The Mile High Club (21 page)

I dress warmly—a layer of wicking thermals because it’s colder than the moon out there, with the wind whipping away every thought of warmth; then the catsuit. It’s a patriotic red,
white, and blue, a line of stars down the thigh, diagonal stripes over the torso. Patriotism goes down well with the air-show crowds. I wear goggles against the wind, soft slippers on my feet so I don’t harm the fabric of the wing.

Bob is our pilot, Buttercup is our plane. Bob is sixty-eight and has a steady hand on the controls. Buttercup is also sixty-eight and she’s a Boeing Stearman biplane, a game old girl painted as sunny as her name. Bob and her, they have a long history together. I often think they’ll go together in a burst of flame on a hillside. I just hope I’m not on the wing at the time.

We take off from a back strip, away from the crowds. I’m already on the upper wing in my safety harness, securely fastened to the upright struts that protrude from the center of the plane’s structure. Surely you didn’t think I’d do this without a harness? Some people used to, but they tended to have short careers.

We circle the air show once, up high. We’ll talk a little on the radio. Bob worries how long he can keep doing this. The maintenance on the old girl gets harder every year. Then we get the signal to go and we come in fast and low. I’ll be in a pose: arm extended gracefully, my long hair streaming behind me like Boadicea the warrior queen. Or Xena the warrior princess—I guess more people have heard of her. One leg cocked up, I’ll hold the pose and wave to the crowd as Bob takes us up in a hard spiral. And for the next fifteen minutes or so, Bob will twirl with Buttercup, looping the loop, flying upside down, flipping her from side to side, always within sight of the crowds, of course. And me? I’ll be up there, posing, slow-motion dancing, sometimes doing a handstand, although Bob has to keep her totally steady for that one, so I only do that when he’s been dry for a few days. The wind pummels the breath from my body, and moving a limb is like pushing against cement. The roar of the air and the rumble and creak of the plane beneath my feet fill my head. There’s a crowd?
I honestly couldn’t tell you. It’s just me and Buttercup and Bob, flying in our little space-time continuum.

 

Evenings go something like this:

Me and Bob, in a Motel 6 somewhere, Buttercup in a hangar nearby. We get takeout and sit on one of the double beds, backs against the headboard, watching HBO. I trade some of my sweet and sour for Bob’s lo mein, and we wrangle over who ate the most prawn crackers. We compromise on the wine: he likes sweet, I like dry, so as usual we settle on a Riesling, one of those big double bottles and we’ll finish the lot.

“You need a man,” Bob says, eyes on Sigourney Weaver, her singlet tastefully ripped as she battles aliens.

I grunt. “I can get one anytime I want.”

“Not just a one-night man,” says Bob. He knows about them. He’s obligingly asked for another room on a few occasions when I can’t go back to their place. “A real man.”

“What man can compete with Buttercup?” I ask, adding hastily, “Apart from you.”

“I’ll find you a man,” promises Bob. “One like Sigourney.” So far, he hasn’t.

Bob and I aren’t lovers. There’s a forty-year age gap. I like men with hair above the neck and none below. Bob likes men who are the reverse of that. We get along like old friends, sharing a room with two beds in each of the cheap motels to save money.

And so our evenings fill the space of a motel room and our mouths and hands follow the predictable routine of takeout and conversations we’ve had hundreds of times before. I wouldn’t change those conversations; I wouldn’t change Bob. Only the location of the Motel 6 changes. It teleports itself from Chino to Riverside to Prescott to Pueblo so that it’s there when Bob and I fly up in Buttercup to prepare for the next show.

And one day, the conversation goes like this:

“Got you a man,” says Bob, reaching over with a fork to snag a pork ball and dunk it in my sauce.

“Can get my own.”

“Not that sort of man. Got you a man on the wing tomorrow.”

Now my interest is up. Not many men wing walk. It’s for the girls; the men are too chicken. Or too heavy. Can’t have a two-hundred-pound man moving across the wing. Bob couldn’t keep Buttercup steady if that happened.

