Chapter 12

It would take us about five hours to get to Jakarta in Indonesia and we needed to go through emigration in Perth and immigration in Indonesia. Before we left the hotel I went to see everyone who was flying with a bag and said that if anyone had any drugs on them to put them in the bag now.

We were going to areas where the punishment for drug smuggling could go as high as execution and I said that I would hate to lose any of my friends. I collected a few small bags of weed and one with an amount of white powder in it. That one was dropped in by Lesley who had such a look of anguish on her face I was almost sorry for her.

I took the bag down to the hotel maintenance area and watched while it was put into the water-heating furnace.

During the flight I went up the plane and sat next to Lesley. I asked her how she was feeling and she had a one word reply – “Stupid”.

I said that I had not seen Carson since before Christmas and she told me that she had spent her break with him and there was a lot of it she could not remember. I told her that I had been on tours with heavy drug users who all had said the same thing.

“Carson is going to meet up with me in Manilla.” She smiled for a very short time.

In Jakarta it was all very formal. The band had to change in the plane before we landed into suitable dresses because they were going straight to a reception at the Palace.

The rest of us would be taken to the hotel where we would be expected to stay for the duration. That night, and the next day, Lesley got the sweats and she was looked after by a couple of the older members of the band who had seen something similar before.

She managed to get through the two shows here and was beginning to look a little better when we took off, four days after arriving, to head north east to Manilla.

Carson never did re-join the tour. When we landed in Manilla there were armed police waiting on the sky-bridge and they escorted us into the terminal via a lower door.

There we had to wait until the luggage was all brought in and claimed and then we went through the most thorough immigration inspection I had ever experienced.

Everything and everyone was searched. From the expressions on the faces of the officials it was obvious that they had expected to find things we should not have been carrying.

We were kept in the terminal while Betsy had her innards searched, but finally we were allowed to enter the country. When we arrived at the hotel there were a number of our passengers who thanked me for my diligence and Lesley gave me a hug and a kiss and told me that she was forever in my debt.

If she had still had that bag of white powder the tour would have finished right here. We found out then that Carson was sitting in jail charged with importation of cocaine. He had thought that the cachet of being with the band as an advance arrival would get him through immigration in Manilla without someone having the audacity to search him and his luggage.

He learned, the hard way, that the Philippines immigration have no cares about class or status when they think you are carrying something they don’t like. He was already in jail before we had left Jakarta and Lesley would certainly have to go cold turkey now.

There were three shows here, just the long dress part with an opening act and a local orchestra, and it all went seamlessly after the scare. We then went west again to Singapore for three full shows, that island being a bit more liberal than the others.

Because it was an indoor venue with local organisers the crew and I had all of our ground time for ourselves and we spent a lot of our few days looking around, most of the girls buying expensive outfits for not much money.

Molly and I went to the Indian Quarter where we both had similar outfits made. Mine were a couple of tropical suits with a collection of silk shirts and hers were pants suits with silk blouses and some matching skirts. I almost envied her when she tried them on.

After Singapore we were to go to Thailand with three shows in Bangkok. It is really only a short hop and we arrived around midday, local time. There were fans there, thankfully the country now being more cosmopolitan, and it felt like we were back to being business as usual.

Lesley took Molly and me aside before she left the plane and told us that she wanted to take us somewhere for dinner and to meet someone very important in her life. I was glad to see her now back to almost normal.

She met us in the lobby of the hotel, me in one of my new suits, Molly with hers graced by a skirt and Lesley in a cheongsam. There was a taxi which took us to a restaurant and, when we went in, there was a table where a very elegantly dressed man stood up to welcome us, kissing Lesley and holding her close.

Lesley turned to us. “Molly and Chris, I would like you to meet Doctor Leong, Pappa Leong as a lot of girls call him, the man who gave me my second life, here, in the town of my re-birth.”

Over the course of the meal we chatted about the tour and other things Lesley had been doing and then, finally, she showed our host some pictures on her phone which included a few of her and I talking to reporters at earlier shows.

