2004-08-14 - 10:33 a.m.
On day three, I woke up early enough to have breakfast in the main dining room. There were few people there�I wondered if most people were having their breakfast via room service. Knowing that finding a share table would be unlikely with so few people present in the room, I asked the maitre d� to have me seated at a table by myself.
After I sat down, a waiter placed my napkin across my lap and handed me a menu. While I was looking at the food categories on the menu, a very lovely runway-model-type woman with a Meryl Streep mouth came up to me holding a tray of sweet rolls on her hip and offered me one. I selected a raspberry-flavored one and she said, �Have two, they�re very good!� So I said, �Okay, give me two, they do look good,� and she smiled and did a Bunny dip as she put them down one at a time on my bread plate. She then circled around the room with her tray to serve other patrons.
A medium distance off from me, another waitress who was preparing something at the waitress station, glanced over at me, smiled broadly as if she knew me, and said, �How are you doing this morning?�
I wasn�t completely sure it was me she was talking to, but she did seem to be looking straight at me, so I smiled back and said that I was doing great, looking forward to the day. My response might have been friendlier than she normally received, because this made her then come over to my table to talk. She said, �You�ve got some good things planned for Cozumel, today?�
�Yeah,� I answered, �I went for the catamaran snorkel and beach party, that sounded like lots of fun.� I felt kind of silly, because I wasn�t sure how much the crew knew about the actual port excursions�life on the ship as an employee and the fun times of the passengers could exist in worlds alien to each other.
But she seemed glad to hear it and said, �Cozumel is a lovely island. How are you liking the ship?� I told her how much I liked it and continued my expression of �What�s there to complain about, it�s a beautiful ship, a perfect size, and with a wonderful crew, I don�t understand why some people complain.� It seemed much more casual and enjoyable for the food staff this morning, as they didn�t have to rush around as much to serve all the passengers as they had to at the other meals. My waiter and the sweet roll waitress had come over to join our conversation.
My waiter, who was from India, said, �What you give is what you get,� meaning, I guess, that happy passengers get good service, whereas complainers continue to spiral further down in misery.
The sweet roll waitress nodded her head at the other waitress and said to me, kidding about her friend and fellow county-person (I could tell from their name tags that both were from Romania), �You watch out for Romina, she is dangerous,� but the waiter from India confessed, �I think about her in my dreams.� I smiled at him and then smiled at Romina who then rubbed me on my back for a split second and then said, �Please, enjoy your breakfast and if you need anything, just ask for me,� and all three went off to their other duties.
After breakfast (Romina had made sure to find me just before the end to say goodbye and to wish me an enjoyable day), I went up to the top deck to see where the ship was and to enjoy this morning.
The water below was an amazing cobalt blue, an ocean color I hadn�t ever seen before except along the Pacific Coast of Baja California. What was it about Mexico that seemed to possess this color of blue for its oceans? I wished I understood the science of ocean colors, just exactly what it was that made the differences. One of the many clues that ancient Polynesian navigators had used to find their way around the immense Pacific Ocean was to use the colors of the water as indications of their location. Did it have to do with depth, temperature, latitude, salt content?
I stood there for a long time, and then went back down to my cabin to prepare for today�s arrival at Cozumel.
I have to admit that for several perhaps unreasonable reasons, I was anxious about it, feeling insecure. For one thing, I hadn�t been to a foreign country since 1988, so I was a little worried about crossing a border (although truth to tell, the second I had stepped aboard this Bahamas registry ship, I had crossed out of the United States). While I have never had serious problems, my border crossings have not always been trouble free and now that we were post-9/11, I wasn�t sure what to expect (in either direction).
I also was worried about the safety of whatever possessions I would be taking with me onto the excursion catamaran�credit cards, travelers checks, my passport, my video camera. These would be in a backpack and would necessarily have to be left unattended while I was snorkeling with the crowd of passengers in the water. Who among the Mexican excursion crew, or even among my fellow passengers, could I trust or not trust? But I figured I needed to bring these things, and what was the point of bringing the video camera if I couldn�t use it in port?
