DUMB DUMB ASKED me if I wanted to go on a cruise for New Year's Eve. I had never been on an ocean journey before and was hesitant because Dumb Dumb was about as much fun as a lawn bowling tournament. Her idea of a good time was going to California Pizza Kitchen and ordering two appetizers instead of one. But in my never-ending mission to get her twenty-eight-year-old hymen popped, I agreed.
"Just you and me will go," she said.
"No fucking way," I said. "I'm inviting Ivory and Lydia too."
"Fine," she said, "but they're not going to want to come with me."
She was right. Lydia and Ivory both told me they'd rather spend New Year's Eve at a Michael Bolton concert and that I was an idiot for having agreed to go in the first place. Upon hearing their totally rational refusals, I rethought my decision and tried to weasel my way out of the deal by telling Dumb Dumb I had a great opportunity to feed the homeless on New Year's and would have to cancel. An hour later I found Dumb Dumb crying in her room. I hate when people cry, especially when it's my fault, so not only did I agree to go with her, I ended up paying her way. Now who's the dumb dumb? I thought.
Right from the start, Dumb Dumb was way too excited about this trip. It's all she talked about for the next three weeks. She went on and on about the fun we were gonna have and all the hot men we would meet. I made her promise to at least let someone feel her boobs or I would tell everyone on board that she was still a virgin.
"You better not!" she yelled. "I'd kill you! Do you think I'll meet someone? Do you think I will? What if I meet my husband on the cruise ship? It's going to be so romantic!"
She would put on one fashion show after another in our apartment, modeling sarongs and different bikini tops.
"What do you think? Do you like the sarong with the polka dots or the one with the sun signs?"
She was exhausting. I was dreading this stupid cruise more than I had dreaded DUI school. It didn't help that Lydia and Ivory had made plans to go away to Aspen on a ski trip with Hugh Grant.
On her final runway walk, she modeled a bikini top with something that looked very similar to a pair of Dolphin shorts that were two sizes too small. If she walked around in that, I'd have to start calling her "Camel Toe."
"Listen, Camel Toe, I mean Dumb Dumb," I explained, "there are going to be a lot of opportunities on this cruise for you to meet someone, so I want you to prepare some conversation topics to bring up."
"I know how to talk to people, Chelsea," she responded.
This couldn't be farther from the truth. The only people Dumb Dumb could relate to were children and slow adults. And unless someone had watched every episode of The Bachelor, or TLC's A Wedding Story, Dumb Dumb was stumped for talking points. She watched reality shows over and over, and not just the original episodes but also reruns of the same episodes, and if TiVo didn't record something she had already seen, she would call her father to ask if he could somehow fix it from New Jersey. I had seen The Bachelor once and decided I wanted to do my own version of the show. It would involve me having sex with all the contestants and then eliminating them based on their penis size. Then, during my rose ceremony, I would wear some shimmery satin Nicole Miller design, preferably in eggplant, and I would say, "Leroy, Tyrone, and Jamal, will you accept these rose?"
I was not looking forward to this trip at all, and the closer we got to New Year's the better everyone else's plans sounded. "It's gonna be amazing, we're gonna meet so many guys," Dumb Dumb would say, ad nauseam.
"Shut up, already! You act like we're going to a man park. If you have high expectations you're only going to be disappointed," I told her. I had very low expectations and felt as if I was definitely going to be disappointed. Plus, I didn't know if I could handle this much alone time with Dumb Dumb. Her earnestness brought out a frightening violent side of me. I would try hard not to yell at her, but it was a constant challenge and I had never been stuck with her for more than a couple hours straight.
"Guess what? You are going to die!" Dumb Dumb exploded. She had just gotten back from the travel agent with our tickets. "It's a booze cruise and we're going to Ensenada!"
I was hoping I would never visit Ensenada again. It's not a place you need to see twice. I had been there a few years before on some overnight adventure with two guys I met at a bar the same night, and I remembered not eating for twenty-four hours. The whole city smelled bad and I'm not a big fan of buying blankets and parkas that have been lying on the pavement. I didn't understand the Mexicans' mentality and wondered how they could be so close to civilization and yet not know about the hard taco shell.
