Sex and the Stewardess

SHIRL — The Lesbian in the Sky

While every stewardess is all things to all men, some stews do tend to inspire similar reactions in a majority of their passengers. Men will lust for one girl, admire another, adopt another, befriend still another, depending upon the type of image a girl projects.

Shirl is the one they are most likely to tell jokes to. She carries a distinct aura of sophistication and knowing wit, and the average male passenger is immediately certain that he can joke with her and that she will enjoy it. At the same time, there is something in her attitude which somehow intimidates them — perhaps it is this same air of sophistication — and relatively few of them try to date her. Nor does she get as many physical passes as other girls do. The fanny-pinchers and thigh-patters, men who go through life oblivious to the fact that no stewardess likes to be pawed while serving drinks and checking seatbelts, nevertheless manage to sense that Shirl finds their attentions unwelcome. They joke with her, but they keep their hands to themselves.

The pilots she flies with have learned that she is not interested in them. The small percentage who insist upon physical contact with their girls make Shirl play her part, and she does so in more or less good spirits. Those few pilots are mostly interested in nothing more than token attention, anyway. They may insist on a kiss or pat a breast, but the sexual attention Shirl has to pay to them is hardly more than symbolic.

Shirl is just under medium height, a slender girl with dark brown hair and a round face. Her features are attractive but not striking. She grew up in upstate New York, one of the younger children in a large family. Her family moved around a great deal, and Shirl grew up without any real roots in a community and with a sense of alienation within her own family.

I interviewed Shirl in New York. Her home base at the time was on the West Coast, and she was on an overnight layover at JFK. Another stewardess had suggested I talk to Shirl and had arranged the interview. She was pleasant and communicative from the onset, but became increasingly interested at the thought of a study dealing with the manner in which the stresses of stewardess life tended to influence sexual behavior. She had had many thoughts of her own on the subject and warmed to it at once.

At the time of our talk, Shirl was twenty-three and had been flying for almost four years.

SHIRL: There’s no question but that this life has a tremendous effect on all of us. There are very few girls who would say otherwise. Some do, of course. Some girls insist that they would be exactly the same if they were working behind a counter in a department store or taking dictation in an office or wiping noses and changing diapers. I think they know better but don’t want to admit it. Just as some people try to blame everything about themselves on their situation, others absolutely hate the idea that they’ve been influenced at all by it. They prefer to think that their entire personality was formed from the day they were born and nothing that has happened to them since that day has made the slightest bit of difference to them.

As I said, I think they must know better. It’s so obvious that being a stewardess has an effect upon a girl’s development. Oh, in so many ways. When I think of the girls who went to stew school with me, the girls in my class... I was fairly hip to things at the time, more so than the average girl. I had been around a bit, and also I’ve always been able to give the impression of hipness, of knowing more than I actually do. It’s a technique I learned ages ago, a way of a wink and a knowing look, of nodding at the right times and either smiling or looking serious at the right times. You could be talking with a person in a foreign language — rather he could be talking, and you could nod in the right places and he would never even suspect that you couldn’t understand a single word he was saying. This has actually happened to me...

Other girls, though, most of them in my class struck me as pretty naïve. I don’t mean just sexually, although I would say that girls in stewardess school have less in the way of sexual experience than the average girl of the same age. I certainly don’t have any statistics, but this is definitely the impression I’ve gotten over the years. The majority, very definitely the majority, were virgins.

JWW: Were you?

SHIRL: ’Fraid not. No, as I said, I had been around a bit. Nothing that would qualify me for an all-time tramp award, but I had been slept with a couple of times. In that company, though, I was regarded as pretty knowledgeable. As I said, most of the girls hadn’t done much and didn’t even know very much about the things they hadn’t done.

But this inexperience, this naïveté, was more than just a sexual thing. All things considered, we were a pretty green crew. We didn’t know how to dress or how to put on makeup or how to order a meal in a restaurant or how to talk to a man without stuttering or, oh, so many things.

And in less than a year, in just a couple of months, all of us had changed completely. I don’t think there were many virgins left after a few months. You can’t tell me that so many of those girls would have lost their virginity the same way if they had stayed at home. I’m sure with some of them it was just a question of time, and that they had just been waiting for the opportunity that they found in the life of a stew. But I’m sure too that the general attitude you find in the life and the image that stews have and the stresses and tensions involved, that these played a part. All of us went through some very profound changes, and found ourselves up against new situations and living new lives, and this had a very considerable effect upon us.

