Winding Down

A few nights ago, I was out on the deck at around 4 am. I was chatting with the karaoke host, she has been going through a rough patch relationship-wise and I’ve been offering my advice to her. After an intense talk about the expectations of relationships, I mentioned the allure of the ocean. It’s really hypnotizing; every time I see it I have this strange urge to toss myself into it. Now, before you start getting concerned about me having suicidal thoughts, she said she feels the exact same way and I know we’re not the only ones. There is something comforting about its vastness that fills me with a desire to be consumed by it. This must be where that old myth about sirens comes from; it is really like the ocean is beckoning me to it with a seductive song of death.

And this seduction pushes itself far past death, into the loins of the ship. The rhythm of the waves fills the staff with an insatiable lust; sex is practically all we talk about here. My co-workers are filled with a covetous confusion, obscuring what the actually want from themselves. Some of my new friends are absolutely clueless as to what they want from a partner. People are leaving in a few weeks but establishing what seems to be serious relationships, others are turning down women left and right because they don’t want an empty lay but they don’t want a girlfriend either. Some of my co-workers cheat on their significant others who are waiting back at home, others try to bang guests every cruise, and others sleep with people they don’t like just because they can. Those lucky enough to find a partner on the ship fall into extremely intense relationships and spend virtually all their free time together. Some have learned to stay away from the other sex all together due to the unavoidable grapevine on the ship. Who’s fucking who is a frequent topic of discussion, so once someone knows it’s more or less public knowledge.

The men on the ship vastly outnumber the women, so you kind of need to get chosen by a girl for anything to happen. I can feel eyes beginning to fall onto me. It seems the closer you are to the end of your contract, the more desirable you become. I guess it makes sense; almost no one out here wants a serious relationship, and dealing with the awkwardness of having to see an old fling every day is something that no one wants. There are girls I have my eyes on, but the majority of them are unavailable, and honestly I’m not very keen on pursuing something. If it fell into my lap (haha) I would consider it, but as of right now, I’m cool as a cucumber.

As far as my post-resignation social life is concerned, I am much happier than I was a few weeks ago. Knowing that my contract is soon up has filled me with outgoingness, which basically means I’ve been drinking. A lot. I think I’ve been up binging until 4 am (at least) every day this week. A few nights ago, I go so drunk that I had to purge, so I pulled the trigger and felt like I was a senior in high school all over again. My drinking isn’t really driven by a desire to get drunk, just to alleviate boredom. Ship life is dull as I have previously written, so I’ve been avoiding that reality by sleeping all day and drinking myself into a stupor at night. It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds, I’ve had some fantastic times doing it, and some hazy mornings. It feels empty because it is, but it’s better to share emptiness with others than in my room by myself.

I’ve been spending a lot of my nights with the showband singer and one of the male dancers. They are both total sweethearts and fun to be around. The past few nights we’ve sat in the singer’s room ‘til the wee hours talking about whatever it is that drunken people talk about. Besides the two of them, there are a few ladies who work in the spa (they’re called “Steiners” officially) who are cute and like to hang out with the musicians, and the art auction workers are a lot of fun and easy to talk to. I’ve befriended a few of the other dancers as well. They are a diverse bunch, some of them are great and others are borderline psychopathic. This coming week the new cast is coming to the ship, and thus begins what a few people have called the “dancer derby.” As I said earlier, sex is mostly what we musicians talk about, so in the coming days there will be a half-joke of a race to see who can get one of the new girls first.

Besides drinking in excess, we’ve spent some nights playing Settlers. I’ve gotten a small group of people to know the game, and we’ve played enough that they’ve actually learned its intricacies. Co-op videogames are also pretty common, as well as music listening/hard-drive exchange parties. Sometimes, a group of us will cram into a room and watch a movie on our 15inch televisions. A few nights ago there was a wine & cheese party in the piano bar, and the pianist played us a set of rock standards, it was quite fun. A few nights before that one, we made a trip up to the “fancy” steakhouse on board. The food was decent to pretty good; my steak was a bit bland but cooked just how I like it. The highlight of my meal was probably dessert. I had house-made mango sorbet that was phenomenal but the portion size was laughable, smaller than a gumball. After that, one of the trumpet players and I split an over-priced glass of cognac. The bottle had never been opened, and the drink was served to us steamed, which wafted a heady aroma into our face as we drank it. The buzz was light and airy, much unlike the belligerence of whiskey that I’ve been used to here.

As things get closer and closer to the end of my contract, the band is really starting to fool around with the material more. At karaoke, we’ve started to switch instruments. I plunk notes out on the keyboard while the pianist has fun playing sloppy drum beats. We play a few rudimentary hip hop songs where the band basically just loops a sample the whole time, so those are kinda begging to be shat upon. As for the dance sets, I’ve been getting more and more creative with the beats I’m playing. The paper for most of the songs is BORING, and I could stand the rote playing for only so long. I’ve been tossing inverted paradiddles in a lot, I like those things. Apparently, I have absolutely no room to improvise on the production shows though. I played out a little bit during our last one, and P promptly told me to stop in a friendly yet passive-aggressive manner. I was feeling mopey about it, so the second show I just kinda went on autopilot. The rest of the rhythm section has room to do some improvisation, so that got me a bit mad that the drummer is always the one at fault. P has a tendency to scrutinize my mistakes and let everyone else’s slide, but I realized it’s silly to get upset about it. I’ll be leaving in two weeks, so it’s not worth it to get dark about stuff like that.   

On the other hand, the jazz sets have been cool. Last week, I did not play my best. There was a total lack of communication amongst the players, and that, combined with a dearth of jazz experience led to a pretty lackluster set. However, tonight there was much better communication between musicians. Tonight, while I was not satisfied with the solos I played at all, they were significantly better than what I have played in the past few weeks.  Unfortunately, most of the musicians are just expecting me to play along to whatever they are doing and no experiment along with the music. Honestly, I have 2 weeks left here, and I don’t want to play underneath people when it comes to jazz. Sure, in more concrete performances I’ll play out less, but when things are left up to us, I won’t give a damn about anything at all except playing the way I want to. Tonight, I got some weird looks from the rhythm section because I wasn’t letting them off easy by keeping straight time. Granted, I made some rhythmic mistakes, but I refuse to just be a background player for them. They are all extremely skilled musicians, probably much better than I am from an objective standpoint, but I refuse to ignore my musical voice because they don’t want to count. This ensemble has two more weeks to play this set; hopefully we will form into something more cohesive in the coming shows. Right now, it just feels like a bunch of egos, mine included, butting against each other.

With only two weeks left, there are parts of this job that make me totally regret quitting, and others that make me feel that these last two weeks can’t end soon enough. I’ll make the best out of the time I have here, and the music we make will hopefully be enjoyable. Until next time, this is drunk me signing off.

-D