Life at 47,000 Feet: Finding Peace with Sexuality, Religion and Family

By Jordan Dunn

Life at 47,000 Feet is an autobiography from the life of Jordan Dunn. It chronicles his lifes journey from the time he realized he was gay at the young age of 9 until he was finally able to fully accept himself as being gay at the age of 37. This book illustrates his inner battle with growing up in a conservative Latter-Day Saint home and exposes both his failures and triumphs along his journey to realizing Gods unconditional love for him and finally finding peace in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665743013

Jordan Dunn

Jordan Dunn is a proud father of two sons. He is an Airline Pilot and graduate of Utah Valley University. During the course of his career he has been among many other positions, a First Officer, Captain and Chief Pilot. He lived in Taiwan while serving a religious mission where he became fluent in the Mandarin language. He is openly gay and currently resides in Fort Lauderdale Florida. His purpose in writing this book is to encourage others that may be experiencing life struggles similar to his to carry on and that accepting your true self is the only way to experience genuine happiness and will release all the cares in the world that have been holding you back from experienceing a fulfilling life.

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Copyright © 2023 Jordan Dunn.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author

and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of

the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of

people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-4302-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4303-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-4301-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908094

Archway Publishing rev. date: 07/05/2023

CONTENTS

1.     The Flying Bug

2.     Simulator Training

3.     Severe Turbulence

4.     Finding Smooth Air

5.     Touch-and-Go

6.     Divine Intervention

7.     Mayday

8.     Ground School

9.     On a Mission

10.   Diverting

11.   Getting an Upgrade

12.   Departing

13.   My First Copilot

14.   Earning My Stripes

15.   Welcome Aboard

16.   Second Copilot

17.   Holding Pattern

18.   Stretching My Wings

19.   Tailwinds

Afterword

CHAPTER 1

THE FLYING BUG

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G rowing up in Utah in the 1980s wasn’t too bad, at least as a young boy. My family lived out in the country, in the middle of my uncle’s cattle fields. Our home faced west, and in that direction, we could see only farmland and Interstate 15 lacing its way to the southwest. The farmland usually consisted of cornfields that farmers would use for silage to feed their cows in the wintertime. I thought the cornfields were beautiful and created a sense of security around our home. It was a good thing I didn’t see Children of the Corn till much later in life.

To the south was an area of uncultivated land that separated our house from my uncle’s. It served as a flood basin of sorts, for when the farmers used flood irrigation in their fields. It would inevitably flood our yard as well. But the flooding didn’t bother me as a kid. In fact, I looked forward to it. It was like having our own water park in our backyard. My sisters and I would ride our bikes through the water, lifting our feet up from the pedals so we wouldn’t get wet. But it was a futile effort; our back tires would spray wet, muddy streaks up our backs.

To the east, where our backyard was, there was more farmland. But the Wasatch Mountains, climbing almost fourteen thousand feet above sea level, were a beautiful backdrop to that side of our home. I would lie on our trampoline in the backyard with my dad’s hunting binoculars and watch the airplanes from the Cedar Heights airport fly over. We lived right under the downwind leg of the flight pattern. In the summer, the large crop duster airplanes would take off at first light to begin their work, and their big radial engines would shake me awake as they buzzed over our house. I would jump out of bed and run to the window to catch a glimpse of them before they flew out of sight. I think they flew right over our house on purpose because the family who ran the airport and crop-dusting business were my dad’s cousins. My dad had probably jokingly complained once about them making noise at five in the morning, so they made sure to keep doing it. I loved it. My heart and mind were infected with the flying bug from the time I was a little boy. I also used to watch the big airliners on arrival into the international airport to the north and try to identify which type they were. But more on airplanes later.

Finally, to the north of our home was another patch of uncultivated land. It was overgrown with cottonwood trees and wild grasses. We affectionately called that area the swamp. There was an old abandoned home back in the trees. When we were young, my two older sisters; my cousin Nathan, who lived down the road; and I would get brave and go check out the house. But we never actually went inside. Although none of us would admit it, we were scared. We also created a fictional man who lived there, whom we named Old Man Waterman, and he didn’t like kids. As young as I was, even with the strict TV censorship of my parents, I had seen enough, and in my mind and imagination, he was real. And he would get me if I got close enough.

