Confessions of a Hostie Page 8

  If he likes my boots, then he is going to love my red lacy lingerie.

  I do however take note that he is wearing the same clothes as the night before. This bothers me and yet intrigues me at the same time.

  He had a suitcase in his room, didn’t he? What the hell is in it?

  We both still seem to be sexually uncomfortable and don’t talk about the night before or about the 2:15 a.m. ‘sleeping pill’ he gave me. We drink some more, and then it is time to get the bill.

  Although I like to think of myself as a modern woman, I am taken aback when Brad asks for two separate bills. The waiter frowns, and so do I.

  Brad finally realises the situation and tells the waiter, ‘It’s OK. One bill is fine.’

  Thank goodness, I think.

  Brad turns to me, ‘I’ll sign for it in my room, and you can pay me your half of it later.’

  ‘Later? Later! You are such a bloody techie. I made every fantasy of yours come true last night, and you won’t even pay for one lousy dinner!’ I want to scream.

  I don’t even care that I am paying half (maybe I will, maybe I won’t), but just the fact that he didn’t offer to pay it all himself offends me.

  I now know he is cheap, and I am not even sure if he is wearing clean underwear. At this point my sex-urge is almost hitting rock-bottom, and I regret spending half of my allowance on new lingerie.

  Totally unaware about how upset I am, he looks across the table at me and asks if I would like to join him in his room for a drink.

  He smiles, ‘I bought a nice bottle of wine.’

  Perhaps I misjudged him? Perhaps it has been very long since he has been out on a date and he has forgotten how to be a gentleman? Perhaps I should give him the benefit of the doubt?

  Even so, I decide to show some dominance, some strength.

  ‘No. Bring the wine to my room.’

  I get up from the table and whisper, ‘Room 216. See you there in five minutes,’ then confidently leave.

  Five minutes later, there is a knock on my door, and I let Brad and his bottle of good wine in. He hands the bottle to me, which in itself is a no-no. Maybe I have read too many romance novels, but my idea of a strong, passionate man is one who walks through the door, heads straight to the bottle opener, opens the wine and pours it while saying, ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’

  As I take the wine, I glance at the label. I remember seeing this wine at the supermarket earlier. I also remember that it was being promoted there with the all-enticing sales pitch of ‘The cheapest wine in Europe.’

  ‘There are so many beautiful wines in this part of the world, and most are not expensive. Who on earth would buy a bottle of Portuguese paint stripper for less than two Euros?’ I had asked myself then. I’ve got my answer now. Brad, that’s who.

  I open my bottle of French and guzzle it. Although he is as cheap as the wine he has bought, he is making an effort to be romantic. He sits next to me on the bed, and with every sip of the wine he becomes increasingly attentive. He comments again on my new black boots.

  By the time we have finished my good wine and some of his paint stripper, I am still wearing my boots and my expensive lingerie. But that’s all I’m wearing. With great relief, I discover that Brad had indeed changed his underwear. Same ugly style, same ugly brand, but a different ugly colour.

  Thank God he’s changed it at least.

  By the time my new boots come off, we are exhausted and staring at the ceiling in contented bliss. I begin to doze off, but I am aware that he is still awake. I catch him looking at the bedside clock.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I lethargically ask.

  ‘There is a replay of the last F1 GP in ten minutes.’

  ‘What’s a F1 GP?’

  ‘Formula One Grand Prix. You know, motor racing.’

  The techies use more acronyms than we do. On a trip, I once made the mistake of agreeing to go to dinner with three techies. As the other crew failed to turn up I joined the pilots as the sole cabin representative. They were polite and included me in their conversations for the first five minutes, but once one of them started talking about aircrafts, the acronyms began to flow. They spent another five minutes explaining their techie-talk, but after a while they forgot that I was even at the dinner table. I did say that I made the mistake ‘once’. I have never made it again.

  I have found that pilots are fine if you talk to them one on one, but once you put two or more pilots together, it might feel like watching a foreign film without subtitles.

