Still weird

Everything is fine, I do not have the Norwalk virus, I am not in love with a Filipino, a Jamaican, a gentleman from St. Lucia, or some guy from Argentina. If you speak English and are from those countries, you will probably work on a cruise ship if you’re into it. This is what I am learning. I am also learning that I have somehow joined a weird hotel version of the circus, and if interested, could work on cruise ships until I am dead or my liver explodes.

We went out in Acupulco again, because that is what you do. First we went to, logically, a mall. The first thing you see is a giant Applebee’s, then you have the choice of a Starbuck’s and a bunch of shoe stores, and 3 people went to see American Gangster (with Spanish subtitles). So. Acupulco seems to be mainly urinal cakes. The bathroom was aggressively urinal caked (the women’s bathroom). The club was aggressively tourist oriented, i.e. big smile+question+resulting expenditure for tchotchkee. The best was a middle aged-plus-ish woman with short hair and glasses who had a digital camera and a t-shirt that said “100% HORNY” on the back of it, just like that. She’d say “oh would you like a picture?” big smile. We were warned and shooed her away immediately because we were told that she’d just print it out in the back, put it in a frame, and then ask for $10. A guy who said “What’s your name?” big smile and then put it on the inside of a shell as if he just painted it. We witnessed a table of large intoxicated people from the ship fall for this. We did not, because we were warned. Guilt farming!

There were a group of parrots in the bar as well, for decoration. They were described thusly by the lead male singer who is very nice and rocks out “Come Sail Away” in one of the spectacle shows: “fucking parrot. I stood next to it for a picture, and it bit me! It fucking bit me and it drew blood!” I also ended up overpaying for dinner, having over-estimated the cost of drinks and stuff. I was expecting change, and got a large smile and “thank you very much!” and a handshake. I was stunned and walked away, and this is how you fleece a tourist. Also, you offer them a bunch of “100% HORNY!” gear, which was being modeled by a bunch of unattractive middle aged Mexican persons. Or, a t-shirt with “ANOTHER SHITTY DAY IN PARADISE” on the back, which I didn’t really get.

You dine right next to a pool which is below a what? A bungee jumping platform. It actually looks kinda fun in a spring break way and the risk of a Mexican death. You can ask to not hit the water, hit the water with your hand, or get your head in the water. The wonders of math! Also, you get a punch card. Your 5th jump is free. The rumor was they were going to get dolphins in the pool, but this is probably so people would keep coming back to see if they got them which they never did. “Are you from the ship? We might get dolphins!” A bunch of people bungee jumped, more as the night went on, and people kept saying “oh you HAVE to do it” and then also “yeah, although all the blood vessels burst around my eyes when I did it. Yeah. I don’t know what it was. The gravity? Anyway. Yeah.” The drinks on the top floor were, logically, 2 for 1, and people ran around with whistles and handed out balloons, the kind you twist if you’re a clown. The DJ kept yelling about “NORWEEGAAN STAAAARRR!” and the dancers danced like crazy persons with hot bodies and incredible rhthym and we danced amazingly (my opnion) and the lighting guy said “oh, I just love watching Second City dance. It’s always so funny.” Fool. Then our music director got upset that “you don’t have to look gay when you dance” even though…all the dancers are gay. Then into the spazzy freakout on the dance floor, was my favorite: a woman FROM THE SHIP™ with cornrows and what? A neckbrace. Delightful.

We finished the night in the hot tub. One of my cast mates loves the hot tub to a hilarious degree, to the point that he suggested having rehearsal in the hot tub and also ate a giant cheeseburger in the hot tub during a 2 hour stint today. This is my current life. Also, in my current life, this does not make him stand out from the clientele. I saw a woman wearing a pink tent. I also witnessed a “Hairy Chest Contest!” with 4 incredibly hairy middle aged guys and the wife of one of them. She was in a blind fold and tried to identify her husband by his chest hair. She felt his last, of course, and guessed immediately. The gentlemen getting manhandled were very extremely rotund and usually had hair all over their bodies except their head. One guy seemed clearly Italian and had hair on his shoulders. If anyone is looking for more stock footage of the obesity epidemic, I have a source! Also, stock footage of random Europeans in speedos: I have a source! I also saw a very very tan very thin older gentleman with a wide white handle bar mustache, tiny speedo and what? Logically: large nipple rings the size of earrings. Oh vacation.

When they win these contests, they are given a little award ribbon thing like Miss America. So a gentlemen that was like 5’4” and bald and running around the buffet on the top floor with his ladyfriend had “MR. SEXYLEGS 2008” written in marker on white tape on a ribbon across his chest.

Today I had 3 desserts. I attempted a night without drinking and ended up doing 2 jello shots because I live in college apparently. Tonight I am actually staying in. You do not think it is possible to eat whatever you want at all times, but it is. It is possible to show up to a restaurant (i.e. theme area) and say “can I have that dessert heh heh heh” and then get it to go, eat it in your room, leave it buy your door, and then go out and do it again. This is because this is what we did.