"It's a booze cruise!" she wailed again.
"You don't even drink," I reminded her.
"Well, I will if it's a booze cruise. This is gonna be the most fun ever!"
I excused myself to my room and called my mother in a panic.
I explained to my mother that if I continued along my path of despair, I knew I would end up hurting Dumb Dumb either mentally or, more likely, physically. I also admitted to being a part-time smoker and that I would be forced to take it up more seriously if forced to vacation with Dumb Dumb. My mother told me that life isn't always about pleasing yourself and that sometimes you have to do things for the sole benefit of another human being. I completely agreed with her, but reminded her that that was what blow jobs were for. She said that Dumb Dumb was a twenty-eight-year-old virgin who was looking at this like the vacation of a lifetime, and that I needed to have a positive attitude rather than sulk and think nasty thoughts. It was curious to me that my mother could have such wise insights, but when finding a joint in my room years earlier blurted out, "Oh this is just fantastic. So now you're smoking cigarettes?" My mother went on to say how fortunate I was to have been exposed to so much and that I should support people who were less cultured. My mom made it sound like I was a debutante who had just been accepted to the Sorbonne and that Dumb Dumb had been born on the New Jersey Turnpike. I liked this inference and decided to adopt a new attitude.
It's funny how things work. If you pretend to be excited about something you're not looking forward to, eventually you will start to believe it. Within days, I was on an absolute high talking about the adventures we would have on board our cruise ship. I didn't even blink when I heard Dumb Dumb mention that we would be sailing on the Carnival Cruise line. "Sounds great!" I said with my teeth tightly clenched; I was not going to allow myself to say anything negative about the cruise line or that maniac, Kathy Lee Gifford.
I started imagining all the ballrooms there would be for me to model my new Roberto Cavalli shoes in. I had no dress to wear with them, but I hoped to find something at Express. I pictured a wonderfully romantic episode of The Love Boat. I would be on the Lido Deck late one starry night in an evening gown looking for the Big Dipper, when a Leonardo DiCaprio look-alike would come up and take me from behind. We would be on the bow and spread our arms out to the sea, and I would yell, "You are the king of the world!"
And who knew what kind of exciting outdoor activities they had? Everyone had told me about all the amazing food on cruises; I couldn't wait to gorge myself on rack of lamb and fresh lobster. Dumb Dumb asked me if I thought they caught the fish right out of the ocean and then served it on board that night. "Probably," I responded. "It seems like the most logical thing to do."
I believed in this cruise and knew it was going to be fun. I daydreamed about all the different love connections that would be made on different floors of our ship. People in and out of cabin doors in the wee hours of the night, walking down the plush red carpets, while upstairs in the Grand Ballroom I would be closing down the dance floor with my new Leo look-alike to a covered rendition of Carly Simon's "Give Me All Night."
Dumb Dumb even agreed to buy a book for the cruise- something she could read while we were lying out in between pool dips. We went to a Barnes and Noble, where I picked up an unauthorized biography of M. C. Hammer, and not wanting to overload her on her first book, I steered Dumb Dumb toward a Choose Your Own Adventure.
The cruise was a four-day, three-night voyage that left from Long Beach and returned on New Year's Day. The morning of the cruise we needed to check in at the dock at nine A.M. I had been in such high spirits leading up to the trip that it was no problem for me to get up at seven-thirty to be there on time, sporting my amazing new attitude while doing so. I was rethinking my whole approach to this game they called Life. Maybe Dumb Dumb was not so stupid after all. Happiness is a choice. I had only just begun preaching my new belief system to Ivory and Lydia, who suddenly and inexplicably stopped speaking to me.
