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Day VI, 11:30am
The ship may be immense, and 2100 people plus 650 crew members don't make for a crowd, but it's still a small world. It's interesting how you feel towards your passengers and crew members after being thrown together in this small city for a week. I'm growing attached to our dinner partners, for example. People with whom Ben and I have absolutely nothing in common. But as each night progresses, I'm genuinely more and more happy to see them at our table, and to listen to the stories of their little days, and exchange dinner banter with them. Having the same waiters, bartenders, cabin wenches, et al is chummily familiar too. Everyone knows everyone's name by now. And everyone has a mini-relationship with everyone else. Hearing the captain over the PA every morning is like a call from an old friend. (He's currently informing us that we're in the Gulf of Mexico, apparently on the right course, but if anyone sees land this afternoon, let him know, because that would be a bad thing.) My favorite people on the boat are the New York girls, three Sex In The Sea-Tee types, one looking like Sarah Jessica Parker, another looking like the slut character (I haven't actually seen the show, but the characters have become international icons by osmosis. To me, S-J-P will always be the dorky girl from Square Pegs.) I went to bed too early, woke around 1am last night and couldn't sleep. So I went in search of my merry trio of cats in the nightclub upstairs. Two of them, Sarah Jessica and 'Samantha' (Ben just furnished the name for me) were there. We were talking about cruising on a cruise. Samantha was in the midst of being hit on, so I gave her space until the exchange had been completed. "Oh my god," she bemoaned, "that guy was hitting on me." "Isn't that what three single girls on a cruise want?" "Yah, but not when his wife is asleep in their cabin!" Niiiiice. "Well," I said, "looks like you'll be taking him to your cabin then." They have been circling a Rod Stewart of their own for the last six days. The name they assigned to him in ignorance of actually knowing him is 'Shaggy'. Sarah Jessica made the move and broke the fourth wall, actually speaking with him. Samantha and I waited breathlessly for the report. When he wandered off, it came: "GOD he's young!" "Too small? Throw him back?" "I didn't say that! He may be failing in intelligence, but it's still a cruise, dammit. I'd do 'im." Ah, these women were far more advanced than I. They're not going to let a little generational gap or double-digit IQ stop them from getting it on. I eyed Rod Stewart, conveniently located on the dance floor, with new eyes. Hmm, I thought, maybe I'm being too much of a priggish doom-slanter. When it opens its mouth and the inevitable idiocy spills forth, why should that stop me from taking it home for the night? I was just about to go talk to Rod, but I couldn't get around his New Look — a below-the-knee pair of nylon khaki shorts, baggy t-shirt and Birkenstocks. Wither has gone my glamour-boy, I wailed inwardly? I pointed him out to Samantha who, being a single girl in New York naturally has an uncannily heightened sense of gaydar. "Are you sure he's on your team?" she asked. I sputtered my exasperated explanation, "Yes! I mean, shit, I know he looks like a garden variety fratboy right now, but I swear, he wasn't always like this! Listen to me! He dresses well! I mean, not now of course, but, shit, he spelled out Y-M-C-A! What more do you need? Y-muthafuggin-M-C-A!" She processed this information and allowed that, yes, it was possible he may be a nob-goblin, but she still had her doubts — such was the travesty of his current ensemble. "Oh, you just didn't know him in the old days," I nearly wept. "Why don't you go talk to him?" I explained my fear of breaking the spell (the which was already being broken by those odious khaki shorts) by finding out conclusively that he's an idiot. "I prefer my fantasies to remain intact, thank you." Though she didn't agree with my methodology, I think she understood my plight. A fight broke out. Not between me and Samantha. Between a pumped-up fratboy type who, from what I could tell from observing things for the last week, was somehow affiliated with Rod Stewart's party. The antagonist in the fight was a wee wop in a guido-shirt and chunky gold chains around his thick, thick neck. An even more miniature Joe Pesci, who had been drunkenly flirting with middle-aged women all night. I didn't know the cause of the fist fight, nor did I have a glimmer of interest in the particulars for they are rarely very enlightening, but its result was dismaying: Rod Stewart was put off. Poor young pup, this may have been his maiden voyage on witnessing a bar brawl. He danced in place, scanning the room with concern, looking around with an anxious cluelessness that was not becoming to him. His naïveté was repellent. "Bah!" I spat, "Look at him! He looks like he was dropped on his head as a child." My previous advice came back to haunt me: "Yah, but it's a cruise." She had a point. I considered breaking the ice at last, but his current confused mood resembled too much a six year old lost in a department store looking for mommy. And then of course there were those clothes… "Maybe tomorrow," I said sullenly. The night jostled and lurched forward with each tilting of the ship. Sarah Jessica and Samantha and I made plans to hang out in the French Quarter together Saturday night, then we turned in around 3am. |
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