Gymnasts. Olympiads. Okay.

We went to see Cirque Bijou last night, which I would like to say is filled with a bunch of lies. I could really insist that it was lies and real life animation if I didn’t talk to the people afterwards who oh, flung themselves around on silks and did crazy I-will-hold-myself-parallel-to-the-floor-with-just-my-arms-and-stomach-muscles. I also did laundry with the woman from Belarus who speaks English and Italian and was in the Atlanta Olympics for the ribbon and ball business. She is very friendly and married to the Italian who tans standing up. Then she gets on stage and does things like, oh dislocate her hip and rip her knee tendons while her husband is holding her above his head via his pointer finger. So they are probably drawings, clay, or stop motion aliens.

After that insane show, we waited to leave and a chatty American man who we found out was 50, sitting in the row below us, stood up to leave. He turned to the couple next to me, separated by one empty chair and said “Where are you from!” They said “ehm?” and he said “Where you from!” Then the wife said very quietly, “France.” Which made the guy lose his mind and start a tirade. “Oh France! Where in France!” She quietly said, “ehm, est?” Which I know means East, and also “I barely speak English.” Unfortunately the American guy said “Oh yeah! You guys hate Americans, right! You don’t like Americans!” and the people didn’t respond that I could hear, and he leaned in and said “You know I’ve never seen Europe, can you believe it, 50 years old and I’ve never seen it, I gotta get over there. You think France would be good to see, huh?” And they must have said “uh…” and he said “Cause I hear Paris is beautiful, but they sure don’t like Americans there, that’s what I hear. But you like ‘em, right? You think they’re okay.” And they must have said “uh…” a little more and he said “yeah, ‘cause you’re young. It’s the old ones that don’t like us, but you guys’re young” and then thankfully his row started moving. Then he spanked his wife’s ample bottom and got a little further along and said to a cast mate “where’re you from!” and someone said “Michigan” or something and he said “Thank God, Americans!” The French couple next to me talked quietly and then jumped a row to get out of there as fast as possible.

We then went to the bar and had some drinks on the cruise director. In the genius of cruise ships, mixed drinks are almost always doubles, so soon 2 cast mates were dancing via bumping butts and the couple behind them at the bar was laughing and we all met. This couple was Bob and Shirley, both from Florida. Since it is a cruise, I immediately assume everyone has been married for 30+ years, although Bob and Shirley seemed a little stiff and like they had way too much plastic surgery for someone who isn’t a talk show host or on tv or something. Bob lives in Daytona Beach and has been racing Nascar for 35 years and Shirley is originally from Terre Haute. Bob bragged that her opening line to him was “Do you do windows?” and they’ve been together ever since. Conversation waned a little bit and he said “I’ll let you get back to your friends” which I found slightly embarrassing, especially since I wanted to talk more about Nascar. That’s when a castmate who was drinking an apple martini purchased by Bob informed me that Bob and Shirley met a week ago and we were interrupting a date. Heh.

I talked to another gymnast/dancer I know from a different ship. He was a dancer for a year at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. He did the can-can, “126 kicks per show” six days a week, two performances a night. My mind exploded and I wanted him to tell all the stories possible, although I mainly got “there was a lot of cocaine” and “it’s very social there, cocaine, and cheap! So cheap.” Apparently they would do the show, go to a party, go to an after party that would start at 6 a.m. and then an after-after party that would start at noon, then sleep for 3 hours at 5 p.m. and get up and do another show. I prefer stories about costumes and dance steps.

We ended the night in a cabin party around 2 a.m. A cabin party is basically college, but with a bunch of foreigners. We went to the 2nd Engineer’s room, a guy from Romania (? Ukraine?) named Bolag or something. Bolav? We have been taught about the engineers, that the chief makes upwards of $40,000 a month and typically does a great deal of female engineering. It felt like 40 people were crammed in a closet, all going “BLAH BLAH BLAH HAHAHA” at once. Borav djed on his computer and an Eastern European guy in white gave a Filipino girl a weird lap dance and a dancer said “I’M GOING TO MAKE HIS TOWELS SMELL AND I DON’T CARE” and smoked in the tiny bathroom. I had to think about how it was boring and strange and how delicious room service is. Then we went back to a castmate’s room and yapped about who are decent musicians and who are crap and who are incredible, which is a good way to start an arguement.