Chapter 325: Going to Paris

Friday, December 1 to Sunday, December 31, 2006 (Continued)

A few days later at school, Julia casually mentioned in class, "I'm thinking of popping over to Paris in the family jet the weekend after next for a day's shopping. Would anyone like to come?"

Pretty much everyone in the class said they'd very much like to come. [The rest of the school had the same opinion when they heard about it, and most of the teachers wouldn't have minded either. Vanessa should have bought a MUCH bigger jet.]

"We'll be leaving 2pm Friday, so that means skipping the last couple of periods."

No one thought that was a problem.

"We'll shop all day Saturday, then fly back in the evening, arriving home about 2am Sunday morning because quite a few of the stores seem to stay open until 7pm..."

"Why can't we stay in Paris overnight?" asked one girl.

"Because the good stores aren't open on Sunday," answered Julia.

"But the tourist activities will be open, won't they? The Eiffel Tower, museums, art galleries."

"I suppose so; I haven't checked. This is mainly a shopping trip. The Eiffel Tower isn't going anywhere so there's no urgency about that. The pilots need to have time to sleep after the trip before they can get back to work flying Mom to DC on Monday, but I'll check with her to see if she doesn't need the plane on Monday."

Our classmates thought Julia should ring her mother IMMEDIATELY to find out.

Vanessa didn't want to lose half of Monday, so the trip was as Julia first described.

When she heard about it, Donna begged to be included, but much to her anguish was not allowed to go. "Too young," according to Mom. So Julia, Ava and Carol picked several of their best friends to definitely get seats, plus the parents wanted both of our female guards to go along for protection (we'd started employing our own guards; I'll write more about them later). The few extra seats were allocated by a 'random' draw we did at home, which amazingly produced no one we didn't like. Several runners-up were also chosen. Then the invitees parents had to give their consent in person, the likelihood of some refusing being why we had some runners-up.

Everyone needed to have valid passports and be able to meet any French visa requirements if the person wasn't an American citizen, plus there were several rules that everyone had to agree to. The rules that mattered for the purposes of this autobiography were:

• Obey the instructions of Ron, Julia, Carol and Ava.

• No alcohol to be brought onto the plane or drunk on it.

• The plane will be stairs-up to depart "Paris - Le Bourget Airport" (it services bizjets, and is less than ten miles from central Paris), at 7pm local time Saturday evening. Anyone not onboard at that time WILL BE LEFT BEHIND!

Our two female, VERY WILLING, guard/babysitters, Jill and Jan, were early-30s and late-20s respectively. Next oldest was me, apparently at twenty years of age. Ava and her friends were 19-ish, Julia and her friends 18-ish. For several of the parents, that wasn't enough adult supervision, and the last rule scared them too, so they refused permission, thereby incurring the lifelong hatred of their child. There were plenty of eager runners-up for the newly available seats though. Even with two guards to keep the girls safe, Mom and Dad still wanted me to go. Julia thought that was an excellent idea because she'd need "Le Bag Carrier." In return for which I'd have twenty hours in a plane with several beautiful girls and a bed. My decision to go was a no-brainer, by which I mean that it was decided by my small head.

Of the 30 participants:

• 25 were girls: Julia, Carol, Ava, 2 guards and 20 invitees; 11 of Julia's and Ava's friends, just 3 of Carol's friends because they were only 16-years old so most couldn't get permission, plus 6 lucky 'random' draw winners.

• 5 were guys: me and 4 others; 'randomly' drawn to keep me company in Paris, and possibly for another purpose if they volunteered themselves for it (described below).

There were a couple of amusing aspects to the departure. First, many of the parents drove their kids to Eugene; whose airfield we had to use because the Government had barely started lengthening the Corvallis runway. They could more easily have carpooled the kids for the 30-mile drive, but most of them came individually, obviously eager to see their kids off and to see the plane. It was one of the largest ever mass-skippings from our school, and the parents participated in it! The school knew about it - ALL of Corvallis knew about it - but the Principal had wisely decided not to try to delay it. Apparently he understood the magnitude of the disaster that'd be caused by delaying our departure for three hours. It'd be an irrecoverable and tragic loss of awesomely valuable shopping time, and he'd be lynched by two dozen homicidal teenage girls. The hundreds of other girls at school would've helped lynching the Principal too, out of principle.

The second amusing aspect was Alexis' parents. Ben (Alexis' father) had thought the last plane was impressive, so the BBJ blew his mind. It blew everyone's mind, but I liked Ben (not that he knew that, because that was me as Mark), so when he was raving over one of the bedrooms, I said to him, "Maybe we can provide a trip for some of the parents somewhere. Do you want me to get a chick for you, or will you bring your own?"

