Coffee, Tea or Me? (29 page)

German men always do things by the numbers. They seem to base their amorous advances on pages from a strange and misplaced book, a book that will never make the best-seller charts here in America. They try to give you the impression that to accompany them from the airplane and share their bed would be a contribution toward some better, super-world. They usually attack the larger species of stewardesses—the flight’s flying Brunhildes.

It is our considered and combined judgment that Germans and actors share honors for being the cheapest dates a stew can accept. Thus, since accepting a date with a German man isn’t about to pay off in an evening in the better restaurants, clubs, or theaters, you’ve got to justify your acceptances as accomplishing something for the State. Very few stewardesses accept dates with German passengers.

Italian men don’t pinch stewardesses. True, they use their hands a great deal when talking, but they aren’t the grabby kind. What they do is look at you long and hard with eyes that catch hold of a loose thread and unravel all your clothes. They have the ability to
look
your clothes off, a state of affairs possessing almost a hypnotic effect. You
want
to take your clothes off once that spell has been cast.

Rachel was once approached by a rather famous member of Italy’s motion picture industry. He cornered her in the galley on a half-empty flight to Los Angeles. He stood with his eyes riveted on the V of her blouse as she poured a cup of coffee for herself. Most of the other passengers were asleep.

“You have a lovely figure, Miss Jones,” he purred, never straying his eyes from her bosom.

“I’ve noticed you’ve noticed,” she answered.

“What is wrong with appreciating the lovely body of a woman?”

“Nothing, now that you mention it.”

“I would like to ask you something and feel that you will not take offense, if I may?”

She looked him square in the eye. “Go ahead. I figure I’ve still got the right to say No.” She poured cream in her coffee. “And, I’ve been asked a lot of silly things before.”

He seemed crushed by her use of the word
silly
. “No, no, no, no, my dear young lady. There is nothing silly about what I am going to ask. My thoughts are beautiful, pure, and on the highest plane of appreciation for what is fine in life. I simply wondered if you would accompany me to my rented villa in Beverly Hills. If you will accept, and I am so confident that you will, I make a solemn oath to you on all that I hold sacred not to even touch your exquisite body with my most unworthy hands. I only wish to look at you as nature intended me to view you, without the harsh cloak of that uniform and those horrible underthings you are forced to wear. I simply wish to fill my eyes with your charm.”

Rachel just looked at him. “You’re putting me on.”

The Italian put his hand to his brow in a supreme gesture of deep and bitter hurt. “Oh, to take such a beautiful and natural wish in so light a vein . . . To think I . . . what is it you say? . . .
put you on?
Oh, no, no, no, no . . . I am simply a lover of living sculpture . . . flesh instead of cold hard marble.”

As Rachel tells it, she almost pulled his curly head to her bosom to comfort him, he looked so hurt. She didn’t, and left the galley to check on the passengers. She glanced back up the aisle to see him hunched against the wall, his eyes squinting in obvious artistic appreciation of her hip movement, his hand still to his head to help the hurt she had inflicted. He never said another word the rest of the trip.

“I kept passing his seat,” she told us over drinks that night. “and I swore each time I was stark naked. I mean, my clothes were
gone.
”

American men always manage to include a hint of humor in their advances to a stewardess. This has to do, I suppose, with the fact that American men never really take sex seriously. They know it’s fun, love the obvious pleasures it brings, but just can’t make themselves romance a woman. We feel it’s the fear of being rebuffed. They seem afraid of attempting too serious an advance. The humiliation of being told No would be too great a blow to their egos.

Maybe it has to do with the need to preserve that rosy-cheeked, Jack Armstrong image American men are stuck with. Whatever it stems from, they manage to come up with the most awkward, clumsy, and least effective approaches of all male passengers. It’s a shame, really, because of all the potential playmates on a flight, those very same rosy-cheeked Jack Armstrongs are the most appealing. After all, we were brought up sexually with American boys.
But
—as women, we like and need a little bit of the chase, the romancing, the wooing, and the intrigue, if only to help us justify to ourselves the final surrender. Of course, we don’t want to give the impression that American men never score. We love them. And most of our flings are with them. It’s just that they could do a hell of a lot better.

