ship him off.

At dinner three couples danced to Bobby Vinton. Two by two, “blue on blue” had them leaving heel marks slain across the dining hall’s squared dance floor. Lines of laughter took the attention away from the wrinkles weathered around their jaws and foreheads. At their age faces were like tree stumps, but then again I looked more enervated than all these geriatrics. Rich histories made me jealous. I pictured the family portraits hung in the hallway, a family of four playing cards pass midnight and the collection of Christmas cards covering the piano table. I had no such memory. Did each life cater to a purpose? Curiosity affected me. The game of “what could have been” never ended. I played it and sometimes it amused me during fits of boredom. I thought of all the things I needed. I already had a serious imagination. What I didn’t know outweighed all I experienced. The meagerness of my existence was confirmed by my fragmentary life. If a biographer exaggerated me, I might be a product of a page. This depressed the shit out me, so I kept quiet. I once read there was an element of mystery in the unsaid. I can’t remember who wrote that, but I thought it sounded like something wise, something a father might say if he wanted to teach his child a thing or two. My father didn’t teach me anything. He just showed me how not to be. Watching the couples, I felt a simple pleasure being there, as if I could steal the experience and consider it my own. Smiling, while other shipmates applauded the dancers, I wondered if the woman danced, whether she would attend to the spotlight. As the couples took their seats, I kept my smile, curious if the woman would have a partner. I wanted to indulge.

*

All six nights, groups traveling together were mixed with different couples and single sailors, like myself. While aboard the ship, one was to have their horizon expand, or rather, that was the Windstar’s mantra. So I sat tall—conscious not to have my shoulders hang downward—and taking advantage of my frame and 6’2 height, saw that my posture did not convey a shortage of self-esteem or my gestures an over articulation of right from wrong behavior. It had taken four years of compulsive correcting, but recently I had become confident that my exterior laid no claim of my interior discomfort. When my twin sister died after turning twenty-three, I experienced a change unlike any other. It was impossible to be prepared for it. And yet, my adjustment was expected. I couldn’t make sense of it. When I was thinking that I wasn’t thinking about now versus then, I was. I wanted to remember how it felt the instant before I opened my eyes and found out I was now an only child. I missed what died in the darkness.

*

Five sat at each table, but so far I was amongst only two. Both men: tall, dark and handsome—the type is well known. Their attire was more trendy than practical, less waterproof than proof of their paycheck. Not the outdoor type per se, but those that went where money could take them. It was a sort of animal instinct—men were hunters, women the gathers—seeking out luxury as if it were bait for their yuppie mouths. With combed back hair, they spoke with their noses in the air, laughed like a finger was up their asses and swallowed down all that was offered. To lend an adjective to the behavior, they were drunk, lubricated, uncontrollable. Or maybe they were just on vacation. I made no judgments, not outwardly, just watched with assumed admiration in a mockery of approval and joined in as if encouraged by celebration. Hand-me-down Rolexes counted down their pulses, and with Blackberries safeguarded under their napkins, it was obvious they were never disconnected from here and there, living and working. We weren’t men of the same mind. Our mothers had bred us differently. Small talk between each swig of Scotch made it effortless to have their dirty briefs aired out and on display. They were younger than I by four years, give or take, Hollywood go-getters, smoking spliffs the entire drive down the Hills, pitching screenplays, blowing lines and here to get away from their “lalaladiiiies”. But as I listened in, laughing along with their humor—those things you do to be one of the boys—I couldn’t help but see myself during that age of invincibility: when you think your shit doesn’t stink, that nothing will kill you and you live by one motto, “ignorance is bliss”. As I swallowed down the Scotch, I couldn’t avoid closing my eyes to listen with my other ear: who would wake first Hollywood or them, was it possible to stay forever dreaming? And there she was dressed in gold.