When we got to the dock, we went to Customs and showed our identification. As if loads of Americans were illegally trying to immigrate to Mexico. We checked our bags and got on line with some of our fellow passengers. Judging from the looks of them, it was clear that they were members of a different income bracket from the people I preferred to surround myself with. But since I also wasn't from the income bracket I preferred, I held off on voicing my initial feelings of despair. I was going to give this cruise my best shot. I pointed to a guy standing at the end of the line. "That guy was just totally checking you out," I lied.
"Really?" she asked. "Where?"
"Over there, over there." I pointed again. She saw him.
"He's not even that cute," was her reply. He wasn't that cute, but she was no Miss New Jersey either, so I was surprised at her laissez-faire attitude. I hoped she wasn't thinking about dabbling in my pool of men. I had been at this game awhile and knew my male equivalence. She obviously didn't realize that you needed to stay within realistic boundaries. Dumb Dumb had a few extra pounds on her and, as far as I could tell, wasn't in any hurry to lose them. She wasn't fat, but she wasn't going to be exposing her belly in a half shirt anytime soon without people quickly looking away.
"Well, someone seems to be very picky there, missy," I said.
"I have a good feeling about this cruise," she told me. "I just know I'm going to meet someone."
I knew there was a better chance of me giving birth to a penguin than Dumb Dumb meeting her soul mate aboard this cruise ship, but my new loving heart prevailed. My main focus was going to be getting her penetrated, or at least fondled. My second objective would be getting myself penetrated. My mother had convinced me that I was a giver, and though I had my doubts, I took on my new role with pride.
As we walked the plank to board the vessel, that pride made a quick exit and I started to get the feeling you get right after a bad batch of sushi: nausea, not unlike sea sickness, but this was more of a visceral disgust. This boat was a fucking mess. The feculent aroma coming from what I could only conjecture was the carpet was a smell I had experienced once before when waking up in a bar. The carpets had some horrible psychedelic design that appeared to be silk-screened on top in a fruitless attempt to cover the wide assortment of stains.
Some of the crew members were wearing blue shirts with the Carnival logo on them and some crew members were just wearing their own clothing with a name tag and a Carnival Cruise pin. Some had their shirts tucked in, some didn't. The crew looked completely disinterested, almost mentally off somehow, and there were framed photographs on the wall of more disinterested employees, all of which were crooked. Most of the crew members didn't even look eighteen. I began to have serious concerns about the kind of operation they were running.
Dumb Dumb grabbed my arm and said, "Let's just go to our room, we have a suite." I couldn't respond because I was still in a state of shock, overwhelmed by a disgust that can only be associated with deep disappointment or a keen sense of smell.
We went to our cabin, which meant hiking up four flights of stairs and down a hallway that was barely wide enough to fit one person-who was walking sideways. Where was this piece of shit boat when they were filming The Love Boat? We opened our door to find a pair of bunk beds and a porthole with glass so thick it was impossible to decipher whether the blue on the other side was the ocean or the sky.
"Is that our ocean view?" I asked Dumb Dumb as I tripped over the threshold. Apparently, we were moving.
"Oh, my gosh," she said. "This is pretty bad." She started to laugh. I did not.
"I can't stay here," I said. "I can't do it."
"It's not that bad," she said. "We can't leave. The ship has already left the dock."
"We'll have to swim to shore," I told her.
"Stop it! It'll be like a great big adventure!" she said.
I needed to find Captain Stubing right away-and Isaac and the doc. Where was that coked-up whore, Julie? Those were my peeps. I wanted to stay in their big, grand bedrooms with king-sized beds and a maid service.
After I regained my composure, I realized it was time to formulate a plan. Step one was to start drinking immediately. I was always more logical when I drank. Step two was to devise a means of escape.
We dropped our bags and I went to the bathroom to check in with myself. The bathroom was about four feet by four feet with a toilet that you had to step over to get into the shower. I stared intently at this absurd setup, trying to figure out where to put my legs while peeing as there were only about two inches between the front of the toilet and the bathroom wall. I opted to put my feet in the shower as I sat sideways on the toilet seat. I called Dumb Dumb in so she could witness what this cruise was really about.
"Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh! How are we supposed to go to the bathroom?" she asked.