In my own case, I would say that being a stewardess has made me what I am today. God, how dramatic! I feel the slightest bit awkward about this, John. Did Fran tell you much about me?

JWW: Just that you would be a good person to talk to.

SHIRL: She didn’t say that I was a lesbian?

JWW: No.

SHIRL: I’m pretty sure she knows. She must know, to have said anything at all about me. I don’t know... of course that’s one standard thing about being gay, that you always have a distorted idea of who knows what. Either you’re convinced that no one has the slightest suspicion about you or else you take it for granted that everyone knows, and actually I guess it’s usually somewhere in the middle. Fran... well, it’s pretty pointless to speculate. Nor am I all that interested. She’s a sweet kid, but not exactly my type...

To return to the point of all this, I don’t know whether or not you could really say that being a stewardess is what made me a lesbian. Obviously there’s more to it than that. It’s not a matter of all stewardesses being turned into lesbians, although I have a feeling that there are a lot more gay girls in the sky than the average person suspects. Very definitely more than the average jerk of a passenger suspects. They think we’re all nymphomaniacs, naturally. All those myths about screwing pilots at thirty thousand feet, balling a different passenger every night. They really believe those myths, you know.

JWW: A lot of stews believe them, too.

SHIRL: Oh, there’s no question about it. A lot of girls live that way. I know it. But it’s not universal, you know. There are girls who have boyfriends and who limit themselves to one guy, and there are girls who, believe it or not, have still got their precious maidenheads intact after God knows how many hours in the air. And, as I said, there are a few of us, maybe even more than a few, who are, well, queer for each other, to use an expression I don’t exactly love.

I never thought this would happen to me, that I would turn out this way. I don’t think about it that often now because it’s how I am now, it’s the way I live, and there’s no point in spending all of your time contemplating your navel and trying to figure out how you got the way you did. All you accomplish that way is to drive yourself nuts. But when I look back, well, I never had any particular interest in girls. I’ve done a lot of reading about lesbianism — everybody who’s gay suddenly becomes hooked on reading about it, you know. And I can’t see any of the standard patterns operating in my case. In fact I think I was growing up with a fairly normal attitude toward men and sex. I enjoyed it, I hadn’t had any bad experiences with it, but at the same time I wasn’t hooked on it to the point of being compulsive or promiscuous or anything. Just a good healthy attitude toward sex, or at least I always thought of it that way...

Shirl went on at some length, describing her early experiences with sex and her attitudes before becoming a stewardess. After completing stew training, she rather quickly fell into the habit of dating passengers and leading a generally swinging existence. These dates did not always wind up in bed, but that was their general pattern.

“It’s virtually impossible to date a man under those circumstances and not go to bed with him,” she said. “That is, it’s impossible unless you simply go out of your way to be a tease. You see, it’s not like normal dating. The guy can’t call you again the next day, and you can’t take time getting to know one another. It simply isn’t in the cards. You both know that you are going to see each other this once and then not see one another again for a long time, if ever. And since sex is the point of all dating, in one way or another, the only way the date can serve its purpose is if the two of you wind up in bed the first night. Some girls say that this speeds things up in a positive way, that it makes you learn to get to know people much more quickly than you would otherwise. I think this is a song-and-dance we like to give ourselves to make a very casual sexual experience take on a bit of a glow. Actually it speeds things up by simplifying them. You learn to be very casual not only about sex as such but about the whole business of relating to people. You learn to develop a fast surface relationship and then you never get beyond that relationship.”

She sensed that her relationships with passengers whom she dated was an extension of the relationship which prevailed on the plane itself. In either case the conversation was essentially superficial, the interacting all on one level, and the roles quite clearly defined — she played the part of a devoted servant who existed to feed a man’s ego, and the role remained essentially unchanged whether she was tightening his seat belt, serving his dinner, plumping his pillow, or servicing him in bed.

