Around the World in a Bad Mood! (6 page)

A
LL TOO SOON
I
discovered the song in my heart was the blues. This living-in-Queens thing was worse than I imagined. To put it mildly, it sucked. My housemates were colorful (to say the least), and the ringleader had a flair for drama and a hot temper the likes of which I'd never seen. Combine the temper with a few vodkas and you had quite a lethal combination. He was home a lot and unhappy. I was home a lot, too, so we spent a great deal of time together. Joy. Why was I home so much? After all, this was my new life, wasn't I the one who was going to take acting classes, get an agent, and be a star? Yeah, that was the plan, but in making these plans I forgot to include the part about being on reserve with WAFTI. You know, sitting on call twenty days out of the month, ready to be at the airport with one hour's notice (and no beeper allowed)! Sometimes I would fly ten days in a row. I felt as though I lived in my uniform and the only good thing I can say about that is that it reduces your dry-cleaning bill considerably. If you never take it off, you can't get it dry-cleaned!

Plus, getting in and out of Manhattan was no small feat. I had to walk eight blocks and then take two trains. I could really go in only on my days off, which were irregular, thus making it difficult to take classes consistently or to attend auditions. It also made it difficult to look for an apartment. You see, I discovered that in New York there is a whole system to obtaining a decent, or for that matter an indecent, apartment. To begin with, you have to decide whether you wish to navigate the stormy sea of rental properties alone or with the assistance of a broker. Going it alone requires a lot of phone-calling, running around, and encountering some unsavory characters along the way. Enlisting the services of a broker also requires a lot of phone-calling, running around, encountering unsavory characters, and shelling out a
huge
sum of cash to the broker in the event he or she finds something for you. The advantage to using a broker is that if you're fortunate enough to hook up with a good one, he or she can speed the process along and prevent you from going on some wild-goose chases. I didn't have the money to use a broker or the time to go on a wild-goose chase, so I simply stayed where I was—22 Lefferts Blvd., Top Floor. It was sort of like a bad marriage.

Actually, the housing thing was the least of my problems. The guys were nice and for the most part they were gone for eight- or nine-day stretches. Even the ringleader had to fly his trips, so often I was alone in Queens, just waiting for a trip. Sometimes it would be two or three days of waiting, and I cried a lot. I began to feel that I had made a horrible mistake with my life. I wanted to go home, and yet I didn't want to just give up. I had come this far and I was finally in the Big Apple. Eventually, I would get off reserve and hold a set schedule. In the meantime I would just have to endure my miserable, wretched life. And let me tell you, it was miserable. I'm the type of person who likes to sleep at night and be awake during the day. However, when you're flying on reserve you might be working a red-eye one night and then working a trip that has a 5:00
A.M
. check-in one day later. Your time clock is completely shot. I also like to have a modicum of control over my existence. Who doesn't? Being on reserve, you might as well throw the idea of control out the window. You're controlled by central scheduling, so you're no longer a human being with needs such as sleep, food, and regularity. No, you're merely a number, a body required to fulfill the minimum number of crew members on board an aircraft bound for somewhere (and often nowhere). Not only that, when you finally do get let out of your cage and assigned a trip, you're at the bottom of the barrel when you bid in with the crew. This translates to having absolutely no choice of where you work on the airplane. Bidding for your working position is done in order of seniority from the most senior flight attendant down to the most junior flight attendant. Junior flight attendants get what nobody else wants, and, believe me, there is a reason nobody else wants those positions. Eventually one works one's way up the seniority list, but it takes an eternity! So there I was, living in Queens, at the bottom of the seniority list, trying to grow out my bad training haircut and battling constant jet lag. I pretty much looked like crap most of the time. I realized that I had never known the true meaning of the word “exhaustion” until I became an international air hostess. Even to this day I wonder what long-term effect crossing the international date line so often has had on me. I remember one hellish week in July: I was lying in the sun (supposedly this alleviates jet lag) on the tar roof outside my bedroom window, fondly known as “Tar Beach.” I had the tunes cranked and the phone stretched out from the hall onto the ledge. It wasn't exactly Saint-Tropez, but it was better than sitting in the house watching
General Hospital. Riiiinnng!
The phone rang, ripping me from a sweaty slumber. It was scheduling.

