Nudist Cruise

by Hailey McPherson

  I still wanted to talk to Liam.

  Chapter 5: Afternoon Delight

  There is a tradition on cruise ships where everyone stands out on the deck when the ship leaves port. I’m not sure why people do it. I guess back when people traveled by ship, their friends and relatives would see them off and everyone waved goodbye since the people on the ship would be at sea for a few months. Now when you take a cruise, you are probably not going to have people at the pier seeing you off, especially when you are sailing from places like Shanghai. Most of the people on the cruise were not Chinese, so I doubt they had many relatives in China. And our passage was far shorter than a few months.

  People still go up on deck anyway. There were no large crowds of well wishers to see us off, but the view was great. The ship started in downtown Shanghai and sailed up the river that cuts through the middle of the city. On the way to the ocean we got a view of Shanghai that most people probably never get to see. The ship sailed very slowly on the river, so it was like taking a scenic river cruise, except that we were on a much nicer boat and the view from the thirteenth deck of a massive cruise ship is a higher angle than it is from a tiny ferry.

  It was also a very steady ship. You could hear the engines start, at least up on deck, but you could not really feel the ship move. I knew right away I was never going to get seasick on this boat. It was just too big to bob up and down the way most boats do.

  Watching Shanghai float away into the distance was kind of sad. I knew I was not coming back, so it was like saying goodbye to a place forever. I can always go back to Shanghai some other time, but not on this trip. I had only spent a few hours in Shanghai, but it felt like I was leaving something behind. I’m sure it was only because I was sailing away on a boat. If I had flown out of Shanghai, I would not have given it a second thought. There’s something that feels more permanent when you leave by boat.

  I also noticed a lot of couples around me. Most of them were holding each other or at least holding hands. They were saying farewell to Shanghai, but at least they had each other. I was just standing there by myself. My boyfriend was somewhere on the ship, but I didn’t know where he was. He should have been standing behind me, holding me in his arms.

  When the ship left the river, it was still in a harbor and still in Shanghai, technically. I just knew that at any minute there would be a loud announcement on giant loudspeakers telling everyone that it was time to get naked. I could picture all the people around me suddenly stripping all their clothes off and frolicking around naked. I’m not really sure how people frolic, but I imagined it just the same.

  Since we were still very close to the shore, I had time to get somewhere safe before the big naked announcement. At the same time, I wanted to watch Shanghai get smaller and smaller in the distance. Usually when I leave somewhere, I am on a plane. You can’t really look behind you while flying away. On a giant cruise ship, you can see everything behind you when you stand at the back – what they call the stern. I still don’t know which is port and which is starboard, but I know that front is bow and back is stern. This cruise was never going to turn me into a sailor, but it is almost impossible to not pick up some of the lingo.

  I was torn between staying where I was to watch Shanghai disappear or hiding from the nudists. There was also the issue of my boyfriend. We were supposed to meet in our cabin after the ship left the port. He could have already been there waiting for me. He was not, but I had no way of knowing that.

  Shanghai got smaller and smaller and the water around the ship got bigger and bigger. This was as good a time as any to go back to my cabin.

  While I was walking back to my cabin, I passed a mother and her son walking in the opposite direction. I was glad to see another child on the ship and I smiled. The boy also smiled and waved at me. When I waved back, I realized that this boy looked a little like the boy in my umbrella dream. They did not look enough alike for some spooky psychic premonition, but they were similar enough that he reminded me of that dream.

  When I went in my cabin, I almost expected Liam to be there. The ship was moving, he had to know that, and he had to know that I was checked in by now. What I did not know was that he had already been there, but left when he realized that I was looking around the ship.

  My day had been pretty busy by this point. I walked the streets of Hong Kong, navigated the Hong Kong MTR system, hurried up and waited at Hong Kong Airport, sat on a cramped plane with a hundred other people, wandered around Shanghai Airport, filed onto a giant boat with two thousand other people, ate supper and walked around the ship. I was ready for a shower.

  Our cabin was bigger than average, but it was still a cruise ship cabin. It was pretty small by hotel standards. The bathroom was tiny. I always complain that the bathroom in my Hong Kong apartment is small. Only one person can fit in the shower and you can barely get two people outside of the shower. The cabin bathroom was pretty much the same size. Everything I read before the cruise tried to warn me that the bathroom would be small. I guess the people giving those warnings have never had a Hong Kong bathroom.

  I’m used to taking a shower in a tiny space, so there was not much of an adjustment on the ship. The only real difference was that the cruise ship shower was capable of producing a consistent stream of water and a temperature that I actually wanted. With my Hong Kong shower, you take what you can get. After my shower, I wrapped a towel around my body and stepped out of the tiny bathroom to see Liam lying naked on the bed.

  I had not heard the big naked announcement yet, but there he was on the bed in all his glory. Nude cruise or not, your cabin is always clothing optional. Having Liam as a boyfriend has taught me that all hotel rooms anywhere in the world are clothing optional. He always takes the naked option.