“For many girls,” she said, “this is all very exhilarating. When you’re busy kicking off the traces of East Jesus, Kansas, there’s something very exciting about all this. The sense of movement, you know, can be very stimulating. The idea that you are in New York in the morning and Chicago in the afternoon and Los Angeles at night and New Orleans the next day, and so on. And sexually there’s the same sense of movement. One night it’s an advertising man and the next night it’s a professional basketball player and the night after that it’s a businessman, each night a different man in a different city. A girl can get a tremendous sense of freedom this way. She’s not only free from home-town restrictions and parental supervision but she’s free from the limitation of any set situation. There’s the feeling that you never have the chance to go stale because your entire world changes every time that you get on that plane and meet new passengers and a new crew and head for a new scene, and that it changes the same way every time you get into bed with a new man.”

She enjoyed this excitement, this exhilaration, at first. But the enjoyment didn’t last.

“For a while it was very thrilling. I suppose I can understand the thrill a real nymphomaniac gets. One man after the other, and not even knowing their names. Not that I was having sex on anything like that kind of a scale, but I can extend the experience mentally and get some appreciation of what it must be like... and it was exciting, and there was a great sense of freedom. I would only accept a date if a man seemed interesting and appealing, and I wouldn’t invariably go to bed with him. Some girls absolutely take it for granted that they will sleep with anybody they date. They feel the man expects it — which is perfectly true, the bastards always take it for granted — and they also feel that, if they aren’t going to sleep with him, they shouldn’t accept the date in the first place. I always felt that a girl has a right to change her mind, and certainly there are times when a man will seem all right on a plane but will later turn out to be a total shit for one reason or another. I don’t think it’s right to force yourself to have sex with a man out of a sense of duty.

“But after a while, and here again this is what I would guess a nymphomaniac feels eventually, after a while there was just no pleasure in it at all, in this constant emotionless sex. And I couldn’t get past this tremendous sense that I was being used by all these men. That it was sort of an unpaid part of my job, that I was just continuing to service them as I did on the plane.”

In time, Shirl lost all respect for men. “Perhaps it was the setting, the way I met them all. Men really feel liberated the moment they step on a plane, you know. And the first thing that comes out is their sexual yearnings. What a hung-up collection of idiots they are! So many of them act as if they’re on stage. I wonder whether they’re showing off to the stews or to themselves or each other or what. The grabbers are the most obviously disgusting ones, but in a way the really smooth and suave fellows are every bit as bad. Even worse. The grabbers use their hands, and you find a way to put them down, and they keep their hands to themselves, and while they may be disgusting they never get to you. They touch you literally, but on a deeper level they don’t touch you at all. But the really nice guys who pitch you cleverly and wine you and dine you and talk oh so pleasantly to you, all so that they can get you in bed and give you a nice efficient screw and roll over and go to sleep. Oh, they’re the worst. They’re usually married, and they’re always scared you’ll fall in love with them and contemptuous of you if you do and twice as contemptuous of you if you don’t — because how could you be so sluttish as to go to bed with them if you don’t love them? You know, sooner or later they all look alike to you, they all sound the same, they all speak the same words. Sooner or later every man is just the same as all the men who have gone before him. Every penis is identical, an instrument for probing you and piercing you and leaving you without really touching you at all.”

“I found myself losing respect for myself,” she went on. “I think what bothered me the most was the way I was able to go on with this way of life without finding any joy in it. And the way I was going to bed with these men without taking any pleasure in it, and, worse than that, without liking them at all. There’s something pretty grim about that. I felt at times like a dreary dismal whore. And an unpaid one at that.”

How long had she been flying before she began to feel this way?

“That’s hard to say. It happened gradually, you know. I suppose you could say that by the end of the first year of flying I was a confirmed man-hater. I still dated from time to time, but I was beginning to turn down dates more often than not, and I was pretty sick of what went on when I did go out with a fellow.”

And was she aware of lesbian impulses at the time?

“Not at all. I was never really aware of the impulses as such. Everybody has homosexual impulses, you know, whether or not you ever give into them or even consider but most people go through life without ever being consciously aware of this.” She grinned impishly. “A girl takes a set early; she likes fellows, so how could she possibly like girls? Of course everyone on God’s earth is born bisexual. You take a baby and tickle between its legs, and it couldn’t care less whether the tickling is being done by a guy or a gal. All that a wee child knows is that it damn well feels good.

“It takes society, I think, to make people either heterosexual or homosexual. And most people, once they decide which they are, they aren’t inclined to question that decision.”

“That’s less true now than it once was.”

“The sexual revolution and all that? I suppose.”

