Inversion – Ch3

It wasn’t until February when the sky cleared out that I realized that I was walled in by mountains.  

I’d moved to Salt Lake City in December of 1985 when the valley was capped by a cloud mass known as an inversion.  An inversion is when warm air at higher altitudes traps cold air below it.  Air generally cools as it rises, but this is the exact opposite.  And because Salt Lake City is indeed walled in by mountains on all four sides the inversion happens every winter. 

Things being the upside down turned out to be a theme for my first couple of years in Salt Lake City.  

Salt Lake City wasn’t an active choice.  It was the last place in a list of three cities when I was given the option of where I wanted to be based with Western Airlines.   Los Angeles meant having to own a car which I didn’t.  Seattle meant being on reserve status for thirteen years – carrying a beeper and waiting for a work assignment, and I couldn’t really see myself having no availability to do schedule anything, ever, at all, for thirteen years.  So Salt Lake it was.  

I rented a furnished apartment in a new complex that had been built less than three miles from the airport.  The only furnished apartments I knew of were flop houses in the oldest most run down parts of Minneapolis and I’d not heard of such a thing as ‘new’ furnished apartments.  I was skeptical but the fact was I had no furniture and needed a place to live. 

Maybe the complex was built on the speculation of Western Airlines’ growth because as it turned out, most of the new hires from Western moved into the place.  It was on the bus line to the airport – a ten minute ride, and at the other end of the route 50, downtown.  The situation with the bus line, the airport on one end and downtown on the other was the only similarity to the life I had in Minneapolis.  

My pay at the time was fourteen dollars per hour on top of a base pay and a per diem rate of a dollar-fifty for every hour I was on duty.  At fifteen-fifty per hour myself and my colleagues at Western were considered high earners in Utah. Merchants and shopkeepers fell all over themselves to court our business and most every shop and restaurant offered us a discount when we showed our airline badge.  

On one hand we were royalty in Salt Lake.  And on the other hand, we too were walled off within the city.  The predominant Mormon culture meant that we were outsiders everywhere – and of the most sinful kind…..flight attendants.  Having come from everywhere we didn’t look like the average folks in Salt Lake City.  We walked differently.  Talked differently.  Acted differently and spoke about different things.  Consequently – from a social perspective, Western Airlines employees did nearly everything together, all the time.  When we were together we felt normal in a place where everyone else thought otherwise. 

The liquor laws were utterly absurd and going out to eat and ordering a drink included a series of steps which required ….. let’s put it this way for the sake of brevity – a whole lot of bullshit.  Going out just for drinks to a night club was even more complex.  I’d never encountered so much hassle with wanting to have a good time.  I guess that was the point.  

The shops in Salt Lake had nothing of what I was accustomed to and this was the case for all of us that had just arrived, as we were all from somewhere else.  To accommodate our tastes we became accustomed to flying to the west coast to do our shopping.  In fact we became accustomed to leaving Salt Lake to find just about anything.

Our ability to leave and get what we wanted only fueled the suspicions people had of us. We’d have things in our homes and wore clothing that people in Salt Lake had never seen before and our flippant attitude towards going to Los Angeles to buy sheets or to San Francisco to buy porn on VHS made us complete pariahs.  

In order to get the social life I wanted I spent my days off in Los Angeles with Carlos and his friends.  

Carlos rented an apartment with a friend near Bullocks Wilshire just off MacArthur Park.  Fabled by Donna Summer I was one hundred percent in favor of spending time adjacent to MacArthur Park.  It was a great talking point despite the fact that the neighborhood was shady.  You just omit the bad stuff.  

When Carlos and I had the same weekends off I’d fly to Los Angeles, take two busses for a total hour and half ride to his place.  We resumed our time together shopping at the Beverly Center and going to the night clubs in West Hollywood.  The two likely candidates in this category were Studio One and Greg’s Blue Dot.  

Carlos knew the doormen at Studio One and that’s where we’d go on a Friday or Saturday night.  A cavernous space, a former bomb manufacturing facility from Word War II, Studio One was legendary.  It was the Studio 54 of the west coast – where ironically I had been one year earlier when visiting New York and when a friend I knew at NBC got us on the guest list.  Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing at either of these places.  I was just a twenty year old kid from South Minneapolis whose father worked in the warehouse at Sears.  

Never before had I seen men who looked like the men at Studio One.  It was a collection of the most beautiful and most hyper masculine.  I was in awe – shock and awe, the first time I saw a group of extremely well built men dancing together with their shirts off.  Men who looked like this didn’t exist – except for here.  

If my time with Carlos included a Sunday, we’d go to Greg’s Blue Dot.  In a small nondescript storefront on Highland Drive was a two story space where a wide array of men spent their Sunday afternoons.  Drag queens, leather men, the men who posed naked in Playgirl and Honcho.  Average Joe’s.  Everyone was welcome at Greg’s Blue Dot.  It was the most fun I’d ever had and I far preferred this place than to any other.  There were no social barriers to talking to anyone at Greg’s, the music was superb, and the drinks were cheap. 

