Permanent Passenger: My Life on a Cruise Ship

by Micha Berman

  One evening while heading back to my cabin, I heard loud desperate shrieking. "Help, get your fucking hands off me; let me go!!" As I turned the hall I saw two security guards dragging a portly man by his arms while his feet combed the carpet behind him, his eyes bulging out of his head in a devilish stare. On a whim, this passenger experimented with cocaine in his cabin and was becoming a real disruption to the midnight buffets, a sin punishable by death on a pleasure boat like the Ecstasy. The guards led him to the brig for a good night sleep; however, sleep wasn't on his agenda.His drug-induced pleas and moans echoed throughout the night and finally ended the next morning when he was taken off the ship and handed over to local police, which in the case of Jamaica or Mexico meant his cruise was officially over.

  The security guards, mostly of Indian descent with English skills that made Captain Gallo look like an English professor, were not intimidating; in fact, they often reminded me of rent-a-cops hired for parties. Standing in hallways around the ship they stared vacuously, often using their disciplinary powers on young children running through the halls of the ship or assisting seniors up the steps. The rate of turnover for these protectors was constant. I came to believe that most of them didn't even recognize me as an Assistant Cruise Director, allowing me free rein to violate rules right in front of their faces with impunity.

  The Captain of the ship determined how strict ship rules would be enforced or in many cases, not enforced. In fact, the mood of the ship for staff was directly a reflection of who was captain at the time. One dictatorial captain who followed Captain Gallo posted flyers on the walls whenever a crew member was caught breaking a rule, detailing who the person was and what offense they committed--maybe a reincarnation of a colonial governor from the day of the Puritans. One cabin steward was guilty of public drunkenness, another waiter was publicly castigated for missing curfew, each of their shave-deprived faces appeared on signs resembling FBI Most Wanted posters. It was a step back into the middle ages and I often expected to witness public spankings on the Lido deck, maybe with some upbeat music from the reggae band as the fitting anachronistic accompaniment. Another captain threw a staff party every month, providing beer and endless amounts of food in an orgy of late night entertainment. Captain Gallo was somewhere in between, enforcing the major rules, providing order but also maintaining an air of compassion and desire to see the crew happy and motivated.

  By far the officers are the best paid employees on the ship with the captain and staff captain's salaries in the six digits. One staff captain talked of his upcoming vacation and admitted he just didn't know what to do anymore, what with several months of vacation each year and the constant traveling on the job, he had run out of places to go. These men, and they were almost all men, were the most at home at sea; sons and grandsons of fishermen and merchant marines. This was their chosen way of life and they were in it for the long haul. Despite their position and power, the officers, jocks in the truest sense, always had to prove they were the best, the idea of them losing in anything to other members of the crew, especially cruise staff, was inconceivable and intensely embarrassing. Their true colors always came out during the annual rigged crew volleyball tournament, officiated by Captain Gallo, insuring the officers a victory each year and a trophy in the Officers Dining Room. The monarchy had to preserve its crown at any cost.

  Whereas, most crew members kept their distance from these officers and viewed them as superior, I got to know them personally and considered them to be like anyone else on the ship. One thing I had to admire about Americans is their love and devotion to deodorant, something the Italians did not hold dear to their hearts or armpits. Smelly Puff Ball was the name I had given to one Italian officer who stunk so bad, I could easily identify him by his noxious scent. Stepping into an empty elevator, I had only to take one whiff and knew Smelly had left his calling card. He was a little round hairy man with a bald head, and the gait of a weeble wobble, but he had the stink of thirty construction workers. Viva Italia.

  Another staff division clad in similar pressed white uniforms were the pursers who ran the hotel side of the ship and were responsible for checking passengers into their rooms, selling shore excursion tickets, handling passenger complaints, and serving as the official bank during the cruise. Most pursers were in their 20s, college-educated and usually hailed from countries like England, Holland, Sweden and the United States. Unlike the Italian officers, they were pale, their bodies craved cannoli, not trophies, and they wore the hairstyle of the geeky nerdish order. The pursers worked long and hard and had the honor that no crew member wanted; lots of time spent going one-on-one with the passengers.