“Beyond that, the whole stress placed upon sex and the increasing amount of writing and talk on the subject. The average person is apt to spend more time contemplating his own sexuality. And he’s more open to new ideas because he knows everybody else is in the same boat.”

She thought it over, nodded. “I guess so. Guess I’m just a child of my time. But as far as I was concerned, I didn’t figure it all out for myself that I was a lesbian. I got taught.”

“Another girl?”

“Uh-huh. Another stew, actually. I had a few blue moods over the years, oh, and I tried to tell myself that I had been seduced, which I suppose was literally true, and that this girl had corrupted me, which was a lot of crap, if you’ll pardon the expression. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was already pointing hard in that direction. I don’t know how long it would have taken for me to get there under my own power. You can never know about something like that, can you? But I don’t suspect it would have taken too long. I had the inclination.

“And I was sort of, oh, drawing away from men in general. I don’t mean sexually as much as emotionally. There were no men that I really talked to outside of the context of the job. Every man was another passenger, someone to be waited on, someone to be supplied with coffee, tea or milk. And at the same time I was drawing closer and closer to a variety of other girls. You really learn the meaning of friendship in this line of work. Stewardesses become close in about the same way as combat soldiers or any other isolated group, I would guess. We lead a life that is so utterly removed from the ordinary run of things, and we have so many stresses all our own. Other people have their own frames of reference. A home, a fixed point to which they can relate the rest of their lives. We aren’t like them and we don’t have anything comparable. We fly through the air, and it’s not always with the greatest of ease. Sometimes it’s pretty rough, and if you don’t have each other to lean on, it gets close to impossible.

“I had never really had friends before I became a stew. Not really. I was kind of off by myself as a kid, and by the time I did open up socially it was as a teenager and I was in a dating situation, so most of my rapport was with the boys I dated. I didn’t have a really close girlfriend all through high school.

“So this was a big change for me, and I really warmed to this sort of friendship. Looking back on it now I can see how my feelings toward certain girls were sexual in nature although I didn’t realize it at the time.

“For example, I had this one girlfriend whom I would frequently room with on layovers because we often wound up working the same flight. A very sweet, loving girl from Minnesota, a Finnish girl, tall and absolutely gorgeous. She went back home about a year ago and married some husky farmer and gets up every morning to milk the cows, if you can believe it. I’m not sure I can myself. I was invited to the wedding, which was sweet of her. I didn’t go.

“Anyway, Cara was a really sexy kid. She had been holding out on the Minnesota farmer, but when she got her wings she really cut loose and let herself fly. She went out with passengers almost every night, and always went to bed with them, and as often as not she would get involved in some pretty far-out orgy scenes. A couple of times she got taken to nude parties and got herself laid by half a dozen men in the course of the evening, and got into some threesomes and things like that.

“This wasn’t unusual in itself. Face it, a lot of stews get into a lot of crazy scenes. We’re attractive and we’re liberated and men like us. But the unusual thing with Cara is that she liked to talk about it. I think she got as much of a kick out of coming back to the hotel room and telling me about it as she did in doing it.

“I know that I got more of a kick from the talk than the actual sex. We would lie there in our beds and tell each other stories about what we had done and what the men were like and how we enjoyed it, everything. There were times when I would be out with a man and I would go to bed with him and it would be a big nothing for me as far as I was concerned. And I would let my mind wander, the way you’ll do when sex isn’t working out as well as it might, and I would imagine myself back at the room telling Cara all about it.

“The thought of that would actually get me going. I would concentrate on that during the actual sex itself, and the thought would be more exciting than what we were doing in bed. You would think it would be the other way around, wouldn’t you? You would think that talking about it would be exciting because it would bring back the mood of the original act. Here I was reversing this completely, which I suppose is about the same as imagining that you are masturbating while you’re having intercourse.”

“Some people do that.”

“They do?” She shook her head. “Well, I can believe it. I can believe almost anything where sex is concerned...

“With Cara, I’ve thought recently that maybe she was just waiting for me to make a pass at her. If she was involved in all those orgies she must have had some experience with women. I’ve never been to those parties myself, but from what I hear every other woman at those things is bisexual and knows it, and the rest of them go along with it for the hell of it, and some nights there’s more girl-girl stuff going on than anything else. So it stands to reason that Cara had had a girl’s face between her legs somewhere along the way, and that she wouldn’t have minded getting something like that going with me.

