Wild West Show
Cowboy boots do not make you a bad ass in an Asian bar
I’d like to pause here in the flow of these selected journal entries to discuss layovers. Most non-airline people have wildly preconceived notions about the glamour of flying around the world and that our flights are just vehicles to take us from one party to the next; the party being the layover. Maybe that’s true with certain airlines, and I won’t lie, when I was dating Liza, who I eventually married, we would meet around the world and have a blast in this city or that one (she was a flight attendant with Japan Airlines and based in London). There was no finer dating life than that, unrealistic as hell on which to base a marriage maybe, but so intoxicating was the actual glamour of the romanticism and jet-set lifestyle!
But the reality is, I flew for a cargo airline. We flew with tons of stuff, and yes possibly even some highly valuable rubber dog shit from Hong Kong, but it was cargo, “stuff,” not people in the back, so usually, the only humans on the aircraft were just me and another pilot (unless the flight was over eight hours and we had another crewmember or if we had one or more jumpseaters who usually sat in the courier cabin which was right behind the cockpit). Our cargo didn’t clap if we landed well and we didn’t have beautiful flight attendants feeding us grapes, bringing us our meals, or fanning us as we watched the autopilot work. Nor could we whine to the flight attendant about what a jerk the “other” pilot may be, if indeed they were one; nope, we served our own food, got our own coffee, dropped grapes into our own mouths, and suffered in silence, sometimes, the two of us in that big ol’ MD-11, preferring to read a book rather than to talk to the other person if one of us was being PMSy (ya know, bitchy).
It’s funny, but the fact that cargo flying could seem “lonely” never occurred to me before I got with my airline. I actually never thought of being a cargo airline pilot and I must say that when I got hired and started flying the line I was like, “Wow, this is kinda lonely.”
So I endeavored to make up for the loneliness on the layovers, like a lot of guys did. Usually the same guy with whom you flew you met for dinner, lunch, etc., and/or you may plan on going to a sporting event, museum, library (no, not really a library) or other tourist site that was germane to that city/area.
A lot of foreign cities had expat restaurants, bars, pubs, etc., that catered to, or were draws for, airline crews or other non-indigenous people. One such place in Narita was called “the Cage.”
The Cage was a small karaoke bar, which was right next door to our layover hotel. I had been going to the Cage since I first began flying to Narita, late 1989, being led there by word of mouth from other airline crews. Sometimes I had one drink and then left, other times I closed the place down.
With regard to our layover hotel, “the Lets” (yes . . . “the Lets Hotel”), it was not exactly the Ritz, but it was right in town and there were quite a few expat places to frequent in that area since Narita was a huge layover destination for thousands of airline crews. The company changed hotels a few years after 1993, moving closer to the airport, but a hotel shuttle bus still runs regularly throughout the day to take hotel guests to downtown Narita and the local mall.
As I said, the Cage was small, maybe fifty by thirty-five feet, and it had extremely steep steps leading up to its second-floor entrance. Rumor has it an airline crewmember fell down them and died; as steep as they were I believed it. You seriously had to watch your step when leaving if either inebriated or tired, or both. Stepping inside, the bar was immediately on your left and there was a metal grate kinda thing separating the immediate bar area from the main seating area. The karaoke stage was against the opposite wall from the bar and in between there was booth type seating on the left and right sides and some couch seating in the middle. You could easily see through the grating to the stage so people often sat “on the bar” to look over the heads of others who might be standing near the bar or closer to the front. The bathroom was novel in that it was very small, located on the right side of the room, yet it could accept one male at the open urinal and a female sheltered in an enclosed stall; modesty, for the guys, was not optional when using the loo.
The Cage could get amazingly crowded, yet there seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to what sparked a standing-room-only crowd one evening, and then an almost patron-free evening the next. During the times when it was packed I felt like a sardine in a can, but the mood was always festive because when elbow-to-elbow, the multinational airline crews were forced to interact and alcohol-fueled détente reigned supreme.
Let there be no doubt, I could not and cannot sing. I did not go in there to break glass with my screeching but more to hear others who actually were quite good. The two times I did sing were because I had had too much to drink and someone dared me; the modest applause I got after singing was no doubt due to the fact that the song was finished, and I was leaving the stage; I had no delusions of quitting my day job with dreams of being a rock star.
But the Cage was a place of entertainment and camaraderie for all crews, and it was certainly a melting pot of cultures and a draw for people lonely for home and friendly company.
On one layover in Narita, I had gone in relatively early to the Cage to wait for my captain to arrive. The place was half full when I got there so I went to my usual hangout spot, the bar, ordered a drink and sat upon it (the bar) and right next to another guy. I had just gotten new cowboy boots and the guy next to me remarked about my boots and how he liked them. He was a United F/O, he said, and he was in almost constant communication with two very beautiful Filipino ladies who were standing, one in front, and the other to his right, next to him. After downing a drink, the United guy heard the beginning intro to a song, said “This is my song!” then jumped down from the bar and took the mic from the previous singer and sang a very well-sung song. Wow, I was impressed!
A couple of hours into my stay the bar had gotten a little more crowded, but still well less than what you would call packed. I still sat on my perch in the back talking to this or that pilot from either my airline or another while minimally talented, none at all, or amazingly gifted singers aired their notes. At one point in those two hours, a group of five American Samoan men entered the establishment and sat all the way in the front left of the room. They looked like junior sumo wrestlers, except without the flab, and didn’t exactly look happy.