  I stood next to the bed and looked down at Liam’s naked body. I had not seen him naked since our trip to Bali three months earlier, unless you count all the times he got naked on Skype. I don’t. It’s nice to see my boyfriend naked on the computer from time to time, but I would much rather see him naked in person. You can’t touch the video on your computer, and my monitor tastes nothing like the real thing.

  I opened the towel to show him my clean, warm body. He had not seen me naked in three months either. I don’t get naked on Skype nearly as much as he does. I might show him a little peak of something sometimes, but usually not often and never as much as I was showing him now.

  I could tell that he was happy to see me and I watched him get happier right before my eyes. People joke about Viagra, and even I get junk e-mail about “increasing your manhood”, but no medical assistance is required when you have not seen your girlfriend in a few months.

  Since we had not touched each other in three months, I was on the bed before my towel even hit the floor. We were kissing as though we had not kissed in three months. His hands were all over me. It was like he was trying to touch every part of my body at the same time, or he had been watching some strange Japanese octopus videos.

  We were so focused on each other that it took me a long time to realize how surprisingly comfortable that bed was. Everything I read about cruise ship cabins had warned me that everything would be smaller, but nothing told me that the bed would be so comfortable. I was expecting a rock hard Chinese bed.

  People often ask me how I can be sure that my boyfriend is not cheating on me since he lives in Mainland China and I live in Hong Kong. We both live in different parts of the country that have different border regulations. That makes going back and forth more difficult than we would prefer. I need a visa to visit him and he needs the right paperwork to visit me. We never get to see each other nearly as much as we would like.

  Whenever we do see each other, we end up making a good deal of that time count. If he were cheating on me in China, he would not get so happy to see me as quickly as he does. His happiness would probably last a lot longer if he were getting happy more often.

  Not that I am in any position to complain. On the rare occasion that w
e get to see each other in person, I am just as glad to see him as he is to see me. I can keep a smile on my face longer than he can, but I would also last a lot longer if we were with each other every day. This was not the most romantic reunion. It was not the kind of deep passion you find in a Jane Austen novel, but we enjoyed each other’s company.

  Besides, we had the next nine days to go at it like crazy. I knew this was not going to be the last time we spent some quality time together. Not even close.

  We decided to go out and look around the ship. Liam had already been on board for four days, but had not really seen much of the ship.

  “I’ve mostly been working, eating and sleeping,” he told me. “I had some time off when we docked in Shanghai, so I went out and looked around a little, but it just looked like any Chinese city to me.”

  Liam is not a big fan of China. We moved to Hong Kong in 2011 and did not set foot outside of China for eight months. It was a full year before we went back home to Minnesota for the first time. We were thinking about going back in the summer of 2013, but this cruise pretty much wiped out any money we would have used for that trip.

  Liam got a job in Fuzhou, China almost a year before the cruise and now we only see each other on vacations and when I go to Fuzhou or he goes to Hong Kong.

  “Fuzhou isn’t like Hong Kong,” he says. “At least in Hong Kong it’s more international. It’s still Chinese, but there’s more English. In Fuzhou, it’s all Chinese.”

  I have been to Fuzhou, so I know what he is talking about. Hong Kong is the way China wants the world to see it. Fuzhou is more like the way China really is.

  Liam also does not like Chinese food as much as most people. After two years in China, I can understand. I love Chinese food, but sometimes you want some variety. Hong Kong has more variety than most Chinese cities, maybe more than any other Chinese city. Fuzhou does not have a lot of options besides Chinese.

  “I just want a burger and a beer,” Liam says. “Is that too much to ask?”

  Maybe he should not be living in China, but he has a pretty good job. He hated his job in Hong Kong. Back in Minnesota he would probably be working at Starbucks or some other crappy job that has nothing to do with his talents. I’m not ready to go back to Minnesota yet anyway. Hong Kong still has too much to offer, and there is no way we would be on this cruise ship sailing around Southeast Asia if we lived in Minnesota.

  At least while he was on the ship he could eat plenty of food that was not Chinese. The ship had two Chinese restaurants, but it had plenty of other options as well.

  “I haven’t eaten anything Chinese in four days,” he said proudly.

  After we said our hellos in the cabin, we got dressed to go out and look around.

  “Do we need to put clothes on?” Liam asked.

  “I didn’t hear any announcement,” I answered.

  Neither of us heard any kind of announcement telling people that it was naked time. We were kind of busy getting reacquainted, so we could have missed it. But considering that our reunion only lasted a few seconds, it seemed unlikely.

  “Do they even make an announcement?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “You tell me. You’ve been on this ship a few days.”

  “The nude cruise just started now,” he told me. “It was a different cruise before Shanghai.”

  I knew that Liam got on the ship in the middle of a different cruise and now this was the beginning of a new one. For some reason, I assumed the one before was also full of naked people. It was not.

  “So you weren’t running around naked the last four days?” I asked him.

  “No, not at all,” he laughed. “I think they would’ve kicked me off the ship.”

  “Then you should just go out naked,” I suggested.

  “But what if I’m the only one?” he asked.

