Hanks is an idle college playboy with a bad accent who intends to do nothing important more important with his life than play cards and seduce young women. His roommate, Kent, plans to go into the Peace Corps and spend a few years of his life making things better for other people in Southeast Asia. Lawrence has a change of plans when he loses a $28,000 bet on a Boston Celtics/ L. A. Lakers game to local loan shark Bardenaro which his father refuses to help him out with. Bardenaro and his henchman, Cicero, likewise refuse the payment plan that Laurence's father suggests to them. So out of desperation, Laurence goes to the airport and begs and pleads with Kent to change places with him on the plane so he can escaped probable mutilation. Kent agrees only when Lawrence signs over his car and his claim on the nubile young Smith College valedictorian, Bootsy Wagner, that caused Kent to be sex-iled the night before graduation.
Once on the plane, Laurence plays the debonair gentleman, taunting Cicero who is hanging onto the door and making menacing faces at him. Laurence then opens the curtain and finds all of the passengers singing "Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore, Hallelujah." "So this is hell," he mutters to himself as he hastily closes them.
After things have quited down for the night, Laurence intrepidatiously makes him way through the cabin and finds an empty seat next to a mild-looking young man reading a book. He settles himself in, tuns off the overhead light (while apologising to the young man) and tries to go to sleep. The young man introduces himself as "Tom Tuttle of Tacoma, Washington," identifies himself as an engineering grad with a minor in "psychological motivation" and proceeds to talk Laurence's ear off.
Tom finds his spiel interrupted when Laurence summons a stewardess and directs her to send a telegram to his father, explaining that he has made a grave mistake, and he needs him to get him out of the situation immediately. Tom turns to Laurence with the look of a devoted and yet crazed Peace Corps member and says to him,
"Let's not pull any punches. We're both men, both adults. Let's face it, you're scared. And you have every right to be. Albert Spear once said that 'fear is victory's fuel.' Oh, you spend a few years with me, pal, and we'll turn that fear into high octane."
Laurence does not answer.
Come morning, the jet is flying over Rome. Tom elbows Laurence away and babbles about the Colosseum being on "the Tom Tuttle Top Ten" of wonders of the world. He proceeds to try and draw Laurence a sketch of a Roman urinal, in an attempt to explain about plumbing. Laurence, cranky and annoyed, gets up and leaves Tom. He wanders along the aisle, lifting a pack of cards and a fistful of gum from the passing stewardess and finds an empty seat next to a fresh-faced girl. He sits down.
Sleepily, she turns to him and nestles her head on his shoulder. She then wakes up and apologises for imposing, then recognizes him as "Kent Sutcliffe" from Yale. She introduces herself as Beth Wexler and says she knows his name; the two of them are to be stationed in Loong Tha together. With a bit of prodding from Laurence, she reveals that she graduated form Long Island University. Laurence then listens amiably as she exclaims how he was nothing like she was expecting.
"I dunno. . . soil science major, hometown: Canton, Ohio. I kinda pictured a goodnatured doofus."
Ten hours later the jet nears Bangkok and Laurence asks Beth to go out with him to see the city. She refuses politely, thinking he is joking. He then begins kissing her arm and she pulls away. She almost squeaks as she asks him if he's been paying all this attention to her just to get her into bed with him. Laurence bungles it even further by sayig that he thinks he's "put in the hours."
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