But, worst of all was my anxiety about going back into the open water.
Prior to my South Pacific trip (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and French Polynesia), which I took in 1986, I had become a certified scuba diver. I said to my friend Tootie, with whom I was going on that trip, �We�re going to the Great Barrier Reef, one of the greatest dive spots in the world, we ought to become scuba divers so that we could properly enjoy it.� She agreed with me and separately we became certified, she in Kentucky where she lived, with a final open water test dive in Florida, I in Northern California where I lived, with a final open water test dive in Mendocino.
I cannot say that I enjoyed my test dive in Mendocino�in fact, I number it among my personal horror stories. It was anything but what I would consider ideal dive conditions. This was in the winter, so Mendocino was dark, chilly, foggy, and as spooky as a haunted house. Just being in the town at all was depressing, let alone contemplating being sixty feet under water for the first time in an ugly, dark ocean. I will never forget the moment I first saw the dive site where we would be having our final exam. We all stood up on a cliff overlooking a nearly black bowl of water surrounded by wet, jagged rock, black and evil, the water completely packed solid with a kelp forest�to me, it looked more like the LaBrea Tar Pit. �We�re going to be going into that?� I said in horror.
�Yeah,� said the dive instructor, �and as there�s no shore, we�re going to jump in from up here.� I almost packed the whole thing in, except that we had already gone too far to give up now. Others seemed willing to do it, so I guess I would, too. Besides, if we wanted be certified, we had no choice.
I�m amazed that I actually did get through it. Jumping off that cliff was to me similar to what I would expect it would be like to jump out of an airplane for ones first sky dive. I just kind of shut my mind off and jumped.
That water was very cold and dark�I could only see my hand if it were less than a foot away from my mask, otherwise, all around me was in darkness. What there was down there to see would suddenly appear in front of my face and then disappear as I swam, and none of it was all that interesting to me (certainly nothing was beautiful)�the dense leaves and tubular stalks of the kelp anchored to the ocean floor below, primitive sea animals glued to rock, starfish, sea anemones, flat abalone, and silvery fish. Apparently there could have been sharks down there, too, but I suppose what you can�t see might not be as frightening as what you can.
Being under there was the first time I appreciated wearing a wet suit, which otherwise had always stimulated a feeling of claustrophobia whenever I zipped myself up into the squeezing confines of one. This time I not only felt insulated from the cold, but my skin also had a barrier against whatever creepy denizens lived down there.
We were then to do a navigation exercise in which we were supposed to swim a certain pattern underwater and, using our compass, find our way back again. In the process of that, something grabbed onto me by the oxygen tank and jerked me back. I nearly had a heart attack at that, and then realized that what must have happened was that some stalks of kelp had gotten entangled around my breathing apparatus, holding me fast. I shouted underwater for my dive buddy to come back and help me, but he merely kept on swimming forward and thus I was left there alone. (I didn�t tell the instructor what my dive buddy had done, because that would have been an immediate flunk of the exam for him.)
Knowing what you are supposed to do and what you actually will do are two different things. When you get entangled in kelp (and down in that mess, swimming through the kelp was like swimming through Sleeping Beauty�s briar patch), you are supposed to take off all your tanks and valves and stuff and bring it all around so that you can see it, and then carefully untangle the kelp. Cutting the stalks of kelp with your knife is forbidden, because it looks exactly like your air hoses and therefore you might cut one of those, instead. However, now suddenly being left alone in this dark sea and trapped deep under the water, I was in no way able to muster the presence of mind to carefully take off all that diving gear, so instead, in a panic, I merely screamed and jerked around with all my might like an angry dog on a leash and somehow managed, fortunately, to wrench myself free. This is not a good technique, as I suppose I could have ripped off one of my air hoses, but by that time I wasn�t thinking, just merely reacting with full panic.
