How to survive seven days traveling the Caribbean in a huge clean boat as if it had boiled, filled with people who do not stop smiling for some reason like happiness.
I have seen lots of white and huge ships. I have seen the north coast of Jamaica. I've seen and smelled a hundred and forty-five cats of Ernest Hemingway residence in Key West, Florida. Camcorders I've seen that almost needed a mobile platform. I've seen bags fluorescent, fluorescent sunglasses and over twenty different brands of rubber sandals. I hear drums, I have eaten donuts shell and saw a woman with a lamé dress vomiting within a glass elevator. I learned that there are different intensities of blue beyond the blue really, really intense.
I ate more food and more stylish in my life, and I've eaten for a week in which I have also learned the difference between "wobble" because of the surge and nod because of the swell. I've seen suits and pants in fuchsia, red menstrual jackets, anoraks brown and purple and white sneakers with no socks. I've seen professional blackjack betting so charming that you feel like running to your table and spend every last penny playing blackjack. I heard asking American adults and buoyant in the Passenger Service Desk if you have to get wet to dive, if all the crew sleep on board and what time is the Midnight Buffet.
In a week I've been five hundred professional smiles. I have tanned skin and I've moved twice. I felt the weight of subtropical sky like a blanket. I skipped a dozen times to hear the tremendous noise, like a wind of the gods, the siren of a cruise. He assimilated the rudiments of mah-jong2, I learned to wear a life jacket over a tuxedo and I'm chess with a girl of nine years. I bargained for trinkets with children malnourished. Now I know all the reasons and excuses imaginable for someone to spend three thousand dollars in a Caribbean cruise. I have bitten his lip and have rejected a Jamaican Jamaican grass really. Reggae music I've heard a lift-and I can not describe. I have learned to fear your own sink. I've gotten used to the movement of the boat and now I want unaccustomed. I tried caviar and I agreed with the child sitting next to me that it is smelly. I have absolutely care professional and as I had promised beforehand. With grim humor I've seen all types of erythema, queratinosis, premelanómicas lesions, age spots, eczema, warts, cysts papular bellies, femoral cellulite, varicose veins, hairpieces collagen and silicone, dye cheap hair transplant failed. That is, I have seen almost naked to a lot of people who would rather not see in any state close to nudity.
I embarked on a seven-night cruise to the Caribbean aboard a boat that was so clean and white it looked like it had been boiled. The blue color of the West Indies range from blue blanket and blue fluorescent child: just as the sky. Temperatures were uterine. The sun seemed covered in advance for our comfort. The crew-passenger ratio was 1.2 for every two passengers crew. It was a luxury cruise. This product is not a service or set of services. Not even a week of fun. It's more a feeling. Is a bona fide product: it is assumed that you feel should occur: a combination of relaxation and stimulation, indulgence and tourism quiet frantic, that special blend of servility and condescension which is sold under the conjugations of the verb care. This verb splashes various brochures: "As never before have cared," "Our hot tubs and saunas are to take care of," "Let him take care ',' Watch out in the warm breezes of the Bahamas."
But there is something unbearably sad in luxury cruises. On board mine, especially at night, with all the organized fun, friendly and fun noise, I felt despair. The word now has been trivialized by overuse, but it is a serious word and I'm using it seriously. For me, denotes a strange desire despair of death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents itself as fear of death. Maybe it looks like what people fear or distress calls. But just to be like those things. It's more like wanting to die to avoid the unbearable feeling of realizing that one is small, weak, selfish and, beyond a doubt, is going to die. You want to jump overboard. I do not think a accident luxury cruises attract mostly people older than fifty years, for which his own mortality and is more than an abstraction.
Most of the bodies that were exposed during the day on the deck was in various stages of disintegration. And the ocean itself (which I thought was so salty as hell or used gargle to relieve sore throat, with a foam so corrosive that I'm probably going to have to change a hinge of my glasses) is basically a huge rot machine. Sea water corrodes the vessel at an astonishing rate: the oxidation, exfoliated paint, varnish removed, turn the brightness, cover the hulls of ships of barnacles, algae and sea indefinitely mucus-pervasive that it seems the very embodiment of death. Not so with the luxury vessels. It is no accident that they are all so white and clean, it is clear that they represent the triumph of capital Calvinist and industry on the primary putrefaction of the sea. My cruise seemed to have a whole battalion of tiny, sinewy types of third world went from one side to another ship in blue overalls looking for damage to resolve.
