Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Ah, the days of seducing pretty girls with the aphrodisiac of aviation. Not to mention near death by midair collision.
Jul 1, 2005 | Some months ago I alluded to the time, back in my private pilot days, when I was nearly killed in a midair collision off the coast of Nantucket, Mass. I never got around to sharing the full account, but now is the time, I think, for a couple of reasons. First, it's a holiday weekend and the mood feels right for something breezy and sentimental -- even if breezy and sentimental includes a brush with death. And also because today is July 1, which happens to be the 19th anniversary of the incident.
Coincidentally, it was three years ago today that one of aviation's worst-ever midair crashes took place -- a collision over the Swiss-German border between a Russian passenger jet and a DHL cargo plane. (If I were the superstitious sort, which I'm not, I might advise fliers to rearrange their Friday travel plans.) Having acknowledged that, let's hold off on any hot and heavy talk on the foibles of air traffic control. If you're looking for a technical discussion about TCAS and transponders, you'll have to wait for another time.
In the summer of 1986 I was 20 years old and had a crush on Dorothy Meyer. Dorothy was the girlfriend of a kid named Logan, an art student and acquaintance of mine, who years later became the first person I ever knew to lose his hair (I was the second).
Life was unfettered in those days. A month earlier I'd made a solo trip to Hong Kong, and for work I held a part-time stint on the docks down at Castle Island, helping longshoremen drive Subarus off the delivery ships. In my wallet was a freshly minted FAA license (Private Pilot, ASEL, with instrument privileges), and I was slowly building logbook time to qualify for the next series of ratings and certificates on the long, potholed route that would someday make me an airline pilot. When the checks from Mom and Dad came through, I'd rent a four-seater up at Beverly and putter off to the Vineyard or up to Laconia, N.H., or maybe the coast of Maine. It was my practice, when I could, to recruit an attractive girl to accompany me.
Late one night I was visiting a friend's place, hanging out after a concert in a room full of skate punks. Logan and his newest consort, a tall, stunningly pretty girl named Dorothy Meyer, were among them. I'd seen her before -- at shows, at a party or two -- and couldn't take my eyes off her.
I positioned myself strategically and was able to get her attention. Shortly thereafter we began talking and paired off toward the back of the room. While Logan entertained his skater pals with a pointed dissertation on rails, wheels and bearings, I proceeded to enthrall his girlfriend with an expert's knowledge of altimeters, holding patterns and foggy-weather landings. With some embellishment I could make the cockpit of a Piper Cherokee sound like the Space Shuttle. She was charmed and I could tell.
It's hard to recall the full intent of my scheming, but by the end of the conversation I'd managed to invite Dorothy on an airplane ride. I could rent that little Piper, I explained -- at that point I was calling the plane a "Cessna," because the name wasn't as goofy -- and we could fly anywhere in New England.
Nantucket was her choice. Sixteen miles to the south of Cape Cod, the crescent-shaped island was a popular day trip for private fliers. I'd landed there many times, but to Dorothy it sounded adventurous. "Patrick says he'll take me in his airplane!" she boasted to Logan, who pretended not to care. Presumably he was jealous and annoyed, or so I wanted to think, but he made a good show of it, excusing himself from a heated conversation about grip tape just long enough to roll his eyes, crane his scrawny neck around and respond with all the affected nonchalance of the bored and spoiled teenager that he was. "Hey, cool," he said.
Effectively we were all bored and spoiled teenagers, and Dorothy herself was no exception. Though in her case, privilege and prerogative took on a distinctly physical form. At 17, Dorothy Meyer was, well, a spectacle. Trying to describe exactly what she looked like is somewhat akin to describing the Eiffel Tower, or maybe the Chrysler Building; as the saying goes, you really had to be there. Dorothy was 6 feet tall and weighed approximately 115 pounds, a caricature of all things slender. She had saucer-size blue eyes and cheekbones that looked as if Michelangelo had cut them from the rarest white marble. She worked from time to time as a model, jetting off to Milan to make a thousand dollars for a day's work in some Italian photographer's studio.
But to give proper meaning to "spectacle," you must add to Dorothy's spindly physique an endless assortment of camp, for she rarely left the house before endowing herself with any and every accessory of adolescent outrage -- from a clattering excess of costume jewelry to knee-high combat boots with red laces. She was part scarecrow, part origami crane, done up in Halloween gothic like an unpaid extra from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." On the evening of my invitation, her basic costume consisted of a jet-black crew cut, leather boots, plaid skirt, studded belt and an uncountable gauntlet of bracelets around both forearms. Detailed curlicues, like the wrought-iron railings of a haunted house, trailed from the corner of each eye. It was all too much, and so appallingly lovely.
Dorothy, I should note, wasn't the first or last girl I'd made efforts to seduce using the aphrodisiac of aviation, only the prettiest and most outlandish. Prior results had been, let's just say, mixed, and this one seemed a long shot. But I'd try.
And so there we were, on the first day of July, 1986, taking off for Nantucket in a $75 an hour Piper-Cessna. The plane, I've never forgotten, was red, white and blue, and wore the registered N81707. For her part, Dorothy's ensemble that sunny afternoon was a miniskirt, ripped-up fishnet stockings, Day-Glo orange Converse sneakers and a black T-shirt. The boys in the rental office were still staring as we lifted from runway 27 of the Beverly Municipal Airport, then commenced a long shallow bank toward Cape Cod.
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