IN HIS OWN WORDS
A memoir excerpt
By Joel
Left: a uniform, an ocean view, and a life beyond the job. Right: Joel in uniform at a hotel. Images supplied by Joel.
Every layover was suspicious. Every hotel room was an opportunity to cheat. Apparently, I was the lead character in a secret life nobody had bothered to invite me to.
I knew the stereotype, especially as a gay male flight attendant. Different city, different man. Traveling. Partying. Unwilling to settle down.
Yes, some flight attendants live that way. Some accountants do too.
The uniform doesn’t determine the relationship. The people wearing it do.
Some couples are monogamous. Some are open. What commitment means belongs to the people inside the relationship.
What bothered me was someone else deciding what mine must look like because of my job.
The truth was almost embarrassingly opposite. I wanted one person, one home, and a relationship I could trust. I wanted someone who understood that commitment wasn’t measured only by the nights we slept beneath the same roof.
It was measured by whether we kept choosing each other when we couldn’t.
Whether his brother planted doubt in Jermaine’s mind or gave voice to doubts already there, I’ll never know.
But eventually, the thing I had been suspected of doing became something I experienced from the other side.
Infidelity entered our relationship.
More than once.
Suspicion doesn’t justify betrayal. If you have doubts, ask. If you’re unhappy, talk. But cheating remains a choice.
Every time trust broke, another piece of the future I had imagined broke with it.
The photographs, furniture, house, and ring still existed.
Somehow, home didn’t.
Work stopped feeling like an escape. Home stopped feeling like a refuge. I felt trapped between the two.
And I kept coming back to the same thought.
I chose this.
I had uprooted my life. Left Chicago, my friends, and the schedule I had spent years earning. I believed I was building something bigger.
Choosing the move was mine. His choices were his. It took me longer to separate those two things than it should have.
What happened?
FROM THE EDITOR
If you're hooked this far in, you might as well find out what happens next. Read Joel's memoir, Plane Crazy, on Substack.
About Plane Crazy
Plane Crazy. Memoir cover supplied by Joel.
My book, like my life, is full of drama. Sometimes even I can’t believe the stories I’m telling—and these are only the last thirteen years, beginning when I was thirty-six. My twenties were just as full. By my thirties, though, I approached life differently. I was making decisions with intention, with some idea of what I wanted them to lead to. In my younger years, I was mostly chasing experiences, curious to see where they would take me. Apparently, having intentions didn’t make the stories any less wild.
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