirmed it to me while we watched the snow fall outside our prison pad. I figured the universe put me in this position as punishment for skipping so many days of Catholic Church when I was a preteen. Apparently, the universe did not take into consideration the ass whoopings my grandmother gave me when she found me loitering behind the church. Maybe I was waiting for Father Long to give me his Holy Sacrament. Did she ever take that into consideration? She didn’t care.