Today as I was driving home from a fantastic and very relaxing massage at the end of a glorious week of vacation from my tiresome job of serving coke after endless coke (yes, I’m using a lot of superlatives, but life is just that fucking fantastic right now, so just go with it…), I was listening to the ‘On Broadway’ channel of my XM radio and a song from the original Broadway production of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown came on the radio. The name of the song is ‘Book Report’. If you are not familiar with the show, it is about the Peanuts gang—snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and all the rest of them. They are in school and going through their various misadventures. Anyway, during this particular song, the kids are singing about the book report that they must write for school. The book: The Adventures of Peter Rabbit. 100-word minimum. Simple enough. Of course we can all remember back to the days of writing book reports and other creative writing tasks given in elementary school and recall that it was often more difficult and cumbersome to come up with 100 words about something we didn’t particularly care about than we would have thought. One of the boys in the song is literally adding extra ‘verys’ to how much he liked the ending…’very very very very very much’, and then counting the words to make sure he hit exactly 100 words. (I, of course, as you can tell from my other essays, have never had that problem. Instead, I have always prided myself on my verbosity, and was usually told by teachers to be more concise than anything else.) In any case, it is a very interesting and funny song about these four kids struggling to write a book report about this benign and rather morose subject.
The song got me thinking about writing and why I like writing about my adventures (and also why I sometimes despised writing papers in school). The simple answer…I. Yes, the word I. In school, you are told to avoid the I and to take a more objective stance on a subject. However, when those damn professors want you to express yourself and make a case for your opinions, it becomes a little awkward to escape the I and to use expressions like ‘one’ or ‘some individuals’. I don’t know how many times I just wanted to thrust an I in my papers to really underline my opinion. Some professors told me that the I was often inferred and that my paper would be stronger by remaining quietly on the sidelines. But, I’m sorry, my name is on that paper and it’s pretty obvious that I wrote the damn thing, so why should I sideline myself. Rather, I I I I believe I should jump on in there and really own up to my cause.
So, now that I have stopped writing for a grade, I feel more at liberty to use the elusive I as much as me, myself, and I choose to. That’s why writing about my own adventures and stories is so much fun. I get to secretly spite my professors and teachers en masse by using as many I’s as I damn well please. Plus, I think the shit that happens to me or that I witness is often very entertaining, so I might as well share it with you. You, yes you. Well, I might as well slam this door wide open and get rid of everything objective. Now it’s about you AND me. How do you like them apples? I thought so…
So, where am I going with this? Not sure exactly. But it sure has been fun talking about myself in the first person rather than a withdrawn third person. After all, I am on vacation and might as well make it all about me.
Okay, enough of that garbage. Let’s get on with a funny anecdote of something crazy that happened to me on my stupendously fabulous (yay for superlatives) week of vacation that I can share with you. Let’s see… Well, I just finished a week-long cruise in the Caribbean aboard the stunning Allure of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world. I like to call this cruise ‘The Big GAY Boat Ride’, because with 4500 gay men, well, that’s pretty much what it was. As you can imagine, with so many gay men there was plenty of unnecessary drama and craziness—parties galore, hearts broken, bitch slaps, rippling muscles, and gallons upon gallons of vodka. I can’t even begin to imagine just how much vodka was consumed during the week of festivities—they say that the main ingredient in the human body is water, but I’m thinking that figure may be slightly off for the martini-slinging gay man. Oh well, it’s all in good fun. Until it turns tragic or trashy, which…eek…happens. On the other hand, vodka does lead to some amazing times as well—like a flash mob of gays sporting itty-bitty swimsuits and drag queens with stiletto heels and gaudy wigs that suddenly appear on the pool deck to dance to Lady Gaga. Just close your eyes and imagine that. Scary. But, oh so entertaining. So long shuffle boards and walker races…hello Homo hello!
It was amazing just how many different types of men were represented onboard. Bulging bicep men, hairy men, short men, tall men, ugly men, beautiful men, old men, young men. White men, brown men, black men, and thanks to body paint, even silver and purple men. Men wearing t-shirts and jeans, men wearing slacks and sweaters, men wearing tight little swim trunks, and men wearing nothing at all. Men, men, men everywhere. It was a gay people watcher’s dream. Men, men, men, woman, men…wait a second. Yes, there were actually a couple of women onboard, 70 to be exact. (not counting the women amongst the 2,000 Royal Caribbean staff members—it takes a lot to run a city-sized cruise ship). It was actually such an anomaly seeing a woman that you almost didn’t believe it was a ‘real’ woman. (sorry divas, but you drag queens don’t actually count) Also, many of those real women were hard to spot—some of them much more masculine than any of the gay boys could ever hope to be. 70 women and gobs upon gobs of gay men. Needless to say it was an eventful week, what with all the visual stimulation I could fathom. I’m not sure if I can handle so much excitement again, but it was definitely worth trying once.
After a week of cruising craziness, I have returned to reality, and alas, the vacation is coming to an end. Back to work I go…god, I hope I still remember how to open a coke… ! Until next time: keep it fun, keep it gay, and (sorry professors) always make it personal!