His 'chick' was sitting on the bed next to him. She answered for her husband, "Both! Let's make it a WICKED trip!" It wasn't difficult to see where Alexis got her attitude to sex from.

[Christmas got in the way, but in mid-January 2007, thirty parents got a 50-hour trip to Paris. They had to provide their own chicks, but we gave them the combination to the spare bedroom, leaving a large pile of fresh sheets in it. Many of the husbands were VERY appreciative, and their wives took home their laundry, returning it to our house the next day or two. Vanessa's bedroom stayed locked because the thirty seats were easily comfortable enough to sleep in, for anyone that wanted sleep, and Vanessa understandably wants her bedroom kept private. She'll be spending a lot of time in the plane, so everyone understood that.]

We departed on our Paris trip a little late because of all the parental guided tours of the plane, but Julia knew the plane could go faster than its cruising speed, so she wasn't panicking. Going faster used more fuel, which would be billed to the Government so we didn't care at all.

We only had twenty hours in the air, so there wasn't a moment to lose (in my opinion). As soon as the "Fasten Seatbelts" signs extinguished, I grabbed Carol, Julia and Ava, dragging them into the spare bedroom to christen it, and by extension, the whole plane. I had an ulterior motive for doing this, and especially for doing it so quickly. For probably the first time in my life, sex wasn't my ulterior motive, but the prime one. My ulterior motive was non-sexual. Weird huh?

My ulterior motive was to do with establishing our authority on these flights, for this and all future ones. It'd evolved from a concern of Vanessa's expressed over dinner a few evenings ago. Julia and I had enjoyed inventing an appropriate scheme. It was to keep Vanessa happy - the owner of a VERY sexy flying bed - so I had no hesitation whatsoever in making sure she got whatever she wanted.

My girls had REALLY fiercely told their closest friends not to touch the alcohol that the plane had in the main cabin's bar or in the kitchen. I'd stressed that to Alexis and she'd promised not to. We hadn't made a big deal about it to the lucky-draw winners. They'd been told the "no alcohol" rule when they signed up for the trip (literally "signed", because the trip's rules were in writing), but it hadn't been stressed. They'd also heard it repeated a few times during the parents' inspection of the plane as the bar is clearly visible in the living room/main cabin. We just repeated something like, "We've already told you that we're not allowing alcohol and it says that on the form you signed."

Right after we disappeared into the bedroom, my sight blob saw two of the guys made a beeline for the bar. We'd seated all the guys in the main cabin, while we, our two security guards and our closest friends were placed in the conference room so we wouldn't inhibit anyone who wanted the go for the alcohol. Under the circumstances - the absence of parents, the boys were excited, and there were lots of girls to impress - it'd been entirely predictable that at least one macho idiot would want to impress everyone else (he'd think) by being cool enough to get into our booze. The only uncertainty was how many of the others would join him. The two initial culprits pushed the others to partake, convincing the other boys easily. Almost every girl refused, fortunately including Alexis. I could see that she didn't hesitate to turn it down. I'd been worried about her, but she's no dummy, and she knows Julia well.

Half an hour after I'd gone into the bedroom, I got redressed and walked into the living room, catching the four guys and one girl drinking.

"Drinking alcohol I see."

"Ahh, just a beer," said one of them, looking slightly guilty, but not too concerned.

"That looks like a rum and coke?" I said to the girl with a glass which looked no different than all the glasses of coke other girls had.

The girl defended herself with, "Ahh..."

I picked it out of her hands and sniffed it. "I thought so." I recited the five reprobates' names, then asked the room, "Has anyone else been drinking alcohol?"

Everyone shook their heads. I knew no one else had. Most of them had a soft drink, which we'd told them to help themselves to, with only the named five drinking alcohol.

"Alexis, would you take the beers and this," the rum and coke, "and tip them down the kitchen sink please?"

I ignored the culprits' comments while I moved forward and knocked on the cockpit door. When the copilot opened it, I asked him, "What's the most convenient airport we can land at to drop some passengers off?"

"That'd be the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport."

It was the most convenient because the pilots had already filed a flight plan to it, as per our instruction to land somewhere about an hour into the trip to Paris. We'd explained the reason to the pilots, who were delighted at the idea of discouraging teenagers from partying it up during flights. Their delight probably having something to do with the pilots' duties including cleaning the plane after each trip.

"Please land there."

"Okay." The copilot shut the door and got busy watching the autopilot take the plane to where it was already going.