  Week after week, tireless pursers answered the same questions and often not very clever ones. Our cruise director liked to end the week by reading his top ten list of stupid passenger questions. His personal favorites were: "Do the crew live on the ship?""What do you do with the ice carvings after they melt?" and"Where does the ship get its electricity?" He liked to tell passengers to look for a giant electric cord at the back of the ship that ran all the way to Miami. Some of the less brain-endowed cruisers actually went to the back of the ship to look.

  Eventually pursers burned out like most of their colleagues; dealing with passengers became a nightmarish task. It was at this time that I discovered a very interesting phenomenon called "distancing." Burnout was a normal phenomenon and merely part of a cycle witnessed in almost every staff member, especially pursers. At first they were excited and cheerful to meet the new crowds each week, but after a couple of months the passengers resembled irritating mosquitoes. The desire to squash them was hard to contain and for pursers the road to insanity had begun.

  For this reason workers like myself developed defense mechanisms for dealing with them. "Distancing" meant defining passengers as "cones" who were a different and separate breed from the crew. I have been told by reliable sources that "cones" referred to Saturday Night Live's Coneheads, who were endlessly asked where they came from. Their standard answer was France. The only thing French about our passengers were the fries they ate. It was considered unpopular to actually congregate with the "cones" and if any of us actually got involved romantically with a passenger it was termed "coning."I never developed these attitudes completely, although I did experience the burnout. I enjoyed interacting with the passengers, mostly because they served as a link to the outside world, often they updated me on current events; the USA Today, the only major newspaper available in many Caribbean ports was strangling me with its paucity of information, superfluous polls, and pukish blue and green colors. The pursers seemed to have mastered the act of manipulation of a "cone" but despite their talents, these educated clean suited youths were often found during their precious time off in exotic ports scratching their heads and absentmindedly nodding at middle-aged couples from Topeka, Kansas.

  One of my closest friends and confidants on the Ecstasy was a purser named Chris, an Icelandic man over six foot tall with golden blonde hair, dancing blue eyes and even chiseled features. Friends mean everything on a cruise ship. With them the ship can seem like summer camp, without them it can be a very lonely place. Despite the thousands of people that surrounded me each week, there was a severe paucity of individuals to connect with on a conversational level beyond ones favorite ice cream flavor or discussing what casino to visit on the next port of call. Chris was someone I could talk to on a deeper level and I felt close to him because in so many ways we were on the cruise ship for the same reasons and shared similar educations and upbringing. We were outsiders, both expecting to be on the ship for only a short period of time, always commenting on what we saw around us and aware that at any moment we had the capacity to pick up and leave. I spent countless hours with Chris talking about the politics of the purser department, relationships, the culture of Iceland and never once did we need to talk about the weather or favorite ice cream flavors.

  He was the closest thing I knew to a "Romeo" on the ship. With his Robert Redford stri
king looks, he attracted the flirty eyes of many female passengers each day as he worked the front desk of the ship answering questions and offering directions. Without even trying, he had a suave demeanor and was not the least bit shy about inviting passengers to join him for a drink."How do you do it?" I asked him one night."I'll show you," he bounced back to me and so for a couple weeks another purser and I enrolled in his Romeo's School of Romance. I am happy to say I passed but not with the kind of grades I would have hoped. Some weeks he would be involved with older women, which he seemed to enjoy as much as the younger ladies he would entertain. Chris, despite his Scandinavian looks was not afraid to compete with the Italian fleet of romantic officers. He matched them in pick up lines, suave walking style down the promenade and in sheer guts and recklessness in approaching any desirable female within striking distance.