“Name’s Leon. He’s a novice but he’s keen. Thought we could try out some fancy-pants double act.”

There’s a mild alarm that I’ll have to split my cut with this Leon, but I’m intrigued. I’ve never wing walked with a man, only girls, and there’s always an element of competition in that. Whose tits can jut the farthest, whose leg can stay extended the longest, whose hair looks the best backswept and big as we leap lithely from the plane to greet the fans.

“Where’d you find him?”

“Came to the hangar when I was putting Buttercup to bed. We had a bit of a chat.”

He must have been convincing. If I had a dollar for every person who says to me, “I did that once” or “I’d love to do what you do,” I’d be rich enough to buy Bob his Mexican island staffed by Sigourney Weaver clones in loincloths. With dicks.

Leon is there the next morning. He’s lean, feline like his name, small and wiry, the same height as me. He wears some sort of tight pants and a thick clinging fleece. The pants show off his ass pretty well. I think that he’s probably gay. I’m wearing an old costume, stuff that is now not good enough for shows. There’s a smear of oil across the chest and there’s a couple of small holes:
one a rip on the thigh where I caught it on the door catch, the other a small one in the crotch where a seam gave when I did a handstand.

“Jaye, Leon, Leon, Jaye.” Bob does the introductions and I check to see whether he’s watching Leon’s ass, but he’s already turned away to fiddle with Buttercup’s struts, so it’s up to me and Leon to make conversation.

“When did you last do this?” I ask.

“Year or so ago.”

“Where?”

He shrugs. “Mexico. Britain. Australia. Thailand.”

Everywhere, it seems, but the States. Nowhere I’d have heard of him.

“Done it with another person before?”

He smiles, showing small white teeth. Both eyeteeth point in slightly; too poor for orthodontics. That’s okay, so was my family. “Yeah. I don’t like doing it alone.”

Bob’s finished fiddling and he produces a second harness. “You’ll share the central brace,” he says, “one on each side. Ain’t had time to put up the other poles. We’ll just take Buttercup up and see how you get along together up there.”

I hoist up to the lower wing with ease; I do it all the time. When I stand up and look down, Leon’s eyes whip away from my legs. He obviously likes women, at least a little.

We attach the harnesses firmly to the central pole, checking to make sure they won’t tangle as we move around. It’s a wide waist belt with shoulder straps and a slender steel cable that attaches to the pole. That’s it: one skinny cable between me and eternity. My long hair is tightly braided and I wear a padded helmet as we’re only practicing. No need for glamour this morning. The earpiece of the radio tucks into the side.

Bob turns the prop and Buttercup splutters into life. It’s a
crisp morning, and my hands are already tingling from the chill, but I don’t like to wear gloves, I like to feel Buttercup beneath my palms. I see that Leon is bare-palmed, too—or maybe he doesn’t have gloves. We trundle around to the runway, and Bob revs the engine. Normally, I’d brace myself against the back support as a lever against the wind as we take off—it’s harder with two since we have to stand one on each side. But then we’re up and the ground falls away beneath Buttercup’s wings and the lift pushes my feet into the fabric.

Bob’s voice comes over the radio. “I’ll come around and level off at five hundred feet, and fly straight. Then you can do whatever it is you’re going to do out there.”

Beneath Buttercup’s wings, there are cornfields and the yellow flat plains of eastern Colorado; a dry creek; a tangle of cotton-woods, yellowing in the early fall days; the huddle of hangars and huts around the airfield. Bob points her nose to the east and we fly into the slanting sun.

I grasp the support with one hand, lean out star fashion, tacitly encouraging Leon to do the same. He follows and when I glance left, he’s arched into the wind, his face ecstatic. I shift to one foot, raise the other leg, point my toe, perform a slow series of poses around the pole. Leon follows a second behind. He’s good at this.

“Going about,” says Bob over the radio, and Leon nods, prepared to hold his pose through the bank and turn.