A flood of relief poured through my veins once I realized I was free, but emotionally, I was through with this examination. All I cared about was that I was alive. By this time I no longer had any idea where I was and, abandoning the navigation exercise, I shot up to the surface of the water. Interestingly, mine wasn�t the only head up there on the surface, many others were up there, too (including my dive buddy, about half way between me and the rocks), either lost or had given up on the navigation. However, I was the farthest person out, way away from the rocky cliffs that served as the �shore,� and between me and solid land was nothing but water packed solid with the black tar of solid kelp. Much worse than that, there was a definite feeling of surge or current pushing me even further out. Floating there in the surface of the water, it felt like a plate filled with water had been tipped upward at the rock edge and I was being relentlessly slid further out to sea.
I began to power my way forward toward the rocks, churning my swimming arms through the leaves of the kelp. After a while, I heard my instructor shout, �Go back under the water!� As that was the last thing I wanted to do, I just kept powering myself forward against the surge and the kelp, really exhausting myself in the process. The instructor kept shouting at me and finally I understood him to say that it was quicker and easier to swim under the surface than on top of it. Feeling that at this point I really had no other way to make it, I managed to make myself go back down and continued to push myself forward. It was easier, as my instructor had indicated.
Soon enough, I made it to the rocks, getting there at about the same time as my dive buddy (so it looked like we had been together the whole time), but then the difficult task still lay ahead of actually getting out of the water. The rocks were jagged and slippery and powerful waves and surges kept pushing me (and everybody else) back. I really didn�t have much energy left. It took three people standing on the rocks to manage to pull everybody out of there, one exhausted body at a time. And then once we were safely out of the water, we still had the daunting task of having to somehow climb our way back up that cliff, this time wearing constricting wet suits and carrying our swim fins and heavy oxygen tanks.
The whole thing had been such a nightmare.
We were supposed to have a big beach party and cook-out that night with the class, but I was tired and angry and sure I had flunked anyway, so I simply treated myself to a delicious dinner alone in a beautiful glass-enclosed restaurant on a cliff overlooking the sea (where it was safe and I could celebrate my victory over the evil waters by still being alive) and then the next morning I drove back home without a word to anybody.
I was so surprised when a few weeks later I received my dive certification in the mail.
I decided then that I would limit my scuba diving to clear, warm tropical waters. None of this dark, cold California ocean stuff.
Unfortunately, the clear, warm tropical waters weren�t much better.
Tootie and I stayed on Heron Island in Australia, which is one of the many coral islands dotted along on the surface of the Great Barrier Reef. It is both a great dive spot and an endangered species haven. At school, I have been giving popular lectures about the Green Turtles and ground-dwelling Mutton birds for which Heron Island is their natal island. That part of the place was worthwhile. The scuba diving, on the other hand, I didn�t enjoy as well.
Reef dives are boat dives, that is to say, that while you may be staying on an island on the reef, for the really good scuba diving, they take you out into the open water in a boat to where the reef drops off and you can dive down along the convoluted wall of the reef to deeper and presumably more interesting regions below. Unless you charter a private boat, you will do this with a crowd of twenty or so other divers, which I thought would make the dive more secure.
When you get to the chosen spot, the boat drops its anchor line down and everybody jumps off into the open water and sinks down about 60 � 100 feet, or so, and then led by a dive guide, the crowd swims along the wall and the guide points out various interesting things such as the presence of moray eels peeking out of coral fissures, etc. Doing this was okay and at least the water is quite clear, although I have an issue with swimming along with a crowd. While being with other people makes you feel more secure (despite the fact that you really can�t effectively communicate with anybody), the swimming itself gets in the way of enjoying what you are there to see, plus all the flapping flippers seem to drive away all the colored fish. You also use up a lot of oxygen. So for me, the reality was that while I was there, I really wasn�t enjoying it�it felt more like running laps in high school P.E., but in an underwater setting. (I have since learned from experienced divers that it is far better to simply let the crowd swim on ahead of you and you and your dive buddy just stay there hanging around the anchor line. You have the beauty of the coral all to yourself and millions of fish come in to investigate. Then when you see the crowd come back, you merely swim back up the anchor line and get back on the boat.)