"Is this your fucking suite} This is what I paid nine hundred dollars for?"
"I am so sorry. I'll pay for my end. You don't have to pay for me," she said.
"Good. I'd like it in cash," I told her.
We left our "suite" to go check out the ship and get some drinks in us. Dumb Dumb picked up an activities pamphlet, which informed us that the casino would open as soon as we left the California border. Things were looking up. Gambling was a favorite pastime of mine, and combined with being on water, memories of my favorite movie, Porky's, flooded into my brain. We went to exchange our money for gambling chips and waited on line behind a woman who was wearing two fanny packs around her waist and missing a front tooth.
After that, we made our way up to the Lido Deck, where we checked out the pool situation and got some drinks at the bar. There was a man sitting at the bar with hair down to his waist and wearing cutoff black jeans. The problem with his hair was that the better part of his head was bald, and the long stringy hair that remained was coming from behind his ears.
I went up to the only bald man with split ends I had ever seen and asked him how to get a drink around here.
"I'll get it for you," he replied.
"Do you work here?" I asked.
"Sometimes," was his response.
Dumb Dumb grimaced, but I pressed on. "I'll take a Ketel One with anything. Two of them."
"Where's the pool?" I asked our bartender. He pointed behind us toward a circular tank that looked like something out of Sea World, except it had no water and was covered with a decorative red, white, and blue tarp. "Is that it?" I asked him.
"That's one of 'em. There's about four more all over, but it's off season so they're all closed up."
"Off season?" asked Dumb Dumb.
"Yes ma'am. November to February," he said as he handed us our drinks in plastic Dixie cups.
"Now do you want to swim to shore?" I asked Dumb Dumb.
We thanked Split Ends for our drinks before I realized they were made out of cheap vodka and Kool-Aid, which Dumb Dumb of course loved, because it reminded her of nursery school.
There was no one else on the Lido Deck, so we made our way down a couple of decks. When I spotted my third mullet, I told Dumb Dumb that we should just go back to our rooms and sleep.
"We should at least lie out," she said.
"It's not even sixty degrees out," I told her.
"That's when you get the best color," she told me.
We got our bathing suits and a dinner menu and went back up to the Lido Deck. Split Ends was still there. I asked him for a real vodka in a real glass but he told me they served only plastic except at dinner. He ignored my comment about the real vodka.
"When is dinner?" Dumb Dumb asked.
"You can eat at seven or at nine in the formal dining room," he said.
"Is the formal dining room formal?" I asked.
"Hell, yeah," he said. "No shorts, no sneakers, no half shirts."
"No problem," I said.
It was too windy to get into our bathing suits so we just sat on our plastic chaise longues in front of the tarped-up pool/ tank and stared at the sky. I thought about taking the tarp off and diving in headfirst; I'm sure I wouldn't have been the first. I tried calling 911, but my cell phone wasn't getting any reception. This was a disaster. My positive attitude had long since joined the witness protection program, but I tried to stay calm.
Dumb Dumb asked me which dinner seating I wanted to go to and I told her the seven o'clock one, because I hoped by nine to be unconscious. Apparently the casino wouldn't open until the next day (big surprise), so we just continued drinking. We passed out on our chairs or, as I like to say, put ourselves down for a nap, sometime after one and woke up to find ourselves surrounded by seagulls feeding on the peanuts left on the bar. Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, someone announced over the loudspeaker that a shuffleboard contest was starting on the Lido Deck in five minutes. It was time to move on.
We flipped through the boat's guide of idiotic activities and decided to play bingo in the Carnival Room at five. We sat next to a couple who told us they were getting married on the boat. This news sent Dumb Dumb into a tizzy.
"Married! That is sooo romantic. Where did you guys meet? How did you propose?" I wanted to remind Dumb Dumb that there was nothing romantic about getting married on a Carnival cruise or having matching ZZ Top shirts, but I didn't want to hurt their feelings.
This cruise was also going to be their honeymoon because the woman couldn't get more than a week off from the power plant where she worked. That was the last thing I heard before I yelled, "Bingo!"
