Flight Times: Prepared for Departure

By Porter Lafayette

My flying career has taken me all around the world for over 3 decades. FLIGHT TIMES is an aviation travel memoir series based on my own real-life unusual experiences and unique thought-provoking perspectives. It is a collaboration which follows my life with a group of airline friends from the late 70's up until the present day.
The best way to describe the FLIGHT TIMES series is Cabin Pressure meets Tales of the City with a little Twilight Zone and X-Files thrown in for good measure. It is now time to fasten your seatbelts and get "Prepared for Departure" because it is going to be a very bumpy flight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Porter Lafayette
• Release date: Oct 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370079728

Porter Lafayette

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Porter Lafayette has flown for over thirty-two years working for some of America’s leading original legacy carriers. His travels have taken him all over the world. He is a dedicated and passionate Health and Safety Aviation activist that is committed to accomplishing his life goal in obtaining a first-ever comprehensive Cabin Air Quality bill for aviation in America.

Book preview

FLIGHT TIMES:

Prepared for Departure

by Porter Lafayette

2017

Copyright @ 1998 / 2017 Porter Lafayette

Flight Times Series Txu 847-087

Published by

Smashwords, inc.

15951 Los Gatos Blvd, Suite 16

Los Gatos, CA 95032

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced

in whole or in part, without written permission from

the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote

brief passages in a review; nor may any part of this

book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted in any form or by any means electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other,

without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flight Times Series:

Prepared for Departure, Cruising Altitude,

Final Descent and Fume Event

Park, Stan 1998

Lafayette, Porter 2017

LGBTQ, Gay, Aviation Travel, Non Fiction Memoir

Paranormal, Adult Content Disclaimer

Editor: BRLV Editing Services

CreateSpace

ISBN-10: 1979427992

ISBN-13: 9781979427999

Table of Contents:

*(Dedication) A Dedication to Joy

*(Preface)

VOL I PREPARED FOR DEPARTURE

Chapter 1 THE GREAT ESCAPE

Hollywood Casting Couch

Pedophiles and Producers

SF Leather Daddy

The Compound

Eyes Wide Shut

A Beautiful Stranger

Sleeping with the Enemy

Chapter 2 COASTAL AIRLINES (Part 1)

Starting off with a Bang

Strike a Pose

Snakes on a Plane

Things that go bump in the Flight

Food and Beverage Tales

The Great Salad Dressing Caper

Don’t mess with people who serve your food

Enjoy Your Cock-tail

For Whom the Call Bell Tolls ?

Ghost of Flight 401

Chapter 3 COASTAL AIRLINES (Part 2)

Nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies

L-1011 Lower Deck Galley Scandals

A Bunny’s Tale

Flying with Scarlett

The Painting Pervert Priest

The Mill

When Nature Calls

Prisoners, Fugitives & Psychopaths

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Viva la Cuba Hijackings

Sex and Lies in the Tawdry Skies

Heartbreak and Betrayal

Indecent Proposal

A Tale of Two Actors

Chapter 4 COASTAL AIRLINES (Part 3)

Finders, Keepers or Maybe

Goodbye to Camelot

Miami Vice and the Cocaine Cowboy Era

Chapter 5 FESTIVAL AIRWAYS (Part 1)

He did an Elvis in the lavatory

The Right to Die or The Right to Fly

Flying with Pully and Miss Puddles

Drunken Nights and Frightful Sights

Flying with Shay Shay

Pranksters, Tricksters & Practical Jokers

Julio Puerto Rican Gigolo

Bomb onboard

LA Serial Killer

Missing Body Parts

Someday My Prince Will Come

Chapter 6 FESTIVAL AIRWAYS (Part 2)

Psychic to the Stews

A Roman Holiday

Once Upon a Stalker

A Little Bundle of Joy

Big Daddy and Skully

*(Epilogue)

A Dedication to Joy:

From our first day here, we found Joy. Joy in her laugh. Joy in her smile. Although our time was short but only for awhile. She touched our hearts in such a special way. Her spirit lives on with us each and every day. We may not understand why she had to go.

Yet, there must be a new angel in heaven. For that at least we do know. Today we all celebrate and we finally receive our wings. Joy is now once again with us, causing our hearts to sing. Although she was given her wings early to soar above the rest. Now we are finally free to fly and put our own wings to the test.

Joy, we’ll never forget you for your kind and loving face. For you were our shining example and have already set the pace. Your memory will live on, as the time in our careers go past. The lesson to live each day to it’s fullest, as if it were our last.