My United friend had moved to some seats, closer to the stage, since he was a frequent singer and his female entourage now flanked either side of him. At some point that evening, and after the Samoans had been there for a certain amount of time, a song began to play. It is a song that I loathed (then, and to this day) when it first came out on the radio and even more so when sung by the karaoke artists who usually butchered its vocals—“To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” sung by Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson. Ugh.
So, the music for the song begins and the United guy jumps onto to the stage and is getting ready to sing when two of the Samoans walk up to the stage and start talking to him. You could not hear what was being said since the mic was being held away from their faces, but it looked like a heated conversation judging by the body language and the looks on the faces. I was watching intently, as was everyone in the room, since this kind of display just never happened.
Then one of the Samoans very quickly put his arm around the neck of the United guy, pulled his head low, and started punching him in the face.
There is a line in Animal House where Dean Wormer says to Flounder, when chastising the pledges for their poor grades, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” Well, at the time of this fight, I was two of those three . . . fat not being either of the two.
Whether it was the cowboy boots that caused me to have no fear of the repercussions of taking on two American Samoans, or the fact that I was indeed drunk and stupid, I don’t know. What I do know is that as soon as I saw the punching start I jumped from the bar, ran to the stage, pushed one Samoan out of the way and grabbed the other, the guy who was punching, and held him tightly to keep him from doing more harm to the American.
I need to add that I was very physically fit back then and worked out with weights a lot. Though not a body builder wannabe, nor displaying an Arnold Schwarzenegger physique, I was still strong and muscular. But, my strength was no match for all five of those guys.
What I thought would happen, when I jumped to the rescue of the hapless singer, was that all the other guys in the place would rush up to help too. But, alas, they—the other male patrons—were thinking men, endowed with brains from their creator that they actually used. I, being, well, me, was not thinking. I was not thinking about the three other Samoans sitting quietly to the left of the stage either. Upon my triumphant arrival and pulling the Samoans from the now bloodied pilot laying on the stage, I felt certain the other guys in the crowd would rush up to help.
So, when I felt a lot of pushing and shoving behind me as I held a bear hug on the Samoan who started the punching, I thought it was a few of the other male crews dealing with the Samoans behind me; nope, it wasn’t. It was actually them, the other three Samoans, taking turns punching me in the back, trying to get me to release their buddy. I turned to look behind me since I was getting some serious hits to my back, and I was wondering what the hell was going on. It was a pretty inopportune time to glance over my shoulder because as I turned to my right I got a fist right in my face. It was then, as I got turned around, that I realized I was solo in this fight: It was one American versus five from one of America’s protectorates. I was bound to be DOA if this kept up. As I got turned around, the Samoans were trying to grab my arms and wanted to use me as a punching bag. Somehow, as they tried to hold my arms, I went to the ground, fighting to keep from being killed, and when I did hit the floor, that seemed to be the trigger for all the other guys in the place to come to my aid, and a good ol’-fashioned barroom brawl broke out with a fair bit of punching going on by others.
The fight broke up fairly quickly after a few of the other male patrons jumped in to help. Seeing they were outnumbered, the Samoans deftly extricated themselves and left, leaving many in the bar shell-shocked at the whole event.
After the chairs, drinking glasses, and beer bottles were picked up and with adrenalin returning to more normal levels, I sat at a table with the two Filipino ladies tending to my injuries. Besides a bruised ego from feeling dejected that I should have defended myself better, I was bleeding from my mouth and nose, and my ribs on the right side hurt like a son of a bitch. As the ladies wiped blood from my face and thanked me for coming to the aid of their friend, a Qantas pilot came up to me and dropped a beer in front of me and told me to drink up. I said, “What is that for?” and he said “Mate, that beer is for you, and if you want more it’s all on me.”
Again, I said, “Why?”
He said, “That was the best entertainment I’ve had all month, it’s the least I can do!”
I had to laugh.
An odd twist to this tale is the après-fight conversation I had with the two Filipino ladies. After tending to me and wiping the blood from my mouth and nose the ladies left the bar, though I stayed for a bit, trying to wind down. It wasn’t until the adrenalin subsided and the alcohol had been pissed away that I realized I was really hurting in my ribs and wanted to go back to my room. It hurt like hell just walking, and going down the stairs of the karaoke bar was an exercise in masochism.
I walked the short distance to the hotel and headed for the elevators when I saw the two Filipino ladies sitting in the lobby. They called me over and again thanked me for helping their friend. I said it’s okay, and then they said the oddest thing. They said they were going to make sure that the Samoans would not be back at the bar, nor would they be allowed to stay within the confines of the city of Narita, in any hotel located there. I was incredulous at their declaration, and to be honest I thought they were full of crap.
However, as it turned out the Samoans were employees of an airline, the name of which I can’t remember, and the ladies that I had been casually talking to all evening were employees of the Japanese Mafia—working ladies, if ya catch my drift. They had contacts in their little black books that would have made many high-level politicians or prominent businessmen run for cover if exposed. So, on this night, right after the fight, the ladies called in on a few favors from their clientele. Both of them, evidently, had the connections to get the Samoans thrown out of the hotel they used in Narita and the karaoke bar forbid any employees of that airline from entering for the foreseeable future. I really thought the ladies were bluffing until the owner of the karaoke bar told me that, indeed, they were two very well-connected, and not to be messed with, women. Now, how the United guy knew them, I don’t know since I never asked, but, I have no regrets for my impulsive nature in helping the United guy and I have a great story to tell my kids.
In reality, fights rarely occurred on layovers. In fact, in my entire flying career that was only the second fight I’d ever personally seen and the first in which I was physically involved.
COPYRIGHT NOVEMBER, 2021 Roger Blair Johnson