I was learning a lot about working on a cruise ship. Based on what I was hearing, I was also glad that Liam and I decided not to do it.
Helena and I talked about how strange it was to have a bunch of nudists on the ship.
“Some of the guys thought it was going to be great to have a bunch of naked girls on board,” she said. “But when you’re working, you don’t get to hang out with the passengers. And even if you do, you have to be professional. We can’t take off our clothes and join them.”
“Would you if you could?” I asked her.
“No way,” she laughed. “I can’t do that in front of so many people.”
“It’s a bit intimidating when there are 2,000 people all around you,” I said.
“Can you do it?” she asked me. “Have you gotten naked?”
“Actually, I did,” I told her. “It was very strange at first, but after a while you get used to it. The more naked people there are, the more normal it seems.”
“I guess if everyone else was wearing clothes and you’re the only one naked, it would be harder,” she suggested.
“I could never do that,” I said. “When they’re all naked, they’re not staring at me. They don’t even care if I’m naked. But if I were the only one naked, I’d be too self-conscious to breathe.”
“What surprises me is that I’ve never seen any of the men…extra happy.” She was choosing her words carefully.
“I haven’t either,” I told her. “I just assumed there would be hundreds of guys walking around excited.”
“Me too,” she laughed.
“But I haven’t seen any,” I said.
“They’re probably all used to it by now,” she explained. “Maybe the first time, they get excited, but by the hundredth time, it’s nothing new anymore.”
Aside from men and what makes them stand out, we also talked about the different groups that charter the ship from time to time.
“You get used to all the different groups after a while,” she told me. “There’s always some group on board.”
“What’s been the best group so far?” I asked her.
“They’re all great,” she answered, diplomatically. “But the nudists just might be the friendliest.”
I had to agree with that. Everyone was friendly to me, at least.
“What was the worst group?” I asked her.
“The poker players,” she said. “They have tournaments at sea and when they’re here, they’re just the most obnoxious people. Very demanding. Not friendly at all. It’s like they think they’re movie stars or something.”
“Are any of them famous?” I asked.
“I’ve never heard of them,” she answered. “They’re famous in their minds.”
“People who are into that sort of thing probably know who all the big winners are,” I decided.
Helena had worked on the ship for a few years. She knew everyone and had some great stories to tell about the sex lives of the crew.
I never knew Sebastian very well. He was always Liam’s friend more than mine. But from what I know about him, he never seemed like much of a lady’s man. His odds of getting lucky in Hong Kong were always pretty low. As musicians go, he looks more like Sid Vicious than Sting. He is too skinny and, even though he is not a drug user as far as I know, he looks like a junkie. I would take a healthy looking Sting any day.
On the cruise ship, Sebastian might as well be Johnny Depp. All the girls liked him, according to Helena.
“When he sings, it makes you melt,” she told me.
I have heard Sebastian sing. I don’t remember ever melting. I guess when you are stuck on a cruise ship, the few available men start to look better than they would on dry land.
“He almost got fired when the Safety Officer walked in on him with three girls,” Helena told me.
“Why almost?” I asked. “Why didn’t he get fired?”
“The rumor is that he invited the officer to join them,” she told me. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The officers are bigger playboys than the rest of the crew.”
I thought about how Liam and I considered working on a cruise ship before we moved to Hong Kong. The image of Liam as a popular rock star with the ladies made me laugh a little.
“Three girls at a time,” I thought to myself. “He wouldn’t even know what to do with two.”
Chapter 22: Room for One More
Liam and I went to dinner before his show. He only had one show that night, but it was the big farewell show, so he spent most of the day in rehearsals deep within the bowels of the ship.
“The crew has their own restaurant?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s smaller than this and the food isn’t as elaborate, but it’s better than Chinese food.”
“But it’s the same food?” I asked.
“It’s mostly the same, but it doesn’t look as fancy,” he answered. “There aren’t any big fruit sculptures.”
“Would you rather live here on the boat full time than in China?” I asked him.
“No,” he answered. “Not at all. It’s too small.”
I looked around the large restaurant with about a hundred passengers sitting at a few dozen tables.
“This ship is too small?” I asked.
“The ship is huge,” he said. “But the crew area is very small. The crew restaurant is small, the pool is tiny, the gym is the size of our cabin. When you work on the ship, you spend most of your time in a small space with a lot of other people. There’s just no room.”
“Why aren’t you eating in the crew restaurant now?” I asked. “Why do they let you eat in here? Is it because you’re a paying passenger while I’m here?”
“Yes and no,” he answered. “I can stay in our cabin because we paid, or Sebastian paid. But some of the crew, like entertainers, people who get a lot of face time with the passengers, can eat in the passenger restaurants.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “Passengers like interacting with the entertainers.”
“See that guy over there?” Liam pointed to a man sitting a few tables away. “He’s one of the magicians.”
“How many magicians are on board?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Liam laughed. There were at least three. “Cruise ships love magic acts, I guess.”
