I overhear the conversation of the lady in the sauna on the deck of the stern. “My man couldn’t come with me on this cruise. He’s on probation. He can’t leave the state of Alabama!” she cackles.
***
The ride up and down Interstate 95 has become a bit of a grind for me during Thanksgivings. If traffic is smooth, the drive takes over seven hours, one way. But it is never smooth, not during Thanksgiving weekend. Inevitably, the vehicles all come to a complete halt at some point in South Carolina, both during the trip to North Carolina and then the trip back to Florida. A seven hour drive becomes nine to ten hours. 20 hours total of driving is just too much during a four day span.
So this year, I told my folks that I will plan to see them at Christmas, and booked a four day cruise from Jacksonville to The Bahamas.
I have never been on a cruise before, and I have never been outside the United States other than to Canada.
The cruise departs on the Carnival ship Fascination at 4pm on Thanksgiving. The weather is cold and windy. Checking in is a bit of a process. I stand in line, inching along through security, for about an hour and a half. Once on the ship, things still seem a bit claustrophobic. The cruise line serves a late lunch, and it becomes apparent to me that at least some of this experience is like being trapped in a giant, over-packed, floating Golden Corral buffet restaurant.
Many of these passengers look like Golden Corral is where they belong. Fat and boisterous, I watch them load their plates with food to even further pack on the pounds and expand their waist size.
I have come on this cruise alone, with the at least a faint hope of meeting a cute woman with whom I can pass the weekend.
Within a few minutes of standing in the buffet line, though, I realize that is going to be a long shot. I see only a handful of women whom I would care to meet, and they all have husbands or boyfriends guarding them. This is a Thanksgiving cruise, I remind myself. I should not have expected many singles. It looks like there are none my age or any younger. Also, there are a ton of kids on board.
Setting sail into the open ocean as the sun goes down, we pass under the Dames Point Bridge leading into Jacksonville. It is my first time being on a ship that will go completely out of sight of land. A strong, cold wind of 30 miles per hour pushes against the ship all night, and we dock in Freeport on Grand Bahama Island about 45 minutes behind schedule, at 12:45pm on Friday, November 28.
As part of the cruise, I booked what is called an on shore “excursion” through Carnival. I chose a 12 and a half mile bike ride around the Freeport area. Counting the tour guide and myself, only six people signed up for this. That really is not too surprising, given the builds and lifestyles of most of the people on board this ship.
But the bike ride is the highlight of the entire cruise for me. We ride through Port Lucaya, Taino Beach, and Fortune Beach before ending at the Garden of the Groves.
The bikes were pretty old and used, but they got us where we needed to go. The guide sort of laughed at me at the beginning of the ride when I asked for a helmet. He pointed out how flat the island was, saying the highest point is only 68 feet above sea level.
When no one else requests a helmet, I let it go. Once we get started, though, I know every single one of us should have been wearing a helmet. Traffic whisks by us only inches away at some points. In the Bahamas, they drive on the opposite side of the road than in the U.S., and the passing lane is reversed to be on the inside rather than the outside. We also ride over rocks and uneven ground.
During one moment, I catch sight of a tree that I have never seen before- an Australian pine, not native to the Bahamas. It distracts me, and I swerve a little, almost into the path of an oncoming car.
Still, the wind in my hair, the small downhill coasts, the beautiful blue shades of the water, and the feeling of freedom that comes from being on a bike make this a moment that I am unlikely to forget.
***
Night life is amusing on the boat. Kids run around everywhere. It is an unfortunate part of my temperament that I do not like children. I have never wanted kids, and more than one woman has ceased dating me once that fact became known to them.
There are over 700 children on this ship. I cannot walk 20 yards without one of them getting in my way, not paying attention to where they are going. And then the parent shouts, “Watch out, Josh! Look where you’re going!”
The kids remain oblivious.
The only place on the ship where I can find refuge is the Serenity Lounge at the stern. You must be 21 or older to come here. In the Serenity Lounge on the first night of the cruise, I almost get into real conversations with a couple of attractive women. But then their husbands or boyfriends alertly come and whisk them away, and I do not see them in this part of the ship again for the rest of the cruise. I have to smile that, after the first night, on a packed cruise ship, I find that I drink alone at the bar in the Serenity Lounge. There are other bars on the ship where people have gathered- with their kids running around behind them, of course.