Here's the thing. A vacation is a respite from all the unpleasant, and as the awareness of death and decay are unpleasant, it seems strange that the supreme fantasy Americans vacation is to be planned in the midst of a huge machine of death and putrefaction primary. But in a luxury liner are ably involved in the construction of various fantasies of triumph. A method for "success" goes through the rigors of self-improvement. And maintenance amphetamine my boat carrying out its crew is a little subtle equivalent of personal grooming, diet, exercise, supplements megavitamins, plastic surgery, time management seminars. There is another way of dealing with death. No grooming, but the excitement. No hard work, but the fun lasts. The ongoing activities, las celebraciones, las fiestas, la alegría y las canciones. La adrenalina, la excitación, el estímulo. Hacen que te sientas vibrante, vivo. La diversión dura promete no tanto trascender el miedo a la muerte como ahogarlo. Los cruceros de lujo siempre empiezan y terminan un sábado.
He llegado a la conclusión de que pasada cierta edad los hombres no deberían llevar pantalones cortos. Tienen las piernas sin pelos, algo que repele: parece como si a la piel le hubieran quitado la ropa a la fuerza y estuviera pidiendo pelos a gritos. El código de indumentaria en este sitio va desde el ejecutivo informal hasta el turista tropical. Me temo que soy la persona más sudorosa y despeinada a la vista. De vez en cuando me quito la cap and I'm taking turns listening to conversations and talking about trivialities. A large percentage of the chatter I hear on the sly is explaining to other passengers about why they signed up for this cruise. It seems the talk of a psychiatric hospital: "And you, why are you here?". Not once did anyone say you're going on this luxury cruise only go on a luxury cruise. Nor is there someone you release that stuff that travel broadens your horizons and he always had the fantasy of sailing. The word used over and over again in the informal discussions to relax. Everyone can imagine the week begins, or as a long-delayed reward, or as a last effort to save your sanity.
Almost everyone has come as a couple, when they walk in the surf, usually rely on their partners as if they were teenage sweethearts. It is clear that they like to do: women have a trick is to hold tight to their boyfriends and snuggle to walk, as men straighten the back, put his face serious and obvious that they feel peculiarly strong and protective. A luxury cruise is full of such unexpected romantic moments, like trying to help each other when the boat lurches, you realize why older couples like to go cruising. I do not know what that would lead a claustrophobic, but for an agoraphobic transept a number of attractive options for closure. The agoraphobic can choose not to leave the boat, not out of the deck where the cabin is or avoid going outdoors and rails with beautiful views on both sides of the deck. Or never leave your cabin.
I'm not a true agoraphobic from which neither can go to the supermarket, but came to love dearly my cabin. To get there I have to climb up a glass elevator that makes no noise. Hostesses there and watch me smile slightly as we go anywhere, and there is a hotly contested competition as to which of the hostesses smells better in this space closed and cold. Back in the cabin I notice that its dimensions are the exact boundary between tight and constricted. At its almost square floor piled a large bed, two bedside tables with lamps and an eighteen-inch TV with four shipping options for cable. There is also a white enamel table serves as a toilet, and a round glass table on which there is a basket that at times is full of fresh fruit and sometimes shells and barks. Fresh fruit is always good. He had not eaten so much fruit in my life. But this is still insignificant compared with the fascinating and potentially unhealthy toilet cabin.
is a harmonious combination of elegant form and function vigorous lined paper rolls so smooth that they lack the usual perforations to separate the leaves. Above my sink has the following inscription: "This toilet is connected to a suction drain system. Please do not throw anything but ordinary waste and toilet paper. " That's right: it is a toilet cleaner. And like the ceiling fan is not a moderate or mild aspiration. Pull the string causes a brief but traumatic noise, a kind of gurgle sustained major, like a stomach disorder on a cosmic scale. Along with this noise produces a powerful suction so powerful that it is both frightening and strangely comforting: your waste does not seem much sucked and thrown away from you. And thrown with a speed that makes you feel that the waste will end up so far in your life that is going to become an abstraction, a sort of sewage treatment in your existential level.
11:05. Talk about navigation systems. The captain explains all about the engine room, bridge and the basic goings-boat performance. My cruise ship can carry a million seven hundred forty thousand liters of diesel fuel for boats. It has two turbine engines on each side, a big one called "Papa" and a small-compared-called "Son." You can go a little quickly in certain kinds of heavy sea when the sea is calm: this is due to technical reasons that do not fit on the napkin on which I am taking notes. The English captain will not win any awards for diction, but it's a quack when it comes to data. It
to parallel park a tractor-trailer having taken LSD is not even close to the experience of the cruise dock. The captain has my same height and go through my thirties, but is ridiculously attractive, as Paul Auster extremely slim and tan. Wearing sunglasses Ray-Ban cordelito but not fluorescent. I make an innocent question, and the captain answered me sharply:
- How to turn on the engines? Not with the ignition key, I promise.
