I Want The Sun to Shine On Me, I Want The Truth to Set Me Free

Previously I mentioned that there was only one production during my four years of High School that I wasn’t in.  There were almost two.  In the spring of my sophomore year Mr. C had a vision.  We were going to do Animal Farm.  And it was going to be like nothing that school had ever seen, let alone attempted.  He found a musical adaptation of the story, but rather than do it as a musical (having tried one before and learning we were horrific singers) we would speak the songs.  They would be chanted, in some cases droned to echo the sentiment of the oppressed proletariat.  And we would not be standing.  He devised this plan where we would have 2 x 4’s with handles tucked up baggy black sleeves.  We’d all walk hunched over, like gorillas, to give the illusion of being quadrupeds.  After all, four legs good, two legs bad. 

The cast would be clad in black.  Only our faces would differentiate us, using make-up and latex appliances to look like animals.  I sensed something different and exciting.  It was dark.  It was bleak.  It almost sounded like art.  I was in.  Plus early on I dreamt of playing animals and monsters.  I wanted to be Vincent on the CBS series Beauty and the Beast.  I worship at the altar of Ron Perlman.  Above all I was told I would have the best male part in the show, Boxer the stoic workhorse.  This was going to be good. 

Until, as it so often does, life had other plans.  My parents had been talking for a long time of going on a cruise.  In the early days of their marriage, my dad and stepmom went on many Caribbean cruises.  Even before I came to live with them they’d talked of taking me along.  That year, they finally booked us a cruise vacation over my Spring Break.  Not to be outdone my mother and stepdad decided to plan a trip with not only me, but my best friend from the old neighborhood to the Bahamas.  Long story short, without any input from me or communication with each other, obviously, the two trips were booked back to back.  The cruise was to happen on the week of my actual break, and the Bahamas the week after.  Literally the day after we got back.  I won’t even get into how hairy those logistics got, especially because I didn’t tell either side what I was doing with the other.  Listen, I know that’s ridiculous, but I learned early on that saying nothing meant a few more minutes of peace when it came to my parents. 

Anyway, two weeks in tropical latitudes probably sounds awesome.  And it is.  However, there was no way I could miss two weeks of rehearsals and still be in Animal Farm.  So I went to Mr. Campbell, hat in hand and explained the situation.  Tickets were bought, hotels were booked.  It was out of my hands.  As I suspected, he told me apologetically that I couldn’t be in the show.  No hard feelings, maybe in the fall, etc.  I could help out on set design and stage tech if I wanted.  Stage tech!  The words still taste like licking a 9 Volt battery.  The part, excuse me, my part went to someone else.  And I went off to get a tan.  Once again I acted like it was no big deal.  I was 15 with a visible moustache and I was going to the ocean for two weeks straight.  I’m a true Sun sign.  I believe the ocean is Mother to us all.  I feel a real connection to those latitudes.  But still, somebody else got my part!

His name was Stacy.  Stacy!  A guy with a chick’s name had my part!  This part called for dark, brooding martyrdom.  Stacy was tall and good looking, and worse outgoing, optimistic, and liked by almost everyone.  This immediately made me think he was a douche.  He was on the student council, the honors society, in advanced placement classes, and he was one of the recognized “spiritual leaders” of the student body.  He was the anti-me.  The Bizzaro me!  And he had my goddamned part! 

I tell you so much about this because Stacy would be the one individual more than anyone else responsible for my going to Euphegenia College.  We’re getting there, I swear!

The trips down island while on the surface little more than relaxing getaways in the sun had real impact on me.  It was on that ship I began to form an idea of who I was.  For one thing, I’ve always looked a little older than I am.  Now that I’m closer to 40 than 30, that isn’t what you’d call a blessing.  This morning I looked in the mirror and saw a new streak of gray that looked as though I’d smeared cake frosting in my hair.  When I was a teenager, it often paid-off.  Such was the case during my week at sea.  On the first day, I found myself sitting alone on one of the smaller decks, listening to a reggae trio called I-95, sipping a rum runner I’d been served without question and feelin’ irie! 

It was by comparison a smaller cruise ship, but big enough that I literally saw my parents no more than twice a day.  Once in the morning when I got up, and then again at dinner.  Otherwise, I figured out quickly I was on a solo vacation.  I was brown as a berry by Day 2 and with my black hair and Clark Gable ‘stache, I was passing for at least twenty at every bar.  It’s not like liquor laws are strongly enforced in the middle of the Atlantic anyway.  The only hiccup, it dawned on me suddenly, was paying for drinks on the ship.  They didn’t accept cash.  Every passenger had this little plastic card.  You charged them up at the beginning of the voyage and the card became your currency.  If you tapped it out, you strolled down to the purser’s office (not Gopher, sadly) and added more money.  The problem was you were required to sign with each purchase.  That meant a paper trail!  I know the inner workings of bar tabs are pretty well-known, but I was a 15 year-old yokel at the time.  It was all very complex and exciting.  I wanted to drink, and they wanted to serve me!  Lest anyone forget, in my parents’ Evangelical world drinking equated sin.  I couldn’t have my dad discover my bar history at the end of the voyage. 

Enter Steve & Lori, my best friends for five days.  They were a 20-something couple from Southern California on their honeymoon.  Steve was an electrician or carpenter, but his bleach-blonde chin length hair and constant bemused grin made him look like a surfer.  Tall, muscular, and tan, he could have easily passed as a member of Swayze’s Ex-Presidents gang in Point Break.  Lori was a sweet, petite California girl, but smart as a whip.  I think she was a teacher or social worker.  The three of us became regulars on that little corner deck.

That particular bar was more of a grab and go spot.  It was covered and not right by the pool.  There were a half dozen white metal tables and the band was bunched up in the corner.  It was perfect for me because it was secluded.  The band played this music I’d never heard before called “reggae.”  The lead singer and bass player was a Jamaican named Moses.  He looked more like a chubby Lawrence Fishburne than a calypso singer.  He was bearded, with short wooly hair rather than the expected dreadlocks, and he wore professorial glasses.  The guitar player J.B. was exactly what every white man pictures a Kingston ganja dealer looks like.  Ghastly thin, scraggly moustache and chin whiskers and long tendril like dreads running down his back.  The third member, a keyboardist named Desmond hailed from Haiti.  He was clean cut and resembled a young version of the Butler on the Fresh Prince.  Desmond never said more than three words.  But every day, when I appeared on deck Desmond would smile and nod, and Moses would call out to me from the microphone.

Yes, this was a ship full of white folks so the boys played mostly safe reggae and calypso on deck.  they whore tacky Aloha shirts and khaki pants.  I know none of this would have been their first choice, but the gig paid.  Life aboard a cruise ship was likely more comfortable than where they’d each come from.  As the week went on and they became comfortable with Steve, Lori, and me, they snuck in a few more interesting tunes and funny novelty songs.  That first day, they started playing an obscure Neal Diamond song in reggae style.  I didn’t know it because at the time my knowledge of the Diamond catalog was at best, limited.  But the Laird Hamilton clone to my right laughed and called out “Neal Diamond.” 

He laughed and Moses laughed, and then Steve (who at that moment I didn’t know from Adam) looked over at me and asked if I knew that one.  I admitted I did not, but that was it.  We began to talk over the next couple hours.  Suddenly Steve was buying me beers (only because up to that point beer was the only alcoholic beverage I knew.)   Inevitably the conversation drifted around to the prerequisite “where are you from, what do you do?”  I was hesitant at first to divulge that I was actually a kid on vacation with my parents.  I wasn’t sure how they’d react to learning they’d been contributing to the delinquency of a minor all afternoon.  But ultimately, I came clean, quietly as I could.  They stared at me for a moment, likely in disbelief and then Steve started grinning and let out this machine gun laugh.  It was totally guttural and California stoner.  He followed it with a Spiccoli-like “maaaarvelous!” 

After that, Steve and Lori adopted me as they’re little mascot.  We met every afternoon, same spot, same time to drink away the afternoons while sailing the big blue.  Steve poured me my very first rum & Coke.  On our second or third day of the trip, they came up to the bar with a backpack.  Inside were two bottles of rum they’d purchased ashore but not declared.  Steve was ordering Cokes all day long and mixing up his own cocktails under the table, passing a few my way as well.  I learned it was called a Cuba Libre, but I simply call it my medicine, still good for what ails me even today.

Steve and Lori were my daylight drinking buddies, but after dark, I made acquaintances with a few more nefarious characters.  Like all cruise ships, this one had a dance club.  However on bigger lines like Carnival or Royal Caribbean they’re big, well lit and centrally located discos, the one aboard our ship was as subterranean as you could get on a boat.  It was a dark, cramped room on the lowest level accessible to guests.  No one even showed up until midnight or later, but I made a habit of heading down early.  Once again, I became friendly with the staff.  I found I preferred the people of the night(life.)  The DJ looked like Randy Newman, crazy curls and thick glasses.  He was kind of a slob, but he was also really funny.  It hurt heart my heart to discover he called bingo in the showroom by day.  He often repeated the joke “four years of college and I’m doing this.  My parents are so proud.”   The blue hairs would chuckle, but there was truth and sadness in those words.  I would show up at the club early just to shoot the shit with him.  He was a frustrated comedian spinning records in a throwback disco.  I never asked why.  Even as a kid, I guess I had enough instinct to know better than to ask. 

I’ve come to the theory that if you meet a thirty-something or older American working on a cruise ship or expatriated to the Caribbean, there may well be a reason you don’t want to know.  The DJ was a funny guy, but there was just enough smuggler or pirate about him that anything was possible. 

And he was the cleanest cut of the friends I made in that bar.  The most colorful and mysterious character, the one who I still wonder about to this day, will be heretofore referred to as Zeke.  Zeke was somewhere around 30, had doe eyes and a gap in his teeth and reminded me very much of Cory Haim.  Now more so.  It was evident from the first time he walked into the club that Zeke lived to party.  At this point in my life, I’d never smoked pot, never would have even considered trying cocaine (still haven’t, for the record), and I’d never ever heard of a B-52.  But by the end of the week, I’d have firsthand experience with (at least witnessing) all three. 