The bartender in the Serenity Lounge is who I talk to the most. He is from Indonesia, and will not see his own wife and kids until February, he tells me. He is thin and a very hard worker, just like all the other employees on the ship. Most are Asian and their lean physiques are in stark contrast to the passengers on board.
I ask the bartender if he likes his work, if he likes traveling on a cruise ship.
“It’s a job, sir,” he tells me.
I ask him if he is looking forward to the end of this cruise. To my surprise, the last day of a cruise is one of the hardest, he tells me. There is no break. They have to load on more supplies and get ready for the next cruise, which will depart the same day that we dock back in Jacksonville.
During one of my walks through the ship, I stumble across a break area for the employees. All of them are smoking, and most have headphones hooked up to an iphone. They are oblivious to their surroundings.
The bartender has two young children.
“Do you want your children to come to America?” I ask him. “Are there opportunities for them in Indonesia?”
“I would like for them to come to America,” he answers me, “but not by working on a cruise ship.”
He looks around at the empty bar. “You should come back in the summer,” he tells me. “November and December are very slow months for this bar on the ship.”
On deck at night, the moon is beautiful over the dark water. My room has a TV channel that shows the location of the ship on the globe, sunset time, sunrise time, wind speed and direction, the speed of the ship, and ocean depth.
When I see on the television that the depth of the ocean is close to 9000 feet, I head out to the stern.
No one is out here. The wind blows strong. There are no surveillance cameras. I lean against the railing, trying to fathom that the bottom of the sea is almost two miles down.
I also realize that if the railing were to give way, I would be gone- simply gone. No one would see me go overboard. And I cannot swim. It would be a painful and most terrifying death.
I look out over the black horizon of the water.
“This is really the stuff of nightmares,” I say to myself.
“Isn’t it a wonder?” I hear a voice say behind me.
A young African American woman comes down the stairs from an upper deck.
“It’s a wonder, and it’s a little scary,” I say.
“People can choose to look at this and be scared. But I am just in awe,” she says. “You think you are in control of your life, and then you see all this and you realize: You are not in control.”
I nod my head in slight agreement, not willing to make the next jump that I know she does, that there is a God who loves us who is in fact in control of it all.
***
On Saturday morning, I awaken to find us in the port of Nassau on New Providence Island. Nassau is the capital of the Bahamas.
After a shower, I am about to get dressed to explore the city. I discover that all of my polo shirts are missing from the closet. I search all over the room, but they are nowhere to be found. The only conclusion that I can come to is that the housekeeping staff has stolen them when they came into clean my room.
I put on a t-shirt (the only type of shirt that I have, now) and some shorts, leave my room and go to the first Carnival cruise employee that I can find- a young girl setting up a food bar.
“Excuse me,” I say to her. “Who should I talk to? I need to report that some things have been stolen from my room.”
She gives me a look like I have just accused her personally.
“Sir, you just need to go and talk with guest services.”
Once I find that desk, I try to remain as calm and polite as possible. The man at the desk, a fellow from New Zealand, takes me to the side to complete the report.
“What exactly is missing?”
“Three Polo styled shirts: A red one, a blue one, and a garnet one.”
I catch him almost rolling his eyes. He types in my answers to a computer.
“Do you know the brand?”
“Izod. I-Z-O-D.”
“How old are they?”
“About a year.”
“How much were they worth new?”
“$25-$30, I think.”
I note that he never once refers to the shirts as stolen. He calls the head of housekeeping on a phone, and asks her to look for them.
Once that conversation is over, he says to me, “We don’t call security unless you insist.”
This seems like an odd thing to say to me. Obviously, you have a thief in your housekeeping staff. I do not say this out loud, but I am sure he can tell that is what I am thinking, especially after I tell him that I do not want any more room service for the rest of the cruise.
“We’ll keep this ticket open. Hopefully, the shirts will turn up. If you happen to find them, please let us know so that we can stop looking,” he says.
“Of course,” I answer.
***
I have had things stolen from me a few times in my life, and it is never a good feeling, of course. This has left a bad taste in my mouth about Carnival Cruise Lines, and about the guy who cleans my room.
Stepping off the ship into the crowded port of Nassau, I put my wallet in my front pocket with my hand over it, and try to forget about my shirts.