Preface:

This story begins after leaving home at an early age while living in a small town in the rural, oppressive, racist and religious South. The decision to leave was made after trying to cope with years of a life with a critical neurotic Baptist Sunday school teacher mother, an indifferent alcoholic father and brother focused on a career in the military/police force. This was combined with the peer pressure and relentless bullying threats of being outed over my orientation by a spurned female from school. It felt as though the walls were closing in on me from all sides.

It was on that day I decided it would be my last. I simply left that evening without a word like a thief in the nite and never looked back. As a very young naive boy who embarked upon a journey through a group of depraved and deviant Hollywood predators. I lived to tell about it and escaped with my life. This experience left me much wiser and more savvy with the knowledge it provided me. The journey follows me through a self destructive and downward spiral after returning from this very emotionally traumatic period in my life. I eventually find true love and enter into my first long term relationship of many years with a man 15 years older than myself. The book picks up from there at the start of my first airline which spans my over 32-year life long career in aviation.

This is my personal story and is dedicated to those who came along for the ride on this very unusual journey of enlightenment. It is one that has brought me great happiness, heartache, sadness and constant laughter along the way. I have changed many actual names and locations in order to protect the identities for those of the innocent and the guilty, which ever they may be. Therefore, it is now time to Prepare for Departure. Please bring your seatbacks to their full and upright position, lock your tray tables and fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a very bumpy flight from here on out.

Chapter 1

THE GREAT ESCAPE

It was a hot and sticky day that morning in the rural South.

A letter had just arrived notifying our family that my brother Tom had been skipping school for several weeks now. He would disappear each day hiding out in the woods near our home while playing Army war games and pretending he was John Wayne. All Tom ever wanted to do was leave this small town and go into the military. My parents were conservative Southern Baptist Republicans. My mother was a neurotic critical Baptist Sunday School teacher. Our father was a former Air Force military guy who had a long career in a printing company. He spent most of his retirement days watching sports while drinking himself unconscious. Even with these major drawbacks for a family, I remained determined to become a journalist or a writer one day.

The kids in my school were similar to my family. All very narrow-minded, racist, and ignorant to anyone that was not like them. As far as being known gay during that time, it simply was not an option. It would bring nothing but huge ridicule to myself, my family and would leave me completely ostracized. So I played along and kept a low profile. This is what was needed in order to just survive while living in that kind of place.

All was going fairly well for several years. I had a nice cover girlfriend named Maureen. My school life was good and I was a fairly popular student with involvements in radio tv journalism, and an honors literature English class. Yet, this would be the month that it would all come crashing down around me. Maureen's dad was in the Navy and he got transferred back to San Diego. It was her last nite in town.

Maureen did not know if we would ever see one another again. She had been saving herself for marriage. Suddenly, this concept did not matter to her any longer. We went to a romantic secluded park and she wanted to consummate her first time with me. Unfortunately, I was not up for the task which only confirmed what I had already suspected for some time. If it wasn't going to be Maureen then it wasn't likely to be any other girl.

She moved away and my cover girlfriend was gone. It became open season on my new single status. A very aggressive but beautiful latin girl named Justine set her sights on me. She was obsessed and started following me everywhere. This caused her to even get involved with our Radio Tv Journalism group. It happened one nite after the show at the radio broadcast studio. Justine and two of the redneck boys from the school liked to cruise around a park opposite of the one small gay bar in town. They would ride around in their 4 x 4 with their confederate flag and throw beer bottles against the wall of the bar. Sometimes they would even ride around to the back of the bar to beat up and harass the closeted gay patrons going in or out.

Shortly, after Maureen was no longer in the picture I began exploring my repressed and hidden feelings. During the nite after the radio show I decided to meet some friends at this same bar. Justine and the boys rode by to harass some of the patrons when they saw my car parked there. This was the beginning of the end for me. Justine became very angry since she now knew why I was not responding to her advances. They went to my home and left a note on my front door with the abbreviations of the bar they saw me near. She was planning on exposing me to the school the following Monday. My parents asked about what the note meant and I knew that my time had run out and it was time to plan my escape. So this was the nite I made my move and I was gone by the next morning.

I had a relative in San Francisco named Aunt Lily. She was always the black sheep of the family. Her life was all about Reiki, Life Regressions, Holistic Healing, and Organic Foods. She was basically a new age hippie from Berkeley. The family always thought of her as out there but I think Aunt Lily knew about me before I even knew myself. She was always my favorite family member. Therefore, she was my tentative destination even though I definitely got sidetracked on the way.