“We have a London trip for you leaving at nine
P.M
. tonight, short London layover, returning on the third day. Check in at JFK at seven-thirty
P.M
. Thank you.”
Click
.

Most people would be excited about the prospect of going to London, albeit for less than twenty-four hours, but not me. I was getting sick of London. I was still tired from my trip the day before, and definitely not in the mood to force myself to stay awake all night serving a full ship of Brits, only to arrive just as the sun is rising in jolly old England. But what choice did I have? I, of course, flew the trip and made it back to JFK three days later. The worst part came when I arrived back home at 22 Lefferts Blvd., Top Floor. It was about 2:00
P.M
. when I walked into the house, stripping off my nylons and polyester uniform, to the dreaded ringing of the phone.

“Hello?”

“This is scheduling for flight attendant Foss, we have a trip for you.”

“What? I just got in from London. I can't possibly go anywhere else today.”

“The trip is for tomorrow. Tokyo, departing at three-thirty
P.M
., check-in is at one
P.M
. Thank you.”
Click.

“Ahhhhhhh, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me like this?!” I screamed. Coming in from London one day and then going off to Tokyo (which is geographically on the other side of the world) the very next day cannot be conducive to good mental or physical health. Not to mention the trip is fourteen hours in the air, if everything goes accordingly. Sometimes there is a fuel stop in Anchorage, making it even longer. I wanted to scream and claw my face. Fortunately, I resisted the urge and took a cold shower instead. Yes, I flew the trip, and I think it was at that point that I came up with the phrase “Around the world in a bad mood.”

Looking back, I guess the only good thing was that I met Bitsy Heatherton on that trip. Who in the hell is Bitsy Heatherton, you may be asking yourself? She is another flight attendant, and she had recently transferred to the New York base. She was looking for a roommate to share a studio apartment with her in Manhattan. Maybe things were turning around. God knows, they couldn't get any worse.

T
HANKS TO
B
ITSY
H
EATHERTON
I was able to finally make the long-awaited move from Queens to Manhattan. She was desperately looking for a roommate to replace her last one, who could no longer handle the glamorous excitement of the airline industry. While on an Athens layover her roommate had called the company and said, “I quit!” She had a Greek lover who apparently offered her a brighter future than did a career as an international airline hostess. Anyway, she was gone and Bitsy needed someone right away. It was my golden opportunity to move to Manhattan.

Getting there was not easy, figuratively or literally. I did not have a car, but I did have a lot of stuff, some of which I never even got around to unpacking. My dilemma: how to get all my boxes, stereo, cross-country skis, and the little furniture I had acquired in Queens into Manhattan. I began by putting a few of my boxes on my luggage cart and some of my clothes into a garment bag, which rested on top of the cart. From there I proceeded out the front door, dragging the entire ensemble behind me to the local subway station, where I caught the F train into Manhattan. Then I took a bus up to the new place. After about three round-trips I was exhausted, and it seemed that I had not made much of a dent in getting things moved out of there. Also, there were a number of things I needed to move that could not be taken on public transportation. I began throwing things away, and finally decided to move the rest of it in a cab. Fortunately for me I met up with a delightful cab driver. His name was Victor and he fell in love with me as he helped me load the Panasonic stereo into the trunk of his gypsy cab. Now, I'm not sure if Victor had car insurance, or even a license for that matter, but without his help I don't think I would have been able to get everything to my new home. His English was limited, but we were able to communicate enough for him to ask if he could take Bitsy and me out for dinner. We accepted. And so the first official night at my new home in Manhattan was spent having pizza and a cheap bottle of Chianti at a dive on Second Avenue with my new roommate and my new friend, Victor the Albanian gypsy-cab driver.