“But she never mentioned it. Maybe she was worried that it wasn’t my scene, which it wasn’t at the time, at least as far as I knew. Maybe she was afraid of offending me. Maybe she was in the same boat as I was, ready for the gay scene but unaware of the fact. If that’s the case, I don’t suppose she’ll ever learn now. Not up in Minnesota with all those cows.”

JWW: You say your first homosexual experience was with another stewardess?

SHIRL: That’s right. The odd thing, or at least I’ve always thought of it that way, is that it was with a girl I didn’t know too well at the time. If Cara and I had worked ourselves into an affair, or into a little experimentation, that would have seemed natural enough. But I barely knew Margot at all, and it all happened in what the tabloids would call one torrid night. Shall I tell you about it?

JWW: Sure.

SHIRL: Well, let’s see. How to begin? It started with a perfectly terrible flight, for openers. I was on a New York-Milwaukee non-stop. It was I think January and the weather was purely awful. We got off all right in New York — we flew out of JFK — and then everything began going wrong. We lost one engine almost immediately. Now this isn’t as dangerous as it sounds, but just to make things that much more pleasant one of the shithead passengers in the first-class cabin happened to notice the engine was out, and instead of keeping it to himself like a good little boy he had to spread the word around. So we had a nice little silent panic scene; nobody said anything because no one wanted to look like a sissy, but the entire first-class section wore a look of collective terror.

Then we hit bad air all the way over the Great Lakes. If you’re going to fly into bad weather that’s a logical place to do it, but at the time I was personally convinced that the pilot was doing it on purpose. Every once in a blue moon some pilot gets a hair up his ass and bounces the plane through air pockets just for the hell of it. Rough air doesn’t much bother them because they’re used to it and because they can anticipate the bumps. But it’s hell on a stew. We’re walking around serving drinks and dinner, not strapped into a nice comfortable seat. If a pilot has a gripe against a stew, the simplest way for him to settle it is to pop the plane into an air pocket and let her wipe her face off the ceiling. This pilot and I weren’t as close as we might have been, and I was certain he was being cute with the plane.

There were other things. just take it as gospel that it was a terrible flight. The capper was that we couldn’t get down at Milwaukee. There was thick fog really socked in at Mitchell Field and we circled for a full hour waiting for a chance to get in. The pilot would rake the plane down looking for an opening and then control would wave him off and up we would go again. Passengers vomiting right and left, other passengers pulling out rosary beads and praying their heads off — oh, you can imagine the rest. It was grim. After a full hour of this we gave it up as a bad job and went south to O’Hare and made a choppy landing there and packed the poor passengers on a bus to Milwaukee. And throughout all of this I had had this one persistent pain in the ass trying to get a date with me, and handing me a line, and letting his hands wander whenever I got near him, and, oh, it was charming.

JWW: You didn’t date him, I don’t suppose.

SHIRL: God, no. I shipped him off to Milwaukee and then tried to find a place for myself. We were all going to stay over in Chicago, but the problem was finding a place to stay. The inn at the airport was where we normally put up in Chicago but they were filled that night, for a change. The management sifted us in with various other airlines personnel, which was how I wound up rooming with Margot.

I had met her, oh, maybe three or four times before. She wasn’t a beautiful girl by any means. There was something a little too solid about the set of her face and the way she carried her body. She flew for one of the more successful trunk lines and she had been in the air for a long time. I guess she must have been about thirty at the time. Dark hair, dark complexion, very penetrating eyes...

It was pouring in Chicago, so neither of us wanted to go anywhere. We had dinner in the dining room of the inn. She was a perfect listener, and I tucked a couple of drinks under my belt and started talking. I had plenty to talk about, just from that one flight alone. If you can get bad experiences like that out of your system then it’s no strain to go up again the next day. It’s the kids who keep it all inside and never let it out that panic one day and find themselves physically incapable of boarding the plane. But when you learn to let it out before it can build up, then you’re all right.

So I got going, and she kept me talking and fed me more drinks, and by the time we got back to her room — our room — I was feeling the drinks and also feeling very damned close to Margot. Nothing sexual yet, or if there was I wasn’t aware of it. Just an emotional closeness. Also I remember that I respected her enormously. She was quite a bit older than I was and she seemed so poised, so self-possessed, as if she had caught on to some secret of life that was still out of my grasp.