  One week a large tour group from Iceland came onboard.Chris spent the week drinking and socializing with his fellow Icelanders that according to my calculations represented close to 1% of that country's population. Eventually Chris would be reassigned from the front desk to the crew deck where he became the crew purser, responsible for all the paper work of all the crew members on the ship. Often bottled up in a small room many levels below the passenger decks, he had less and less time to play the game of romance and eventually left the ship. We had talked of living off the ship together but as it would turn out my burnout factor came several months before his and only after I had left the ship did I learn that he too was planning his departure. Chris, like many of his fellow pursers, could not escape and was ultimately the victim of long hours of administrative work coupled with an intense barrage of passenger frustration.

  Cruise staff, on the other hand, were blessed with little work and a lot of privileges. Not all cruise lines treat their staff the same, but Carnival was unusually lax with rules and regulations for crew and not very demanding in terms of work hours required. The only activities we could not do on the ship was gamble, dance, or sit at a bar and even if we sinned and violated one of these edicts there was little chance of real disciplinary action. Our cruise staff, mostly comprised of dancers, performed two shows a week and helped with certain activities throughout the week. The rest of my team were comprised of musicians, child counselors and a disc jockey. Life was quite good for the musicians who had the liberty to wake up late and linger during the day until they performed at night. Often you found them sunbathing, reading, or playing cards. The disc jockey had a similar setup but was required to work each night in the disco.

  However, the best position was no doubt the production singers, the prima donnas of the ship. A male counterpart named Gene joined Charla, who I had met on the plane. Their only responsibility was to perform two shows a week and at most they worked 6 hours a week; the rest of the time was spent with their every need and desire granted quicker than an all powerful genie from a bottle. These singers were treated to the best rooms on the ship and were allowed as much vacation time as they wanted. Whereas, the salaries for most cruise staff range between $250 to $300 a week, a production singer brought in close to $800 a week.

  Early in my journey, even before the plane had taken off from Washington D.C., I had met my first friend, Charla. We spent one night whispering in the hallway of a Miami hotel, swapping stories and sharing our fears about the adventure that lay ahead of us, so we had already formed a bond before joining the ship. Charla had just graduated from college and had spent the past summers as an entertainer in local amusement parks, a normal stepping stone for ship performers. A natural beauty, she had auditioned for a singer position without really imagining she would ever be hired even as a stagehand. Now she had landed her dream job and was savoring every satisfying moment. Her face was recognized throughout the ship for she was the star in this fantasy world and even though she liked to play down all the attention, it was obvious to all that she really loved it, basking in the glow of adulation.

  Our relationship quickly became like brother and sister as we settled into the routine of cruise life. Whereas, romance was a seasonal event in my life, it preoccupied Charla's calendar. The first few weeks of the cruise for Charla played out like a soap opera as the two studs of the ship fought for the honor to have her as their girlfriend. On one side was Denzel, a Tarzan-type figure, a gorgeous aerobics instructor from Los Angeles who could have appeared as the leading man in any film, while his competitor was Johnny, the stylish, long-haired, hip hop disc jockey from Texas. Denzel had been discovered during one of his explosive aerobics classes in Los Angeles where he liked to climb the walls like a spider and holler primeval grunts. A cruise representative witnessed this insane spectacle and brought him aboard the cruise in a matter of weeks. Now he was electrifying, motivating, and shocking middle-aged women during their 45-minute aerobics classes on the M.S. Ecstasy, as well as, courting the beautiful and desirable Charla.

  Each night Charla and I would go over the pros and cons of each man until finally the moment arrived to make a decision. Denzel's Spiderman abilities were to no avail as the charming, sweet-talking disc jockey won and eventually dated Charla for most of her time on the ship. When she wasn't performing, she spent her days lifting weights, reading fashionable ladies magazines like Elle and Cosmopolitan, sunbathing, watching old movies, gossiping and applying makeup. I never saw Charla without cosmetics. In fact, after a few margaritas she confessed she often wore it to bed like a good luck charm so that her boyfriends wouldn't see her without it. Her pillow must have been very colorful. Not too long after, I nicknamed her "Tammy Faye Charla" to her chagrin.