For work, my dad owned his own custom cabinetry business. He originally started with a partner named Craig. But that partnership quickly went south, as Craig was better at spending money than making it. So my dad bought him out and went at it solo when I was very young. Thanks to Craig, I’ll never be able to trust a business partner of my own, and after watching my parents run a small business, I hope I don’t ever have one. My dad turned his company into a successful business later on, but in the early years, things were tight financially. My parents did a good job of hiding it, though. Every birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas was perfect to me. I don’t remember ever having to go without.

My mom worked as a bank teller in town. I’m sure that helped make ends meet for our family, and I loved going to that bank. I would run around the two floors, up and down the metal stairs. I enjoyed the echo the sound made in the stairwell. I would peek into the different offices and run away when the occupants noticed me from the side of their doorways. My mom would threaten to ground us if we didn’t hold still till she finished her shift; I’m sure our behavior was embarrassing for her. The bank manager, Mr. Randolph, must have been patient with her and with us kids.

For the most part, my childhood was relatively normal. There were four children in my family. I had two older sisters and one younger sister. Our routine was to attend school during the week, and Saturday was chore day. My siblings and I would be assigned different jobs to help clean the house and yard. The plan was to get the chores done fast, because after that, we were free. Sunday was church day.

I grew up a member of the main religion in the area. At the time, I didn’t realize how unique that was. I never really looked forward to church. As a young boy, I had better things to do. But Sunday was the Sabbath, and we went to church. My mom would wake us up on Sunday mornings with an AM station that used music by the church or church members. My mom played it through the intercom system in our house, so on Saturday nights, before I went to bed, I would turn the volume down on the speaker in my room to get a few more minutes of sleep before my mom would open my door and turn it back up.

My dad was always involved in some position or another in the church. He would go early to take care of whatever business he was needed for. So it was up to my mom to get herself and her four kids ready. I don’t think we ever made it on time. My sisters were the slowest at getting ready for anything, especially church. But I was impatient and hated being late. Sometimes I would ride my bike just to be there on time and then to make a quick escape afterward. Otherwise, I had to wait for my mom. It seemed she had to talk to every single person in the building before we could get out of there.

Overall, it was a pretty good life. At times, I wished I lived in town and closer to other kids. But living out in the country afforded me opportunities that city kids didn’t have. I could ride my bike on any road and not really have to worry about traffic. I usually encountered only my uncle driving his tractor with a big bale of hay on it, going to feed his cows. In fact, when Nathan and I got Rollerblades, we would hide and wait for my uncle to come by on the tractor. After he passed, we’d skate up and grab on to whatever he was pulling behind him that day. We would hold on for dear life as he unknowingly pulled us along. In reality, we were probably going ten miles an hour, but it felt like eighty, and it was a thrill. I never really got the hang of the dismount, though. Whenever we were approaching where we wanted to go, Nathan, who was always in charge of our shenanigans, would say, Get ready to let go. But I always panicked, and the front wheels of my Rollerblades always found a rock or pothole. I would quickly jump up and pretend I hadn’t just majorly hurt my pride, both knees, my butt, and at least one of my hands.

When I was eight, I got a BB gun, because that was what boys wanted at age eight. I was instantly the terror of any animal that breathed, apart from cats and dogs. I loved them and would never have hurt them. I only actually remember killing one thing. It was a robin, which my dad specifically told me I was not allowed to shoot. I instantly felt terrible. It was eating cherries from one of the cherry trees in our backyard, and I didn’t want it to. That robin will be on a panel that judges me one day; I know it.

I also began working for my dad on Saturdays, when no one was at the cabinet shop. I swept the floors and threw away all the wood scraps. I had to ride my bike to and from the shop. It was about a two-and-a-half-mile ride, and it was a lot of work for five dollars a day. But at eight years old, I thought I was making great money. The work also got me out of the house and away from my sisters.

