Setting The Scene

To my newest audience, all one or two of you, let me bring you up to speed. My name is Scott. I like to travel. I like to write about it. I do my best to make it interesting. After all, if you’re anything like me (at the ripe age of 21, my biggest dream is to get a vasectomy), there’s little else to do with yourself. So indulge me for a bit, as I try to make the mundane exciting and the insane digestible.

Disclaimer: Names are pretty much unchanged, with one or two exceptions. Fuck your privacy, we need a good laugh at your expense.

Lets set the scene. As I’ve said, I’m 21. It’s winter break, before the start of my very last semester in college. The basic plan is to go home to Long Island – a small semi-wealthy town called Syosset, but to help those who don’t know New York geography, and to hide my shame from the ones who do, I say I’m from Queens – then a 5-day Caribbean cruise with my middle-aged 50-something divorcee father, a brief weekend joint up to Boston to visit an old school friend, and a return to New York to round out the rest of break before going back to St. Louis and my inescapable (barring a few F’s) fate. A simple enough plan, but varied enough to keep the attention of my ADD-addled brain weighs on average 3 pounds, about 2% of my total body mass…

Right, enough exposition.

Skipping my week in the unmentionable place, I start my story in JFK Airport, one of two JFK-related sites I’d hit before my trip was over, well before sunrise on a Monday morning. My father, naturally, was a bit grumpy. I was high strung, as I tend to be when I break the 24-hour mark. The airport was strangely busy for this early hour, so we passed the time in our own ways; him being the strong silent type, and me fucking with security. At JFK, they talk to so many different types of people, they don’t notice when you go from New Yorker to Southerner to Irish to Australian in the span of 30 seconds. I’d be envious of them if they weren’t security guards.

Does that help you get acquainted with me? I hope so, because I’m just going to fast forward to the boat. You don’t really want me to waste your time describing how I asked my flight attendant with the drink cart if she knew how to mix a fuzzy navel or a dirty sanchez, or how I loudly called out “Mullet!” whenever I saw one (a common occurrence in the Tampa airport), or how I tried to place bets with the people on the bus over what tree species we were driving past. No, lets just get to the fun part, the ship.

Points if you catch that bad joke, free blowjob if you laugh at it.

Speaking of blowjobs, here’s another opportunity to tell you about myself. My life as a scientist has taught me to be observant and experiment in all aspects of life. So much of this trip (and by extension, this blog), is observation and experimentation. But I bet you’re thinking about a different type of experimentation. No, don’t bother. That was a vacation many moons ago; by now, I’m quite comfortable in my deviance. But, suffice to say, as I walked the poolside Lido deck, I took in all the eye candy, girls and guys alike.

Except, the eye candy was in short supply. If you ever doubted America’s obesity epidemic, you only have to spend time on a budget cruise. I saw enough FUPAs to make my eyes bleed – Google it, or not. This cruise was far fatter than the cruise I’d been on as a child, a Princess cruise, Carnival’s high-end line. We used to be able to afford such things. But, besides the clientele, the boat and cruise were very much the same, right down to the menu. I assumed this meant that this boat too had a 24-hour pizza joint and room service. Because that’s exactly what these people need.

Turns out it wasn’t exactly the same. The food, while identical in name, was crappier in taste. But considering most passengers idea of classy was a box of Franzia with their deep-fried squirrel, I figured they’d hardly notice.

One more generality needs to be said about the cruise before I talk about what actually happened. See, this is a Carnival Fun Ship (get the joke now?), which means it’s meant for families. Nearly the entire roster consisted of parents and their children. My father and I were no exception, but most of these kids were preteen or younger. I felt like the only 18-25 year old on the entire boat, and I wasn’t that far off. We numbered maybe a dozen on a good day. However, the upshot of having a small group of peers was that we all kinda knew each other, Makes for more interesting dynamics, I’d hoped. We’ll see.