The ice in the air melted. It was so fast, in fact, that I would have thought I imagined the whole thing had not the Hispanic guard yet been flanked by three others. They hurriedly finished searching me and left me to return my own belongings to my backpack. I stuffed them in frantically, snatching frenzied peeks at the line of boarders tapering to an end. I rushed onward, terrified I would miss my flight and, thusly, my ship and, thusly, my career. At least they hadn’t bothered to weigh my obviously overburdened carry-on bag.
Once I crammed myself into my seat, I panted and marveled at how I looked on paper. A single white male, between 30 and 40, of above average intelligence and educated, who seems like a nice guy. That was the exact profile for a serial killer. Now, somehow, it was also the profile of a radical Muslim terrorist! What had happened to my country? Was there anyone we were not scared of? My vacation to Egypt was nearly enough to win me a permanent vacation in Cuba… at Guantanamo!
Part 3: The Fun Ships
Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.
—Pablo Picasso
Chapter 11. Who Da Boss?
1
Strangely, New Orleans somewhat reminded me of Bianca: French speaking, vibrant and sexy with a promise of sweaty, carnal, and even gastronomic pleasures. The Big Easy was also kind of a dirty hussy with a long history and no shame.
It was hard to quantify my fascination with Bianca. She was my first world traveling, cigarette smoking, semi-trashy European beauty. I was spellbound the very first night I met her, a chance date that was overwhelmed by chemistry. Bianca had made a surprise visit to the States to see her childhood friend Mihaela, who happened to be my colleague and friend. But Mihaela and her boyfriend already had tickets to a concert purchased many months prior, so they asked me to keep Bianca occupied. Did I ever. After three days Bianca left for Romania. After three weeks, I did, too.
So a head-spinning three days of Nevada September prompted a heart-blasting thirty days of Romania October. By November she signed onto Conquest, and, suffering already the pangs of separation from my wild and adventurous Bianca, I resolved to follow in whatever capacity I could. Mihaela was already flabbergasted that I followed her childhood friend home to Romania for a month. She was aghast when I told her I was selling everything to follow Bianca to sea for good. A restaurant management position on a cruise ship was a far cry from my graphic designer lifestyle, but after all that magic, how could I let it end without a fight? Bianca was responsible for her family and was unable to live in America. So why not follow her to sea?
My life was surprisingly ready for such a crazy leap. After three all-consuming and tireless years building a business with my partner, too many disagreements forced a nasty split. My wife chose this time to run off as well, but that split was actually quite delightful. But only a short three months later my partner had completely devalued our stock into penny shares, and my ex-wife had completely devalued my credit. So I woke up one morning broke, yet could no longer bear to freelance my graphic design skills because it was just too similar to my former business. I needed something different, and a life at sea certainly promised that!
Hence my flight to New Orleans in fall of 2002 for an interview on Carnival Conquest. My entire life, prior to the business, had been in fine dining, so I was more than qualified for a low level management position. Yet Mladen, the interviewer, was uncomfortable with my nationality. In Carnival’s thirty years, there had not been a single American in the restaurants who had not quit, not one. I offered to prove my mettle by beginning at the bottom and to undergo a whirlwind assistant Maitre d’ training. We agreed on school for a month on Fantasy, to include washing dishes and bussing tables, and then I could join Bianca on Conquest for the remainder of training. All told, I was to train four months before they gave me my officer’s stripe, after which Bianca would be free to follow me ship to ship.
I imagined the joy of sharing a tiny cabin with my favorite woman, Bianca, in my favorite city, New Orleans. The reality was quite different. Carnival’s foreign employees enjoyed being paid in U.S. dollars, and intended to keep the opportunity solely for themselves. When the time came for my officer’s stripe, I was denied based solely upon my nationality. The man who scuttled my career, a Dutchman named Gunnar, actually said to my face that he ‘would not have on his record the promotion of an American who would just quit.’ His two cronies, the Maitre d’s Ganesh and Ferrand, both offered to assist my appeal, but when the time came they scurried under a rock and were never heard from again.