  I could not think of any reason why that would make any difference. Liam loves to be naked. He does not really care if everybody else is naked or not. Of course, if there are a bunch of naked girls around, that’s even better for him.

  “Why would that stop you?” I asked.

  Liam decided to be cautious. Neither of us had ever been on a nudist cruise, so we were not sure about the etiquette of who gets naked first and when. We both put on clothes and left the cabin.

  The ship was well out of Shanghai by now. We could still see some land in the distance, but we were definitely on the ocean. The land was always going to stay there. The ship pretty much hugged the coast all the way from Shanghai to Xiamen. There was no real reason to go too far out into the ocean and if it did, it would have hit Japan or Taiwan. It was the same from Xiamen to Hong Kong. We would not be completely surrounded by ocean until we headed to Vietnam a few days later.

  We saw another person in the hallway, but he was also wearing clothes.

  “See?” I told Liam. “I told you not to get naked.”

  I had actually told him the exact opposite.

  “He doesn’t count,” Liam said. “He’s a guy.”

  Liam was only interested in seeing naked girls. We were not on this cruise because he wanted to embrace a nudist lifestyle. He was not interested in enjoying nature to the fullest extent or anything about body acceptance or gender equality. He wanted to get naked and see lots of naked girls. If they could all be supermodels, that we be a bonus for him.

  I was just as guilty of not knowing anything about nudists as Liam was. I was not on this cruise to embrace any kind of lifestyle. I was here because it was a free cruise and a chance to spend some time with my boyfriend.

  “We should go to the pool,” Liam suggested. “If they’re going to be naked anywhere, it’s there.”

  By “they”, he meant all the attractive girls.

  “Most people are probably eating dinner right now,” I suggested.

  I ate earlier, but the ship was not even close to being full at that point. Now it was sailing on the ocean. This was as full as it was going to get. There were almost 2,000 passengers and over 1,000 crew on this ship, but you would never know it walking in the almost empty hallways. It was also getting dark and as good a time to eat dinner as any.

  “I’m pretty hungry myself,” Liam said. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  Chapter 6: The Muster Drill

  We were about to go to one of the restaurants when they started to make an announcement. I was expecting to hear that it was naked time, but instead they were announcing the “muster drill”.

  Anyone who has ever been on a cruise knows about the muster drill. That is where they tell everyone about the emergency evacuation procedures. Nobody ever thinks the ship is going to sink when they book a cruise, but after that Italian ship that capsized near Rome and of course, everyone’s favorite, the Titanic, it is a good idea to let the passengers know where to go and what to do just in case.

  I was not expecting our ship to sink. That almost never happens. You are more likely to die in a plane crash. The most likely emergency would be a fire, especially on a Chinese cruise.

  I read about the muster drill before the cruise. I was expecting to put on a life jacket and go out on deck near our assigned lifeboat where they would tell us what to do just in case. That is not the way it works. Having 2,000 people put on life jackets and go to their lifeboats all at the same time is just a bad idea.

  They used to keep the life jackets in the cabins until someone decided that thousands of people all running back to their cabins in an emergency was not the best way to do it. Now everyone’s life jacket is kept at their assigned “muster station”. In an emergency, you just have to go to your assigned lifeboat.

  They told us all to go to our muster stations, which were pretty easy to find. The room key/credit card/ID access card told you where your muster station was. It was also on the maps in the rooms and the maps they gave everyone when we checked in. Everything was clearly marked. Ours was one deck right below our cabin. If anything happened in the middle of the night, I could be
at our lifeboat in two minutes. Liam would probably die in the fire since trying to wake him up is like trying to wake the dead.

  “In the event of an emergency, kiss your butt goodbye,” I told him. “The ship would be at the bottom of the ocean before I could wake you up.”

  I was probably joking, but it is difficult to get him out of bed in the morning.

  We never put on the life jackets, but they showed us how to use them. It’s not that complicated, but taking out 2,000 life jackets for a safety drill and then putting them all away probably is.

  They showed us our assigned lifeboat, which was a lot bigger than I expected, and told us several times that the crew was well trained and would know exactly what to do in an emergency. I wondered how true that was. Training for an emergency is very different from actually reacting to an emergency. The Titanic crew probably thought they were well trained, but that was a long time ago. They probably actually fill the lifeboats now.

  During the drill, I looked around at the other passengers. I thought it was funny that the first time I was seeing all of these nudists was while they were clothed. I thought this would be the last time I would see them all wearing anything, but of course everyone had to wear clothes whenever they want off the ship. I kept expecting everyone to be naked all the time even though there were plenty of times they could not be. I would end up seeing plenty of people wearing plenty of clothes on this nudist cruise.

  When the muster drill was over, everyone just wandered away. It was like when a bar closes for the night. Everybody left at the same time, but only half had somewhere to go.

  Liam and I headed to the main restaurant. I was not hungry, but he was starving. We heard an announcement on the way there, but the speaker it came out of was broken, so we could not really hear it.

  “Was that the naked announcement?” Liam asked me.

  “I don’t know what that was,” I answered. “I didn’t catch any of it. I think I heard the word monkey.”