"Shut up! Shut up! You got it?!" yelled the woman. The master of ceremonies pointed me out in the crowd and I stood up as everyone applauded.
"Just kidding," I said and walked out.
I was getting very drunk and needed fresh air. Dumb Dumb followed me, but I told her I needed to be alone. "Are you going to jump?" she asked.
"No, I'm not going to jump, but I need to eat soon. I'm wasted."
"Well, stop drinking," she told me.
"That's not really an option."
It was a quarter to seven as we walked outside to the Yellow Deck and walked a lap. Dumb Dumb suggested we run back to the room to get ready. "Get ready for what?" I asked her.
We headed to our assigned table in the dining room and saw three women in their midforties sitting there. "Great. Look at our table," I told her.
We sat down with the ladies at our round table, leaving us with five empty seats. "Hello, ladies," Dumb Dumb said and started the introductions. They were very sweet, prim and proper ladies who were clearly from some town with no television or magazines. "We're from Nebraska," one of the women said, which happened to be one of the states I suspected. The only surprise was that anyone would actually fly in for this cruise. They giggled devilishly as they told us they were on a "girls only" trip away from their husbands. I could tell the raciest things these women had ever been involved in was a co-ed game of Connect Four.
After about a minute of small talk, the skinny, dark-haired woman with the palest skin I'd ever seen asked, "Are you Christians?"
"Yes, I am Christian," said Dumb Dumb.
"Oh, how lovely," they said. "So nice to meet you." The women immediately warmed.
"No, you're not a Christian," I told Dumb Dumb. "You're Presbyterian. That's very different." This was so typical of Dumb Dumb. She didn't know anything about herself.
"Well, whatever," Dumb Dumb said. "I believe in Jesus Christ."
This is exactly why I didn't want to go on vacation with her. She had no loyalty. She was as bad as my sister Sloane. I didn't want to be the only nonbeliever at the table. Luckily, I was drunk enough to defend myself.
"I'm a Jew," I told them and ordered a double Ketel One and cranberry. Certainly the "formal" dining room served real vodka, I thought.
"That's nice," one of the women replied.
And just like that, as if I hadn't said anything at all, the ladies sprang into a conversation about the sinful nature the Jews possessed when killing their Lord Jesus. I didn't know if I was hearing this right because I had become so intoxicated, but I couldn't believe that anyone would talk about religion while on vacation. How could Miss Nebraska think this was a proper environment to discuss something so controversial? One woman went on to say that if she had her way, not only would President Bush serve a second four-year term, but she hoped they would overturn Roe v. Wade. This woman was obviously a menace to society and needed to be stopped.
"Excuse me," I interrupted, "I have a question. Is it okay to drink while you're pregnant…?/ you're planning on giving the baby up for adoption?" This time Dumb Dumb didn't follow me outside.
There were four Mexican guys hanging around on the Lido Deck. I will refer to them as "cholos" only because one of them was wearing a hat that said, "CHOLO."
"What's up, homeys?" I asked as I slid down in a chaise longue next to them. They were smoking pot out of something that looked like a cigar. "Is that a spliff?" I asked.
"Yes, mija, would you like to take a puff?" I had learned my lesson the hard way about laced marijuana and was too drunk to smoke marijuana that wasn't laced.
"No thanks, homey. You guys heading back to Mexico?"
One of the guys came over. "My name is Rico," he said. He wore white volleyball socks up to his knees with cutoff tan Dickies and a thick black belt. A white wife-beater tank top completed his outfit. His head was shaved, but he had a bushy mustache.
As Rico sat down next to me, I leaned over and violently threw up. His three friends backed away in disgust. I felt embarrassed but I couldn't stop heaving. I vaguely remember the three guys saying something about leaving, but Rico opted to stay by my side and hold my hair.
He finally moved me to where I could throw up over the balcony, and I spent the next four hours doing just that. I couldn't move an inch and he understood completely. At one point he took a rubber band out of his pocket and put my hair in a ponytail. This guy was turning out to be very dependable. Without him, there was a good chance I would've fallen overboard. He looked through my pockets to find my key, and around midnight, he said it was time for him to take me to my cabin.
