But where to go?
I passed some plastic flaps into what appeared to be a crew corridor, and soon found the crew mess. It was brimming with people of different colors, screaming in different languages, wearing different uniforms. It was bedlam. I had no hope of finding Bianca in there. Instead, a petite brunette found me.
“You’re Brian, nu?” she asked, cute round face smiling up at me. She carried a plastic mug filled with coffee still hissing around chocolate soft-serve ice cream.
“I am,” I replied. “How did you know?”
“An American in the crew mess?” she asked in answer. I had yet to understand how everyone knew I was American before I even spoke. She continued, “Bianca’s working the officer’s mess today, so she’s busy right now.”
I was led by the elbow back into the corridor and into a metal stairwell. The cutie sat on the steps beside a cluster of mugs filled with dregs of coffee and mounds of cigarette butts. “I’m Vio, her cabin-mate. After a quick smoke, I’ll give her a call and see what’s up. You smoke?”
“No, thanks,” I said, leaning against a cool metal wall. I stood a little straighter when I realized that Vio was eyeing me up and down.
“Well well,” she said, giving me an apparently impressed nod. “Bianca caught the best fish yet. Even if you don’t smoke. But you don’t have any money, or you wouldn’t be here. Guess that means you’re not too smart, either.”
Vio finished her cigarette, then called from a nearby phone. She conversed briefly in Romanian, barked a laugh, then hung up.
“Wait!” I cried, but it was too late.
“I know, I know,” Vio said. “You want to talk to her. Gotta wait. She’s angry because her period just started. We knew it was coming any day now, and she was desperate to avoid another Egypt. When she’s mad she won’t talk to anybody, so we’ll have to wait.”
“Oh, come on!”
“No cheeky cheeky tonight, Romeo,” she added mischievously. “I’d invite you to my cabin to make up for your disappointment, but she’s there. I can already see her wormy apple cheeks burning red as an angry donut’s. Meet her at the gangway at two o’clock. You can’t wander the ship today because the Coast Guard is here. Big drama, and you don’t want any drama before you meet Cedric the Mean Indian. Trust me.”
“I can’t wait in the mess or anything?” I replied, surprised. “I have to actually leave?”
“Da,” Vio replied. “You need to go back to town because I have port manning today, which means I can’t get off. So that leaves you to get me a home pregnancy test. Welcome to ships!”
2
When I met up with Bianca, she was all business and prepared me for a meeting with the food and beverage manager, preliminary to further interviews. When I arrived at his office, however, I was surprised to instead meet Cedric the Mean Indian. It took all of thirty seconds to see how he earned his nickname. He did not interview me so much as interrogate me. It was the most brutal few minutes of my life, and I barely managed to get in ten words.
Yet somehow it was successful. Cedric arranged for me to meet with the big boss Mladen that evening, who offered me a job not just as a waiter, but as an assistant maitre d’. Because the meeting had been in the dining room during dinner preparation, it was concluded rather quickly. Though always a frantic time, it was even more so that night because the guests were all press getting their first glimpse of Carnival’s new baby. During my hasty departure, I was accosted by Dan, the maitre d’.
“Welcome to the club,” the salt-and-pepper haired Irishman called on my way out. Dan looked like a man who had seen his share of trouble in the past, but was now a tough, compact set of discipline. Even his pencil-thin mustache looked ready to toe the line. We chatted briefly, and I came to sense that Dan’s support had been instrumental in my getting the job. Man, did I owe Bianca!
I wandered the ship awhile, but soon gravitated back to the dining room. I was keen to see how ship restaurants differed from those on land, and differ they did. On the surface the process looked the same, with waiters taking orders and delivering food, but the underlying foundation was structured in a way unique to ships and vastly different than anything I had seen in ten years of restaurants, whether independent structures or part of hotels. It was not just another game, but a whole different sport—not even including the intricacies of dozens of interacting nationalities.
