The Love Boat Sails Again

Last week-end I had the thrilling experience of taking a cruise – or, as I now think of it, taking An Unlimited Opportunity To Eat. People should really just say, “I’m so excited, I’m going on an eat," rather than “I’m going on a cruise," because it’s so much more the truth. Remember the Love Boat? They didn’t show nearly enough passenger eating to make that show realistic – why, in that show, people were falling in love, reuniting with old flames, and settling decades-old grudges. In reality, the lost loves would have never even seen each other over their plates of heaping cruise food.

Now, cruises present an opportunity to observe another culture, right there on the ship. The first culture is what I call the “Polaroid Culture." People who work on ships are obsessed with taking your picture and then selling it to you while you are trying to eat. They will jump out from behind plants, they will catch you as you struggle into your swimsuit (which after the first day of eating becomes less swimsuit and more tee shirt and sweatpants), they will snap you while you hang over the railing of the ship, asking God to show you some dry land soon. These picture-takers seem to think that you never look too bad for a photo – the first one they take is when you board the vessel. After six hours of turbulent airplane flight, two hours of tourist charter bus chatter, and ten hours of assuring your spouse that you do, in fact, have the birth certificates in your purse, the cruise people think that the uppermost thing running through your mind is, “Oh, now if someone could only photograph me right now – every wrinkle, every bruise, every tear! Then, I would feel complete!" The photo of our “boarding the ship" experience looks like my husband and I were hit by a bus in Orlando, Florida, and somehow managed to crawl to Cape Canaveral to join the other eaters (oops! I mean cruisers, of course).

I have one tip for anyone who is thinking about taking a cruise – do not assume, as you are packing, that if you cannot find an article of clothing up in your attic to bring along, that you will just “buy it on board." Un-unh. Unless the articles you cannot find are tanzanite or rum, don’t plan on getting it on the ship. This is the exact reason why I was roaming the streets of Nassau, Bahamas, trying to buy a bra.

I ended up bra-shopping on Nassau because I didn’t have a formal gown to wear on the ship, and I had to buy one on board for two million dollars. I didn’t mind, though, I was so busy eating that I just learned to hand over a credit card and reach for a dessert crepe at the same time ( they teach a ship-board class in this, by the way.) Anyhow, the gown was nice enough, but I needed a strapless bra in order to wear it, and there was not one to be stolen, purchased, or eaten on the entire ship. “I’ll just get one in Nassau," I said confidently to my husband, who was trying to see if his black boxer shorts could pass for a bathing suit – we have three kids, okay? Packing appropriately was just not a priority in the days before the cruise.

So, to buy a strapless bra in Nassau, you have to go where the town folk shop, not where the tourists shop. And frankly, the town folk like to have their fun with the tourists, I decided, as I walked down a dusty, deserted road near an abandoned mineshaft following a Nassau native’s directions to the lingerie store. And who can blame them – a bunch of over-fed, sunburned tourists who are constantly leaning due to the rocking of the ship screaming for the best deals possible on local art and liquor might cause one to hand out fake directions every once in a while.

Well, I got back to the ship in time to get sick with a flu bug, and in your tiny cruise ship cabin you do not need either an evening gown or a strapless bra, but you do need the ESPN channel, apparently, which you must be able to find now even in the remotest reaches of the world, where they have never even heard of dessert crepes. So, as I watched a soccer match on TV and stared at my gown hanging lifelessly on its metal hanger, I reflected on what I had learned. I had learned that even a bad photograph is going to be a memory someday, and that one slab of prime rib is good, but two is one too much, if you want to fit into your swimsuit the next day. But most importantly, wherever you travel, respect that you are a guest. Especially if you need a strapless bra.

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