Frenchmen suffer from too lofty a reputation. It’s hard to be known as the world’s greatest salesman and try to convince someone who’s read your clippings that you’re not always selling. But despite this knowledge of the French reputation, the aura created still lingers on, especially when a Frenchman can corner you long enough to slide those beautiful sounding syllables off his tongue.

What’s fun about accepting an after-flight date with a Frenchman is knowing you won’t be rushed. No, the French manner, according to those who have experienced it, is for a lingering, easy evening. Not that we’re naïve enough to ignore the eventual goal of our French date. I suppose it’s just a matter of enjoying the flight before actually reaching your destination.

We were working a flight with your friend and ours, Betty Big Boobs, when a handsome Frenchman, an architect from Bordeaux, stepped on board for the trip from New York to San Francisco. With all Betty’s boasting of the legion of men hot after her body and soul, she never included a Frenchman among her conquests. Maybe she felt she
needed
a Frenchman for her lineup. Anyway, she clamped onto him from the first minute. She rubbed that chest of hers all over him when serving, managed to stretch herself in search of more damned unnamed objects in the overhead rack immediately above him, and, in general, really put on a show.

He, of course, knew it immediately. And he played it beautifully. He played hard to get. The more indifferent he became, the bigger and more overt were the advances Betty made to him.

As they left the airplane in San Francisco, Betty whispered to us, “Ah wonder if they’re as good as they say—Y’all know, long fuse—short explosion.”

You really can’t believe anything Betty tells you where men are concerned. She did show up for the next morning’s flight, exhausted and beat-looking. Her eyes drooped low and dark and her neck showed a series of blotchy, irregular marks. She told us about it in the galley.

“It was so beautiful,” she sighed as she counted off the booze lockers. “We danced and he cooed in my ear all those pretty, dirty li’l French words, and he bit my neck and we drank and rubbed noses and all like that. And then when we finally ended up in his room, ah was so damned tired ah didn’t know if he was French or Eskimo. Ah guess he enjoyed it, though. He made a lotta noise.”

It seems that every Spanish gentleman traveling on our flights considers us a collection of young, fighting bulls, despite the obvious conflict in gender. And, a Spaniard loves to wave a red cape of promise in our eyes every mile of the flight.

He’s convinced that all women run to red, especially when the matador is dark, mysterious, and renowned in matters of love. In effect, he dangles
himself
in front of us, hoping one of his flight’s bulls will tire and succumb to the inevitable thrust a bull is subject to at the end of the battle. I myself have tired and lost on one occasion. I’ve always been kookie over red.

Spaniards like to board the aircraft with their ties off, their shirts unbuttoned three or four from the top, and their pants indecently tight. This seems to apply to all men of Spanish origin, regardless of their financial standing. Admitting a slight amount of prejudice, I vote for Spaniards as the world’s greatest lovers. I know other girls who agree. The only ones we know who were disenchanted after a fling with a Spaniard were those who took their advances seriously. Spaniards are never looking for anything that even smacks of permanence. They’re like married men in that respect. They’re simply after an exhilarating and challenging afternoon and evening in the ring with a new, healthy, and spirited bull. It’s fun to try the sport on occasion, and unlike the case of the real bull, you don’t get killed in the end.

Men from England are effective simply because they ignore you. The trick is not to misread their intentions. They have on their mind what any other male passenger has on his mind. They rely on a passive technique, however, one that goes with the universal impression of the British gentleman.