I made my way to the hostess stand to join Dan. We chatted for a long time, dinner raging around us, like officers on a hilltop above the battle. Eventually he left for his office, inviting me to join him at the maitre d’ table that night.
When second-seating dinner was finally over and Bianca began tidying up her station, it was 1 a.m. The atmosphere in the dining room was depleted of all energy, like the battleground’s last shots had switched from echo to memory. I helped Bianca by folding the linen napkins for the breakfast shift, just a scant five hours away. When Bianca left to safeguard her silverware rack from prowling waiters, I was approached by a Filipino waiter.
“The maitre d’ table is ready now,” he said. In a surprisingly formal manner, he motioned that I should follow. I then joined a nightly ritual among what could be considered the ship’s non-commissioned officers. A round table had been selected in a pleasant corner of the Monet dining room, and there I joined seven others: two maitre d’s, three assistant maitre d’s, and two hostesses.
Menus were not necessary, partly because everyone knew the selections implicitly but mostly because the kitchen was required to comply with any order. It was assumed I would have steak and lobster, so I was not consulted, but fed. Certainly I didn’t argue, even if it was in the wee hours of the morning. Everyone drank copious amounts of wine, except Dan, who sipped from numerous cans of Red Bull. The waiters of the surrounding stations all struggled to finish their duties, while we were waited on hand and foot. I was a bit uncomfortable during the entire ‘welcome to the officer’s club’ experience.
Dan’s authority was apparent, as all the others at the table were defined entirely by their differing levels of obsequiousness, with the suction entirely directed at Dan. His charisma was unmistakable, though how exactly it manifested through his curt speech and no-nonsense manner was difficult to put a finger on.
After half an hour Bianca had finished her duties and came to claim me. She was due to work breakfast, of course, but that still gave us a few hours together. Bianca was obsessed about sleeping in a real bed, so we took a taxi to my hotel. She was so exhausted that she drifted off to sleep while smoking on the balcony in my T-shirt. I put her to bed and watched her sleep. I was too excited to relax. Three short hours later the alarm shattered dreams and she stumbled off to the taxi, racing once again to the dining room. This, I would soon learn, was what it meant to work on cruise ships.
3
Two months later I signed on to Carnival Fantasy in Port Canaveral, Florida. Part of my arrangement with Mladen was a whirlwind tour of the restaurants, starting at the bottom as a waiter and high-tailing it up through the ranks to assistant maitre d’. The beginning was referred to as ‘college’. Though intimidating, it was an exciting time. Teaming up with people from all over the globe was a real pleasure, and made the unending hours almost enjoyable. Almost. We worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week—not including homework—bussing tables, washing dishes, and carrying trays. This was all on top of the real challenge: learning ship life.
We had become the property of Carnival. The corporation told us who we slept with and for how long, when we ate and what. This complete lack of free will was the hardest part for me. I had no say in how cold it was, or what I wore to compensate, or even when allowed a bathroom break. If the corporation needed us to work an extra shift after twelve hours already on, we did so. More or less, onboard was on duty.
I tried to keep in close communication with Bianca, but hardly had time for the internet café—and rarely found a free computer when I did. But letters from Bianca were worth the effor
t. I learned perhaps more about being a waiter on a cruise ship from her grumbles than from college. The letters were an exciting glimpse into how my girlfriend lived her life. Unfortunately, as the weeks went by her words turned more and more sour as the drudgery of nonstop work set in:
“The restaurant college is the most cheerful part of the ship life. I enjoyed it as well. Like you, I was excited to come in contact with people of so many different nationalities. I imagine you are the most bizarre and desirable creature over there. Just don't get too far away, especially in the Eastern Europe corner. It's similar spider web.”
“Yesterday we had a crew party up on the Lido deck, and after we ate the food cooked especially for Romanian people, we danced until 3am, and I checked in for breakfast at 6.30. I got old, I think, because in my first contract, I used to party and get drunk almost every night, and I was cool, and now, I couldn't wake up this morning. I was dreaming the alarm clock was ringing, and there was nobody to stop it.”