So a mere thirteen months after I joined Carnival, the international politics ended my career before it began. This led me to pursue Sundance which, surprisingly, brought me back to New Orleans and the mighty Conquest. But this time my position was quite different. I was no longer a landlubber naively assuming things would go as promised, oh no; I was seasoned by the sea. Conquest was a big money ship for Sundance and I was sent here to make things happen. No more shenanigans for me!
The change was apparent from the very beginning, when my Bianca was not on the gangway to greet me in a tight pink sweater and knee-high leather boots. Instead I got Bill Shatner, beside whom stood a young man I presumed was the outgoing associate. Their postures resonated open hostility, though Shatner’s arrogant stance clearly indicated who had the better of any disagreement.
“Buzz Lightyear!” Bill bellowed with enthusiasm. He powerfully shook my hand, and indicated with a curt nod his companion. “That’s Doug, my associate.”
I extended my hand to the sour-faced man with dark, curly hair, but he looked to the floor and muttered, “You’re in for a ride.”
“Buzz,” Bill barked. “You got a cock, don’t you?”
“Why, yes, Bill,” I said sweetly, “I do, in fact, have a penis. Thanks for asking.”
“Good! Doug’s gonna take your luggage to your cabin, and we’re going to Bourbon Street.”
I blinked, realizing he was serious.
“But, Bill, I haven’t even signed on yet!” I protested. “I need to meet with the crew purser to get my ID and all that stuff.”
“Bah!” he scoffed, pushing me back down the gangway. “Doug will take care of it. I need to see some tits, and we’re going to a strip club.”
“But survival training is mandatory.”
“I’ll tell you what’s mandatory,” Bill pressed. “Tits. You do like tits, don’t you?”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Then we’re going. Welcome to Conquest.”
So much for no more shenanigans.
2
The walk to Bourbon Street from Carnival Conquest was a good twenty minutes on a normal day. But then, how many things in my life are ever normal? Today was the Fourth of July. Drunken, riotous bodies of all ages, shapes, sizes, and colors crammed Canal Street in drunken revelry. Heat rose in waves off the bodies and steaming concrete as an ephemeral souvenir of summer in the South. Bill pushed through the throng like a man with a purpose which, of course, he was. I stumbled along behind, trying hard to keep up but trying harder to derail him entirely.
“We really don’t have time for this,” I pressed. “We have to be back by 3 p.m.”
“How the hell would you know?” Bill retorted over his shoulder. “You just got here.”
“I was on this ship for an entire contract!” I called loudly over a group of raucous college kids swilling beer. Bill muttered something, but I could not hear above the noise. We passed the entrance to a bar and the doors suddenly burst open, apparently from the buildup of noise behind them. Zydeco music poured out like water from a burst dam, flooding over us.
“My previous associate was such a pussy!” Bill shouted as we moved onward. He roughly shouldered aside a belching, rat-tailed man in a sweat-soaked tank top. “You better not let me down!”
“I thought your associate was Antonio Banderas!”
“He was, but he’s off studying to be a goddamn priest, so then I got Doug!”
We turn
ed onto Bourbon Street and dove into deeper and more riotous crowds. The street was closed to autos, but it was a traffic mess nonetheless. Everyone stood sweating in the street with their go-cups, enjoying the rare privilege of drinking alcohol in a public street. As we neared the strip clubs, Bill plowed through the bodies with more fervor than ever. Finally we stepped out of the chaos and into Rick’s Cabaret. Instantly it was dark and cool and mercifully quiet. Well, compared to outside, anyway: the bass from the hip-hop thumped jarringly.
“Now we’re talkin’!” Bill shouted with glee. He gestured broadly towards several stages, each graced with a bronze pole. Amazingly, we had the place all to ourselves. Why the thousands of drunken young men chose to remain outside in the heat was beyond me. Then again, the heavy cover charge may have explained that. Bill marched into a sea of little round tables and planted himself firmly in a low-backed, stuffed chair.