  Brad hasn’t mentioned the words ‘vector’ or ‘V2’ once over the past two days, so I must cut him some slack. Still, lying in bed with a beautiful woman who you have known for only two days and wanting to watch car racing – that’s just wrong.

  I want to say sternly, ‘Well then, you have ten minutes to get out and watch it back in your room.’ But I decide to be more diplomatic.

  ‘I am so tired. You’ve worn me out! Why don’t you watch it in your room? It is OK. There is no need to feel obligated to stay. We can catch up in the morning.’

  I don’t need to tell him twice as he is out of my bed before I have finished speaking. He at least has the decency to kiss me goodbye.

  The next morning, I wait for him to call me. He doesn’t call. I am now caught in the horrible dilemma of ‘Should I call?’ or ‘Should I wait?’.

  I want to call him, but then don’t want him to see me as desperate or needy.

  I can’t remember who said who was going to call whom last night. All I can remember is we said we would see each other in the morning. It is almost midday. We go to work tonight, so maybe he is sleeping late?

  The hotel gives us an automatic wake-up call before checking out. Ironically, the cabin crew are called an hour before we need to leave the hotel while the tech-crew only get 45 minutes notice. The company has made the automatic realisation that pilots don’t need as much time to get ready as us hosties.

  For Brad, ten minutes would be enough to get dressed and ready. He could use the extra thirty-five minutes to watch car racing.

  It is a long sector tonight, so most crew will try and get a few hours sleep prior. As for Brad’s routine, who knows?

  What if he is thinking the same thing as I am, I suddenly wonder. Maybe he is expecting a call from me? Should I leave a note under his door? Should I leave a message for him on the phone?

  Most hotels let you leave someone a voice message without having their phone ringing. The message light flashes, and the guest can then retrieve their messages when they are awake.

  Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll leave a voice message.

  I choose my words carefully: ‘Hi Brad, it’s Danielle. I am not sure if we are catching up today. It is around midday and I should be in my room until about two. Call me if you can. Otherwise I will see you at sign-on.’

  This is so awkward. I hate that I am at Brad’s beck and call. I hate that he is the one with all the control. I hate this early stage of a relationship.

  Relationship? What relationship? We’ve slept together twice – that’s not a relationship.

  I remember having a few drinks with some of my girlfriends and discussing our two favourite subjects apart from shopping: guys and relationships. It was pointed out that a guy will sleep with you the first time out of curiosity. If he sleeps with you again it is because he likes you. If he comes back for a third time that is a relationship.

  The phone rings.

  ‘Hello, this is Danielle,’ I say in my sexiest voice.

  It is Brad. ‘Hi. I am going to get some sleep before call. How about we meet downstairs for a coffee?’

  ‘OK,’I reply.

  He says, ‘Ten minutes?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Why did I agree to ten minutes? Although I am already showered I need at least half an hour to get ready. He has got me wrapped around his little finger, and he knows it.

  When he says ‘meet downstairs’, does that mean we are having a coffee in the hotel or a
re we going into town? Do I need to wear every layer of clothing again?

  I decide to show some strength, again. When I get to the foyer, I will insist that we have coffee here at the hotel. I manage to get ready within the ten minutes, but deliberately delay leaving my room for a few more minutes. Then, I walk down to the foyer with confidence.

  He is not dressed to go to the Arctic circle, so it is obvious that he didn’t intend to leave the warm confines of our hotel. It is also obvious that he is more vulgar than I ever imagined, as he is wearing the same clothes he did for the last two days.

  What the hell does he have in his suitcase?

  We sit down in the hotel’s restaurant, which is the only place to get coffee in the complex. We indulge in some idle chit-chat before he drops the bombshell. He tells me something so unexpected, so shocking and so disturbing. He tells me something that is worse than saying, ‘I am sorry, but I have to tell you that I am married’, or even ‘I have a girlfriend back home’. He tells me something that is as terrible as saying ‘I am gay.’