One of the rules of scuba diving is to watch your air gauge and when you approach the half-way point (leave a reasonable cushion before the halfway mark), it is time to turn around and go back. I apparently reach that point quicker than most people�I have a poor �VO2 max� or something (I am not a runner and am not in that kind of efficient oxygen-use shape). Anyway, on this dive on the Great Barrier Reef, I reached the point where I had to turn around and go back, so I tapped on Tootie and showed her my air gauge and indicated that we should now go back. She showed me her air gauge, she still had plenty of air left, which is irrelevant in that both dive buddies are supposed to go back when ONE of them has to�that�s part of what being a dive buddy means. But Tootie merely shrugged her shoulders as if to say, �Hey, I�ve paid my money, I�ve got plenty of air left, you do what you want, but I�m going to keep on going.� Having no choice, I had to go back by myself.
So here, once again, I was left out in the ocean all alone.
You are supposed to relocate the anchor line (or, if you have been paying attention, you could retrace your steps along the compass, which few people can do when they are meandering along a reef following a group), but when I turned around to look for it, I saw that we had gone so far that I couldn�t see where it was. Having no idea how to find the boat again, I went back up to the surface of the water to look for it. What I saw really shocked me. I found the boat all right, but it was extremely far away, way farther away than I ever would have imagined. It was almost so far away it was as if it weren�t even there at all. In fact, it seemed so far away that I couldn�t image actually being able to swim back to it, but of course, I had to.
I must interject here that this was not a product of my own stupidity or ineptness as a diver. On the plane flying back home, I had a conversation about this with a professional diver, one who had done deep-sea diving at the bottom of the North Sea building off-shore oil drilling platforms for Norway, and he told me that finding the dive boat after recreational dives had been such a problem for him and everyone he knew that he developed the technique of never leaving the boat�s anchor line at all. �With all the powerful currents under water pulling you this way and that, there�s really no sure way of keeping track of where the boat is and it always scared me so much when it was time to go back that I realized it was better to never leave the boat in the first place.� Now here was a true hunk, not someone to attempt to lay down a macho trip, but to tell it like it really is�this aspect is frightening and dangerous and here is the common-sense solution for it. Scuba diving is, by the way, an extremely dangerous sport. As many die from scuba diving each year as die from mountain climbing. Both sports subject the participant to vulnerable exposure out in the changing elements, and require dependence upon partners who may or may not be up to the task.
So if you want to get some sense of how I felt when I reached the surface, you can check out that movie that is out now,
It was bad enough that the boat was so far away. The surface of the ocean was now no longer smooth. A storm had brewed (that couldn�t be known from down below) and there were now actual waves tossing me about. I was now in a panic and could do nothing more than swim with all my might toward the distant boat. It seemed that for every ten feet forward that I moved, the waves pushed me back five.
I knew that it would be better to swim under water again, as I had learned in Mendocino, but I was now too panicked to attempt to breathe through the narrow tube of the under water breathing apparatus, I felt more secure being at the surface where I could breathe normally and also keep my eye on where the boat was.
With a great deal of effort I did manage to make progress and eventually I got close enough to the boat that I could hear the dive captain screaming out at me. I have never heard such language in all my life. What he was saying was along the lines of, �You fucking bastard, put your god-damned breathing apparatus back in your fucking mouth and go back under the water, you piece of shit� and the more I refused to do it, the more he attempted to drive me into doing it with his language. �Fucking asshole, you�re going to DIE out there if you don�t put that thing back into your mouth, god-damned fucker, piece of shit bastard, I�m not going to have you die on my watch, you stinking CUNT, put that thing into your MOUTH!� and so on.
But with HIM on the boat and ME in the water, there really wasn�t much he could do to make me do what he wanted and I wasn�t about to do it myself in the emotional state I was in.
To his credit, he really was worried, and he had a great right to be. His final threat was that he was going to jump into the water himself and make me do it, and when I continued to refuse to do it (I was nearly home free, by now, anyway), he actually did jump in and swam over to me. I was so exhausted I could hardly swim another stroke. When he got to me, he grabbed me in a water rescue hold (which I recognized from having taught life saving, myself), and I simply relaxed into his arms and let him pull me the final way toward the boat. �You made me get wet, you owe me a beer for this one, mate,� he said as he dragged me toward the boat and safety.