“I think they’re for the older passengers,” I suggested. “It’s like shuffleboard. Who in this century plays shuffleboard? But every cruise ship has it.”
“They usually have a topless show,” Liam said.
He seemed disappointed that there was no topless show on our cruise.
“I don’t think nudists would care about that,” I suggested.
“Can you imagine being one of those women?” Liam asked.
Obviously he imagined it once or twice.
I could not. I always dance with clothes on, and usually while wearing heavy costumes. When you have always danced in costume, it would feel strange to dance naked. I’m sure there is more freedom of movement, but I don’t think the audience of a naked dancing show cares about that.
“Wouldn’t it be weird to dance on stage with your tits out and then have dinner with the audience,” Liam said. “They’d just be staring at your chest the whole time.”
“Even more than usual,” I added.
That would be the most uncomfortable dinner ever as far as I was concerned. I would spend the entire meal very aware that everyone at the table had just spent an hour staring at my breasts and was now picturing me naked while we ate.
“They do that anyway,” Liam said.
He was right, of course. A lot of men think that our eyes are twelve inches lower than they really are, especially when they have never seen us topless.
Liam had to go back to rehearsal after dinner, so I went on the promenade deck and watched the passengers return from their day in Ho Chi Minh. Usually everyone wandered onto the ship at their convenience, but in Ho Chi Minh, everybody had to take a
shuttle bus into the city. That meant they all took them back to the ship. I saw a few taxis, but most of the passengers arrived in groups, one bus at a time.
I was surprised by how many shopping bags I saw. I know all too well that Hong Kong is a shopper’s paradise, and I found out firsthand how much money you can spend in Xiamen, but I did not think Vietnam was the place to go for fashion and keepsakes.
When I was a little girl, I only heard bad things about Vietnam. It was a terrible country full of evil communists who did the worst thing anybody in the world could ever do – they beat us in a war.
The Vietnamese seem to have a different point of view about the whole thing. They don’t think of themselves as evil and they even like Ho Chi Minh, the guy for which Ho Chi Minh City was named.
What no one told me when I was a little girl is that the United States and France had a long history of not treating Vietnam very well. There is no way we would ever let any other country do to us what we did to them. When you grow up American, people will always tell you that the United States is a Christian nation, but the Golden Rule has never been part of our foreign policy.
That was all a long time ago and now Vietnam is more than happy if Americans, French or anybody wants to come in and spend money. They may be communists, but they love money just as much as everyone else. China is communist, technically, and they love money more than any country I have ever seen.
Watching all these Americans, Canadians and Europeans walk onto the ship with Gap and Old Navy bags from their day of shopping in Vietnam was a strange experience for me. I only found out later that most of the American brands are “genuine imitations”. I always thought Hong Kong had a lot of counterfeit fashion, but apparently it is nothing compared to Vietnam.
I went up to the top deck to watch the ship leave the dock. We got into Ho Chi Minh late, but we left on time. Our next port was the final stop, and being late for that would probably cause nothing but trouble for the crew and a lot of the passengers. Liam and I had plenty of time in Bangkok, but other passengers probably had planes to catch, and the crew had just enough time to do whatever they do before they turn around and do it all over again with a new group of passengers.
Once again, the sunset was over land. Since we were always going southwest along China’s and Vietnam’s coast, we never had a sunset over the ocean. I’m sure that would have been beautiful, although the sunset over the southern tip of Vietnam was pretty nice. It was greener and cleaner than the sunsets over China. I have always heard that Vietnam is a beautiful country. Maybe I will actually see it the next time I go there.
When the ship was somewhere near the Gulf of Thailand, people started to get naked again. There never was any big naked announcement. I don’t know how people knew when it was time to get naked. They just knew.
Liam’s show that night was the big farewell show. It was the last full night of the cruise and they always put on a big show for the passengers. All of the other shows were individual performances by each person or group, but this one included most of the entertainers. Nudity was not allowed in the theater since some of the ship’s highest ranking officers were there. It was supposed to be more formal than most of the shows, although their definition of formal only meant that everybody had to wear something.
There was even a rumor that the captain would be there. For some reason, everyone treated the captain like he was a movie star. There was one point in the cruise when people were lined up for an hour just to shake the captain’s hand and talk to him for a second while a staff photographer took their picture together. I never understood that. He certainly has an important job – he’s the captain of the ship – but I don’t know why he was a celebrity. No one ever acts that way around plane captains or train drivers. They are responsible for moving large machines full of people, too.
It was not the best show I have ever seen. They tried to do too much all at once. They wanted the entire show to be one big extravagant finale. A good show knows when to go fast and when to go slow. This one was at top speed the whole time.
The worst part for me was that Liam was only in it for a few minutes. He spent a large chunk of the day rehearsing and he was barely on stage. I would have preferred if he was not in the show at all and we could have spent more time together during the day.
