My Dear Friend, Captain of the Crown Princess,
I've known for many years, since we were roommates in college, that you are an exceptionally lucky man. And now again I am forced to realize this fact again as we sail, metaphorically side by side, on the same route through the Caribbean. I had thought that, when I found employment with Carnival before you that finally my luck had turned around but I now know that you were wise to wait to find your future employer. If I only had the foresight! I have just received a frantic message from the Disney cruise ship asking if there might be some emergency on the boat. It is five in the morning and they saw nearly every passenger on the deck. It brought me shame to share that it was merely a party we were unable to put an end to for fear of mass drunken riot. And now, locked in my chamber waiting for the drunken animals to tire themselves out I feel, once again, envious of your good fortune. I Imagine tonight is formal night on your ship and all of the passengers in elegant gowns and tuxedos are posing for photographs in the Piazza. We've been working round the clock for three days the keep the decks vomit and urine free. We've replaced all carpeting with astroturf and quarantined children to their rooms because of rampant nudity on the decks.
My sister is not what I would call learned. Though she has logged as many if not more hours in higher education as me there seems to be a great chasm of knowledge between us. She looked down at her escargots.
"I don't know how to eat this," she said taking a blind stab into the buttery abyss with the snail fork. In an attempt to be fancy she ordered the escargots because it was the most french sounding appetizer. I scooped one into my mouth and dabbed up the sauce with bread.
"The sauce is really the best part, the snail is just there to soak up the sauce and be deliciously chewy."
"There are snails in these little holes?"
"What did you think escargot was?
"I thought it was a type of endive."
"That's escarole."
"Can the snails breathe in butter sauce though?"
"I don't know can a cow breathe in a pool of A1 sauce?"
"I don't like riddles," and she stuffed a dinner roll in her mouth. With her lobster course she asked what the little black thing on her plate was.
"It's probably a truffle mushroom,"I said. The waitress nodded,
"Yes, is after dinner treat," the waitress added and laughed as she walked away.
"Actually, pigs hunt them in the woods. They're called truffle pigs." We went back to our food and five minutes later my sister tapped my shoulder.
"It doesn't taste like chocolate."
"It's a mushroom."
"So they don't make chocolate out of them?"
I decided to call it an early night and head back to the stateroom to do a little reading. I was working on a nautical encyclopedia researching what to do if I accidentally push my sister overboard (take back the other side of the stateroom closet). To my surprise the door wouldn't open to the room. The keycard worked but the door felt heavy like something was blocking it. I leaned all of my weight into in and managed to push it partially open. Gusts of wind started blowing against me. When I finally got the door open enough to squeeze through it slammed shut behind me. My first thought was that we had be burgled by pirates. Everything in the room was knocked over and scattered around. Then I realized my sister had simply left the balcony door open. I ran out to the balcony just in time to see a pair of my american apparel underwear parachuting out to the gulf of mexico. After a slow drift they finally plunged into the sea where they would most likely be worn by a fashion conscious pelican. I looked over the balcony and envisioned the place where my sister would hit the water and be devoured by a whale.
From underwear overboard to bored underwater we signed up on a snorkeling excursion along the cozumel reefs. Here is how snorkeling is presented:
"Join us on a fun filled 'booze cruise' complete with margaritas, rum punch, and dancing on a boat trip out to the lush and lively coral reef of cozumel. You'll be one on one with exciting aquatic life and colorful reefs led by professional snorkel instructors in the crystal clear gulf waters. Afterwards enjoy a snack and beach time at one of our private beaches with open bar."
Here is a more accurate description of the outing:
"Come squeeze yourself on a cramped boat with about 40 other people most overweight and over 50 where you'll be stuffed into some heavily used snorkel gear and spend about 40 minutes trying to keep water from going up your nose as it seeps slowly into your leaving face mask. If you manage to stop hyperventilating for any amount of time you may be able to catch a glimpse of a turtle just before it hides under a rock. Enjoy an afternoon bobbing in the gulf with about a million other people kicking you in the face with their flippers and splashing water into your breathing tube. You will desperately need a drink after spending half of your day pushing fat children off of yourself, so we'll provide all the free watered down margaritas you can put down."
Several times one of the instructors floated over to me and asked if I needed help using the snorkeling mask.