“Now you work midnight buffet? You assistant waiter for a while, then. I wish waiters could work midnight buffet, I'm tired like hell of waking up early in the morning. I'm in the mood to sleep mucho to recover, but only midnight buffet people get more than 4-5 hours sleep. They used to give us breakfast off once at three weeks, but there were some complaints from the guests regarding breakfast service, so the management changed the working system and nobody gets breakfast off anymore. Too bad! Me love you shakily, and I send you slippery kiss.”
“My rasclat guests this morning were smelling the glasses I poured water in, saying that they are stinky. I had to change 4 glasses, and all seemed stinky to them. They were yelling at the assistant maitre d’ that on this brand new ship everything is stinky, then they go smoke like crew!”
“I have some crappy guests the second sitting, they try to intimidate me, they are giving me hard time eating similar pigs: 3-4 appetizers each, soup, salad, 2-3 main courses, 2-3 deserts, but I'm cool and I have answers for everything they ask. My assistant Adrien saves my life, and I recommended him to Dan for promotion to waiter. What I get for my kind act? The bamboclat got a tattoo in Cozumel on his arm, and now he can barely carry the trays.”
“My cabin mate Vio got fixed for some complaints, so she has almost no guests this week. That means no money. You can't play games with Dan, he fixes you like a banana, no matter who you are. So she have no guests for the first sitting, and only 9 at the second one, and those ones are some alcoholic bastards. In the first night of the cruise, they came one hour late, drunk as apples. When she came to sing a Happy Birthday cake for one of them, that one said: ‘Can I put the cake on your face?’ When she was telling us this story, Vio got mad all over again. Her boyfriend, my assistant Adrien said, ‘Don't be upset. Our guest is our master, he is king. You should have said: Yes, put the cake on my face, and as well break the plate on my head, because you are the guest!’”
4
I spent one month in school and with practical lessons, which included washing dishes and even a stint in the galley. Mostly I assisted waiter teams, such as the Romanian couple Dumitru and Lowena, who were friends of Bianca’s from her early days with Carnival. Back then, Dumitru had been married with children, but fell for the much younger and vibrant Lowena, who was supposed to only be a ‘ship squeeze’. Having a new mistress each contract was kind of the usual on ships. Dumitru, however, actually left his family to remain at sea with Lowena. Such stories were common on ships, I soon discovered.
In a blink, it was time to leave Fantasy for Conquest. Trainees do not choose their ships, of course, but Carnival generally kept family together. In my case, it was all prearranged that I would work under the tutelage of Dan, so I was assigned the snazzy new ship Conquest. As an assistant maitre d’-in-training, I was to first work every station as a waiter, then after four months get my officer’s stripe and move into the white uniform.
That was all fine and dandy, but my excitement was over finally beginning a life with Bianca. Within minutes of signing on, Bianca found me on the crew deck. We hugged so tightly that we refused to release even for a kiss.
And then she was gone.
Bianca had to run back to her station on the Lido deck. She had snuck off to greet me, but couldn’t risk being caught away from her station too long. Such things as life and emotion were completely secondary to bussing tables, even if this early there were only fifty guests aboard, over three hundred clean tables, and forty bored waiters.
Indeed, all I saw of Bianca that whole day was evidence. Our shared cabin was extremely small—perhaps five by ten feet—crammed with two lockers, a sink, a tiny desk covered entirely by a 13” TV, two bunk beds, and a small chair groaning under a box overloaded with gift-wrapped teddy bears. Tommy was apparently back at it. We shared our shower and toilet with two neighbors, and our floor with two frogs. My bunk was shared with my suitcase. Bianca’s fixation with a real bed suddenly became very clear. More than ‘roteste!’ would be needed to get around each other when dressing for work, that’s for sure!