In the room I kept up my talking jag, only now I wasn’t talking about the flight or flights in general but about men and sex and the whole wretched mess that it was.

This must have been what made up Margot’s mind for her, this along with the actual circumstances, which did make it easy for her. But from what I know of her — and I still don’t know very much about her, as it happens — she doesn’t make a practice of seduction. If she did, she wouldn’t still be a stewardess. You can be gay and go on flying, but if you let too many people know about it you’re going to get your wings cropped. And if you make passes at girls who aren’t interested, that’s all, sister.

JWW: So you feel that you invited a pass?

SHIRL: There’s really no question about it. I made it pretty clear to Margot that I had the potential, that I was gay as a jay and was waiting for someone to bring me out. And even if this hadn’t been the case, the sleeping arrangements and my own conversational fix reinforced all of this. Margot had been originally scheduled to occupy the room as a single, and instead of twins there was a double bed for the two of us to share. And meanwhile I was stretched out on the bed in my bra and panties babbling about what this man had wanted to do to me and what I had done with this one and so on, the usual sort of sex talk that I had been having off and on with Cara.

Then Margot got undressed, not stripping down to her underwear but all the way. And I went on talking like a ninny. And she was on the bed, and she offered to help me off with my bra, so I rolled over with my back to her and she unfastened it, and I rolled back and she drew it off, and then I squirmed out of my panties, and I finished another boring anecdote, and this time she didn’t say anything at all.

I turned and looked at her.

She was lying on her side sort of drinking me in with those deep sensitive eyes. And the moment our eyes caught I got the strangest feeling. It went all through me.

You could call it the moment of truth.

I could talk about it all dawning gradually, but I don’t really think it happened that way. I think it came all at once, one brilliant intuitive flash, and I got the complete message that quickly. I knew what she was and I knew what she wanted and I knew I was going to go along with it and I knew it would change my whole life and I knew that I wanted it. Just all at once I knew all of these things. All at once.

She took me in her arms and kissed me. It was the strangest feeling. Girls and women kiss each other all the time, you know, but obviously this was worlds removed from a little peck on the cheek from somebody’s maiden aunt. Her mouth was soft and warm and fresh and, oh, I don’t know. It was all so strange.

I just let her make love to me. I might as well have been a doll. A Chatty Cathy doll who had done all her talking in the early part of the evening... It wasn’t what she did to me that was unusual. I wasn’t exactly a virgin, you know, nor had my experience been limited to the more ordinary ways of getting there. So there was really nothing physical that Margot did to me that I hadn’t had done to me before, by men. Oh, not to mince words, I had been touched and kissed everywhere before, I had been eaten before, and I had liked it before, but this was different.

Partly it was different physically. This was a part of it, I have to admit it. You must have heard it said a few thousand times that no man can perform cunnilingus the way a woman can. That only another woman can really know how to bring delight to a woman’s body. Well one of the reasons everybody says this is that it happens to be the truth. Really. This doesn’t mean that every man is a boor at going down on a girl, or that every dyke is an utter genius in the lips and tongue department, but as a general rule girls can get you places men can’t, and Margot was particularly wonderful at this, and that was part of the reason the whole experience was so perfect.

But more than that, I think, was the simple fact that she was a woman. And that none of my bad feelings for men could get in the way. And that Margot and I had been talking, really talking, and I felt genuinely close to her, and, oh, I don’t know exactly. Maybe a part of it was that I had actually been waiting for months or years for a woman to make love to me, and that now that it was happening I was enjoying it to the hilt.

Afterward, I returned the favor. Did unto her as she had done unto me. I didn’t really know what she would like or anything, but I figured that I would simply do to her what she had done to me, and I guess I had a feeling for it. We were very good together.

Best of all, there was none of that empty feeling that I always had after I made it with a man. Even if I had an orgasm with a man — and I frequently did — I was still sad and empty and, oh, so utterly alone after it was over. With Margot all I felt was close and warm and together.

She talked to me for hours. About what it was like to be gay, and all of the things I would have to know in order to survive as a flying lesbian. She told me the names of some girls who were gay and some who swung both ways. I was surprised to learn that some rather good friends of mine were that way. I had never suspected it, and they had never given me any indication.

