Writing via ship

The first thing I thought upon getting here was that I never truly realized how much I want to be a ship captain. The captain of this ship, his name sings Greek and he is truly the sort of mariner that would a thousand years ago be trading spices across the Aegean, or leading Triremes to try and sack Sparta. You get to wear an awesome uniform and your table in the grand resturaunt “The Manhattan Club” overlooks the miles of sea you’ve crossed. You get literally two waiters per person and I’m pretty sure you get groupies.
Yes, you have to know how to sail. But I saw this guy before and his swagger down the hallway says that he’s a captain even when he’s wearing a suede jacket. I read the newsletter they give you each night and with the newsletter was a picture in which some guy makes frequent, glowing references to him like he’s a benevolent, seaworthy version of Kim Jong Il. Recognizing him the following morning from his indirect address, I spoke to him in Greek for about ten seconds, and felt disappointed when I didn’t know how to say “Can I be the assistant captain?” because I’m sure he feels as sure as I am that this is my destined job.

I can imagine sitting on the top-most deck, beyond even the hallowed cubic feet of the topless sunbathing deck, standing next to him absorbing his compliments. “Iakove,” he will say, which is my Greek name, “We have done a fine job of sailing this wine-dark sea.” I will remove my captain’s hat, hand it to a simpering and nameless first-mate who will later groom my hat for any stray strands of hair with which to remember me, and I will say “Yes, Captain Salessiotis, steady as she goes.”

The requisite twenty-five years inbetween now and then don’t matter very much, but they will have to involve me learning how to use a compass.

Right now it is 10:15 and we are in the middle of the world’s longest sunset. On the west side, there’s nothing but water until we see the Korean Penninsula or maybe upper Japan. On the east is the shadow of a shore, part of the Canadian Wilderness, and lots and lots of ice. I note where we are constantly because somehow I anticipate falling off and having to swim to shore. Starting a new Alaskan life. We have been sailing for the better part of two days, and it has taken me this long to get over how one boat can have 14 floors, and can take a full fifteen seconds to rock from one side to the other. This would probably seem like less time if I could get something to drink, but alas, I cannot. Legally. But they have Guiness here, so I have had plenty in the way of carefully lied beverages and long, utterly confusing explanations of why it’s perfectly legal for me to have that Daquiri. Say, where are you from? Oh, I have a cousin there! So you see, we are practically brothers, and it is of little importance that I have lost the only piece of identification I have.

The boat sways more when you’re on your second glass of wine, and the waiter is pouring you a third glass. I am not a lush—I am simply on vacation. From sobriety. Just kidding.

Everyone here hired to help you is from a distant, third-world country and is all smiles. I people watch often, because sometimes there isn’t much to do, and I decide that I would have lost my patience with most of the people by now. You work for a solid 8 months, no days off. You travel the same route many times over and have to pretend that everyone who sends back the chef’s second attempt at making Pork Loin to your obscure specifications is a wonderful person who you wouldn’t necessarily drown if you had your way.

I am getting fat. You can always eat. There are more bars than bathrooms. Oddly, the only regulated form of exercise is shuffle-board which everyone seems amazed by. If you start a game, you can count on an audience who seems delighted by the way the game is played. There is not much for me here, because I am not old enough to lecture, drunk enough to lose money in the casinos, or charismatic enough to make friends of people in the hot-tub. I am here for my Grandma’s last cruise, and she always cruises. She is more well-traveled than the navy, and has been to just about every country that hasn’t seen a recent genocide or civil war. But now she has cancer, she’s terminal, and despite the best efforts of California’s foremost doctor concerned with her ailment, there is no guarantee that we will be visiting California to see her again. Her general doctor says six months, her other doctor says we will be able to prolong your life. But she is in pain, doesn’t seem to enjoy herself often, and you have to be especially careful not to get tired of her lamenting. The sea is the best place in the world for every lamentation, and I almost regret that I didn’t cross the threshold with more to pine over, because you feel romantic whenever you see the water cresting over the side of the boat. There is so much to say about not having seen land for so long, and being on of all things an honest voyage to somewhere.

This is overshadowed by the fact that I have forgotten just about everything I brought for the cruise. My camera, my extraordinary camera that could capture the splendid shadow on the inside of your soul and every detail between there and the lens. My laptop. How I long to see the apple light up on the back of something. I imagined myself in a lounge chair right now, feeling the sun in my face and writing leisurely of the differences between the waves I see, but right now I’m in the computer mill writing on a Dell. I have to send this to myself, and the satellite linkup is seventy-five cents per minute. I have spent four-fifty already trying to read my email. A special announcement: I am delighted to hear from all of you. I check my mail here, so send me an email and I will read it and be happy. There is no time to write email because every extravagant charge I incur I bill seeing my Grandma’s face. I can’t really spend much, there’s no cash and no way to pay for anything by myself. Everything is on Grandma’s tab, and she took us here in the first place. This is me having buyer’s remorse over a snickers bar. It is a sailing tribute to capitalism. Not that I mind. There is thousand-dollar Cognac and the sort of liquor more valuable than any comparative volume of precious stone or jewel. I have not had a sip.

But sometimes it feels like there’s nothing to do. Everyone is full of magnificent gestures and airy, warbling laughter. I didn’t think a modern cruise would smack so much of the titanic, but it does. We even have a backdrop that looks like the titanic. My sister keeps making comparisons to it, and I have to tell her to stop because I don’t want to freeze to death in the middle of a god-forsaken ocean. I think my greatest pleasure as Captain would be giving a rousing speech on the topic indomidable spirit to my crew, ready to call the rescue alarms because engine 12 is down and we are losing power. I feel bad because everyone here that helps you feels like a camp counselor. I am right now near the escalator to the theatre, and a nice guy from South Africa who could be British if I wasn’t ignorant and didn’t have a nameplate that said otherwise, is guiding people after two or three compliments in the right direction. You look lovely this evening. Is that your girlfriend?

There are people my age here, but I am not smooth and have no good conversation starters. I don’t know why I deserve it, but I have been cursed with awkward elevator exchanges on so many occasions that you would think the other person in the lift is a longtime ex or the other side of an ongoing series of nasty civil suits. They’re just people I see around, and I have nothing to say, and cannot start conversations. I cannot start anything. Everyone I have ever met has had to make the first move, and so I can’t really do much. This is probably some kind of diagnosable social disorder, but I can skirt it with half-witty, superlative commentary and the excuse of being a sniveling coward in the face of insignificant social quandaries and just about every other challenge that requires a spine. The thing I want out of myself most is to be three things, a nice guy, a responsible member of society, and the brave and silent type. I am one third of these things, and sometimes I think that it is pure accident, because people who are nice like I am have no choice. It’s the default.

I am with my father on this trip, my stepmother, as well as my two uncles, their wives, my sister and my grandma. My father and stepmother embarrass me so efficiently that I could make money out of it. They are so tactless and uncouth that everything my mother has taught me of polite society screams out in horror when they make cute little innuendo to each other like a relationship based off of cooling lust is anything to be proud of. My dad has a problem with everything and everyone, and my stepmother is the sort of aged northern belle that resents living in a house with not enough chandeliers and expects to be indulged universally with the patience shown grudgingly to a four-year old.

People here speak Korean and Mandarin and Greek and Italian. It’s great. And now it is later, so I will do nothing for a while, then hang out in the Navigator’s Lounge. It’s the spot dead center on the highest part of the ship accessible by guests. I already have a regular seat—straddling the invisible line that divides the boat into stern and portside (right and left, but depending on where you are like east and west) and looking out over the miles and miles of waves ahead. This is the closest I get to being a captain, but it works.