Riding Rockets (8 page)

I didn’t go to either my junior or senior prom. At the few dances I did attend I stood against the gym wall with the other nerds, dweebs, and losers attempting to fight off impure thoughts. When there would be a girl-ask-boy dance, I would be left against that wall. The girls at St. Pius X High School weren’t stupid. In my entire four years of high school I doubt I accumulated more than a couple hours talking to girls. My senior yearbook doesn’t have a single entry from a girl. In fact, it bears only one dedication. It’s from a fellow dweeb that reads,
You missed Korea, but here’s hoping you make Vietnam
. It probably comes as no surprise that when I graduated I was as virginal as Mary the Mother of God.

The West Point of my era was another all-male bastion. Cadets joked that the mortar in the granite walls was actually semen. My Company K-1 marching song included the lyrics “We make the cum fly.” West Pointers of my era looked at women with the same leering eye as a convicted felon doing thirty to life. Flirtation Walk, so romantically depicted in the movies, was littered with more used rubber than a Firestone test track. My West Point experience reinforced what Catholicism had taught me—women were nothing more than sex objects.

The USAF officer corps that I entered in 1967 was also a male organization. I never encountered a female flyer. Strippers entertained us at the O’club on Wednesday and Friday nights. Military flyers saw women only as receptacles. If anyone from my era says otherwise, they must be running for Congress. Women may be from Venus and normal men may be from Mars, but military flyers are from the planet
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
(AD).

When I walked into the astronaut office on day one, I didn’t have the slightest sense of how to incorporate the six TFNG females into my work life. My behavior and vocabulary around them was exactly as it was around men. I recall an early incident of telling a joke to a TFNG audience including Sally Ride that had the word
tits
in it. Sally hardly said another word to me for the next ten years. But, at the time, I didn’t have a clue. I had no other experiences to draw upon. Professional women were as unknown and unknowable to me as sea life at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

I wasn’t the only one afflicted with an atrophied brain when it came to interacting with the women. On one occasion a few of the men found a live grass snake near the gym. They entered the ladies’ locker room and shoved the slithering creature into Judy Resnik’s purse. After she returned from her run, every man present gathered at the locker room door giggling like middle-schoolers. They heard the shower run, stop, then the shower door open. A few minutes later a scream right out of the movie
Psycho
echoed through the gym. The guilty parties evaporated faster than you could say “Tailhook.”

A navy TFNG probably best summarized the military male attitude about women. We were standing outside Sally Ride’s office. She was absent and I took the opportunity to point out the bumper sticker on the front of her desk. It read, “A woman’s place is in the cockpit.” My Top Gun companion looked at the sticker and chuckled. “A woman
is
a COCK pit.” That was exactly how most of the military astronauts saw women in general and good-looking women in particular. We were flying blind when it came to working with professional women. And now, we were thrown into a group of women who weren’t just professional. They were pioneers. They would be carrying the banner of feminism into the final frontier.

Who were these alien creatures we confronted?

Judy Resnik, twenty-eight, hometown Akron, Ohio, had a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland and was a classical pianist. She had been married briefly and was divorced. Prior to selection she had been working with the Xerox Corporation. Judy and I would fly our rookie mission together, an experience that would make us close friends. She would die on
Challenger,
her second mission.

Rhea Seddon was a thirty-year-old unmarried surgeon from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Besides being easy on the eye, she had an alluring Tennessee accent as smooth as Wild Turkey. She was a Berkeley graduate and held a doctorate in medicine from the University of Tennessee.

Anna Fisher, twenty-eight, was another very attractive medical doctor. She was born in New York City but called San Pedro, California, her hometown. She held a doctorate in medicine and a master’s in chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles. When Anna entered NASA she was married to another doctor, Bill Fisher, who would later be selected as an astronaut in the class of 1980. Anna would have her first baby a few years after her TFNG selection and would become the first mother to fly in space.

Sally Ride was a twenty-six-year-old physicist PhD from Stanford University. She was also a superb tennis player, having achieved national ranking on the junior circuit. At the time of her TFNG selection she was unmarried but would later marry and divorce Steve Hawley, another TFNG. Her hometown was Los Angeles, California.