Bay Street is the main tourist area. It runs east and west. This is not genuine Nassau. Shops like these, t-shirts and jewelry- one can find anywhere (though I later learn the Bahamas is a great place to purchase diamonds in part because there is no sales tax and DeBeers deals directly with the merchants).
I have about four hours before I need to be back on the ship and it sets sail. I decide to walk south, away from the coast, for an hour and a half or two hours, and then turn around and head back.
The walk south goes uphill, and I get a decent view of the harbor to the north. From my map of Nassau, I see that there are several embassies nearby, and I think I spot one- though I cannot tell what country it represents.
The city changes once I begin the downhill walk. Now, I am getting into the area where the native Bahamians actually live. This is what I want to see.
I come to a park with a baseball field. I consider getting my camera out and taking a picture, but then think better of it. Three guys are sitting around the edge of the park, and they watch me. Though it is near 80 degrees, they wear hoodies, with the hood pulled up over their heads.
I know I look like a tourist with my backpack and my bright Florida State baseball cap- not to mention my white skin.
Instincts tell me to not stop to take a picture. Keep moving.
Further down the street, a car pulls into the small parking lot of a shop. The lady who gets out looks at me with curiosity before going inside.
As I walk and get nearer to the business, she comes back out and hops in the driver’s seat. As I pass, she shouts to me from her open window, “Excuse me, sir?”
I turn to look at her.
“Are you a tourist?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“Then you need to turn around and head back in the direction you came. You are in a dangerous neighborhood and you look like a target, especially wearing that gold watch.”
I immediately decide to take her advice.
“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that.”
“Stick to Bay Street,” she says. “That’s the safe place for tourists.”
“Okay.” I nod and smile and start to walk away.
“Love you!” the woman says.
As I walk back past the park, one of the guys in the hoodies crosses the street and is about 30 yards behind me. I am not sure if he is following me, but I think about what I am going to do if there is a confrontation.
The stolen shirts are still fresh in my mind, and the theft is a source of irritation and anger.
Even more, I am agitated and frustrated that things have not gone as I hoped over the past few weeks with a girl that I like back in Florida. I was happy around her. It is particularly painful because I feel like she got to know me well, perhaps better than any woman has ever known me. And then she quite suddenly chose to stop being around me and go with another man. It was and is a shock to my system. It is the kind of pain that drains hope from my soul of ever meeting a woman that I can trust. It is the kind of pain in my body and mind that creates a sort of madness behind my eye sockets… I look forward to when these feelings subside.
Anyway, I decide that I am done being the victim for today. If this hoodie guy comes up to me and demands that I give him my wallet or watch or something, then I am going to forcefully tell him what he can go do with himself. He is going to have to knock me down to get those things.
If the situation escalates and he pulls out a knife or a gun- well, then I like to think that I have the bravado to play out the end game right here. “Murdered in Nassau” has a colorful ring to it for the final chapter of my life. I think I would prefer that ending to something like “Died alone in a nursing home after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s.”
So, I walk along for a little while longer, and then quite deliberately turn and stare back at the guy, trying to make eye contact with him. He becomes squirrely at my movement, and looks down and away from me. I continue walking. When I turn again, he is gone. I make my way back to Bay Street.
***
Now that I only have t-shirts to wear, I know that I need one or two nicer shirts for dinners on the ship. The food at dinner time is my second favorite part of the trip, behind my bike ride in Freeport. I do not eat much during the day, when the food is obviously of cheaper quality, to save my appetite for the high quality evening meal. I have lobster tail once, during the captain’s dinner where everyone dresses in formal attire. And every night I have multiple helpings of broiled Atlantic salmon, jumbo shrimp cocktail, artichoke dip, pumpkin bisque, Italian minestrone, onion soup, escargot (for the first time), steamed white rice, and for dessert, melting chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, or amaretto chocolate cake with butter pecan ice cream.
It amuses and amazes me that, with all this great food on the dinner menu, I watch some families order nothing but loads of pizza and French fries.
I do not want to wear a t-shirt to these dinners, so in Nassau, back on Bay Street, I stop in "Senor Frog’s", a chain of bars in the Caribbean. Senor Frog’s also sells a line of clothing, and I look at a golden colored collared button down shirt made of rayon. The shirt is about the perfect size off the rack.