My first stop was to see Maureen in San Diego. I wanted to apologize for hurting her and give the explanation which she deserved. It was great to see her that one last time. Her life was in a good place and that made me very happy to see this. She had enrolled in school to become a Nurse, met a surfer guy that looked just like me but only straight and ended up having children with him. I was then heading for San Francisco when I ended up missing my connection at Union Station in Los Angeles. It was there that I met Simon which ended up being my first real boyfriend. He was a middle eastern student working at a rental car stand while going to UCLA.

He was a great guy and was very special. This chance encounter turned into a several month romance. It ended after he was hospitalized with a brain tumor and his family never let me see him again since they did not approve of his lifestyle. I heard that he had passed away not long after that. Yet, never got confirmation since I wasn't allowed to ever see him again.

Hollywood Casting Couch

When Simon disappeared I stayed in LA a bit longer and kept in touch with some of the people I met when we were together. One was a casting agent for a major tv studio named Mitch and the other was a doctor and horse breeder named Phil. I met with Mitch one nite for dinner in Beverly Hills. This was the nite I met George Burns who was giving me some career advice at the bar. Mitch had decided to move in for the kill now that Simon was out of the way.

Mitch mentioned that he was casting for a major tv pilot and felt that I would be great for the main character of the show. He then made a sexual play which I declined. It was clear that the role was attached to my being willing to be intimate with him. He said that if I said no then he would be moving on to his 2nd choice that was flying in for a screen test the following week. I told him that was not my dream and that I never wanted to be an actor. My dream had always been to become a journalist and a writer.

Pedophiles and Producers

There were many young actors on the scene at that time that I would end up meeting at these Hollywood parties where the age dynamic was very odd. Many are very famous actors today. There were alcohol and drugs everywhere but the average age of the party was predominantly new young actors age 7 to 18 and the rest were all much older Hollywood power brokers. Later I would find out that these men were all pedophile players who exerted their power and connections. This was done to get the young actors to do whatever they desired if they wanted to work or become successful. It was a very deviant and depraved set up that I found myself in during this time.

The role I turned down became a huge tv hit and the actor that ended up in that role is still a huge megastar even today. The tv pilot launched his entire career. I just felt the worst feeling about those places and the people there. My gut feeling told me to run and do whatever it took to get as far away from these people as possible. This is when I decided to leave LA and continue on with my plan to see Aunt Lily in San Francisco. I headed up to the area only to find that she had now separated from her second husband and had returned to the rural town in the South.

It was not long before I met a very wealthy and educated scientist named Chuck at a book reading. He seemed charming, intelligent and a person of quality or so I thought. We dated for a short time and he was much older than me. The age difference was almost 30 years apart. I ended up moving in with Chuck and was trying to make it work. Yet, as time went on it just became more clear that the age difference was simply too far apart.

SF Leather Daddy

Chuck also began to disclose his fetishes that he had kept to himself in the beginning. I came home from a movie one nite only to find him in his playroom all dressed up in leather waiting for me. This was a time when I had no experience or understanding of the leather S&M Bondage dynamic in certain parts of gay culture. The relationship just got more strange from that point moving forward. Chuck was scheduled for a medical convention in Japan the following week.

I really did not like confrontation but knew it was time to go. Later that week I made contact with Phil the doctor from LA that lived in the midwest where he also bred racehorses. I told him what had happened with Chuck and he invited me to get away from things for awhile.

Therefore, I left Chuck a Dear John letter thanking him for everything but telling him it just wasn't working out. A trip to the midwest seemed like a much better situation for me. Fresh air, the country, and horses sounded ideal. Little did I know that I would only be going from the frying pan and into the fire.

The Compound

Phil met me at the airport and picked me up in his vintage Bentley. He collected antique cars as well I found out. He seemed really so excited that I decided to call him. I was hoping that this would be a nice break after what I had recently gone through. During this time all I really wanted was just a friend. We arrived at this large compound which had a main house, guest quarters, a pool, gym, spa, farm, horse stables, multiple car garages, media theater, offices, and other various nondescript areas.

It all appeared somewhat normal at first. However, the longer I stayed the more red flags began to appear. I started to notice how strangely interconnected all the people seemed to be in this creepy little town. Everything that went on was reported to Phil and everyone in the small town seemed to be controlled and associated with Phil somehow. They were always coming to or from his very odd and mysterious compound in the town center. It felt as though I had moved into Stepford and all the people were robots. I noticed that there was a strange locked door down a hall near Phil's bedroom. He was going to be at a vintage car auction that day for a few hours. While he was gone I located the keys to the room and decided to check it out. After I opened the door it lead to a