Coffee, Tea or Me? by Donald Bain, Trudy Baker, Rachel Jones, Bill Wenzel

first meeting on makeup, hairstyling, and general grooming.
    The class was conducted by a faggy-looking man with long, wavy hair and a twitch in his left eye. He sketched facial outlines on the blackboard while a sharp looking girl in a stewardess uniform welcomed us to the classroom.
    “Welcome to your first class in how to look more beautiful, radiant, and charming. I’m Miss Lucas and with me is Mister André, a well-known hairstylist and makeup expert. When Mister André is through with you, your own family won’t know you’re the same girl they knew when you left to become a stewardess.”
    Mister André picked on Cynthia first, much to her delight. He pointed out how nicely her hairstyle complemented her facial structure to which she replied, “It should. My stylist is very highly paid.” We all felt a little waifish by comparison.
    The next girl he called to the front of the room was Betty. Gay or not, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her forty-inch chest. It was at this precise moment that Betty got her nickname. Rachel leaned over to me and whispered, “She’s got to have the biggest set of boobs I’ve ever seen. And we know they’re all for real.” Cynthia read a book while Betty was up front.
    Mister André told me my face was oblong, and Rachel was handed the sad news she was moonfaced. Cynthia was termed classic, and Sally Lu was actually called ordinary, sort of Middle American. We decided that Mister André’s face was definitely early-fag. And his long, lacqured fingernails didn’t clash with this diagnosis.
    They really worked us in stewardess school. The training was no joke. To graduate you have to pass the FAA test—that’s the Federal Aviation Agency—and the test is a long written affair that requires you to know everything there is to know about all the planes the company flies. First we went over those planes inch by inch in classrooms, using textbooks and charts. We had to know where the emergency exits are, how to use them, how much fuel the plane carries, how the galley works, what equipment to use in emergencies, and where it is. We had to know all of this and much more for four different types of planes.
    Training started every day at 8:00 in the morning. We were up at 6:30. The commotion in the bathroom was unbelievable as we all rushed to shower and fix our hair. We had to be dressed fit to kill every morning, our fingernails absolutely perfect, our faces made up. After a week of classroom work, they took us aboard the jets out back. A dozen times a day we climbed aboard and worked in one area and then another—the cockpit, the galley, the lavatories.
    We had special over-water practice so that we would know all about the life vests, the rafts, and the emergency equipment. One day they took us all to a nearby lake and put us in life rafts—those big, yellow inflated rafts that bob around on the surface. There were about six of us and a supervisor on each raft and six rafts drifting around on the water. At first we paid strict attention because we knew this was important. It might someday be a matter of life and death. Naturally Rachel and I had managed to get on the same raft. By this time all the girls knew, look out for Rachel and Trudy—anything can happen. Well, we floated pretty close to the next raft and right there at arm’s length I saw the little cork that you pull to let the air out of the raft. Rachel read my mind, “No!” she said. But I knew she really wanted me to do it.
    I looked over at the other raft and waited for the supervisor to turn her head. Rachel, bless her, put out her hand and paddled us a little closer, all the time saying “No, no!” I reached over, pulled the cork and SWWSSHHH that raft went flat, all the girls fell into the water, spluttering and coughing, and that supervisor with her wet hair in her face shouted, “Which one of you did it—Trudy or Rachel? It had to be one of you.”

    Later on they took us out on actual flights and pulled