Kathy Sullivan, twenty-six, was unmarried and held a doctorate in geology from Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Kathy would later become the first American woman to do a spacewalk. Her hometown was Woodland Hills, California.

Shannon Lucid was from Bethany, Oklahoma, and had a cement-thick Sooner accent. I once heard her speaking with Apollo astronaut and fellow Okie, Tom Stafford, and wondered if they were speaking Klingon. At thirty-five, Shannon was the oldest TFNG female and the only mother (three children) at the time of her selection. She held a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Oklahoma.

All of these women were feminists in the sense they were out to prove they were as good as any male astronaut. Only Sally Ride struck me as an activist, a woman bent on making a political statement as opposed to a personal one. She seemed to view the world through NOW prescription lenses. Every action had to be gender sanitized. Before her first space mission I heard her say there could be no live TV downlink of her during orbit food preparation because it would show her in a traditional female role, even though food preparation, like toilet cleaning, was a shared crew responsibility. After the mission, at a JSC welcome for the crew, a NASA PR spokesperson brought out a bouquet of roses for Sally. She refused to accept them, as if to do so would be an affront to women. After all, the males weren’t being given roses. Every military TFNG quickly learned to be careful in word and deed around Sally. She had about as much tolerance for our arrested development as Billy Graham did for a Wicca.

The other five females cut us varying degrees of slack. Rhea Seddon was a model of tolerance. She had to be. A couple years into our TFNG lives she married Robert “Hoot” Gibson, an F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot. Forget the James Carville and Mary Matalin marriage as one of polar opposites. Compared with Rhea and Hoot, James and Mary are paragons of blissful compatibility.

It was easy to see the mutual attraction between Rhea and Hoot. Rhea was a petite, confident surgeon. She was blonde, beautiful, outgoing, and a classy dresser. Hoot was the Chuck Yeager of the TFNGs, capable of flying anything with a stick and throttle, and flying it as if it were a natural extension of his body. He didn’t so much strap into a cockpit as meld with it. He was a natural-born leader and would ultimately rise to the position of chief of the astronauts a few years after
Challenger.
On appearance alone, women were drawn to him. He had a Tom Selleck look about him, with a large blond mustache and an easy smile. In his California childhood he had learned to surf and play guitar. He rode motorcycles. He built his own formula-one racing plane in his garage, was a frequent winner in air races around the country, and held several world speed and altitude records. He also flew super–high power WWII fighter planes and Russian MIG jets in air shows as part of a flying museum. He was the consummate fun-lover. When I returned from my third shuttle mission, my wife told me how Hoot, a family escort for that mission, had driven the crew wives into the Edwards AFB desert and spun doughnuts in the sand in a government van. That was Hoot, always ready to thrill the women. Occasionally at parties, he and a few other navy pilots would grab a microphone and serenade a skirt with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” Next to Hoot, Tom Cruise’s
Top Gun
character, Maverick, looked like a
Show Boat
chorus member. Oh, did I mention he was the lead singer and guitarist in the astronaut band, Max Q? I hated him. I’m kidding of course. I had great respect for Hoot and thoroughly enjoyed being part of his crew on my second shuttle mission, STS-27. But in his company another man couldn’t help but ask himself,
What would any woman see in my sorry ass?

But there was another characteristic that came with the guitar, surfboard, and airplanes. Hoot was, like all military aviators, a male chauvinist pig. If NOW had a ten-most-wanted pig list, he would have been at the top. If they had ever caught him, though, it would have only taken a few minutes before the NOW politburo fell into a hair-pulling cat fight screaming, “I want to have his baby!” Hoot was that charming. Lest you think I exaggerate, even Sally Ride went out with Hoot when both were single, which says a lot about his charm factor.

Hoot’s hallmark was his “snorting.” Whenever he saw a young, attractive woman, he would discreetly make a sound like a pig snort. This was a physical manifestation of one of his favorite expressions, “I’d like to snort her flanks.” He did this snorting so often that when he was assigned as the commander of STS-27, our mission was nicknamed Swine Flight by the office secretaries. I’m sure Gloria Steinem and Sally Ride would have thoroughly agreed.