  He looks at me and says those horrid words that no girl wants to hear, ‘I’d like to let you know that I have only recently ended a long-term relationship, and I am not looking for anything serious at the moment.’

  You condescending pig! Did I ever tell you that I was after a serious relationship? What gives you the right to sit in front of me, in the same clothes that you have worn for three days straight (and possibly more) and treat me like a piece of dirt? You’ve had your fun for a couple of days, so now you decide to tell me that you are not looking for anything serious? You’ve made me feel cheap, and you’ve made me feel like a whore. So this is what you guys refer to as a ‘Goodyear relationship’. Now, you’ll be able to brag to all your techie friends about the good-looking hostie with the big boots and the sexy red lingerie that you had a fling with in Frankfurt.

  I would have liked to tell him all this. Instead, I roll over like a puppy and say, ‘That’s OK. I am not looking for anything serious either. I’ll give you my number on the plane, and if you want to see me when we get home then you can.’

  I know that the chances of him calling me are about the same as me doing a trip on Christmas day by choice, but I still want to be polite and try to end things on a civil note.

  And you never know, he might just call.

  The day I start fully believing my own justifications is the day I will ask Mary for her therapist’s phone number.

  sick of being sick

  Moving on, from a Goodyear to a New Year. January one, a new year, a new beginning.

  But first, I must get some sleep. I spent another New Year’s Eve in the air and have just returned home. I have worked through the night: I am exhausted, jetlagged and have a runny nose.

  God, please don’t let me start off the New Year with a cold.

  I fall into my bed, unshowered and without the strength to even slip on my pyjamas. I wake up a day later, blow my nose, cry out ‘God, I feel like I am going to die’ and go back to sleep.

  Could there be a more defining moment of one’s depressing solitary existence than when you are feeling so sick and so tired that you don’t have the energy to call someone for help?

  If jetlag, fatigue and hypoxia (the lack of oxygen) are not enough to contend with, the fact that I am one day on the equator, wiping sweat from my brow, and the next day near the Arctic, snapping frozen icicles off my eyebrows, is something my body cannot cope with sometimes. Today is one of those sometimes.

  When I do muster the energy to get out of bed, I make my way to the shower.

  When you spend as much time in the air as I do, your body is in a constant state of dehydration, regardless of how much water you drink. I drink bucket-loads. Sometimes my skin becomes so dry that I place a massive dab of moisturiser on it, and it disappears before I even have a chance to rub it in.

  Flying does horrific things to your internals even when you are well. When you are not well things just get worse. If I get even the least bit run down, I often get crusty formations inside my nose. Everyone needs to pick their nose at some point, but since I started flying I’ve had to contend with so a lot more than boogers. Most instances, especially where blood is concerned, are too gross to talk about.

  Working on an aircraft is a stressful environment for the body, and sometimes the body reacts. There is a lack of studies that expose how one’s health is affected by spending thousands of hours in a pressurised tube at over 30,000 feet above the ground. Working in the cabin is akin to working on the top of a mountain. The air in the cabin is rarefied, and in addition to that, we are breathed on, coughed on and sometimes spat on by passengers from all corners of the globe, who are often in varying degrees of health themselves. If a bug enters the cabin there is a big chance it will only leave when it has attached itself to someone else.

  Hygiene is a big issue with crew. It doesn’t matter how many times you wash your hands or try to avoid touching or breathing someone else’s germs, it is almost impossible to avoid infections. Unless the company dresses us in surgical gloves and masks and lets us carry around our own oxygen supply, getting the odd bug is always going to happen in the closed work-environment of an aircraft.

  Additionally, a plane travels at great speed above the clouds. We are obviously closer to the sun than normal, and one doesn’t have to be Einstein to work out that we’re constantly exposed to high radiation levels.

  No wonder I get sick so often.