Everything on the ship is theme area, which is great. My favorite is the Internet Café, which has @ all over the carpet. @! @! @! And crazy purple triangles which means THE FUTURE.

I am regularly waking up in the middle of the night and have crazy acidic stomach at all times. A friend said the hardest thing to get used to was barely ever working. I can see how this makes sense.

We went to the crew’s favorite bar, which was about a 45 minute walk from where the boat docked. Basically, if you would like to know what the coast of Acupulco is like, just thinking of the most college spring break type coastal thingie. The strip of clubs everyone loves in the crew has an upper bar section, a lower bar section, and then a separate row of beach chairs and stuff that was served separately. Anyway, the nice thing about it is that it is blatantly a tourist trap and no one pretends otherwise. Everyone says “are you from the ship?” in English. This is probably because we are white and in comfortable shoes and around 3000 people hit the strip of stuff. Every car is a VW bug—the first version of the VW bug—and somehow still pretty nice. But I mean, in a 3 lane road, that is 3 lanes both ways, it might be full of cars and seriously, all of them are taxis. We got a cab ride with 4 of us and drove like insane bats out of hell all the way there.

I should note that we all have, at all times, the option of laundry. Here is how hard it is to do laundry: but in bag, leave it outside your door, wait one day. Get it back, entirely ironed and hung up where appropriate. In the opinion of the laundry humans, t-shirts are hung.

It is difficult to get used to not paying after meals and taking drinks out of one theme area into another theme area. Here, we can go to a bar, then go back to our room to make a drink, then go back up to the bar to drink it. No one minds. I do not accept this as fact. It is a fact. I do not accept it.

I saw an incredibly large pair of underwear on an incredibly large woman who had just had a massage and came to join me in the sauna. In my opinion, there was no light on. She agreed, I sat by the door, so if I died, someone could at least catch a glance from the light in the hall. She had clearly just had her first massage and said how crazy it was that they wanted her to go to the steamroom and then into the sauna and how they didn’t warn her about having a bathing suit and now her underwear were going to get wet. She was also very modest and blown away by the sauna and “how does anyone lay down in here!” She then very shyly asked if she could take her top off. Her top was a towel, but whatever. She then tried to explain why and how she just needed to dry off and that I shouldn’t stay longer than 3 to 5 minutes, even though the hourglass was clearly longer than 5 minutes in her opinion. I did not say “I’M AN LA WEIRDO! PLEASE STOP TALKING!!!” but I wanted to do that. We met another passenger couple who were from the Kentucky side of Cincinnati, one half of which was a woman who made her living working at VA hospitals all over the country. I have heard tales of VA hospitals. They aren’t happy ones, and usually involve cutting off the wrong leg. I said nothing and she pitied my parents for me getting a theater degree when I went to such an expensive school. We talked to a few Navy vets who now go on cruises. One couple was great, one was a large gentlemen who let us witness him eating potato chips from the inside of his mouth. So. We’ll see how long we fraternize with the passengers in this manner.

It is slightly unfortunate that we are now friends with dancers and ballerinas. One ballerina is regularly lifted each show. This would be more incredible if she didn’t weigh less than a 5th grader. Also the other cast person who dates one of the dancers told us how much they weigh. No one stabbed him in the face. This is because we lacked implements. So. We can be Goldilocks with giant naked women in the spa (porridge too hot) and tiny gorgeous dancers in our social circle (too cold). Don’t they eat Goldilocks?

ALSO:
The people watching is pretty much off the charts. It’s all kinda wonderful in a very specific way that if you are not sleeping or eating properly can make you very upset. The couple we met in the hot tub were very nice and here is what I remember of their conversation. First of all, she made it clear right away that they were NOT married but that this is their second cruise together. She ran VA hospital with 1400 employees and she is most interested in what goes on behind the scenes on the cruise ship. She was slightly stressed about feeding and bathing everyone and taking care of everyone’s clothes and all of that. They DID see the comedian from the night before, but had to leave after a while and she only saw part of it because she fell asleep “because she is diabetic and any spike in blood sugar will make you fall asleep and I had some red wine so forget it.” Her son went to a school near my hometown and he really loves Indy right now and it’s a great place for young people (this is wildly not true) but can still be by his mom but you know, not too close so that it’s annoying. The male half then talked about how his daughter would love to work on a cruise and then the female half informed us that we are allowing our parents to live vicariously through us (do you hear that parents??) and that p.s. that other hot tub really only works if you have a stone on your stomach, otherwise you’ll flap around. The male half then gave a long speech about how wonderful his daughter is and they both seriously inquired about how one goes about getting a job on a cruise ship because she’d be so good at it.