It may not have been a palace, but Bitsy and I loved living in our little studio on the Upper East Side. The rent was $750 a month, which isn't a lot—especially when you divide it by two—but we weren't making the big bucks yet. And we were living in Manhattan, so every time we walked out the door we spent $20 on something. We decided to take a few more girls in on a temporary basis in order to reduce the rent. We weren't concerned about crowding because we would all be on different schedules. It was unlikely that we would all be there at the same time, so we bought a futon and plastic shelf unit and Bitsy and I decided to share the closet. We didn't have any intention of hanging around the apartment that much anyway; I was going to be a big star and she was out to meet a rich man and be a socialite. Now that we were no longer on reserve and were holding schedules (crappy ones, but schedules nonetheless), we were ready to set the world on fire!

I was flying trips to Madrid, and although I love Madrid and enjoyed being there once I arrived,
getting there
required an enormous amount of intestinal fortitude. I never knew just how difficult it could be to drag my ass from point A to point B until I became a flight attendant. To begin with, Bitsy and I lived on the fifth floor of a five-story walk-up, so every time I came home from a trip I had to navigate the stairs with my luggage cart. At this point in history the ever popular rollerboard had not yet come into fashion, so I had two blue WAFTI-issued bags that had to be arranged on separate carts and then tied together with a bungee cord. Leaving the apartment, once I made it down the stairs, in my blue polyester uniform including my blue pumps with two-inch heels, I had to schlep six blocks to the Lexington Avenue subway and then trudge down another flight of stairs against a teeming assemblage of other harried New Yorkers coming up the same stairway. The next obstacle was maneuvering my way through the turnstyle. And then there's the lengthy wait on the platform (this part was particularly horrid in the summer months because of the sweltering heat, which was only made worse by the oppressive polyester uniform). And then finally boarding, and usually standing on a jam-packed number 6 train downtown to Grand Central Station, where I would catch the Carey bus to JFK Airport.

I'd only allow myself the luxury of a taxi if Bitsy or one of the other assorted roommates was also going on a trip to Grand Central at the same time. Taxis were a nonessential item that did not fit into my tight budget. I could hardly afford to take a taxi from the apartment to the Carey bus, so taking a taxi all the way to the airport was completely out of the question, although I longed to do it quite often. In any case, getting to the Carey bus was just the first leg of what was a long day's journey into night. Once I arrived at JFK I had to hustle up to the check-in office where I checked in, met my crew, and got our flight information. We then boarded the limo (really a big van that smells of stale car freshener combined with patchouli oil) bound for LaGuardia Airport, where our trip would begin. Why didn't we just check in at LaGuardia and eliminate the hassle of going out to JFK? Because that would make sense. One of the phenomenons I've discovered about the airline industry is that the less something makes sense, the more likely it is to become a standard operating procedure. So, along with seven other flight attendants, I would settle into the limo for a nice long ride in rush-hour traffic from JFK to LaGuardia.

Upon our arrival we would then hurry over, en masse, to the 5:00
P.M
. shuttle and fly, as passengers, up to Boston, where we would have a two-hour sit before our 9:00
P.M
. flight to Madrid. Since I left my apartment at 1:00
P.M
. I had already put in an eight-hour day, but according to WAFTI the workday was just beginning. Alas, the time clock does not start until the captain starts the engine. At that point we still had an eight-hour flight ahead of us—providing there were no delays—and then another hour to get to the hotel and sign in for our rooms. Often the rooms would not be ready for new occupants and so the available rooms were given out in seniority order. In other words, the junior people on the crew would have to wait in the lobby. I've fallen asleep in the lobby of many a hotel in this world while waiting for my cell—uh, I mean, room.

The worst part of this was that it was my weekly schedule; I had to do five of these three-day trips a month. After about three months I was getting burned out and pretty ragged around the edges. I was already a haggard battle-ax of a gal at the ripe old age of twenty-four. However, I was not as bad as some—at least not yet. I'll admit it, I have met some flight attendants who have scared the hell out of me. I'm sure you know the type because they terrorize everyone on the plane: “Fasten that seat belt!” they bark as they come up the aisle, slamming the seat backs of poor slobs who haven't returned to the upright, locked position as previously ordered. In short, these flight attendants possess all the charm and conviviality of the Newark Airport parking lot at about 4:00
A.M
.