On one particular Saturday, when I rode to work, the shop was a disaster. I looked at the piles of scrap at the ends of the two table saws and was overwhelmed. There was no way I would finish it all in a day. But I started my routine, which was sweeping the floors at one end of the shop. I slowly pushed all the dust, trash, and scrap toward the bigger piles at the table saws. As I swept, I began to get mad. There was so much! I convinced myself that my dad’s employees knew they didn’t have to clean up, so they deliberately threw stuff anywhere they wanted, and I knew which ones were the worst offenders. I didn’t put as much effort into my sweeping around their work areas as I did the others; they would have to live with part of the mess they’d made.

After I finished sweeping, it was time to fill trash cans with scrap and sawdust and then haul them out to the big dumpster at the far end of the parking lot. Once at the dumpster, I had to lift the heavy trash can up to dump it without letting it get away from me and dumping all of its contents all over the ground or losing my grip and having the whole trash can fall into the dumpster. It was embarrassing when that happened and created more work. There always seemed to be a car coming by at the moment that happened—so embarrassing.

After successfully emptying my first couple of trash cans, I walked back in the big bay door by the table saws, looked at the huge pile of scrap, and felt defeated. There was no way I could finish the task that day. My dad’s employees had made that mess, so they could clean it up, I decided. I shut the bay door, locked up the shop, and rode my bike home.

As I rode into our driveway, my mom was getting into her car to go somewhere. You’re back early, she said. Did you finish already? Dad said there was quite a pile this week.

No, I said. It was too big; I can’t do it. It’s too much.

My mom got visibly angry. Get your bike, and put it in the trunk, she said.

Why? I asked. Then came a lesson that became a building block of my character.

You don’t just quit a job because it’s hard. When you commit to someone to do something, you finish it. You told your dad you would do this, and you’re going to finish it, she said.

I knew the tone my mom was using; it was her Test me, and see what happens tone. I loaded up my bike into the trunk, as directed, and sat in silence on the ride back to the shop. She bought me a soda and a pack of peanut M&Ms from the vending machines and said, You can come home when you’re finished. If you need dinner, call, and I’ll bring you something.

I went back to work, mad at my mom for making me do something I didn’t want to do. I thought of my sisters at home. I figured they probably were just lying around watching TV, happy they didn’t have to be there on a Saturday, the only real day a kid could do anything fun, because Sundays were for church and not for fun.

Little by little, the piles started to go down. The words my mom had spoken ran through my head: When you commit to something, you finish it. I began to feel guilty about letting my dad down, or almost letting him down. I wondered if my mom would tell him when he got home and what he would think of me. I kept working; load after load went into the dumpster. Finally, as the sun was going down over the western mountains, I did one more thorough sweep to get as much dust as I could from underneath the giant table saws, and I was done. I will always remember the spot where I stood with the push broom in my hand, feeling a huge sense of accomplishment and pride. My dad would be proud. I rode home covered in sweat and sawdust but happy.

When I got home, I said nothing other than I’m done. My mom’s demeanor was different; she gave me a look that told me she was proud of me and knew I had learned my lesson, and nothing else needed to be said.

When I was a little older and my dad’s business was doing better, we began family vacations to Disneyland. In better years, we got to fly down to Los Angeles instead of driving. Whenever we flew, for me at least, the flying was almost as exciting as being in Disneyland—almost. Going to the airport, watching all the airplanes come and go, asking my dad which types they were, and studying every little detail so I could remember each of them were thrilling. Flying scared my mom and two of my three sisters. There are still teeth-mark scars on my left thigh from my oldest sister laying her head down on my leg and biting me as we went through some choppy air.