Yet despite this apparent proximity, Bianca and I rarely saw each other. She worked in the Monet during dinner, whereas Dan assigned me to the Renoir. This was in order to be a midnight buffet supervisor. Thus while I was working, Bianca was sleeping, and vice versa. Our only overlap was lunch on the Lido deck, which was far too large and crazy for us to ever see each other. Only two short hours between lunch and dinner were available for together time, but those were dedicated to sleep. Such naps were most necessary, because after months of hard labor and only four hours of sleep a night, a body required more rest.
On average, I saw Bianca less than fifteen minutes a day.
In the beginning we found ways to show our affection. The next day, for example, I found Bianca in the Lido’s walk-in cooler. I closed the door behind us and kept it locked by retaining a tight grip on the inside handle. With my free hand I grabbed Bianca’s vest, pulled her to me, and indulged in some of the hottest, wettest kisses ever. Love among the lettuce! It amazed me how much balm for my fevered soul lay in her lips. I had no idea I was such a romantic. She whispered how much she missed that, and I did too. It was a fun, yet tender, moment.
It was about all we got.
We worked easily twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and with opposing schedules we may as well have been continents apart. Soon the only sign of Bianca—other than stories by shared friends—were the breakfast trays she snuck into the cabin while I was sleeping. As the days went by, she became less and less talkative. Within a month of my arrival, her entire focus was work and only work. As she struggled harder to wake up for breakfast, and harder to wake up for dinner, she struggled less to head into port on rare time off, and less to find time for me.
My new life moved very fast. Much can happen when your very home moves daily to a new nation. Each week, Conquest sailed among New Orleans, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and Mexico. The excitement of such locations was quickly stifled when you only see them from the Lido deck during work. Snippets of port would be jumped on, regardless of fatigue or the odd hours. This was what it meant to be a sailor, I discovered.
I saw the whole world in those first few weeks, but not because Conquest sailed there. I was now a citizen of Carnival, just one of sixty nationalities working and living in close proximity. A few months ago I was stuck behind a desk designing electronic medical records, but now I could be found at a 3 a.m. Filipino birthday party singing karaoke—using my best Elvis voice to sing Tagalog lyrics, no less. You never know your strengths until you get out of your comfort zone!
My new friends shared with me their stories about life in every corner of the world. There was Robertino, the powerful Croatian haunted by his service as a sniper in the ugly Croatian civil war; or Ketut, the youngest of six Indonesian boys in his family, who worked to get his sister out of the rice paddy and into school. And then there were the women.
Oh, the women!
Fortunately, I recalled Benjamin Frank
lin’s reminder that ‘beauty and folly are old companions.’ Bianca, too, had warned me that ships were an adult playground. No problem. I was painfully far from prudish. What was new to me—very new!—was being objectified as a source of financial freedom. I was the only American crew member and, thusly, the only vehicle to a fabled Green Card. I received a great deal of attention from a bevy of beautiful women from all over the planet. This was no doubt a big part of why I was finding joy in my new life on ships, despite the long hours, cramped living conditions, and growing distance with Bianca.
My assistant at dinner, Rasa, a pretty blonde from Lithuania, nightly offered herself for a good time. Even Vio approached me every time she was on the downswing of her on-again, off-again relationship with Adrien. Then there were the literally dozens of women whom I had never even met who found me and offered all manner of... things... for a chance at living in America. A worldwide smorgasbord of babes. A teenage dream come true? More like a nightmare.
Worse, if one could call it such, was my new best friend, Liezle. I had first met this lovely young Slovakian in Carnival college. She, too, had been assigned Conquest to join a lover, so we had travelled from Fantasy together. As a testament to how insanely gorgeous she was, at the airport she had been accosted by a model scout for lingerie ads. ‘nuf said. While we were just friends working together on midnight buffet, we were becoming quite close through a shared disappointment with our lovers onboard. A risky situation, to be sure, in an environment so cold that the need for contact was very real, sexual or otherwise.
Unsinkable Mister Brown (Cruise Confidential 3) Page 15