Once I was safely on board, he started shouting at me again, demanding to know why I was alone. �What the fuck happened to your dive buddy?� he screamed.
I explained to him how I had gotten low on air, yet she wouldn�t come back with me, so now his ire was more properly transferred to her. He insisted that when she got back that I point her out to him. He said, �And when you do, I will tear up her dive certification. As a dive captain, I have a right to do it, she�s a menace to other divers.� I was actually looking forward to that little drama.
When Tootie finally arrived dripping back on board with the rest of the crowd, the dive captain said, �She�s the one, isn�t she?� Then he proceeded to give her a screaming lecture in front of everyone, �He could have been KILLED, thanks to you, I have half a mind to tear up your dive certification.� But she seemed properly contrite, so her dive certification was spared, although, frankly, I don�t think she would have cared all that much if he had ripped it up. I doubt if she enjoyed that dive, either, particularly at the end with the waves so choppy and the seasickness that most of us suffered from on the way back to Heron Island. The storm was so bad that they cancelled all dives for the rest of that week. As for the dive captain, there being no more dives that week, he took a little vacation and went back to the mainland, so he never did get that beer from me. Not that drinking with him would have been all that much fun.
Believe it or not, Tootie and I actually did one more scuba dive on that trip, this time in Fiji on a private charter with just the two of us and a dive captain and his mate. The conditions were perfect, with bright, sunny weather and beautiful clear, turquoise ocean water. Tootie thought it was worth just one more try to make up for the bad previous experience, and we would never stray far from the boat. (This was kind of like when the horse throws you, you need to get back up on again.) It was rather beautiful, although I never quite lost my feeling of anxiety�being deep under water with an artificial breathing device is to put one in an alien, hostile world, no matter how beautiful it may look. Plus the experience was marred by some kind of disturbing parasitic sucker fishes (with leech-like three disc razor-blade sharp teeth) that kept attaching themselves to us and we kept ripping them off. And some powerful force in the ocean managed to wrench from my belt an expensive underwater camera filled with all my underwater pictures. The dive captain circled the boat around and around for an hour in an effort to find the yellow camera floating on the surface of the ocean, but it was irretrievably lost. I think that both Tootie and I decided that scuba diving really wasn�t for us�the rewards weren�t equal to the dangers and the hassles.
Snorkeling, though, that was a different animal. We snorkeled on Heron Island the day before our scuba dive. And on the Blue Lagoon Cruise in Fiji, we snorkeled a lot. In both places, these were from off-shore, so there was always that feeling of security of where solid land was.
The water around Heron Island was very shallow, only a few feet in most places and the place was famous for �reef walks� in which island guests could see a lot of cool underwater things without even putting on a bathing suit. Tootie and I found deeper water in the channel that had been cut through the reef so as to allow tour boats access to the dock. There in that water, we swam out to an old wreck that was rusting out on the reef, and on our way back, a school of manta rays swam down deep underneath us, which was fascinating.
But by far the best snorkeling was in Fiji and I enjoyed it so much that I would stay there in the water for hours each day. My feeling was that in all honesty, you could see everything when you snorkeled that you could see when you scuba-dove, except that with snorkeling you look at it vertically by looking down, whereas with scuba you look at it horizontally.
So now, back on my cruise on the M/S Norwegian Sea, while I felt somewhat weird about going to one of the world�s great dive spots and not scuba-diving, (the reef off the coasts of Yucatan, Belize, and Honduras is the second longest one in the world, second only to the Great Barrier Reef, and it was Cousteau�s enjoyment of Cozumel that had put it on the map). But here, I was anxious about even going snorkeling, because the snorkeling we were going to do in Cozumel was going to be out in open water from off of a boat, not from shore. So that old dive boat fear was creeping up on me, making me worried about the day. I doubted that I was as strong of a swimmer as I had been in 1986.