He looked at me with a grin, “Chris, any time you want to make that permanent you are welcome to come back and see me. I am retired from surgery now but would love to oversee your transformation into a truly beautiful woman. I have made some new discoveries since I worked on young Lester.”

When the girls went off to powder their noses he said, “Chris, I could see by your face that I may have hit a nerve earlier. I apologise; my professional curiosity sometimes makes me say the wrong things. I thought that you looked so natural in those pictures that you may be considering an operation but I have seen how you and the glorious Molly seem to be a very loving couple. I rather doubt that she would want to lose the man she loves.”

I sighed, “You’re right. When I was spending my days as a full-time woman it felt natural and, dammit, it felt right. I could not decide if I was one or the other for a while and had a few experiences that I would not like to see aired now. I have fallen in love with Molly and we are starting to plan a future together. Lesley had eyes on me while I was dressed that way but I think she has gone off me now. Hell! I was even being considered as her next step-dad!”

He laughed out loud at that one. “I met the wonderful Lynda Lee before I made Lesley a woman and I can totally understand where you stand there. She even had eyes on me for a while until I told her that my husband would not approve.”

When the meal was over he hugged us all and gave both girls a kiss on the cheek. Lesley gave him a bunch of tickets for one of the shows which he thanked her for.

On the way back to the hotel we were quiet as Molly and I had now been included in what must be a very small band of colleagues who now knew the biggest secret of all.

That went some of the way to decipher the odd behaviour. There must be times that Lesley felt that she was totally alone in the world and it went some way to explaining her slightly odd sex life and her inability to say no to the bad people in her life.

I was feeling very protective of her now.

I believe the shows in Thailand went off flawlessly. None of us were needed to be at the venue and we relaxed.

Molly had been a little strange when we had gone to bed after that dinner and she held me very tightly before she whispered, “You are not thinking about seeing Pappa Leong, are you?”

I kissed her and told her that it was not even a thought, before the dam burst and she devoured my body like a tigress in heat.

We, and the crew, savoured the odd juxtaposition of Asia and France that is Bangkok and all of the girls bought locally made clothes. I added a particularly striking powder blue suit. With my longer hair wig I made quite a figure.

It fitted with the powder blue pencil skirts that the crew all wore when we got to the airport again. We were heading to a country where there were booked out shows. India was a place well used to over-the-top dressing with the movie business there and the outfits for the shows were already popular.

Kolkata is an hour and half behind Bangkok and the flight time, direct, is only about two and half hours so we will arrive just an hour, local time after we leave. We landed at just on midday and there were crowds to welcome us. The band went first to great acclaim and we needed to wait a while before the rest of us could disembark.

India is, well – India. There is no place like it for hustle and bustle, the sights are amazing and, often, the smells are disgusting. At all the hotels we stayed in the crew were treated as well as the band and our time in the country was very enjoyable.

There were five shows in Kolkata, followed by five in Delhi, just two and a half hours by air. After that we zigged and zagged around the country; Hyderabad, Madras and finally Mumbai, nearly six weeks in the country. All of the shows were packed and we all had a ball, the crew visiting various tourist sites by coach while the band went first-class in helicopters.

We all got a case of ‘Bombay Belly’ for a while and it was downright disgusting as well as painful at times. The show went on and the band cemented its legendary status for the seemingly millions of fans.

Mumbai, being the centre of the Bollywood film industry, threw up an interesting experience for us all while we were there. The band spent an extra week there laying down a new album, purely for local release after we had left. It was first half material with a mainly Indian orchestra backing them.

On the final full day we were all taken to the main studio where I was reprocessed into CeeCee and a mirror image of Lesley, the crew being similarly outfitted and made up to be close to the other band members. We were then given a fairly simple set of steps to learn before we were in front of the cameras.

The song being recorded was a love song between a girl and her imaginary lesbian lover and it meant that Lesley would mime it while the rest of us would dance around her in pairs.