So, Rhea and Hoot’s marriage was one of the world’s great mysteries, like the rise of life on earth. If the pope were ever to beatify a woman as the patron saint of wifely patience, it would have to be Rhea. Indeed, we called her Saint Seddon for putting up with Hoot.

If Hoot were number one on NOW’s most-wanted pig list, I would have been number two. As test pilots would say, I operated at “the edge of the envelope.” It was as if I had sexist Tourette’s syndrome. The joker in me would leap from my mouth. Only around Sally did I keep myself somewhat throttled. I had a sixth sense about the danger there, like a dog knows not to paw at a snake. But Sally really wasn’t an issue. After my tits joke, she avoided me like I was criminally insane.

I definitely tested Shannon Lucid’s feminist tolerance a few times. I liked Shannon. She always struck me as indifferent to office politics, whereas her five peers were clearly vying for that most coveted of titles: FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN IN SPACE. Shannon was just there to do a good job. Whatever came of that, so be it, was the attitude she projected. I admired her for that. Her philosophy would serve her well. Ultimately she would fly five times in space, including a six-month stay aboard the Russian Mir space station. (Sally Ride only flew twice and departed NASA after
Challenger.
But it’s her name in Billy Joel’s song, not Shannon’s. Life isn’t fair.)

Shannon’s first flight had Saudi Arabian Prince Sultan Salman Al-Saud aboard and after the mission he invited the crew and their spouses to visit Saudi Arabia. Shannon’s husband could not make the trip. Shannon wasn’t concerned. She didn’t need a man to hold her hand. Wrong. Saudi Arabia did not allow women to enter the country alone. She had to have a male escort. When Shannon heard this she told headquarters she wasn’t going. NASA HQ and the State Department were concerned about the potential press photo featuring only the men from the mission being greeted in Riyadh by King Fahd, so they asked the Saudis to look into their laws for a loophole. I was in my office when a TFNG came in with word they had found one. The Saudis would allow Shannon to enter as Dan Brandenstein’s honorary daughter (Dan was the mission commander). Or, she could enter as John Fabian’s honorary sister (John was another crewmember). Or, they might make a special exception, as they had when the queen of England had visited the country, and designate Shannon an
honorary man.

When the men in my office heard this, we exploded in laughter. What greater insult could a feminist hear than to be told she must take on the label “man” to get some respect. When I heard this, I couldn’t contain the joker in me. I immediately went to Shannon’s office and congratulated her on having achieved the highest honor a woman could ever hope to achieve…to be designated an honorary man. Shannon had a lively sense of humor and laughed at my antics, but I made certain not to walk down the stairs in front of her for the next few weeks.

Shannon later came into my sights at a Bible study meeting. The astronaut office was filled with devout persons of several faiths. Some of the most religiously committed astronauts were marines, a fact that shocked and awed me. Marines were known for eating their young, not for their “praise Jesuses.” But several had organized a weekly Bible study. Shannon was a member of the group, as were Donna and I. The topic of one meeting was how people who had never “known Jesus Christ” might be treated by God in the afterlife. One group member posed these thought-provoking questions: Could a native from the jungles of Indonesia, who had never heard of Jesus Christ, enter God’s Kingdom? Or how about a mentally ill person or someone born with half a brain?

The last part of this question was a setup the joker in me could not let pass. I jumped on it. “Yeah, Shannon, what about women?”

Suddenly Shannon had the mark of the beast. I was a dead man. She bore into me with a look that said, “I’m going to stake you to an anthill!”

After the meeting it was suggested I find God somewhere else…somewhere far, far away from this Bible study group. Donna and I were excommunicated.

When I die, I’m going to two hells. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I will be in Bible hell, the one with all the fire and brimstone. There, demons will torture me with their fiery pitchforks. But during the rest of the week I’ll be damned to feminist hell, where some high-value parts of my body will be placed in a red-hot vise and Shannon Lucid, Sally Ride, and Judy Resnik will take turns cranking the vise tighter and tighter while I plead, “Mercy! Mercy! I was raised on the planet Arrested Development. I couldn’t help myself!”