The rest of the years, we made the nine-hour drive from Cedar Heights to California. We didn’t have a family station wagon. My dad drove Broncos. I loved those Broncos and owned four different ones later on in life. As for a road trip with a family of six, however, the math didn’t work out with the number of seats available. I didn’t want to sit by my sisters for nine hours, and they didn’t want me sitting by them, so they would sit on the bench seat in the back with their pillows and headphones or whatever they brought on the trip with them, and I would get banished to the far back of the Bronco with the luggage. I always made just enough of an issue about how bad it sucked that my sisters wouldn’t want to trade me places. That was what I wanted. I actually liked it back there. I had my own space away from my sisters. I didn’t have them falling asleep on me, drooling on me, or fighting for more space. I brought one of my favorite blankets and a pillow and made a cozy setup on top of the luggage. The setup got even better the year I got my portable CD player. I only had one CD, and it was just me and Céline Dion for nine hours. I was the last one to get the air-conditioning, but it was worth the solitude I needed!

The first time I realized that something inside me sexually wasn’t quite the same as it was for everyone else around me happened one day at my uncle’s house. I was no older than second grade. I was there with my mom, and we were standing in their family room as my mom and my aunt talked about one of my cousins and his recent dating activities. He wasn’t having much luck at the time, and one girl in particular wasn’t interested in him as much as he was in her, so he was discouraged. I said, If I were a girl, I would go out with him. Almost immediately after those words left my mouth, something inside me stirred. I felt good for a moment, and then I felt awkward and ashamed. My aunt and mom laughed a bit over my comment and then went on chatting. Little did I realize that that moment of feeling good and then feeling ashamed was the beginning of a lifelong battle that would last till I was thirty-seven years old.

For a long time, years even, I would think about what I’d said that day. Why did I say that? Where did that thought come from? That’s not something a boy says about another boy, right? At times, I overcame my overanalyzing and went back to being a kid again for a while, but I would inevitably go back to wondering where the thought had come from.

When I was in third grade, I had an encounter with my cousin Nathan that revived the emotions I had felt that day at my aunt’s house. Nathan and I would play army in the swamp. We both had camo we would dress in and fake guns. We built forts and blinds to hide us from our pretend enemies. It wasn’t my favorite game, but since Nathan was my only choice for a playmate, I went with it. I didn’t mind dressing up in the camo. One day we were playing army, and Nathan announced that he had found the keys to get into his family’s camping trailer, which would make the best fort ever! We hid in the trailer till the coast was clear from the enemy—his dad, my uncle—seeing us playing around in the trailer. The game of army quickly ended after that when Nathan asked me if I wanted to play house.

That caught me off guard. Nathan was a tough guy, the son of a tough farmer, and I was a tough guy, the son of a tough carpenter. Playing house was for girls. What do you mean ‘play house’? I said.

You know, we can be the parents, Nathan said.

How do you mean? I asked.

We’ll take our clothes off and pretend we are having sex, Nathan replied.

I was in third grade and only had a small idea of what sex was, but I was intrigued. He began taking his clothes off and told me to do the same. We only went down as far as our underwear. I had tighty-whities on, and he had biking shorts on. I was jealous; I always had wanted at least colored briefs, but my mom always bought plain old white ones. I could see Nathan showing a bit of a bulge growing in his shorts, and I was too, although I wasn’t sure why.

He said, Let’s get up on the bunk bed, so we climbed up there. Then he said, Now we hug, so we did. Then he instructed that we needed to repeatedly push our waists together, because that was what parents did. That was the part of sex I was kind of familiar with, although I wasn’t 100 percent sure why they did that.

It kind of felt good but was mostly awkward. Just like in real life between a couple, it was all over in a few seconds. We got dressed, and I went home, feeling a tad weird about what had just happened but also aroused by it.

Nathan and I played house more during that year. Each time, it got more involved, and eventually, we were totally naked and experimenting with things. We never kissed, because boys didn’t kiss. He taught me about jacking off, which he called beating off. The last time we did anything like that was when I was in fourth grade. I liked doing it. We would have sleepovers and sleep out on the trampoline and mess around in our sleeping bags.

One night, the last time we ever had a sleepover, Nathan wanted to show me something. When it was late and we were sure everyone was asleep, we jumped off the trampoline totally naked and ran around the yard, hiding again from unseen enemies. It was exhilarating to be running around buck naked. Then Nathan stopped and said, Watch what I learned how to do.