Carlos and I never actually dated but we continued to hang out and oftentimes this included his roommate Uvaldo.  I did sort of end up dating Uvaldo which gave me slightly greater access to Los Angeles as I no longer needed Carlos to be home in order to spend time there.  

Uvaldo had no discerning features save for one artificial testicle, and had no unique capabilities.  He was just a nice guy, easy to get along with, and someone who seemed to like being around me.  Our time together mostly included hanging out with his friends as he maintained closer ties to the Latino community than did Carlos. 

Though Uvaldo I met Xavier Francisco Leyva. That’s how he introduced himself.  Xavier was strikingly handsome with a square jaw, big biceps, jet black hair, gold chains, and eyes that sparkled in any light.  Those eyes with their laser focus of attention when listening drew me in.  And far.  

Xavier and I started dating which gave me still more access to Los Angeles but with Xavier it was different.  He owned a shop in Bell Gardens that sold First Communion and Confimation dresses.  It might seem inconsequential but it wasn’t.  His shop wasn’t the most well appointed – it was somewhat dingy in fact, but it was the best place to shop for such items.  He was a young Latino entrepreneur and was raking in the money.  

The Burbank airport was closer to Xavier’s house so when I flew in I’d arrive and depart from there – a far superior experience than using LAX.  Xavier would pick me up in his black Mazda sedan that had gold rims and tinted windows and we’d head off to dinner, usually to a place in the hills or to Tamayo, a restaurant named after the artist Rufino Tamayo and whose pantings were hung throughout.  With stunning food, sweeping views, and the most beautiful of people, I was ushered into another world.  

After dinner we’d go dancing at the Latino nightclubs in East LA.  Beautiful women wearing well-fitted velvet dresses and high heels.  Men in beautiful suits and elaborately stitched cowboy boots.  I was immersed in an entirely different culture and I loved every minute of it.  Xavier paid for everything when we were together even when I offered.  I wasn’t opposed to his generosity. 

While Xavier spoke English, most of his friends did not and although I had taken Spanish in fourth grade it wasn’t exactly the vocabulary I needed here.   I started learning Spanish with books and tapes I used at home and while on my layovers.  In Salt Lake I’d go to Spanish mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe.  I figured I likely picked up some English as a kid by sitting in church and hearing the same things over and over.  It’d probably work the same with Spanish. 

It didn’t take long until I could follow along with Xavier and his friends and on occasion Xavier and I would use Spanish in simple conversations. 

Carlos and I kept in touch but our lives seemed to be moving in different directions.  He continued going to the sex clubs despite the reports of an emerging illness and I was Xavier’s boyfriend living lavishly in East LA.  

For whatever reason – likely logistics, Xavier and I tapered off our time together until we were no longer a thing.  It was fun.  It was exciting.  At work I was starting to hold a regular schedule but because of my lack of seniority, it meant working on the weekends.  

That’s when I met Victor.  Victor was slightly older than me, and from the training class just before me – the one I would have been in had I accepted Western Airlines’ first offer of a training date.  We were flying Mazatlan turns together.  Salt Lake – Phoenix – Mazatlan and back the same way, twice a week.  It was a great schedule.  Two days on, five days off.  Victor was the Spanish speaker on the flights. 

Like Xavier, Victor had the dark sparkling eyes but that was the only similarity outside of being Mexican.  Victor laughed almost continuously – mostly at his own jokes and when poking fun of my poor Spanish vocabulary.  His accent was from Guadalajara – the ‘preferred’ dialect in Mexico as he’d say.  He walked and carried himself with the most noble of postures – and would use a hand in the air, literally, to brush off any conversation he felt was inappropriate.  It wasn’t arrogance though it was easily perceived as such.  

It should come as no surprise that Victor and I started dating, and this time around it was much easier because Victor lived just a couple of miles east at the edge of downtown in a converted old brick building that had a little water fountain in the court yard.  Its blue and orange exterior trim – a daring color scheme for Salt Lake City, gave the place an air of sophistication which is likely what had attracted Victor.  With his bedroom window open – it looked into the courtyard, we could hear the trickle of the fountain as we slept. 

My abilities in Spanish continued and after awhile, Victor and I mostly spoke Spanish when we were together, both at work and at home. 

Over all, the scene in Salt Lake wasn’t getting any better but summers were great, and the place where I lived had a large pool in the center and on any given sunny day – which was almost everyday in the summer, my colleagues and I could be found poolside sharing stories about our recent trips and layovers. 

Money was still tight at the time and one of our most coveted things was getting assigned to a long-haul flight on a 727 to a place like Chicago, New York, or DC because we served full meals on these flights and there’d always be leftovers. Sometimes even better meals from first class as people in first class often slept or had dinner plans once the plane landed.  

My first flight to Chicago offered a layover at the Palmer House.  It was my first time to Chicago in ten years, when in 1976 we drove there to see the Sears Tower.  My eyes widened to unexpected proportions when we entered the lobby of the Palmer House.  Never in my life had I seen something so beautiful or so elaborate.  At the same time I was a bit perplexed because I was working for an airline that had just come out of bankruptcy.  But this was life in the airlines then.  The most exquisite of things, readily available, and usually on someone else’s tab.  I graduated to buying my linens at Hecht’s in Washington DC.