  I pride myself on being a strong, independent woman, but right now I will swallow my pride, if indeed I could swallow. I call the one person in the world who can care for me and make me feel better: my mum.

  She comes over immediately. Funnily enough, while she is feeding me her cure-all chicken soup, she says, ‘Why don’t you look at settling down? Surely there’s a pilot out there who would appreciate a lovely girl like you?’

  I sit up a little and speak from the heart, ‘Mum, I appreciate your advice, but I am not interested in a pilot.’

  Then she starts with the ‘You are not getting any younger’ speech.

  Most things in life are a compromise. So, I tolerate my mum’s nagging while she nurses me back to some semblance of human functionality.

  I love my mum. In spite of all the nagging and advising, she is truly the greatest.

  I drag myself to my local doctor. I am there so often that we are on a first-name basis. I know that if I don’t take antibiotics, it will take me a week to get better; if I do take them, it will take me seven days. More important than the antibiotics is the medical certificate I need to show the company to prove my condition.

  If one was to ask any airline company if their employees are more susceptible to health problems than those people working on the ground, the company would deny it with all their will, yet we are allotted more annual sick days than any other job I know. Is that a contradiction or a cover-up? Either way, I need those sick-leave days to recover from the stresses and strains my body endures.

  Although my body screams out for rest often, I push the envelope and try to get back to work as soon as I can. That is because I love my job, and usually can’t wait to go to work. Even now, I am trying my hardest to recover because I don’t want to lose my next trip. It is to Narita, Japan, and my friend Danny is on the crew. If anyone can make me feel better, particularly emotionally, he can.

  Soon, I am on the road to recovery. I’m almost good to go again and consider going on the Narita trip after all. Just to make sure that I truly am well enough –, which really means asking myself, ‘Do I really want to do the trip?’ – I turn on my computer and check the crew list for the flight. These days we hosties can do almost everything online, from bidding for trips to doing courses and, importantly, checking who is coming along on our flights. I see that Danny Weily’s name is still listed, but I also notice that the boss onboard is Carolyn Burkett. When Carolyn Burkett’s name is ever mentioned, the words ‘Get a life’ are usually somewhere in the same sent
ence. She is often referred to as ‘the pot-hole’, a nickname that some of the crew have given her, because everyone tries to avoid her.

  Like the others, I don’t have Carolyn on my Christmas card list, but I do love working with Danny. I wrestle with my conscience and my health, and soon tip the scales in favour of Danny.

  I’m off to Narita! And I haven’t been to Japan for ages.

  Knowing it is going to be Frankfurt-like freezing in Japan, I pack my suitcase accordingly.

  No wheelie-bag this time around. No fuschia gloves or grandma-pants either.

  I have some beautiful clothes in the winter wardrobe section of my closet and relish the opportunity to choose warm clothes that are functional as well as fashionable. I drive to work totally satisfied that I have packed to perfection and am doing a trip I really want to do.

  Although it has been over a year since I have seen Danny, it feels like it was only yesterday. It is so good to see him, and we agree to try and work together in the cabin. Danny and I are similar seniority so if we work down the back of the aircraft, we know we should be able to work together. This will also keep us as far away as possible from Ms. Pothole.

  Carolyn’s briefings are painfully long. Just as passengers reveal their true selves during the boarding process, our bosses reveal their true selves during briefings: the more anal the boss, the longer and more detailed the briefing usually is.

  With the world’s longest briefing thankfully behind us, we finally get on the aircraft. Danny is so funny onboard. Nothing is a hassle when I’m with him, and he is as easygoing with the passengers as he is with fellow crew. When we start the meal service, we have the usual beef or chicken choice, but Danny calls the chicken everything from ‘chicken-ooh-la-la’ to ‘Kentucky-Fried Chicken Japanese-style’. He has so much fun with the passengers, and they enjoy the interaction as much as Danny does. Sometimes crew get so caught up in getting the service done as quickly as possible that they forget how much fun can be had in the process.