After that, I went with men a couple of times. I think most gay girls feel compelled to test themselves from time to time if just to prove to themselves that they really do like it better with other girls. Just a couple of times over the years, though, and it was never good. I think it could have been but my earlier experiences had spoiled it for me, probably forever. Although you can never tell about that. You can really never tell. I’ve known girls who were gay all their lives and who suddenly got married and left the life completely, and whether they did this as a way of retiring to what the world considers a normal life or whether the men really did turn them on, well, that’s something to speculate about, but it does show that people can never be sure what’s coming up next, what changes they’re about to go through. As for me, I would guess that I’m going to stay this way forever, and that’s fine with me, but I have to admit that you can never know for sure.

Like Margot, the girl who initiated her into lesbianism, Shirl has learned to keep her sexual predilections under wraps insofar as her colleagues in the skies are concerned. However, they know she doesn’t date, that she has no interest in men, and she suspects many of them have guessed that she is homosexual.

“But this doesn’t get in the way,” she told me. “There’s a very big difference for most people between being pretty sure of something and having it thrown in your face. There are girls I work with, girls I fly with frequently and often share a room with, and I’m sure they have a pretty good idea that I’m homosexual. But I never make a pass, or even drop a hint in conversation, and thus it never makes it difficult for us to get along well and even to have an open and uncomplicated friendship with no sexual aspect to it on either side.

“You know, people always worry about homosexuals, they worry that we’re all out to seduce them. I frankly have no interest in the seduction of the innocent. I couldn’t be less interested. It’s not just a matter of fear on my part, but that I would absolutely despise myself for forcing myself upon someone who didn’t want me in the first place. Call it insecurity if you want, but it’s the way I am, and I personally feel it’s a good way to be, a healthy way. Oh, I’ll know straight girls who appeal to me tremendously, and for whom I have strong feelings, and I’ll go so far as to think that it would be really groovy if so-and-so were gay, but I’ll also have the balance and perspective to realize that she isn’t and that there’s no point trying to get involved with her. So I may get turned on by a straight girl, but I’ll always manage to turn myself off without any great trouble.”

Her own sexual outlets consist largely of non-stews.

“It’s safer that way. In all respects. I have made it with several gay stews, and it’s good that way, but it can screw you up. Some girls will have these long-term affairs and the worst thing possible is to get involved in something like that. Not that I want casual sex, I had enough of that with men and I want to be able to talk to the person and feel something for her, but when you mix up long-term love together with your job, well, it can get messy. I know three stews with whom I’ll get together now and then. They all have the same general attitude I do and it works out nicely with them. But I wouldn’t want a big emotional scene, and on the other hand I wouldn’t want to get involved with a stew who was just looking for some new thrill to write up in her diary. That type of completely casual experimentation is a lot of fun under the right set of circumstances, but it’s the sort of thing I would rather indulge in with a stranger, a civilian, than with someone in my own line of work. Just a personal preference, perhaps, but I think it makes sense. At least it does for me.

“One thing that you learn, that male and female homosexuals always learn, is how to connect in a strange city. That’s really a tremendous advantage of being gay, you know. It’s so much easier to find sexual partners. Normally if you fly into a city where you don’t know a soul you are pretty much doomed to sleep alone. This is especially true for men unless they want to hire professional companionship. Remember, for the one guy who manages to date and bed a stew, there are maybe fifty who wanted to and couldn’t manage it. But it’s true for straight girls, too. If they get picked up they’re tramps, and if they don’t they sleep alone. While if you’re gay, you just go to a gay bar and meet someone who’s there for the same reason you are, and the two of you are on a perfectly equal footing from the start, and it works out very well, all things considered.

“Admittedly, the bars are inclined to be a bit depressing sometimes. But you only have to use them to get started, to get connected with the right people, or on occasional nights when nothing’s doing or you have the urge for someone new. Generally, though, I’ll know a few gay girls in every city I fly into. I just get off the plane and check into my room and get on the phone, and there will be a party if I want or some company for dinner or almost any sort of scene I might be looking for, with as much or as little love and sex to go with it as I’m in the mood for. It really couldn’t be more convenient, and it fits in neatly with the life of a stewardess, because in the morning I’m on the plane and away to another scene entirely, with warmth on either side and good feelings and no regrets.”