Bill continued with obvious contempt, “Antonio Banderas wouldn’t set foot in here. Too religious, he claimed. We all know he was a closet gay. But Doug? He was horrible. With all the money he’s making, he’s banging some fat Steiner. Can you believe that? I didn’t even know they allowed fat chicks.”
A slender and scantily clad waitress slunk up to the table. She stood above us with a seductive wiggle. Bill never looked at her face even once, but stared obsessively at her overtly enhanced breasts.
“Hi, guys!” she bubbled. “I’m Trixie.”
“Why of course you are,” I replied lightly.
“Two Heinekens!” Bill boomed. “And keep em’ coming.”
“Oh, I keep em’ coming,” she replied with a wink. As she strode away, Bill reached out as if to grab her ass.
“Jesus, Bill,” I chided. “You’re panting already. Don’t get too far gone, because we don’t have much time.”
“Quit your whining. A few beers won’t hurt you.”
“It’s not the beers I’m worried about.”
“What, you scared of tits?” he barked. “You are so damn uptight, Buzz. Chill out.”
“With this crowd we’re not going to get back in time.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he dismissed. “You look so goddamn nervous. I think you’re scared of big tits. What, you never been in a titty bar before?”
“Actually,” I replied. “I dated a stripper in Iowa.”
“Bullshit!” he called. He eyed the empty stages, muttering, “Where are the women, anyway?”
“Maybe they are understaffed because the Fourth of July is like, a wholesome family day and stuff.”
“I want tits!” he bellowed at the nearest empty stage. After a minute of no response, he finally turned to actually look at me. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“About what?”
“They have strippers in Iowa? What, the Pork Queen, or Miss Hog Wild? That’s what Doug was into. He was really into screwing that fat middle-aged chick from the Spa. Bah! You never dated a stripper.”
I held up my fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “Scout’s honor: I dated a stripper. I went to the Fox Den for a friend’s bachelor party. There was a gorgeous little thing there named Tyler. Well, her real name was Penny. At first, when she was on the stage, I tipped her well. So she followed me around after that. Everyone else thought I was going broke paying for lap dances, and wouldn’t believe me when I said I got them for free.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Bill retorted. “I still don’t.”
“They had one of those old-style photo booths in the corner, and we disappeared for a long time in there. By the end of the night I showed them plenty of pictures and her phone number. I still have them in storage somewhere.”
Bill frowned at me. “You are serious!”
“I am. There are few things more satisfying for a twenty-one year old than having free access to the dressing room of a strip club. I hung out there for a couple of weeks. The girls shared some of their tricks to get more money from us stupid, boorish guys. It was fun.”
“Well?” he demanded.
“Well what?”
“Did you do her?”
I gave a melodramatic sigh. “Alas, it didn’t get to that. There was a huge bar brawl one night that ended all the good times. Scared the hell out of me, actually. The bartender was this huge three hundred pound redneck who just got out of jail. When I saw him leap over the bar with a club and start whaling on an entire biker gang, I felt it was time to leave. It may look cool in the movies, but seeing a glass beer mug smashed over a man’s head is decidedly not cool. The cops showed up fast, and in force. I seriously think the whole thing was a set up to close the joint down. Half the girls quit on the spot. Tyler was one of them, and she moved back to Wisconsin.”
Eventually the stages were peopled and, not surprisingly, time flew. I checked my watch fanatically and grew paler and paler by the hour, but Bill couldn’t have cared less. He was happy as a clam at high tide when staring at artificially inflated breasts. When we finally did leave, hours later, he was half drunk with beer and wholly pleased with himself. I was aghast at the lack of taxis, and even more so at the pandemonium on the streets. The crowds were dense with rollicking, beer-chugging animals of the human persuasion, of all ages, shapes, and sizes. We plowed through them resolutely, Bill in the lead. I pushed him ever onward, but he refused to hurry and refused to let me lead at a faster pace. By the time we reached Conquest, embarkation had closed nearly an hour earlier.
