Around the World in a Bad Mood! by Rene Foss Page B

smoking, no cell phones, no meals today!
    Thank you for flying, we’re glad to arrive.
    If you want to get there faster, if you want
    to get there sooner, if you just want to get there
    why don’t you drive??? We dooooooo!!!!!

Melrose Place?
    S O, THERE I WAS living in a studio apartment with Bitsy and a bunch of other new flight attendants who came as quickly as they left. To call it an ever-changing cast of characters would be an understatement. We did have a lot of fun, and the neighbors thought it was something to have all these wacky chicks coming and going. And wacky we were!
    I had started taking voice lessons and could be heard vocalizing at odd times of the day. I was also taking tap-dance lessons, and when none of the other girls was around I would practice my tap and vocalize at the same time, killing two birds with one stone. We also had a girl from Alabama living with us for the summer, Kitty O’Malley. Although she was a bit older, she was junior to us because she had started three months after we did. Kitty was quite pretty, recently divorced, and glad to be out of Alabama. She had a Southern drawl and a general Southern charm that drove the men crazy. Often I would come home from a trip to find Kitty sitting on the futon, sipping champagne with some Wall Street guy who was hoping to get to know Kitty a bit better. I always hated to break up the party, but I was exhausted and there was a house rule that those coming in or going out on a trip called the shots. Since I had just come in from a trip, whatever I said was the law of the land. After all, it was a one-room apartment. In any case, I think my wanting to lie in bed and watch television might have taken something away from their romantic evening. Kitty never seemed to mind, but I certainly got some evil looks from her assorted dates. Actually, the general layout of the place didn’t really inspire romance. You walked in the front door and there you were in the middle of the kitchen. To the right was a little dressing area and a small bathroom, which always had panty hose, slips, and other hand washables hanging in the shower. To the left was a perfectly square room that had two tall windows that looked out to a brick wall. We had furnished it with two single beds (in front of each window), a futon across from one bed, and a tall plastic collapsing shelf unit across from the other. We also had some folding lawn chairs that we stored behind the shelf unit. There were always suitcases and uniform pieces strewn about the place, which gave it the feel of a flophouse rather than the pied-à-terre of international flight attendants. Bitsy had filled her side of the shelf unit with her mug collection. She had recently entered a phase where she was questioning her career: “What is the point of this insipid little job anyway?” she asked us daily. “All I have to show for the last four years of my life is a mug collection. Some people have homes, cars, kids, husbands. I have mugs.” Her mug collection consisted of a mug from every city she had ever visited, even if it was just to get off the airplane to buy a mug. Some of the mugs were pretty ugly, but they meant the world to her so we never asked her to get rid of them. They kind of grew on us after awhile.
    Bitsy, Kitty, and I also had another girl living with us on a part-time basis. Her name was Rose. She had been flying for ten years and held terrific trips to Asia. She really lived in Phoenix, but since there was no base there Rose had to fly into New York the day before her trip. She always needed a place to spend the night. This is what’s known as “commuting.” Some people think it’s a big deal to have to commute an hour to work by car. People in the airline industry often spend eight hours getting to work by plane, and that’s pretty much what Rose did. She would leave Phoenix on the first flight bound for JFK; if she didn’t get on that one she