During my recent trip to Spain film director Pedro Almodóvar calls and invites me to join him on a short flight from Madrid to Marbella. Since I’ve never flown first class or met movie celebrities, I accept, figuring I’ll learn much about filmmaking. What a horrific misconception. First, I can’t find Pedro, and the flight attendant says he’s never heard of him, and that I look nervous and need something to avoid getting sick. I decline, and about twenty minutes later, uneasy sitting alone in first class, stand and open the economic partition and see almost everyone in coach is already sleeping, and remains so despite three male flight attendants ostentatiously flirting with each other and drinking tequila. Let me emphasize I’d also disapprove of straight people behaving that way.

“You guys shouldn’t be drinking,” I say. “And why are all those people asleep, anyway?”

“We gave them muscle relaxants,” says an attendant.

I march right to the cockpit and pound the door, demanding to speak to the pilots. The door is opened by a woman in her forties who tells me and the pilots she’s a virgin.

“I doubt that, ma’am,” I say.

“No, it’s true. And I must do something about it.”

“How much longer is this flight?” I ask the pilots.

They glance at each other.

“It can’t take long to get to Marbella,” I say.

“We’re further from Marbella than when we started,” says one.

“Why is that?”

“We’re flying in circles.”

“What the hell for?”

“Our landing gear isn’t working. We’ll have to make an emergency landing.”

“When?”

“Maybe quite a while. There are no empty runways.”

“Spain’s full of airports.”

“Not that’ll handle a plane this size. Please excuse us.”

In the aisle I see an actress, that is I assume the pretty albeit slightly-worn red head is an actress. To those few passengers still awake she passes a petition of complaint and asks them to sign. I soon learn she couldn’t act and instead became a dominatrix. Another man, an actor, I think, grimaces after finishing a cell phone conversation, and claims his girlfriend is mentally ill and perched on the ledge or her high apartment patio, ready to jump, and he can’t dissuade her because she drops the phone.

The three amorous attendants are now singing “I’m So Excited” and disco dancing in the cabin. That’s outrageous, particularly during an emergency, and, after consideration, I return to the cockpit and see one pilot being fellated by a man, probably one of the flight attendants. It doesn’t matter. The virgin’s in there too, and heats up before dashing out. I follow and see her enter the cabin and unbuckle the pants of a sleeping young man, lift her dress, sit facing out on his lap, and start wiggling.

Disconsolate, I again walk to the cockpit and see two reasonably sober pilots who tell me an emergency landing is imminent and to go buckle up.