We trudged across the metal gangway under the glowering gaze of the chief of security. He was a late middle-aged Asian man surprisingly larger than both of us. He folded beefy arms across his chest and chided, “You are lucky we kept the gangway open.”
Bill merely shrugged as he was patted down. I followed, guiltily explaining, “There were no taxis because of the holiday.”
“Irrelevant,” he replied crisply.
Bill was already leaving when the chief barked an order for us to stop. He picked up the phone even as he glared at us. Nervously I stared at the thick gold bracelet he wore. It fairly glowed against his chocolate skin, and he spoke with enough gestures to make it rattle on his wrist.
“They’re here,” he said into the phone. “Yes, sir, both of them. The one embarking has his papers in order, though I don’t believe it was handled by himself. The purser mentioned the outgoing auctioneer handled it. Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
He hung up the phone and said to us, “Chief Officer wants to see you both immediately.”
My heart sank, and Bill continued to lead, only this time to the office of the chief officer. Though I was intimately familiar with Carnival Conquest, I had not yet been to a few areas of the ship. The engine room and boson’s area were terra incognita, as was the bridge deck. This was where you did not want to be, if you were crew, yet here we were.
Bill unerringly led us past the officer’s cabins on deck four, where I had lived as restaurant manager, then above and beyond to the bridge deck. He obviously knew where he was going, which I found even more demoralizing. I knew we were in trouble when the usual medley of nationalities dropped off and suddenly everyone was Italian. Carnival preferred Italian officers on their ships, and they were the only ones with business here. Unless, of course, someone was in big, big trouble.
Like us.
The door to the chief’s office was open and Bill entered without knocking. He strode over to a chair and seated himself, completely at ease and acting as if nothing in the world were wrong. I, on the other hand, was completely freaking out. Crew members are rarely fired for being so late, but it was a permanent blemish on their record, and two strikes was enough for firing. I had already had all sorts of management trouble on Conquest from my restaurant days, and before I had even started work I was going to get a black mark! I was furious at Bill, but wondered where along the way I could have derailed him.
I stood beside Bill’s chair, awkward and obviously unsure if I was to sit as well or not. The chief gestured to the remaining chair, and I dropped obediently i
nto it. Before us sat an Italian man: short, slender, and handsome. He set aside his paperwork and silently reviewed us. Bill leaned back and crossed his legs, utterly unperturbed before the chief. In fact, he looked bored.
“You wanted to see me?” Bill asked bluntly.
“You were an hour late,” the chief said quietly, with a thick Italian accent. “You think I would not?”
“We both know the ship wasn’t leaving for several hours,” Bill replied offhandedly. “So that is not a concern. It is a national holiday and we couldn’t find a cab. We had to walk.”
“You should not have been out at all, then,” the chief retorted. “Your being late is completely inexcusable. Every crew member is my responsibility, and your new assistant here missed safety training.”
“He’s been on Conquest before,” Bill scoffed.
“That is irrelevant,” the chief snapped, words growing warm. I stared in shock at Bill, whose posture made it very clear that the chief was completely wasting his time. “Everyone attends safety training, including myself.”
“He’ll go next week,” Bill said simply.
“Unlike you,” the chief replied with an arched eyebrow, “I cannot so cavalierly allow any crew member to be a safety liability, not even for a single cruise. I could, and should, deny him entry on the ship.”
My stomach flipped. This was no idle threat. The chief officer was second only to the captain himself and most definitely had the authority to do so. With Bill’s cocky stance, he had plenty of inclination, too. I tried to speak, but Bill cut me off.
“He’s not a liability. He’s already been here for an entire contract, and in an emergency he’s obviously better suited to help than a dancer or a Steiner. His job is to handle drunk groups of hundreds. And look at him: would you rather depend on him or a 90 pound Filipina stewardess? Furthermore, he is only a supernumerary.”
Ship for Brains (Cruise Confidential 2) Page 17