Of course, being Bollywood, when we got to the actual filming there were about a hundred Indian girls as fifty pairs who would be in the background. I, being the subject of her singing, was given extra movements which were somewhat more explicit.

I suppose that our earlier relationship allowed the whole thing look real enough and the director was fulsome in his praise, treating us to dinner after a full day filming, all still in our costumes.

When we had been changed back to normal people Lesley sought me out and gave me a sisterly kiss,

“Chris or CeeCee, you are a true friend. You have pulled me away from the flames a couple of times and you know more about me than most. I am forever in your debt the way you saved the tour back in Manilla and hope that you are not a stranger once the band is finished. By the way, I think that our performance today will add some millions to the sale figures once that video goes out to advertise the album. You were magnificent.”

After Mumbai we were off to South Africa for shows in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town which all went to plan From Cape Town we were across the ocean to Rio De Janeiro and then on to Buenos Aires, La Paz and, finally, for the crew, Bogota.

We landed at Bogota with a mixture of relief and sadness. Terry had sent a message saying that the entire crew had earned a rest and a bonus for this trip so far.

Before we left Betsy to the new crew we all needed to run the replacements through the little details that made Betsy such a wonderful work-place and it was a wrench for me as I doubted that I would pilot her again, after close to six years of being ‘my’ aeroplane.

Our four cabin crew were all upgraded to senior crew members and would further their careers in charge of others. Julia was moving on to the logistics arm to be in charge of setting up the cargo planes used in tours and other charters.

Annette would be joining Molly and I back in Sacramento to train other flight engineers. The tour had turned out very well for the whole crew and we all went out to a good restaurant in Bogota to celebrate our future before going our separate ways.

We had been offered tickets to the show there but had all declined, saying that we had heard it often enough already.

Betsy would be leaving Bogota to fly to Tokyo to begin the next leg of the tour in a couple of weeks with the band and support crew joining it there after a break. That would take them across the northern hemisphere during the summer months; going via South Korea, Europe and the UK before ending up back in New York.

There to do nearly four months playing five nights out of every seven in all of the major cities; the northern areas first while the summer remained, followed by the warmer southern states. I, for one, did not envy them.

The last show of the tour was to be in San Francisco and Lesley made me promise that I would get our crew there for the after show party as a thank you for our help. I had the suspicion that the party was likely to be still going on into the next morning.

It nearly did not get that far. When Carson went to trial in Manilla he tried to make out that it was Lesley who had forced him to carry the drugs for her and that he was a dupe to her charms.

Lesley and the band were in Rome by then and the Italian police pulled the entire band in for questioning and drug testing. Lesley had, by that time, no traces of cocaine in her system and nothing untoward was found among the band and the other passengers or in a search of Betsy.

Carson, on the other hand, could not deny the blood tests that had been taken when he was arrested that showed high levels of cocaine use. The case made the papers everywhere and I was glad to be well away from it.

I was well away from everything at the time. I was in the small hotel in San Salvadore where Molly and I were enjoying two weeks honeymoon. That night of wild passion in Bangkok may have been the actual turning point as she was now pregnant.

After Bogota we had told Terry that we needed a little extra time and, after a couple of days in the office in Sacramento to write up a report, we flew to Vegas to get married. She looked magnificent in her wedding dress and I had a new, and very elegant, suit. Julia and Annette were in attendance and we had a very nice time.

Back in Sacramento I was spending long hours in the office with Terry, who was not looking too good, while Molly was looking for somewhere for us to live as well as getting to grips with her check-pilot job.

I told her to concentrate on Willow Creek because Betsy Too would be moored there and it was very close to the airport and our work. She found a smart place for us, four bedrooms and three bathrooms with a double garage plus a workshop for me.

If I was putting down roots they were going to be solid ones. It was, incidentally, only a fifteen minute stroll to the marina so I could go and tinker with Betsy Too when she arrived. That was something I was looking forward to.

One day Bronwyn walked into the office and handed me a parcel that had come from Bangkok. It was a CD and a flash drive with a note that said, “CeeCee, when I said you were a natural I did not realise just how natural you were, having only seen still pictures. My offer is still open.” It was signed ‘Pappa Leong’.