"I'll sleep here, just leave me alone," I cried.
"No, mij a, you cannot sleep here. You will freeze like a turkey."
It was pretty cold, but I doubt I would have frozen, and I wished he hadn't brought up Thanksgiving.
After another hour I agreed to let him carry me back to my cabin, which was not an easy route to negotiate considering the narrowness of the hallways. People glared at us as he strode inside with me in his arms like a scene out of The English Patient and asked if everything was okay. I tried to answer them but could only slur.
As he opened the door to our room, Dumb Dumb flew to her feet in her Shrek pajamas and screamed, "Oh, my God, are you okay?" Then, "Who the fuck are you?"
"Calm down, mij a, I am just delivering your friend," Rico said.
"Get out," she screamed. "Heeeeeelp!"
"Yo, yo yo, chill lady, chill," he said and then turned around to leave as she picked up a shoe and hurled it in his direction.
"Thanks," I slurred as I heard the door shut. I climbed into the lower bunk bed. "Shut up, he took care of me," I told Dumb Dumb as I passed out.
When I woke up the next morning, feeling five pounds lighter, I informed Dumb Dumb that we needed to get off the ship at Ensenada and pay some Mexicans to drive us to Los Angeles. "I cannot spend New Year's Eve on this boat."
"No way, that's crazy. We could get raped," she said.
"Well, at least we'd have a good New Year's!" I yelled. Rape didn't sound as bad as spending another day on this cruise. "Think about it," I said. "I know they have those parasailing rides on the beaches in Mexico; maybe we could parasail back." Then I rolled over and went back to sleep.
"You can gamble now. We're in Mexico," Dumb Dumb said when she woke me up two hours later.
Immediately, I felt better. Since I would need a cheeseburger and a couple of hours to recover before my next cocktail, we headed to the cafeteria for lunch. I explained to her over the world's most disgusting cheeseburger that Rico had taken good care of me last night and that she shouldn't judge people based on their socks.
"I was scared. I didn't know where you were, and my father told me not to leave the cabin after dark," she said. It was no surprise to me that she had called her father. She called him several times a day in New Jersey to ask him things like whether it was going to rain in California and if it was okay to eat at Subway, the sandwich chain. My favorite piece of advice he had given her was to never use tampons and only wear maxipads because, "There's a killer out there, and its name is toxic shock syndrome. ' ' I wanted to tell her father that I was living proof that a tampon could survive inside of a woman for up to three days before any real symptoms flared up, but I was becoming more adept at picking my battles.
I asked Dumb Dumb if she thought any more about my idea for getting back to Los Angeles.
"My father said no way, it would be way too dangerous," she told me.
I thought about going it alone, but I couldn't leave her here on this ship by herself. Still, I couldn't believe this boat was where I was meant to wreak havoc on New Year's Eve.
"Fine," I said. "Let's go gamble. I'll teach you how to play blackjack."
I gambled for close to eight hours straight with Dumb Dumb standing guard. I was up four hundred dollars and was feeling great. She was too nervous to waste any of her own money, so finally I gave her one hundred dollars in chips and she played with that. She appeared to be winning, but she always bet the minimum amount, which was good because it meant she was occupied for a longer period of time.
I would have been happy gambling into the wee hours of the morning if necessary and asked our dealer how late he was open. "For the next thirty hours," he said, "until we get back to California." That's when the Scott Wolf look-alike walked past our table. I hadn't had anything to drink yet, and his presence alone was reason enough to celebrate. He wasn't as cute as Scott Wolf, but neither was anyone else on this cruise. He had lighter hair and a rather stocky physique for someone not much taller than five-five. Dumb Dumb elbowed me. We both knew he was by far the best-looking guy on this boat, and his smooth, soft skin reminded me of myself a couple of months earlier.
"Don't even think about it," I said through a tight smile. "You can have Rico."