He had me shine the flashlight on his penis, and he began jacking off. He went faster and faster. In my ignorance, I did not understand why this was worth stopping our frolicking around the yard. Then it happened: he climaxed, and white stuff came shooting out the end of his penis.

Did he just break something? I wondered. No, there would be blood if it was broken. What just happened?

He said it felt amazing, but I was a little freaked out by what I’d just seen.

We went back to the trampoline and got in our sleeping bags without talking more about it. After that night, we didn’t ever play house or have another sleepover. Nathan was going to sixth grade and got his own group of friends and interests—interests that didn’t include me. From that time, I told myself that the things we had done were just things boys did as they were growing up, and I tried not to dwell on it.

CHAPTER 2

SIMULATOR TRAINING

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F ourth grade brought a lot of new experiences into my life. The mind of a child absorbs things quickly, and I began to think about jobs I could potentially do when I grew up—jobs that had nothing to do with math, because that was my number-one most despised subject. I had no time for or interest in math. I either wanted to be an airline pilot or wanted to take over my dad’s business one day after he retired. How much math does a pilot or cabinet maker need to know anyway? I thought. Oh, my childish ignorance.

My fourth-grade teacher happened to be Mr. Harrison, my uncle and Nathan’s dad. I had hoped to get him as my teacher, because my oldest sister had had him and loved him, and I wanted to have the same opportunity. He was a great teacher. His dad, my grandpa, had also been a teacher, and his teaching style was old school, which worked for me, but he couldn’t have gotten away with many of the things he did if he had been teaching class in today’s world, which is a shame.

In fourth grade, we learned about Utah history. One of the main goals was for us to memorize every one of the twenty-nine counties in Utah, which seemed impossible to do. When I moved to Texas later on in life and saw they had 254 counties, I was grateful I had been in Utah in fourth grade!

Toward the end of the school year, each of the five grades in my elementary school had to put on a program for parents that showed all we had learned during the year. The teachers of the fourth grade were particularly proud of their program about Utah history. The programs usually involved a lot of singing and dances. It was fun, and it got us out of the classroom and into the lunchroom, which was transformed into an auditorium to practice our lines and our dances. I don’t remember the particular lines I had that year, but I do remember the lines my best friend, James, and I had in our first-grade program. The theme of that program was Crazy Days. We recited a poem whose origin, for the life of me, I cannot find, but there are more than a dozen versions of it. The version we had went as follows:

One dark night in the middle of the day, two dead blind men went out to play. Back to back, they faced each other, drew out their swords, and shot each other. If you don’t believe this story is true, ask the blind policeman; he saw it too.

I digress.

Fourth grade was when boys my age saw that the mighty fifth graders began having girlfriends. I wasn’t too concerned about having a girlfriend; I was around girls enough at home and wasn’t interested, but my buddies were, so we decided to get ourselves girlfriends. I found out that a girl named Sarah liked me, so I asked her to be my girlfriend, and she accepted my invitation! My friends at the time and I thought we had the prettiest, most popular girlfriends in the fourth grade and thought we were pretty cool. I was shy growing up, and the feeling of being part of this group of kids and noticing the attention it gave us was something I liked. Sarah was in the same class I was, and we began passing love notes. It gave us a thrill. We learned how to say, I love you, in sign language, and when our teacher wasn’t looking, the sign language flowed. He caught us every now and then. He called me out once for not knowing the answer to a question and said, You need to pay attention and quit writing love letters to your girlfriend, in front of the whole class. I was a lot more cautious after that. I didn’t like that kind of attention on me; it was painful.

In the fourth grade, I had another hard lesson on integrity. Every day, during math, we would do a timed test. We worked on multiplication during the first part of the year. Mr. Harrison would pass out a paper with a twelve-by-twelve grid on it and have us fill in the numbers across the top and left side as he said them at random. Then he would start a timer. It always seemed way too short of a time to fill out the grid. I had most of my times tables down. The eights, nines, and twelves always gave me trouble, though; the answers just wouldn’t stick in my memory, so I had to count in my head to get the answers. On one test, I was close to being done—I had five spaces left to fill out—when the timer stopped. To correct the tests, we would pass them to the person behind us, and Mr. Harrison would call out the correct answers. My friend Brianna, who also was a friend of my girlfriend, Sarah, sat behind me. She saw I only had five spaces left to fill and whispered that she would fill them in for me so I could have my multiplication passed off finally. We corrected the tests, and she announced that I had gotten 100 percent. I felt relieved to have finally passed.

