Fly boy
Okinawa, Japan
I AM DRINKING in the Officers Club on Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan. I am with my flight attendant crew, having worked a military charter the day before, bringing troops and their dependents to Japan. The Air Force very generously gives us base privileges, the officer’s club, the enlisted men’s club, the base exchange, the swimming pool. I am 25 years old. It is five years after the fall of Saigon and I know little about the military. I grew up in San Francisco where I protested the Vietnam war, marched down Market Street with 25,000 people, argued politics with my father, a veteran of WWII.
My girlfriends and I have ordered a giant pizza. We start talking to a group of fighter pilots at the next table who pull up chairs and accept our offer to share our greasy cheesy pizza. I have never met a fighter pilot before. I start chatting with a pilot who tells me he is from Wenatchee, Washington, apple-growing country, son of a district court judge. Randy is different. Most military guys I meet on my flights are from the small towns of the Midwest and the South. They joined the military as a way out of a predictable future- marry a local girl, live near the folks, have a bunch of kids, go to church on Wednesdays and Sundays.
Randy is more worldly and privileged than they. He is tall, lanky, handsome, well-read, a little shy. He looks dashing in his flight suit, the confident, cocky air of a fighter pilot swirling around him like smoke. We discover we share the same birthday. I make a quick calculation based on our places of birth. According to Zulu, the 24-hour clock used in aviation, I tell Randy he is exactly 3 hours older than me! It’s destiny, fate, the gods have sent me a sign, I silently think. I am instantly smitten. I decide then and there I have met the man I am going to marry.
I chase Randy around the Pacific for a few years, Okinawa, the Philippines, mainland Japan, bidding my schedule around his deployments and TDY, temporary duty. It’s terribly romantic, meeting up in exotic locations, making the most of a few stolen days together. I write him ardent letters on beautiful stationery, bring him gifts, a fossilized walrus tooth from Alaska, a six-pack of his favorite beer from the Philippines. “I love you,” I tell him, my eyes luminous. “Thank you,” is all he says in reply.
He never comes to visit me when he’s in the States. That’s okay, I rationalize. I’m the one with the flexible schedule, the flight benefits. I fly for free. Randy ends up in Meridian, Mississippi. I fly down to visit every six weeks. One month the only flight I could get was into Mobile, Alabama, not Meridian, Mississippi. I rent a car, start driving on a two-lane road in the Deep South, the roadside covered in thick kudzu vines. It will take three hours to get to his house. I think I know where I’m going, but I really don’t. It’s 11 p.m. and I’m lost. No cell phones, no GPS, not even MapQuest back then.
Nothing looks familiar and nothing is open, no gas station, no 7-Eleven. There are no signs, no streetlights. I see a juke joint in a cinderblock building, neon signs flickering in the windows, music filtering from an open door. I park in the gravel parking lot and go inside. I hesitate. I am alone in the middle of nowhere. No one knows where I am or even that I’m here. Randy doesn’t know exactly which flight I ended up on, the uncertainties of flying standby. All he knows is that I’ll arrive sometime that night.
The bar is dark, smoky, crowded, the patrons predominantly black men. I ask a guy standing near the door for directions. Randy lives on a county road, his address a post office box. The only landmark I can remember is a mental hospital. I don’t know the name of it, don’t know the street, but if I can find it, I can make my way to Randy’s house. The guy in the bar is patient, kind, helpful. He consults with two of his friends, what is it I am looking for? Is it Weems Mental Health Center? “Yes, yes,” I say, “that’s the name of it.” They give me directions to continue on the county road, turn left at the bait shop, right at the big magnolia tree, then go straight. I will eventually find it.
I spend a fun, romantic four days with my fly boy. We go to barbecues at the lake. We water ski, river raft, go to a high school football game, see the latest Indiana Jones movie. The fighter pilot community is a tight group of guys, zany, crazy, living life to the fullest. I meet wives, children, girlfriends. Randy talks about bringing me home to Washington to meet his folks when he gets leave. I am so excited, I buy a gift for his mother on my next trip to Brussels, Belgium- 8 white linen dinner napkins trimmed in handmade Battenburg lace.
The wife of one of Randy’s friends quietly tells me she has a plan for how I can get Randy to marry me. “Just get pregnant,” she advises, rubbing her own 7-months pregnant belly. “Then he’ll marry you.” “I can’t do that to him,” I tell her. “I want him to marry me because he loves me, not because he feels obligated.” “Well, it’d work,” she says. “Honor and duty, very important to them. Think about it.” I dismiss her suggestion.
Randy’s roommate Oly hums “Goin’ to the Chapel” under his breath if he answers the phone when I call Randy. I am convinced a marriage proposal is imminent. In a magazine, I see a beautiful ivory wedding dress with a wide satin sash of dark caramel brown. Randy will wear his dress blues, ribbons and pilot wings embellishing his chest. We will walk under an arch of swords held over our heads by his squadron mates. It will be beautiful, enchanting, perfect.
Then Randy stops talking about taking me to Wenatchee. Not enough time to do all the things he wants to do, see the friends he wants to see, go where he wants to go, he vaguely explains. After he returns from leave, he is given orders to Hanford, California for F-18 training. Flying Tigers gives me a furlough letter. There go the free flights!
The last time I visit Randy, I want to talk. I refuse to give him an ultimatum as I know the answer could backfire on me so I ask him gently, openly, “What do you see as the future of our relationship?” He tells me “Frankly, I don’t want any commitments or responsibilities and as long as you’re in Boston and I’m in California and you’re not working for an airline, I don’t think there is a future.”
My heart sinks to the soles of my feet. He’s being honest with me, 100% genuine. If a man tells you something, listen. I reluctantly take my own advice and after our last romantic weekend together, after 3 1/2 years of romantic weekends together, I never see or hear from him again. I am devastated.
Decades later via the internet and social media, I see Randy has married a pretty, petite, dark-haired woman with two children. They have a daughter together, a real daddy’s girl I surmise, as she is always standing next to Randy in photos, his arm placed protectively around her shoulders. She is tall and long-legged like him, names her firstborn Randall after his grandfather. I look at the pictures of a darling blond baby. This baby was meant to be! Who knows what he will grow up to become, to accomplish, to achieve? Randy was never fated to marry me. He remains married to the dark-haired woman who is obviously his soulmate, retires from the military with honor and high rank, flies for a major airline, retires from the airline, lives in Tennessee, in his wife’s hometown.
Forty years after I last saw Randy, I am attending a reunion of my long-dissolved charter airline. It’s lots of fun, catching up with my flight attendant friends whom I haven’t seen in 30 years, trading stories, reminiscing, remembering the carefree breezy days of our youth, flying all around the world together. A flight attendant named Peggy and I start chatting. She lives in Wenatchee, Washington now, widowed, her kids grown. She tells me a story of her elderly neighbor Helen, who asked Peggy if she ever worked at Flying Tigers with a flight attendant named Ann. Her son Randy dated this girl, here’s her photo. Peggy said Helen handed her a picture of me.
I am completely and utterly astonished. Maybe I did mean something to Randy, maybe he did care for me after all. I ask Peggy questions but she has no answers. The photo is gone, Helen died long ago.
I used the white linen dinner napkins a few times but gave them away. Too difficult to iron.