"No, I'm usually good at holding things in my mouth."
The excursions mostly took you through cookie cutter ports and beaches that all looked exactly the same. This part of the caribbean was like a bizarre twilight zone where everything looks exactly the same as it does back in the states. Every port had the same bar, the same made in china wares at the gift shop and the same vendors walking up and down the beach selling you beads, coconuts or massages. You almost have to do excursions because the port towns are so generic and boring. If you leave the port town you find nothing but cab drivers that will rip you off and run down villages where people are alternately trying to sell you something or ignore you. The cigarettes have weird pictures of dead rats a neck stoma holes. And the shopping is mostly pointless unless you want knock off designer clothes or whittled pieces of wood in the shape of monkeys.
I wandered around the port in honduras after spending the day at a monkey sanctuary where I failed to donate my sister to the spider monkey exhibit and had a very unsatisfying conversation with a parrot.
"Hi bird. Hello? Hello birdie?" The parrot just stared at me. "Hey bird hey."
"Hola," the parrot said.
"Oh you speak spanish, that makes sense. Hola."
"Hola," he chimed back.
"Como estas?"
"Hola," he said.
"Estas bien?"
"Hola," he said again.
"So you don't really speak anything, you just know that one word."
"Hola," he said. Another tourist came up,
"Aww, chiquito pajaro, lindo pajaro."
"Hola," he said again.
I stopped in a Fat Tuesdays and ordered a Barena and a pick of cigarettes. I ran into one of the older gay couples. They wanted to know how my search for a husband was going. It wasn't looking good. But I had to tell all the juicy stories of love found, love lost and love made. Older couples followed the exploits of singles like men follow their favorite sports teams. I told them about the supposedly straight guy that whipped it out in the urinal next to me in the nightclub bathroom.
"What did you do?" They asked, eagerly on the edge of their seats.
"I told him if mine looked like that I'd keep it to myself."
"Tough break."
"I'm being set up tonight, apparently the winner of last night's karaoke competition is going to the night club tonight. My ladies are gonna hook me up."
I had befriended a bunch of party girls and cougars in the night club thinking that maybe they would know where all the hot young gay men are. Or at the very least they could point me in the direction of the bi curious straight guys. In the mean time at least I had a group to dance with and bum cigarettes from. I met the smattering of busty southern belles at 2am in the Skywalk nightclub. The texas women were lounging around with cleavage and virginia slims abounding.
"Ladies where's my man?"
"Oh he's right over there, tall, curly hair, I'll wave him over." They waved over Manny, a choir singer from delaware working on an off broadway production of Newsies.
"Can I get you a drink he chirped?"
"I've, uh, got a drink-- maybe later?"
"Okay, well, I'll be over there," he indicated a gaggle of teenagers in the corner trying not to get kicked out of the night club.
"Well?" one of the belles said.
"He was a cutie patootie!" a cougar added.
"He's nineteen! Or younger!"
"Still cute. And he'd probably let you do whatever you want to him," another cougar said.
"I don't want to do whatever I want with him! I'd break him in half."
"I hear you, I like to roughhouse."
"Can't you just find me one decently attractive man in his thirties?"
"We're all straight, dude," one of the guys said. "This one guy did whip his thing out in the restroom. He was probably gay."
"Ugh, not that guy."
"Yeah dude, it was pretty small."
It was then that the token straight 'dude' and the token gay guy befriended each other. He agreed to be my wingman if I agreed to use my preternatural ability to attract beautiful women to get him laid. I told him I try not to use my powers for evil but I'd see what I could do.
And on the other end of the gulf:
My Dear Friend, Captain of the Crown Princess,
Tonight we ran out of tequila, whiskey and all flavors of vodka except blackberry. The parties have gone on for four days now. Most of the passengers, including some of my crew have stopped wearing clothing. I look out over the gulf and see nothing, blackness all around me. I know in my soul that I am doomed the tragic circumstance of hauling sexually rampant twenty somethings from port to port for the rest of my life. I've turned to scotch to ease the pangs of captaining a floating brothel of booze and promiscuity. Tonight your passengers are probably enjoying five course meals and Christmas Caroling in the aft deck. I await your communication. I have never felt sea sickness before but I imagine it feels much like the knot I have in my stomach now. I must away, I've just received word that there is a naked riot in the food court.
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