I went home and told my mom that I had passed the multiplication test finally, which made her happy, but my insides were in knots about my lie. I knew that what I had done was wrong. I had to tell my mom what had happened. So before bed, I asked my mom to come to my room, and I confessed what I had done. In my fourth-grade mind, I had done something serious enough to go to jail or at least start fourth grade all over again. I was terrified of the consequences. She thanked me for telling her, although she was disappointed, and said that the next morning, she would take me to school, and we would tell my uncle what had happened.

While I was getting ready for school the next morning, I was petrified about talking to my uncle. He was my uncle and my teacher, and I wanted to make him proud. I felt ashamed. My mom walked into the school with me, and we found my uncle and asked to talk with him for a moment. He saw that there were tears in my eyes, so he took us to the library across the hall from his classroom, where it was a little more private. He and my mom waited for me to confess what had happened. After I told him I had cheated, he thanked me for being honest with him and said I would have to keep taking the tests till I could pass them honestly. That was one of the hardest things I had ever gone through as a child, and it had a profound impact on me for the rest of my education. I passed the test the next week.

Back to having a girlfriend. Sarah and I were together almost every recess. She would save me a spot on the monkey bars, or we’d play on the same kickball team. Sitting next to each other at lunch was a big deal. All the boys sat together, and the girls sat together on different sides of the lunch room. There was no rule dictating this; it was just how we separated ourselves. I only remember sitting next to her once. The janitor, Mr. Andrus, noticed me. I was uncomfortable, and all the other girls around us stared at me as if I were invading their territory. We didn’t have lunch together again.

The really serious part was going steady, whatever that meant to a fourth grader. To let everyone know you were going steady, you had to have some way to prove it. My friend Scott and I did this by letting our girlfriends wear our watches and even take them home after school, which was a big deal. I had the coolest watch. It was black and florescent orange. This was the late 1980s, and the face was digital, but it had digital hands that moved instead of numerical digits. My grandma gave it to me; she wanted me to understand how to tell time with a real watch, one that had hands, not just numbers. As she put it, Any dumbbell can recite numbers, but to read my watch, you actually had to know how to read a clock.

When Christmastime came, my grandma took us Christmas shopping. In my family, we drew family members’ names for Christmas, so on that trip, we were out buying sibling presents, and I also needed something for Sarah. I wanted to buy a bracelet for her that had her name on it, but it would have taken almost all my money, and my grandma wouldn’t let me spend more on a girlfriend than on my sister. I had gotten intel from Scott’s girlfriend that Sarah was buying me a bracelet with my name engraved on it, and I did not want to have a lame present for her. In the end, though, I had to compromise on a less expensive bracelet without her name on it. Grandma won.

When the day to exchange presents came, Sarah did indeed give me a gold bracelet with my name on it and a little baseball glove etched on it as well. It instantly became a prized possession, and I still have that bracelet in its original case to this day. She loved what I got her too, even though I thought she would surely be disappointed.

Sarah’s parents weren’t as strict as mine were. She always wanted to go see movies at the one-screen theater in town, and I wanted to go with her because she wanted to kiss me, and I wanted to kiss her just to see what it was like. Her parents always let her go, but my parents had a series of questions they had learned to ask about anything I wanted to do or anywhere I wanted to go. The disadvantage of not being the oldest was that my parents gained wisdom from the dumb decisions of my older siblings. I did manage to go to two movies with Sarah, though. Both times, my parents were out of town, and my grandma let me go. We saw Dead Poets Society the first time. I was nervous to kiss her; I didn’t want anyone to see us. The first time we kissed, I made her crouch down on the floor in front of our seats before I felt comfortable enough to kiss. Her lips felt cold and wet. After the first time, it became easier. She would tap me and say, Kiss me. I was the man.