So I am standing next to one of those tall chair-less tables looking out on the gyrating mass on dance floor. We're all looking at the dance floor – the staff is. I introduce myself to the Italian officer. "How long have you been on board?" "2 contracts, and now I will ignore you and continue to stare at the dance floor." I try again, "so, you must really like working on a cruise ship, huh?" "Yes, I do, now please, I am trying to maintain my aloof posturing and bob my head every now and then to the music and I cannot do that and listen to your human talk at the same time."
Ok, maybe Francisco, or whatever his name is didn't really verbalize the latter parts of his responses, but that is effectively what he said. After two or three such encounters the staff & officers seemed much more like pigeons than people. Is talking really so difficult?
"Don't take it so hard, Dave" says Brian the audio tech. "Were you talking to an officer?" Yeah why? Just don't talk to officers. Here's the Italians' [officers'] idea of a joke: "why is sex so good with twenty six year olds?" "I have no idea Brian," humoring him, "why?" "Because there are twenty of them! Hardy har har! Tell that one to the Captain and he'll laugh his ass off. Then he'll fire you."
As an A/V specialist, although I have never desired to be a technical person and although they are not my department, I end up conversing with the techies. There's Brian, Joe, & Jeff. Brian runs the soundboards and buys us drinks. Joe is a drama teacher from Canada who has got better hitchhiking stories than I do. He runs the lights. Jeff used to work backstage at Hershey Park. Now he works backstage on a cruise ship, but he's an actor really. And he reads vibes. "What's my vibe Jeff?" "You are reserved, but really at ease with yourself, and a little geeky." "I'll take that," I say. After all, you can't talk to techies without a little of it rubbing off.
I am looking at Joe who is covered in dancers. Like a multi-leveled feline scratch pad. "Wow, Svetlana's DELICIOUS tonight. He licks his tongue - I can't take it anymore. "So Joe, are you gay or what?" Joe, understanding my lack of sobriety as he is dealing with his own, hesitates in his reply. Brian steps in rather academically, "it's quite simple really. Joe's a gay man that likes to talk about vaginas and I am a straight man that likes to talk about penises." In fact, I used to make I'm my own extremely gross sex positions. For instance have you every heard of a dirty Santiago…"
Long nights that run past 3 am (of which this is my second) usually end up at the pizza bar on the deck. I'm headed there now, but I figure I'll take at least one crack at the dance floor just to get it out of my system. I'm on the floor for 10 seconds before a girl grabs my arm and wraps herself inside it. This girl can move and knocks my socks off. "Vlada, is that you!" I say through the vodka haze. This was the new poker dealer that I had met the day before. She was so reserved that talking to her felt like prying open a can with a screwdriver. Like talking to a pigeon. Hmmm…
My confidence up, I go to the disco another night, but don't fare as well - I start thinking that maybe this cruise line isn't for me. Meditation isn't going well either. It seems to make me extremely self-conscious. It gives me nightmares. I explain to my spiritual friend Natalie (in Virginia) – "Maybe it's like psychic detox. Maybe dreams are just the icebergs showing us what's underneath and the fact that I am experience pain where it bothers me the most is just a sign that I'm becoming able to let it go?" Maybe. Or maybe I'm just not quite doing it right.
Bisera - I've come to like her very much. She never got back on the boat in Mexico. There was an emergency surgery and she lost her child. Corpus Erat.
The succession of my roommates has been as follows:
Chris from Canada – corporate trainer
Sergey from Ukraine – was a housekeeper, but he's got his masters and now is 1st accountant
Mike from the Philippines – didn't stay long enough for me to ask what all the tattoos meant, but explained that they are cheaper over there.
And now – Sunil from India.
Sunil (soon EEL). How do I remember a name like that? This was probably the farthest I've ever stretched a mnemonic. It involved Ursula from The Little Mermaid plotting to feed her pets.
But it worked.
I lay in my bed and Sunil tells me about spirituality and ghosts. He intensely reads my palm. I am a hard worker because luck is not on my side. I will have two wives. He describes his import/export business and how he screwed it up by trusting his uncle. Now he works in the gift shop and it is a hard reality to face. He is homesick and misses his wife and child.
We swap stories until very late in the evening. Sunil shares a banana and a Coke. The first night he sat next to my bed and talked to me, laughing as he talks because that is his way and wildly gesticulating in an Indian fashion. And his hands come a little too far into my American comfort zone. It is as if he is tickling me and I, bewildered by my own response, cannot stop giggling like a little boy. It goes on like this for some time. The next day Sunil talks to me down from the top bunk looking over the side, and it is like the bunk beds you had when you were a kid – painted like a red fire engine, and all is well with the world. A friend.
I'm missing the rest of my friends. Keep in touch.
P.S. Do not attempt to explain the word "cheesy" to a non-native speaker without being prepared to spend at least an hour and willing to make a dancing fool out of yourself. Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment