The Carnival Valor

Last week I wrote about a great line from essay writer David Rakoff. That made me think about the humorous essays we had to write in my copywriting class last semester. I didn't hate mine, so I'm going to post it here.

When I was ten I wanted my mother to buy a minivan so badly I left copies of Consumer Digest on her pillow with the best valued Dodge and Ford minivans circled in red. The idea that you could have individual seats, like armchairs, in a car was unreal. Who would not want to drive around in a portable living room?

But by the time I was sixteen and received my mother’s station wagon as my very own to drive, I was glad she had never caved to my demands. Minivans were way lame; station wagons were, well ok, also lame, but they got better gas mileage.

By the time I was a senior in college I had a similar view of Carnival cruises. The excitement of eating essentially freeze-dried food, participating in family bingo night, and shaking my hips to a boat- wide Macarena dance party led by some poor soul dressed up as Smokey the Smokestack had lost most of its appeal.

However, that spring I agreed to a six -day seven- night Caribbean jaunt aboard the Carnival Valor. Time was running out to be an irresponsible college kid participated in wet t-shirt contests, got matching tattoos at 4 a.m, and downed SoCo lime shots until you threw up in the back of a cab that was blasting Juanes and probably in the process of dropping you off at a Mexican brothel where you would spend the rest of your life as the mistress of someone named Papa Pepe.

Or just fruity drinks in tacky souvenir glasses, sandy beaches, and sunburns. This is where it seemed to be heading when we finally made it past the check- in line, complete with the obligatory group photo in front of a backdrop of the sun setting over palm trees. We boarded the ship to find large groups of people with actual red necks riding the gold plated elevators that shot up from the lounge where a man in a tux was playing Top 40 hits on an electric piano. There were waiters in khaki shorts offering strawberry daiquiris in, you guessed it, tacky souvenir glasses. By the way, these are not free; they are approximately $20 each. It was like OZ gone wrong. That’s basically what my friend Laura shouted to the entire deck, “Oh my God it’s like we’re stuck in a tiny city!” If only she knew how tiny.

We struggled down five flights of stairs to the steerage deck where we found the room four of us would be sharing. If this had been the Titanic we would have been goners. The door clicked open and we peered eagerly around the corner and into a ten by ten square box with two beds. How weird, we thought, how could the front desk have forgotten to give us keys to the second room? So we traipsed back upstairs to customer service where we were told, “No, no, you are booked one room only. The beds, they come from ceiling, you see?” And so they did. Had we been monks perhaps there would have been enough free room but we had STUFF.

We decided to get a little fresh air. We walked up stairs carpeted in giant bald eagles. Stars and stripes served as a wallpaper border. We entered the Bronx Bar and passed through it to the Lincoln Dining room, past the One Small Step dance club, and ended up face to face with a giant tiled mosaic of Rosie the Riveter. Good Lord the boat was America themed.

So what do you do if you are stuck on a cruise ship that is decorated like the 4th of July on crack, sleeping in ostensibly a bomb shelter, a little snobby about muscle tees and jorts, and seated every night at a dinner table with four thirty year old UF grads reliving their college years in a big way?

Well, you have possibly the best week of your life of course. There is nothing to do but roll with it.

There were, of course, tense moments. There was the time Meghan had had just about enough of our other friend’s daily rendition of the same one line of “Sexy Can I?” and yelled at her, “THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE ROOM!” And the time we lost a guest named Tamika and urgent calls were sent out over the loudspeaker until it was discovered she hadn’t been left at port, only avoiding her husband by sleeping in another guest’s bed.

I began to think of the Valor as a sorority or church congregation; there was a special bond between its members formed by experiencing something that could only be understood by having been there. The ship activity pamphlet was our bible, Matt- the hot British cruise director- both our president and preacher, and red and blue our colors- because not only are those America’s colors, but also the colors of the hallmark Carnival smokestacks.

When we were docked and exploring a port, other ship members would recognize us by the Carnival issue towels we carried. “Hey, are you guys on the Valor too?”

“Yeah, yeah we are!”

“Do you want to see how the giant snake tattoo on my arm moves when I flex my bicep?”

“Yeah, yeah we do!”

If they were on the Valor, they were one of us and we loved them for it. We started recognizing the same people around the boat each night and making friends. There was the twelve year old Swede with beaded dreadlocks, the sixty year old who wore a pink sequined tube dress every night, and the boy who told my friend her feet were beautiful, led her off for some romantic star gazing and then made her cry because he wouldn’t kiss her. He respected her too much for that. Or something.

And of course there were the men (boys) with whom we shared dinner each night: Rob, Andrew, Jordan, and Luke. They were quite a group; two had already been divorced, one had his engagement broken off when his girlfriend was deported and they all showed up each night, sunburned and drunk, in Hawaiian shirts and immediately poured a tall glass of whiskey and water.

Meghan developed a serious crush on Rob. So serious that she tried to extend their relationship past spring break. But he was thirty, divorced, and working in finance ten states away. It was clear the differences were too great. Although there may have been more to bring them together than the fact they were both on the same floating object in the middle of the ocean, my guess is that that was a big part of it. Life on a cruise ship doesn’t translate to the real world.

It’s more like falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland where nothing happened as it should and everything was turned upside down. Laura does not usually get hickies so bad she has to wear a scarf with her bathing suit, and we do not usually meet teenagers asking us to help them hotbox their bathroom with weed from Belize. For further proof, each clock on the ship told a different time that seemed to be in no logical relation to any other. But, unlike Alice, there was no rabbit rushing around with a broken time piece to point this out. It just was what it was. And what it was was absolutely  amazing. Book your tickets now.