Maureen Freely: A SECOND LOOK
As anyone who has ever tried to join it can tell you, the Mile High Club is not all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s almost impossible to get into position without letting at least one fellow passenger in on the secret. You have to be prepared to stop writhing, and breathing, if there’s the remotest chance a flight attendant might be passing. You must master the art of the silent orgasm – and even then, you’ll have to clock up a lot of air miles before you can make good use of it.
Conditions have to be perfect – and how often does that happen? When was the last time you weren’t seated next to a crying baby or an overweight alcoholic?
Even if you take your own partner, you are not going to have plain or pleasant sailing unless you are the only two people in Economy – or rich enough to be travelling Club Class.
All frequent flyers know all these things to be true. Which is why most of us don’t even think about sex in the air. And yet we are being asked to believe that air-bound sex is on the increase, so much so that many airlines are having to train staff to deal with offenders.
Certainly the news stories are on the increase. Not long ago, Americans were shocked to read about the computer programmer flying from Hawaii to Los Angeles who would not stop having sex with her boyfriend in the toilet when attendants knocked on the door to tell them they were about to land.
Then last week there was the businessman misbehaving with his ex-model mistress on a South African Airways flight.
He said nothing happened: his head was in her cleavage because he was trying to comfort her after an argument. She said something did happen but that it was “not so explicit”.
One report had them topless. Another had children across the aisle craning their necks and asking their parents: “Why is that woman panting?”
Virgin Atlantic is said to be planning to solve the problem by having hot tubs and private bedrooms on some of their transatlantic flights in future. “You can do it on ships and trains,” Richard Branson is quoted as saying. “Why not on planes?”
The word is that most other airlines will be taking a sterner approach, but if you ask me, adding to the deterrents is only going to add to the mystique.
If they really wanted to get people to give up on this fantasy, they’d be better off publishing true stories to illustrate how easily, and farcically, air-bound sex can go wrong.
Here’s a typical example, courtesy of an honest friend who once struck up a conversation with a handsome doctor sitting in the window seat on a British Airways flight to Hong Kong.
They quickly made friends, then made plans to spend the next week together. During the film, she showed her gratitude by putting her head under his blanket and giving him some fun.
He was just reaching his climax when there was an announcement that a passenger had suffered a heart attack. Was there a doctor to attend to him?
The doctor crumpled, sighed, zipped himself up and went off to see the patient. He came back looking very crumpled indeed.
They had more drinks. Foreplay took longer this time. Just as he was reaching his climax, they had to stop again and fasten their seatbelts due to sudden turbulence.
They tried to contort themselves accordingly, but eventually the man gave up. He tried to service my friend instead, but she got a bit too carried away and her waving arms hit the champagne bottle on the tray next to her, and it fell over and poured into his briefcase.
They decided to try the toilet. While they were waiting in the queue, they listened to what sounded like another Mile High couple in the cubicle. Only to discover, after they got in there themselves, that the woman must have been moaning about the state of the floor …
How humiliating to go through all that, only to find you don’t have any libido left to finish the charade. Unless you’re an exceptional person like my friend, the only way to live with such a memory is to lie about it.
But that’s no reason why you should allow yourself to be fooled. Next time, ask for details.