With an erratic schedule to a wide assortment of destinations, and being stuck in a tube with a hundred-plus people at a time, the first year of flying was wrought with near constant illness.  Colds mostly, but also strep throat and ear infections.  It was rapid fire exposure to a lot until the body’s immune system was put into high gear and then at which point, I was seldom ill ever again. 

But, in the fall of 1986 I became terribly ill.  There was a lot of illness at this time.  AIDS was the televised topic that went on day and night.  Friends from work would be out for weeks and when they returned to work they’d become different people.  Frail. Gaunt.  Slowed speech. Some walked with canes now.  

Jim showed up at work after a long absence and I couldn’t believe what I saw.  He lived near me and I knew him well – we’d fooled around once or twice.  He was broad shouldered, square jawed, athletic.  Extremely handsome.  Model material.  Now he had trouble catching his breath after walking the concourse.  

Bob was next.  A young handsome Hawaiian man with a gorgeous smile that was now sunken inside of face that was nearly unrecognizable.  He and I had spent some private time together on a Honolulu layover.  

Then there was Kelly, then Stan, then Patrick, and Ken.  It was like watching a highly formal game of chess and as if suddenly someone violently shook the board and then all the pieces fall down.  

No one said a word and pretended it wasn’t happening but everyone knew what was going on.  If that was unique to Salt Lake City – possibly because the city was so insulated I don’t know, but us, the male flight attendants…. we were the people spending time in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  The words not spoken were that we brought this home with us.  

I had all the symptoms.  Sore throat.  Diarrhea.  Rapid weight loss. Night sweats.  I wasn’t in a state of denial but I was in a state of shock.  In a little less than a year of living it up on weekends in Los Angeles, with no intention of harming anyone and with only the desire to live a nicer life…. now this.  In my mind I heard myself saying, ‘this just isn’t fair as I’ve done nothing wrong’. 

Word was out that a test was available.  I didn’t want to know the news.  I wanted to pretend this was not happening.  But I also had an obligation to take care of myself with whatever that meant at the time. I scheduled an appointment at a office associated with my HMO.

The bus down Redwood Road went once an hour so I took it to 2100 South and walked the other two blocks.  I checked in for my appointment and was asked for what reason I was visiting.  I told the nurse I had come for an HTLV-3 test.  She asked what that was – she didn’t know.  I told her it was the test for AIDS. 

I waited.  My blood was drawn and I was told the the results would be back in two weeks.  They’d call me.    

It had since started raining and by the time I’d walked the two blocks back to the bus stop I was drenched.  I stood waiting in the rain for a bus that didn’t come so I started walking.  My clothes were already soaked through and I felt it couldn’t get any worse.  But it did. 

I walked the entire three miles back home in pouring rain, along the side of the road because some of Redwood Road was undeveloped and had no sidewalks, feeling deeply sad, ashamed, and frightened.  The heavy storm clouds overhead matched what was going through my mind.  The rain became the external tears that I could not shed and contained a similar volume.

I had no idea how I was going to explain this.  I had two weeks to ponder everything I had done and having just achieved some level of stability in my life I had to think about the instability that might await me in fourteen days. 

Once home I took a hot shower and went to bed.  On top of being ill, I was now emotionally exhausted on a level I’d never previously known. 

I started feeling better physically but had to hide my emotional distress because I had to work and was facing the public.  One a flight to somewhere  – probably Las Vegas because we flew hourly service in and out of Las Vegas, I noticed a woman watching me.  It wasn’t uncommon.  Flying then was still kind of a sophisticated thing for people and Las Vegas – you know.  Throughout the flight we’d catch one another’s eye. 

After we landed this woman stayed in her seat after everyone else had gotten off.  I casually approached her to determine if she needed any help.  There was a familiarity about her appearance but it was her voice – a raspy baritone, that I felt I knew from somewhere.  

“Honey,” she said to me.  She called me honey.  “I know you’re going through something terrible right now.  I know you’ve been worried about whatever it is for a while.  I want you to know that everything is going to turn out okay.”

The time it took you to read that is the time I had to anchor this.  In other words – no time.  She got up, collected her things, and left the plane.  Eerily now, it was just me in main cabin. Empty.  Her words, certainly haunting, gave me a moment of solace.  How could a stranger possibly know this, or anything about me?

I went up to the lead flight attendant and asked for the passenger manifest.  It only contained the names of frequent fliers.  On the list was the woman in that seat.  Sylvia Browne – the psychic medium that I had seen on television.  

The two week angst of waiting ended with a call from the doctor’s office.  My results were negative, but they did ask me to come in again to determine what had caused my illness.   As it happened, the recent bout I had had with strep throat wasn’t fully eliminated because I had stopped taking the antibiotics when the symptoms has receded.  This only rooted the infection deeper and stronger and when the antibiotics were stopped, it came back with a punch.  

Not long thereafter I was passing through LAX – changing planes, when I ran into Carlos. He was a skinny little guy as is it were but now he was even thinner.  The slightest of breeze would have knocked him over.  I pretended not to notice.  It wasn’t too much later that I learned Carlos had died.