I’m the one watching him now, and there’s a thrill in watching something so beautiful this close, watching some
one
, too. He’s graceful; more deliberate in his movements than a woman, but no less glorious. With a thrill, I notice the hard lines of his thighs, the curve of his butt, the weight of his calves. And I notice, too, that in the wind, his suit is pulled tight across his groin, and he’s erect. Not simply turgid from effort, but supporting a full-on
pointing-to-the-right erection. Pointing to me. I glance again. He’s not particularly long, but the outline looks thick. He must be really wound up for the cold and the wind not to send him as limp as one of Bob’s lo mein noodles.

Two more passes of the airfield, and then Leon takes the lead. He handstands, as straight and steady as a redwood, his fingers splayed on the wing. He must be confident to try this so soon, with an unknown pilot and plane. Then his legs spread wide, and he holds the pose. Great abs. Another second, and his feet are lightly planted on the wing again.

He flashes me a smile, rests his butt against the pole, jack-knifes forward until he’s in a cat stretch along the wing. I’m not trying to follow his moves. I’m simply watching him, his body, and trying to ignore the feelings in my cunt. It throbs in time with Buttercup’s engine. The throb that tells me to radio Bob to get the hell down out of the sky, so that I can take Leon by the hand and find a quiet corner of the hangar to see if his dick is as delicious as it looks, flattened by his tight pants.

Leon stands. “You try,” he mouths, the words whipped away by the wind.

Try what? I’ve been watching his body in the minutest detail, thinking of golden skin and muscles as hard as Buttercup’s seat underneath that god-awful flying gear. I’ve been thinking of what he’ll taste like, all sweat and adrenaline leaking out through his pores, and I haven’t been paying attention to his moves.

He smiles. “Put your back against the support,” he instructs, this time through the radio.

“Going around again,” comes Bob’s voice over the radio, and it’s Leon who acknowledges him.

Leon waits until Buttercup steadies on her new course. Now we’re heading west, toward the Rockies. I can see them, hazy and purple, tipped with caps of new snow.

He’s behind me. His fingertips run along my body from shoulder to hip. “Good posture.” His voice is tinny in my ear through the radio. It sounds strange with him being so close. “Try the cat stretch.”

His hands remain at my waist as I jackknife. He’s so close to me that I can feel the brush of his groin on my hip. He’s still erect.

His hands travel slowly around the contours of my ass, one finger running over the crease of my pants. As bent over as I am, the gusset of my pants is biting into my pussy. The seam is pressing on my clit, and by clenching and releasing my ass, these tiny movements bring me higher. I must be red in the face from having my head so low, but I’m not straightening just yet. Beneath my feet, Buttercup flies on, and the rumble from her engine travels up my already heightened nerve pathways as the throbbing builds.

I can’t hold the position forever, of course, so I arch out into his graceful cat stretch. His hands fall away from my ass, and the pressure eases between my legs, a temporary reprieve. I’m so horny I just want to bring myself back into reach of his hands.

I stand again, place my hip against the pole and wiggle my ass. As invitations go it’s unsubtle, but we can’t stay up here forever. Bob will be swinging Buttercup around any second and we’ll be heading back to the airstrip. Leon rests against me and I feel the weight of his cock as he dry-humps himself, sliding over my shiny-suited ass. It’s way too cold for him to unzip himself; he’d get frostbite in those delicate swollen tissues. Me, however…

His fingers work their way down the seam of my pants, and then, as I hoped, they find the hole. It’s only a small one, an inch or so of torn seam, but it’s right over my cunt. My hands tighten on the pole and my breathing is shallow. Buttercup trembles beneath my feet, Bob is humming to himself over the radio, the
Rockies are huge and purple and solid in my vision, and my cunt is fiery with need.

Leon slips two fingers into the hole. They brush lightly over my panties and I shudder. Then they scissor and the old thread gives way a little more, admitting three fingers. And now they brush rhythmically over the gusset. He must realize how wet I am. I grip the pole tightly with both hands and concentrate on his fingers, moving to and fro with deliberate intent.