Zeke always looked happy.  He wore unbuttoned white linen shirts and khakis every night, which by the way was only at night.  I never saw Zeke on deck or even in the ships halls during daylight hours.  But it was guaranteed around midnight he’d appear in the doorway of the disco.  And by night three, as soon as he walked in, he’d slide into one of those deep booth-like chairs on wheels often found in strip clubs (and apparently cruise ship discothèques) and hand me his white card. 

“A B-52,” he’d call out loudly in a nasally voice, “and whatever you want.” 

I somehow became his bar boy, but I didn’t care.  It was always the same.  A B-52 and whatever I wanted.  Which meant my drinks would never show up on my old man’s bill.  And Zeke didn’t give a shit what I ordered.  He seemed to care little about money period.  Too be honest I don’t think, even drinking Heinekens or rum the whole week, my drinks ever racked up half the expense his precious shots did.  Those suckers were not cheap.  But I confess, they were delicious, albeit a touch girly.  Kahlua, Bailey’s, and Grand Marnier, what’s not to love?  They were sweet and warm and spread their wings in your chest.  Still, it’s not something I’d ever feel secure enough to order in public.  But when off to sea, why not?

Zeke was on the cruise with his father who, incidentally had just gotten out of prison.  For what, again I did not ask.  I met his father once.  We went back to Zeke’s stateroom with another strange character called Ripper (not even making that up) so he could roll a spliff.  Rip had olive skin, wild curly black hair, wore sunglasses constantly, and claimed to play drums in a rock band in LA.  I’d eventually learn he was just a rich kid.  I saw the rest of his family.  I sat and watched as Zeke picked seeds and stems from the greenery.  His old man sat up in bed from a deep sleep when we arrived and immediately reached for a bottle of whiskey on the bedside table.  He looked like something out of Middle Earth.  The best way to describe him was a human frog.  Bald, round, with thin short limbs, floppy, liver-spotted man boobs, and faded green globs of jailhouse tattoos.  He just sat there swigging whiskey, chuckling at God knows what, occasionally speaking completely incoherent sentences.  Zeke would tell him to shut and go back to sleep and the old man would just cuss at him. 

Zeke said he’d picked up his father at the prison and they’d come straight to the ship, after a short stop at K-Mart to buy the old guy some cabana wear.  The cruise was a welcome home gift, and then Zeke was taking him back to his “farm” somewhere in central Florida.  What he grew on this farm, again, he never said.  But he let slip once or twice that he had a number of dogs and lots of guns.  The night before we docked in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Zeke regaled us all over a table full of empty B-52 glasses and beer bottles and other various shots (and traces of white powder, allegedly) of his many misadventures in Jamaica.  He spoke of some hidden bar way up in the mountains where all the locals knew him.  He wanted all of us to rent motor scooters and come with him the next day.  Even if I hadn’t been with my parents, an unguided excursion up some random mountain road into the wilds of Jamaica would not have been on my agenda.  I was curious to see if Zeke really could come out into the daylight (and if so, would he sparkle?)  I would get the opportunity eventually. 

At the end of the trip, we woke up back in Miami.  Waiting to disembark, I got bored and made one last trip to my little deck bar.  Moses was sipping coffee as it was his day off.  Steve and Lori were there too.  We hugged and said teary goodbyes.  This was long before Al Gore invented the internet so there were no emails to be exchanged.  And how weird would it be for a 15 year old to ask for their home phone number or address.  Still, I wish somehow I could have stayed in touch with those two.  They were good people.  Maybe somehow one of them will read this one day and say “hey, that was us!”  So if you’re names are Steve and Lori from southern California and you were on a Dolphin Cruise ship in the spring of 1991, hit me up!

As for Zeke, that goodbye was far less emotional but much more interesting.  I would love to know what ever became of him.  I would just prefer to find out from a distance.  As I was getting ready to go find my parents, Zeke and Ripper appeared in the sliding doorway of the bar.  It was the first time I ever saw him where he didn’t look happy.  In fact, sunlight didn’t suit him well.  He stumbled over to the bar and began demanding, what else, a B-52.  The bartender explained to him they were only serving water and iced tea.  The “bar” was closed, to prepare for the next wave of tourists later that day.  Zeke began to get loud and some of the other guys from the disco went over and tried talking him down off the ledge before security arrived.  Zeke was begging for alcohol, telling us if he didn’t get a drink soon he was going to have an unbearable migraine.  He then went on to explain that he’d received an early wake up call from the purser’s office.  Apparently he’d put down $2,500 in cash at the beginning of the cruise, and his bill was now way up in the thousands and he needed to settle up before leaving the ship.  They were holding his luggage until he did.  I started getting a little nervous, wondering if he had taken a quick accounting of his bar bills. 

I should have known he was no where near lucid enough for math.  He told us he’d had to call his wife (wife???) and told her to drive down to Miami, which was not exactly down the road a piece from wherever the hell their farm was (sounded like Bogotá) with the four grand he needed to get off the ship.  While I love to party, meeting Zeke and witnessing his experience on that cruise taught me to always keep a running tally in my head, no matter how drunk I am.  Well it also taught me to never run a tab.