The making of a porn star: Jump 3 (warning: expletives)

As usual, you are told to arrive before 8:00 am and as usual you are sitting around for a while waiting for everything to get started. Along with climbing, at least when you are learning skydiving, you cannot expect efficiency with time. If the low number of instructors isn’t going to suck up time, weather inconsistencies will. Today was kind of nice because there were so few people there in the morning I was able to relax a little and actually talk to other people (I am an introvert and thus sometimes have a hard time with large groups, especially if I don’t feel I belong). Heard about the 90 year old woman that skydived there a few weeks ago for her birthday. Cool! Tandem of course.

So, by now you know all about the general process of skydiving. I’m on category C, where you start separating from your instructors, or rather they start separating from you. As they said, Category C is one of the easiest categories because you really don’t have a task except to relax. And work on your form in freefall.

I kidded with the guy who called me Denise on my descent last time; I’m supposed to change my name to that to make his life easier. And the two instructors I was jumping with I had jumped with before, so that was nice. Perhaps I was a little too comfortable because when setting up my gear I was chatting with one and I think he was double checking my name, and I told him what it was. Then I said he could also use Denise, my porn star name – and a guy nearby kind of looked at me incredulously. (OK, I was NOT saying people should fuck me -- haven’t you received that email ever that says your porn star name is your pet’s name as a child and the name of the street you grew up on?).

ANYWAY. Scene 2: Location: In the plane. Everything is fine, blah blah blah. My instructor is chatting with the guy next to me – blind guy doing a tandem jump. Cool. Then I look at one of the people up front on the floor (these are the people jumping first, and are the ‘fun’ jumpers – people who have their license and jumping for fun) and I see a cockroach crawl along his jump suit collar. Let me tell you, cockroaches FREAK me out when I’m not prepared for them [I’ll be writing a story about them]. I just turned to the wall of the plane and repeated over and over, holy fucking shit. And laughed that crazy sort of laugh when you feel you are going insane. But it was also to get it out of my system so I could concentrate.

Scene 3: Location: In the air. This time when I jumped I felt like I was flipping on my back, which really freaked me out, and I thought I was starting off horribly (found out later we exited kind of vertical – very bizarre because I could have sworn I was upside down). So went through the normal procedures – altitude check, three touches to the pull cord – and while I’m doing that the guy on my right signals for the guy on my left to let go of me. Well, that kind of distracted me. I felt like I blanked a bit, but started with the altitude (check), arch (check), leg (just check, don’t play superman), relax, repeat.

And apparently the guy on the right let go too, because then I started to rotate left and right. They had said this would likely happen some because a beginner has a hard time controlling their movement. But I kind of felt like a ping pong ball or something – or I know – a voltage meter! – coming up against a battery and then moving back (because I don’t think I ever rotated more than 90 degrees total and it was along a single plane). Again I thought I was doing horribly. (turns out the instructor on my left was being a little overeager in correcting my movement) Soon enough it was 6,000 feet and I had to pull at 5,500.

Scene 4: Location: Under canopy. My chute goes up and all I start yelling is fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. And there’s noone around! This is supposed to be a porn movie! Oh wait, no, it’s not. OK, so I was yelling that because I thought I had messed up. And let that thought get the better of me, so did not concentrate well at all under canopy and in my landing, so didn’t do a great job. A VERY important lesson is learned – your skydive is not over until you are on the ground. I think I let myself go a little because I knew I had someone on radio who could talk me down. But I also had just let my concentration go a little because I was mad at myself, and that’s a no no. Stupid stupid. Note my last rock climbing post about how a large percentage of people are hurt coming down from a climb.

I get down into the hangar and I’m still beating myself up internally (thinking but not yelling fuck me), and one instructor comes up to me and said I did an excellent job. I looked at him in disbelief (can you read my mind and so are being nice and want to fuck me?). Now, these guys (and they generally are guys, at least there) tend to use superlatives, but I thought that was even over the top for a superlative-using instructor. But no, he said he thought it was the best category C he had jumped with. Unbelievable. He had to say it a couple times. Well, you live and you learn. Or you die.

BTW, some people I had met during my initial class, or even after, are much further along than me, or even done with the process. Let me ask how you approach swimming in the ocean, or cold water in general. Are you the type of person who runs and jumps right in, or do you, like me, take it a little bit at a time? It can seriously take me a half hour to get into cold water. All these other people like to jump right in. But I like the speed I’m going at. I can reflect on the jump and be relaxed for next time. If there is a next time. But there will be. They made me buy the book, finally, and now must do my book studying. But that’s kind of like the wave that catches you when you are trying to go slowly – they made me buy the book, and I’m a little more committed.

BTW2, I have spoken with at least two skydivers who, when they hear that I rock climb, say they don’t think they could do it. Funny I think.

And on the way back in disgusting traffic, I called my mom and told her. I felt guilty about not telling her last time. And, I guess it's like the rat that gets used to being shocked. She just asked me how it was. And told me she wants to know ahead of time next time so she can light a candle for me.

I didn't tell her about the guy who showed up at the drop zone today who had had a horrible landing and broke his pelvis in half and broke off his tailbone. Which also gives me something to think about.

BTW3: This post is dedicated to my porn movie co-star. Her comment from my last post: I finally went sky-diving (tandem) for the first time about 6 weeks ago. My knees were weak from hours afterwards (that only usually happens to me with an amazing orgasam, so that's what I'm comparing sky-diving to). I instantly was obsessed with going back to make my first real jump, but quickly decided that unless I was going to go through the entire process, it wasn't worth it. And since I'm seriously thinkng about buying a condo, I decided not to spent the money. So consider me living vicariously through you on that front, and I'm looking forward to hearing all about it.