The CD was ‘Les Lee and the Lessos ‘-’ Love Songs for Dreamers’ and was the after tour release in India. We put the flash drive in the slot in our computer and Terry, Bronwyn and I watched the Indian video of the song we had recorded.

Terry gave me a hug and told me that if we weren’t already taken he would ask me to marry him. Bronwyn just held me tight and gave me a kiss on the cheek,

“Chris, you really are the best, no matter what you do. That video almost made me leak; well, actually, it wasn’t almost.” With that she left the room in a hurry.

Our daughter was born in Sacramento in the first week of September and we welcomed Elizabeth Lesley Culver into the world. Together Molly and I had made Betsy Three.

Betsy Too, however, was now moored in the marina with many admiring looks from the other boaties. She had been unloaded in San Francisco and put back in the water there. Once she was made sea-worthy again we topped her up and took her up river to her new home, now registered as a US boat.

The journey only takes about an hour and half by the high-speed ferry but we sauntered along and took most of the day about two weeks before Molly went into labour.

We went to the after show party taking Betsy Too down to the Bay and mooring in the marina there. Bronwyn came along to look after our daughter while we were at the party, being a very good friend and quite close as a neighbour.

When we walked into the party Lesley gave a little scream and came over to us, giving us both hugs and kisses. She asked where Elizabeth was and I said that she was at the launch being looked after.

I invited her to the christening in a couple of weeks and she exclaimed, “Only if I can be a godmother!”

We then caught up with the other girls who I had been able to roster on to be close. The party went well into the next morning and Lesley insisted that we join her in her limo so she could take us back to the launch.

When we got there I could see Bronwyn with the bassinet up on the flying bridge taking in the sun and we boarded Betsy Too. Lesley was all over the baby and held her to her with tears in her eyes,

“Did you really name her after me?”

We both said, “Of course” to which Molly added, “If it wasn’t for you we would never have met”.

When Lesley calmed down a bit she handed the baby back to Bronwyn to put back in the bassinet and there was a moment where they both looked startled.

Bronwyn was unused to having a mega star so close but I thought that it may be much more than that. The five of us went to lunch at the marina club-house and I could see Bronwyn opening up more to Lesley, slowly realising that she was as much of a normal person as anyone.

I suddenly understood what it had been when she had watched the video and it wasn’t me dancing in a long frock but Lesley who had given her damp panty.

After that meal there was a special bond between us. Lesley moved out of her hotel after finishing the interviews and came back to Sacramento with us in the launch, spending much of the trip holding hands with Bronwyn.

And so I put down my final roots. Molly and I had a second child the following year, a boy we called Terrance after our late boss who had passed away not long before. I was the boss of the company and Lesley was a frequent visitor to head office, coming in with Bronwyn who was now living with her full time.

She took the direction I thought she may do, becoming a very successful solo singer and the love songs were really beautiful now. I thought it may be because she had someone solid in her life to sing them to. The company supplied her with a personal jet and she would often be flown to her sold-out shows in it. Sometimes, Molly or me at the controls.

One thing I did do once I became boss was to get a professional still from the dance video that showed all sixteen of us. I had the band and all the crew numbered and underneath was a list of names with the crew all clearly identified.

On the top of the picture was ‘Never be afraid to try something new!’ and it now hung on my office wall, as well as, I hope, all of the other offices of ours that I had sent it to.

I may have mentioned it before but I do have the best job in the world. Now, however, I have a lovely and loving wife, a family and a group of wonderful friends who I share it with.

CeeCee never shows herself but her core is still there in me to ground any overbearing ideas I may have.

The only problem that I have is hearing the strains of that love song, now a sort of anthem for many young girls and a favourite on TV music shows, as a nearly three year old Betsy dances to it in front of the screen. Not yet aware that it is her godmother, and her father, who share the limelight and the final kiss.

Marianne Gregory © 2022