  Her life was luxurious, of the rich and famous except on a smaller scale; yet there were moments I sensed a boredom in her eyes. There was only so much mascara one could apply. I would often hang out in her room drinking tea, watching the same old movies and generally admiring her overflowing supplies of makeup, jewelry and designer clothes. Over time Charla became my true confidant on the ship, the person whom I would tell all my secrets and fears. Each week we would head off the ship together to go to malls or to the beaches. Though we began our journey on the same day, Charla remained on the ship that fateful day I walked off. Our friendship continued beyond the ocean as I wrote her letters trying to find out the latest news on the ship. After two years on the high seas Charla also decided she had had enough of ship life and left the world of cruising to join the National Broadway Touring Company of Miss Saigon.

  Johnny, Charla's successful suitor and the disc jockey on the ship, worked the hours of an owl, lounging, sleeping, sunbathing during the day and re-emerging at night to occupy the four-sided glass booth in the Stripes Disco. Johnny and I spent many hours in his fishbowl talking about our common problems and frustrations, always to the thumping of the loud rock tunes. Johnny was surrounded by the most interesting characters on the cruise, collecting each and every one of their business cards. He was obsessed with networking, planning for that time he would leave the ship and use every number and name he ever collected to start a new career in every state of the union.

  Also extremely distrustful of the management of the cruise ship, Johnny was forever coming up with conspiracy theories of how "they" were trying to get him to leave. If the concept "burnout" applied to anyone on the ship, Johnny was the poster boy. Not equipped with the proper equipment or music, Johnny had been involved in a letter writing campaign with the main office in Miami for months trying to arrange to get more music. He was demanding a better selection of CDs and would settle for nothing less. Time and time again he had been turned down and eventually he began to buy music with his own money. The irony of a multi-million dollar cruise line unable or unwilling to buy a couple extra CDs seemed ridiculous and for Johnny it was a reason not to sleep at night. I tried to explain that Carnival's CEO, a kind very rich middle-aged Jewish gentleman in Miami had a lot to worry about. After all he headed a company with thousands of employees, directed the largest fleet in the world, and was responsible for a company worth billions. It was
unlikely he was masterminding a plot to keep Madonna's most recent release from Johnny's turntable. "You're full of shit," was the most rational and printable response I could get from the long-haired paranoid schizophrenic DJ from Texas.

  Soon matters became extremely tense as the main office requested him to stay on board during our one day at port in Miami to play music for groups touring the ship. This was the day off every crew member looked forward to each week and for months Johnny played cat and mouse with cruise authorities fighting this unreasonable decree. In time, Johnny would ultimately leave the ship several weeks before me and return to the topless clubs of Dallas where he started. In the years since I have worked on the cruise ship Johnny still keeps a spark of hope that one day he will return to work aboard a cruise ship with a proper supply of music and he probably will, a victim of a sick love-hate relationship.

  For many of us working in the industry the attraction of cruise life became an addiction that was hard to leave. I met many people who have been on ships for five years or more and were simply terrified to get off. Gene, Charla's partner on stage, a black man in his thirties was closing in on 9 years of ship life. He had worked on every ship Carnival ever produced. The concept of grocery shopping, paying utility bills, cleaning an apartment were abstract ideas to a man that had spent nearly a decade on a floating hotel. He was a cruise co-dependent, functional at sea and a total wreck on land. He had tried to adjust to life in Philadelphia at one time and within a week was back at sea. Stories were told of how some of those who left had to rock themselves to sleep once they left the ship, withdrawal was painful and often unsuccessful. The responsibilities of living a normal life after being catered to on a ship was too much for many departees, and the cruise management, to their devilish delight, liked to use this fear of adjusting to land life as a weapon to keep us aboard.