The audience responds with a shrill laugh and quite cruel. The total number of forty women who have come to this talk is zero. A guy that I have bed next to me is taking notes with a Mont Blanc pen and a notebook covered in leather. A single moment of illumination on the road from the ping pong room would have prevented me here now taking notes on paper napkins with a fat felt-tipped pen that is used to emphasize. The audience of the lecture consists of big men, big-bellied, bald, about fifty years, all looking to be the kind of guy that amount a director ejecutivo saliendo del departamento de ingeniería de la empresa en lugar de hacer algún relamido máster en administración de empresas. En conjunto, constituyen un público muy experto y hacen preguntas complejas acerca del calibre y la potencia de los motores, el manejo de una fuerza de torsión multirradial, la distinción exacta entre un capitán de clase B y otro de clase C. Son de esos hombres que parecen estar fumando puros incluso cuando no están fumando puros. Mis intentos por tomar notas técnicas empapan las servilletas de papel hasta que las letras amarillas adoptan un aspecto hinchado y bobalicón como los graffiti de un subterráneo. La velocidad máxima de un megacrucero es 21,4 nudos. De ninguna manera I will raise my hand in the midst of these people and ask what is a knot.
13:30. Join the cruise director to have a bit of fun in the contest for Best Male Legs judged by all the ladies in the pool! With hair stuffed into a swim cap at the suggestion of staff, took an active part in these shenanigans. It is a tournament-style competition where girls Girls Team and Boys Team kids have to climb to a kind of plastic telephone poles smeared with petroleum jelly, face another (a) Man (a) and try to make it fall water, which is brine-pool repulsive by beatings with a pillowcase filled with balloons.
resist a couple of rounds and I am knocked down by a huge Milwaukee newlywed with furry shoulder punches me, making me almost drop the shower cap and throwing the force into a pool that is not only having a high sodium content but, at this point, is covered with shiny Vaseline. I emerge sticky, upset and cross-eyed because of the right hook of the kind that marred the truly legitimate chance he had of winning the contest for Best Male Legs. Yet, I finish third, but count me after he would have won if not for my frown, swollen left eye and squint, and my hat crooked they were a backdrop too ridiculous to that the jury could appreciate the beauty of my shapely legs.
20:45. The cruise is proud to present the hypnotist N! Presented by the cruise director. Warning: it is strictly forbidden audio or video recording of all shows. Children must stay with their parents. Children should not sit in the front row. Among the shows presented this week include a Vietnamese comedian who juggles chainsaws, a husband and wife duo that specializes in medleys of Broadway and a love of singer-impersonator whose imitations were so moving that the vote is scheduled second round. The hypnotist is British and it seems beyond belief to a villain in series B of the Fifties. At present, the cruise director said that he had the honor to hypnotize both Queen Elizabeth II and the Dalai Lama. His performance combines with a hypnotic spree quite conventional chatter and jokes at the expense of the public. And ends up being a ridiculously symbolic microcosm of the whole experience at this luxury liner. First, we are told that not everyone is susceptible to hypnosis. The hypnotist makes several simple tests to over three hundred attendees to choose those who have the talent they will likely join in the fun imminent.
Then, when appropriate are gathered on stage, all tied up in complex contortions as a result of the aptitude tests, the hypnotist is a good time assuring them and us is not going to pass anything they do not wish to pass and which have not undergone a voluntary basis. After convincing a girl that he is leaving a strong voice with a English accent from the top left of your bra. Another woman prompts her to perceive a foul odor emanating from the man who is sitting beside him, who in turn believed to be the seat of your chair slowly warms up to a hundred degrees. Of the other subjects, a flamenco dance, one not only believes to be naked but embarrassingly ill-equipped and another does scream piteously: "Mommy, I pee!" every time the hypnotist says a certain word. The audience laughs hard when applicable. And indeed it is fun to see these well-dressed adult passengers behaving strangely no reason that they can understand. It is as if allowed to build fantasies hypnosis so clear that not even know they are fantasies. As if their heads and not their own. Which is obviously fun.
Perhaps the most striking symbol of this cruise is the hypnotist. Not only is that absolutely no disguising his boredom and hostility, but incorporates an ingenious way to his show: his boredom gives the same air of guy who is back of everything that makes us trust doctors and policemen, and hostility is what starts the biggest laughs of the public. The attitude of the hypnotist on stage is extremely hostile and petty. Cruel pretends different U.S. accents. Ridicules both the public questions of hypnotized subjects. Burning spear glances to Rasputin and says some people will wet the bed at three in the morning or they will drop their pants in his office just two weeks. The swing of delight viewers back and forth and clapping in the knee and dry eyes with handkerchiefs. Every moment of perversity is followed by a gesture with the palms to confirming that the hypnotist is fabulous, we want and we're a gang just wonderful human beings that we're having death.
of something supposedly fun than ever will again.
Mondadori.