We’ve never been able to figure out why the British are considered cold and aloof where physical love is concerned. From what we’ve heard, some of the gayest, hottest, and most unusual bedroom scenes have resulted from a stewardess accepting the stiff and proper advance of a Britisher. They sit in their seats, splendid in tweedy tweeds, sipping the tea you’ve served them, their curved pipes close by at their sides. Immediately, you project yourself into a future that finds you rubbing toes in front of a roaring fire in the drawing room of an English manor house. A shaggy Collie sleeps at your side and you listen attentively as the master relates how the downtrend on the London Sugar Exchange is playing all sorts of havoc in New York.

“Yes, sir,” you answer and promptly ready yourself for the Mrs. Minniver role.

It’s all so marvelous dreaming these dreams as you smile at the tweedy gentleman in seat 5A.

But after hearing stories from girls who’ve tried to play out that dream, you come to realize that men from England are not only as hot-blooded as their Southern counterparts, but their intentions aren’t nearly as honorable as their attitude would suggest.

But you must admire their technique. They actually ward off any advances a stewardess might make, all for the sake of implanting the needed trust in the girl’s mind.

One of our captains, a guy with at least thirty outside business interests and the money to prove their success, did business of one sort or another with an Arab firm. We were flying with him from St. Louis when he asked us about our plans for that night.

“Look, here’s the situation,” he said as we passed over Columbus, Ohio. “These two very wealthy Arab businessmen are in New York for a few days and I’ve arranged a party for them at the Waldorf. It’ll be at their suite of rooms and they’re pretty damned important to me. I thought you might like to come, enjoy the food and drinks, and rub elbows with all that oil money.”

We arrived at 8:30 dressed in our best and were ushered into the suite by a tiny fellow with a white turban and gold teeth.

The suite was large and beautiful with many rooms off the main living room. About twenty people were chatting over drinks. There was a heavy smell of lamb in the air and this spicy fragrance, mixed with the heavy, sweet odor of some sort of pipe tobacco, brought on a strange feeling of menace.

Our captain introduced us to Elkim al Salim, a sinister-looking man with a big, pockmarked face, heavy brows, and a set of gold teeth. It was a little unnerving to see him look us up and down, turn to the captain and smile and nod his head in indication of acceptance, then look at us again. It was like being on the open slave market.

We mixed with some other people for about an hour. The captain brought us fresh drinks and we asked him about the guests, most of whom were women.

“Well, don’t get shook but there are quite a few call girls here tonight. You know how it is. These big shots from other countries like to swing with something different when they get here.”

“It must cost him a fortune,” Rachel offered.

“It costs me a fortune,” the captain answered.

“You?”

“Sure. It’s good business to keep him happy. A couple of broads a night and he’s good for more business with me.”

We never figured our captain for a pimp. We never expected the next line either.

“Look, now don’t take me wrong, but he really has his eye on you two. He said something about sweet, unspoiled girls. You both could pick up a bundle here tonight. And you wouldn’t be the first stewardesses to moonlight.”

Without a word, Rachel and I walked away from the captain and went into one of the other rooms to look for our coats. We had just found them on a bed when our Arabian oil mogul with the flashing mouth appeared in the doorway and closed the door behind him.

“I didn’t expect you to be ready so soon,” he said hoarsely. “But I’m pleased.”

We started past him but he barred the way.

“There’s no need to go anywhere. Right here is fine. My staff will see that we are not disturbed. I trust the two of you won’t become too loud.”

“Get out of the way, you pig,” Rachel screamed at him. It didn’t upset him. In fact, it made him smile.

“I think that’s good that you want to fight a little. I like that. Warren said you might struggle a little and I told him that makes it all the more pleasurable for me. Would a little smoke of hashish help?”

“Get your ass out of our way,” Rachel piped, “or you’ll go back to your harem with my foot still there.”

He lunged at me but I stepped aside. Rachel opened the door and I followed her out of the room. We knocked over some drinks on the way through the main room, took a second to upset our captain’s drink down the front of his suit, and got out of there on the run.

We were going to report the captain but didn’t. He resigned from the airline the next month to take care of his other interests.