“Does rayon shrink?” I ask the attendant.
She gives me a warm smile. “No, that shirt should not shrink when you wash it.”
So I buy it for $32 and wear it to dinner.
After dinner, I step out on the stern deck of the Serenity Lounge, looking at the stars and the sea. A pretty woman in a red bikini sits alone in the sauna, and for a little while it is just the two of us. She smiles at me.
Drink in hand, I am waiting for the liquid courage to kick in so that I can go up and talk to her more easily.
Before it does, though, a man whom I overhear is her husband joins her in the sauna, along with another couple. I cannot help but overhear a story that the guy from the other couple tells:
“So they had given me ecstasy. And I had never taken that before. Man, when I got on that drug, I was freaking out. I picked up a butcher knife and was just walking around the house. I knew I was going to cut somebody or cut myself. They tried to get the knife away from me, but I didn’t want to give it up. Finally, they got the butcher knife away and got me to lie down on the couch. Man, I laid there, looking up at the ceiling fan, for seven hours. I didn’t blink that entire time. I was just staring at it. My eyes dried out so bad… Ecstasy’s a powerful drug, man.”
Everyone in the sauna goes on to share some stories of their own drug experience.
I sigh.
I cannot relate to that. I have no stories to tell from a drug experience. In the dating world, I think that makes me a bit of a square. Everyone, it seems, everyone has used drugs, and many continue to do so. It does not matter your station in life. Whether you are homeless or whether you are a lawyer, whether or not you are religious and go to church- everyone has used drugs. The hypocrisy of what I see from this every day in my job is really disgusting. Rich people with drug problems can check themselves into an expensive rehab and are treated with kid gloves. Poor people caught with drugs by the police get prison.
I suppose church might be the best place to find women who do not want you to use drugs with them, but I cannot force myself to get high on Jesus with them, either. And just saying something like that makes them angry and ends any hope of getting along… It is what it is.
One of the waiters has noticed that I am sailing alone. I can tell he is from an Asian country like Indonesia or the Philippines. His English is not the best.
“Mr. Nathan, you should come back on cruise at different time,” he says to me one night at dinner. “Too many kids on this cruise. December will be the same, lots of kids. You should come in February. What is the holiday you have in February?”
“Valentine’s Day?” I ask.
“Yes!” he exclaims. “More people like you on that cruise. No kids.”
I laugh. “I don’t think a Valentine’s Day cruise would work out too well for a guy sailing alone, either.”
My response goes completely over his head, though.
“You come back in February, Mr. Nathan,” he repeats. “What is holiday again?”
“Valentine’s Day.”
“Yes!” he exclaims again.
We shake hands when I leave dinner for the last time. He smiles, and we wish each other good luck.
***
Back in my room, as I undress for the night, I notice a small closet door, away from the main closet. A memory comes rushing back to me.
“Oh, no.”
I open the door to the small closet and sure enough, there are all of my Izod shirts hanging on the rack. I forgot that I had put them all in here.
I immediately get dressed again, head to the front of the ship and the Guest Services Desk, and apologize.
The next time I see the steward who cleaned my room, I apologize to him personally and tip him some money. He seems to want to have nothing to do with me, though, and I cannot blame him. I almost wish the shirts had been stolen, now, so that I would have been right in my assumption.
***
After the cruise, when I arrive back home in Live Oak, I do a load of laundry. My golden "Senor Frog's" shirt shrinks too much to be wearable, and largely disintegrates in the clothes dryer.
***
One of the prettiest sights on the cruise is sunset on November 30. We are well out to sea, and so the sun actually goes down over the water.
Along various points on the horizon, clouds shower rain into the sea as the sun sets.
I have heard some stories about the ocean flashing green right at the point when the disc of the sun drops below the horizon. It is depicted in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so I watch carefully for this.
Right as the sun goes down, I notice that when I blink, the ocean toward the horizon appears to be a different shade of blue, and close to green. It only happens when I blink and only lasts an instant. I guess that it is because the rods and cones in my eyes are a little off in discerning color from watching the setting sun for a couple of minutes straight. Perhaps that is what people are seeing when they claim to see a green flash. But who knows?
I am glad that I went on this cruise, and I look forward to more adventures in traveling. I think if I sail again, though, I will see if I can book a singles cruise.