I looked over at the boy who was saving my New Year's and said, "Excuse me, would you mind coming over here a minute?"
"Sure," he said and walked over to us.
"Is your name Kevin?" I asked him. This was my new favorite pickup line.
"No," he said.
"Really? Do I look familiar to you?"
"A little bit," he told me. That meant he was interested.
"Well this is Dumb Dumb and I'm Single," I told him.
"Shut up, that is not my name," she said.
He was laughing now and I knew I would have sex with him. "Do you have any friends with you?" I asked.
"Sure," he said. "A bunch of us will be at Club Paradise on the Upper Deck in about an hour. Would you like to join us?" I thought about reminding him that this was a cruise ship and if we did show up at Club Paradise it didn't necessarily mean we were joining him, but I kept my mouth shut.
"We'll meet you there," I said. He was very cute and I was elated. It turned out that, after all, showers would be necessary. "Let's go get ready," I told Dumb Dumb.
She was more excited than a chimpanzee holding a banana. "Oh, my gosh! This is amazing! Do you think his friends will be cute too? What should I wear? I'm so excited. I hope there's dancing."
I hoped there wasn't dancing, but I wasn't going to let that spoil my only chance of a hookup on New Year's. This would be my third New Year's in a row that I was single, and I wasn't going to let it go by without hooking up. If a fourth New Year's went by without any action I would be in an official slump.
We took showers with our flip-flops on in an effort to avoid direct contact with the carpet, and while we dressed, I drank three more plastic cups filled with vodka and switched to orange juice for some vitamin C. Having missed dinner on purpose in order to avoid another confrontation with John Ashcroft's wife, I downed a couple of Power Bars to ensure enough stamina on the dance floor. I looked hot and, most of all, skinny. I love the day after throwing up. I felt like a feather.
We went up to Club Paradise, which is an interesting name for anything on a ship that should have been sunk by a torpedo years earlier. I spotted my? version of Scott Wolf surrounded by a couple of other corpulent figures. They all had the same clean-cut college boy look going on, and they all seemed like they were in their early twenties. I was twenty-six at the time and figured I had to take what I could get at this point on my trip. It's not that my guy wasn't cute, but if we had been on land, his having a full set of teeth wouldn't have been an added bonus.
As usual, Dumb Dumb was clinging to me, so I made one of his friends ask her to dance. This gave me an opportunity to get my man alone. Plus, I don't like to make my moves in front of an audience.
His name was Les, which sounded like a child molester's name, but again I knew this was probably God testing me, and I had to take what was thrown my way. As soon as I saw Dumb Dumb start relaxing with her guy, I leaned in and asked Les if he had his own cabin.
"No, I'm sharing one," he said. "But my roommate is on the dance floor."
"Well, do you have bunk beds?" I asked him.
"Yeah, we do," he smiled in a cute, embarrassed way.
"You want to go back to your cabin and fool around?" I asked him.
"Absofuckinglutely," was his answer. I thought that was a pretty bold response for someone of such little stature. I was starting to like this guy more and more. I loved a man/ boy with confidence.
I told Dumb Dumb that Les wanted to show me his cabin and that I'd be back in an hour. She wasn't happy about it, so I gave her some food for thought. I explained that this cruise was going to be like a coming-out party for her and if she showed signs of maturing out of adolescence and into the beginning stages of adulthood, who knew how many more vacations together were in the cards for us. When that didn't seem to work, I promised her a year's subscription to Tiger Beat.
I was pretty buzzed from having almost nothing in my stomach and I needed some cardio. That's why when the door to Les's cabin hadn't even closed all the way and he had already thrown me onto the lower bunk bed, I showed no signs of a struggle. In fact, I was turned on by how forceful he was and could not imagine his penis being any smaller than a standard-sized lint brush. I was auditioning him for my New Year's Eve sex partner, and so far it looked like he was definitely getting a callback.