The best part for me, and Liam, was that this was his last show of the cruise. After this, he was just another passenger. He could do whatever he wanted until it was time to leave the ship. That meant we could spend the last day together, and after that we had two days in Bangkok just for us.
After the big show, we went back to the cabin and spent some vigorous quality time together. He had a lot of that post-show energy to burn up and I was more than ready for him to give me an encore performance. Since we live in separate parts of China and only get to see each other every few months, I am always ready for any performance.
I’m actually a little surprised that we did not spend all of our free time in the cabin. Before the cruise, I was concerned that I would never get to see much of the ship since we would be in the cabin all the time. It did not work out that way because we were on a ship full of naked people. There was no way Liam was going to spend all day in a cabin when there were a thousand naked women walking around outside.
Liam took a nap after his farewell show. I helped him get rid of all that energy. I felt like a swim, so I went up to the pool deck. It was naked time, but I wore my bathing suit and sarong anyway. It was a force of habit, and I was not ready to be a full fledged nudist.
The pool deck was reasonably crowded. This was our last full night on the ship and the nudists were determined to take advantage of what little time we had left. There was an empty exercise pool, so I went there instead of the big main swimming pool.
There were a few people in and around the other exercise pools, but I did not think twice about taking off my bathing suit. I had already been completely naked and the more I did it, the easier it got. It seemed more natural to be naked when everyone else was naked, and swimming naked is better than swimming with clothes on any day.
I had a good swim and when I was finished, I got out of the pool without trying to immediately hide my body. I already knew that no one was going to stare at me. If you are the only person naked and everyone else is clothed, you will be the instant center of attention. But if everyone else is also naked, they don’t even notice.
I also noticed that when you get out of the water naked, you don’t get cold the way you do while wearing a bathing suit. When you get out of a pool with clothes on, you need a towel to dry your clothes off. It is the wet clothing that makes you cold. Wet clothes also feel wrong, so you want to dry them as quickly as possible. When you are naked and wet, it feels natural, so there is no hurry to get dry.
While I was standing there wet and naked, some friendly nudists invited me to join them in one of the hot tubs. I did not even put on a towel on the short walk from the exercise pools to the hot tubs. I just walked from one to the other as naked as everyone else.
We all talked for hours and no one ever guessed that I was not a nudist. I was naked on a nudist cruise, so the safe assumption was that I was one of them. We talked about where we were all from, our jobs and how many cruises everyone had been on, or for some of us, how this was our first cruise.
Everyone in that particular hot tub was from the United States, though from vastly different areas. Most of the people I meet in China seem to think that all Americans have the same attitudes and opinions about everything. The conversation in that hot tub would have devastated their image of us. We were all from the same country, but we all came from different economic and political backgrounds. The fact that we were all sitting in the hot tub completely naked was irrelevant.
Chapter 23: Last Sea Day
It was not technically a day at sea, but we were at sea most of the day. The ship did not dock in Bangkok until six o’clock in the evening and everyone was free to be as naked as they wanted
until we reached land. Liam had already decided that he was going to spend the entire day naked. He went to sleep naked and since he did not have to work, he was not about to put on any clothes until we reached Bangkok.
I woke up earlier than Liam, as always, and I put on my running clothes. It was a naked day and I was a lot more comfortable being naked in front of everyone than I was when the cruise started, but I still felt like I had to wear clothes while jogging.
The sports deck was as deserted as I had expected. The night before was the last night on the ship, so there was more alcohol and partying than usual. I did not expect most of the passengers to wake up for a few hours.
After I ran a few laps and got a sweat going, I thought about the nude man I met the first time I went jogging on the ship. He said that running nude was more hygienic because you are not rubbing your skin against sweaty clothes. It made more sense to me now that I was learning more about the nudist lifestyle.
I took off all of my clothes except for my shoes and socks. My feet would probably be happier without sweaty socks, but the deck of that ship was not designed for jogging barefoot. I left my clothes on a deck chair and started to run naked. I was never worried about anyone stealing my clothes because the deck was deserted. Besides, these were not the kind of people who steal clothes, and there was nothing worth stealing anyway.
“Imagine having your clothes stolen by nudists,” I said to Liam later in the day.
I started running slowly because I did not want to hurt myself. My breasts will never be the largest in the world, but they are ample enough that swinging them wildly in every direction for an hour would probably not feel all that good.
Before I went on this cruise, I would have never thought about jogging naked. I always try to wear the right running clothes, and your birthday suit is never what they recommend in the catalogues. By the end of the cruise, it was not the nudity that concerned me, it was losing the support of a good sports bra.
It was early in the morning, so there was a nice cool ocean breeze on the sports deck. Not only did running naked not hurt my breasts, but they felt a lot better with the wind rushing past. Instead of being smashed against my chest with wet fabric, they were enjoying the warm sun and fresh wind. Just like swimming naked, I discovered that running naked is better. The only problem is that I live in Hong Kong where you can’t do either.
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