Boy, did I underestimate Les. Not only was his penis larger than average, he had the stamina of the Iraqi ground forces. He had the exact same physique as Serena Williams. Things were happening that even I couldn't keep up with. Before I knew it, not only were my clothes off, but somehow I was on the top bunk. Les launched into a vault across the room to the porthole, where he grabbed a condom and then triple saichowed back up to me. This guy belonged in the Olympics-and not the ones I would have qualified for. All of a sudden, he was on top of me. Just before we started having sex, he flipped me around and I was on all fours. I had never been manhandled like this before and was really enjoying myself. This cruise was turning out to be an episode of The Love Boat, after all; I would have to check tomorrow about availability for next year.
That's when Les hit me. Not a slap or a caress, just an open-handed full throttle strike against my right ass cheek. It was with such force that not only did I cough, I almost flew off the bed. In the couple of seconds it took me to remember his name, he hit me three more times, alternating ass cheeks.
"Hey! You! Stop that!" I managed to yell out.
"What's the matter?" he stopped to ask.
"Did you just hit me?" I turned to look at him so he wasn't staring at the back of my head.
"You don't like that?" he asked me in a soft voice. Now he was back to his original self.
"Well, I don't know, I guess… wasn't I doing good?" was the nonsense that left my mouth in the form of a question. Spanking was usually something you discuss beforehand. I felt a little violated and thought that after we were done I was going to be forced to make him a sandwich or something.
"You seem like you like it," he said breathing heavily. The truth was that I did kind of like it, but at the same time, it seemed so violent that I felt as if I should object. I was in a tailspin of confusion I hadn't experienced since the first time I heard George W. Bush speak. It wasn't that I didn't like confrontation. I did, but I had never had a disagreement during the act of sex before and I hadn't known Les long enough to have our first fight. I thought about hitting him back, but that seemed too manufactured. It was usually me calling the shots in bed, and I didn't know how to react to someone else taking the wheel. Especially when we were technically the same size.
"It's okay, I guess," I told him. And so it continued, for the next fifteen minutes until he climaxed which, coincidentally, also bordered on bearlike behavior.
"How old are you?" I asked him after we were done. I was lying on the top bunk and he had moved to the bottom. I was lonely and felt like making small talk. I had never been left so quickly after sex before, though I had done it many times to others. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, I began to realize what abandonment was all about.
"I'll be nineteen on January first," he told me.
"I really need to get back to my friend," I told him as I lunged off the top bunk, naked with one hand covering my vagina and the other covering my right boob. My left boob was out for the taking, but in an effort to avoid it getting hit, I turned and quickly put on my clothes.
In my drunken stupor I was still trying to figure out how I could have ended up in bed with an almost minor. This wasn't good at all. I had never slept with someone even a year younger than me and immediately felt like R. Kelly. How did a boy that young learn how to spank women? I feared that maybe he was lying about his age and wasn't even legal; images of the water police taking me off the ship in handcuffs and ankle weights swam through my mind.
The next night was New Year's Eve, and we decided to see a show called Swing, Swing, Swing since my gambling streak was over and I was now down two hundred dollars. As we were being seated, I saw Rico a couple of rows behind us. "Hey, Rico," I yelled, "corno te llamas?" He looked at me and my roommate and then made a gesture that was similar to the middle finger, but the Spanish version that tells someone you're not interested in speaking with them.
"You really pissed that guy off, now he won't even talk to us," I told Dumb Dumb. "Thanks for taking care of me!" I screamed out, and this time he made a gesture I hadn't seen before. I didn't understand why he was pissed at me. I never threw a shoe at him.
As the mangy curtains separated to start the show, the first person out on stage was a bare-chested male wearing green tights with a long run down one leg and a fake wreath on his head. He sprang onto the floor with a combination of two back handsprings followed by a half pike into a somersault. I would have recognized those moves at sea or on land. It was official: I had now hit my all-time low at the tender age of twenty-six. Not only did I sleep with an eighteen-year-old who hit me, but he was the lead in an abysmal cruise dance show called, Swing, Swing, Swing.
Maybe a real boyfriend wasn't the worst thing that could happen to a girl.