The captain made an announcement that we had made good time in our attempt to catch up after leaving Houston five hours late and because of our speed, we would be arriving in Cozumel only two hours late, at 1:15 instead of 11:00, but that we would also be leaving two hours later, too.
I decided to skip lunch because I really wasn�t hungry and besides, I didn�t want to worry about having to go to the bathroom while I was on the snorkeling catamaran. Instead, I went up on the top deck to watch our progress.
The hotels of Cancun could be seen off to the right, looking like a Mexican version of Miami Beach. I noticed that many of the hotels had a modified pyramid shape, possibly in homage to the structures of the ancient Mayas who had lived there on Yucatan so long ago. I reflected upon how last year I had been relaxing on the beach in Miami Beach and had watched a cruise ship go by and wanted to be on one someday. Here, just one year later, there I was on a cruise ship and seeing the equivalent of the opposite view. The same feeling happened once we got to Cozumel. My vacation last year included Key West, and on my second day there a cruise ship was in port. Now, this time, on the island of Cozumel, I was on the cruise ship stopping at the port.
As we approached Cozumel, there were a number of people up on deck with me, watching our arrival. Up ahead we could see the dock we were going to be sidling up against and it seemed that the Captain had cut our engines and we were now in a controlled drift toward the dock. I wondered how it felt to have that much mass at your control, and how much experience it took to make an arrival like that in which, at the end, we would just barely tap against the bumpers of the dock. In the distance ahead on the other side of this bay that we were entering was another cruise ship already docked. I could tell from its distinctive Y-shaped funnel that it was a Carnival cruise ship. It looked much larger than ours.
As we arrived, I could see blue-uniformed customs officials walking along the dock toward the ship, and further back were hordes of tour leaders waiting for the onslaught of a thousand passengers. A mock pirate�s ship sailed in our vicinity�one of the excursions offered was a party adventure sail on a pirate�s ship. I could see the Fury catamaran that I was going to take for my snorkel trip already waiting at the dock, loud rock music blaring from its deck. Already I got into the swing of things and my anxiety floated away.
After a while, the cruise director announced that we had cleared customs and would now be able to disembark from down on deck one. As I stepped off the ship, a lean, muscular �Maya� man dressed in a loincloth and feathers put his arm around me for a tourist photo. My grandparents had had dozens of such cheesy photos from ports around the world and I thought it would be fun to have one of my own. However, I didn�t buy the photo when I saw it. He looked great, but I looked like a barely walking public service announcement for the evils of a sedentary lifestyle.
Up ahead on the dock, people holding signs with the names of the various excursions began the task of gathering together their patrons. The man holding the �catamaran/snorkel/beach party� sign guided us all down into the waiting catamaran. I was very pleased to see the Army mother and daughter get on board with me, along with a man from Texas they had met while partying last night�it turned out he lived not too far away from where they lived in Dallas. Also Tadzio and his friend got on board, too.
The Army mother and daughter, the Texan, and I found a good place to settle down in and almost immediately the catamaran�s crew started handing out snorkels, masks, life vests, and swim fins in our size and began instructing us in their proper use. I look off my t-shirt, but was glad to then slip on the life vest as a cover. The Texan had gotten very badly sunburned the previous day, but he was game for going back out in the sun again. The Army mother slathered him with sunblock, and then he put his t-shirt back on as further protection. And then we were off, shooting rapidly along the turquoise water toward our snorkel spot.
We went up to and beyond the Carnival cruise ship. I was excited to see that it was The Triumph. Why that mattered was that that had been the ship that an on-line friend of mine had taken on a cruise two years ago (his first). It was that cruise of my friend�s that got me to realizing that my idea of a cruise no longer had to be �someday,� but that it could be �now.� Here, now, was that very ship, now repositioned down from New York and sharing the first port of my first big ship cruise. I felt that something had turned full circle.
Our catamaran continued on way past The Triumph and our catamaran�s captain asked how many people were beginners with snorkeling. Most people raised their hand, and so he decided to take us to a �beginner�s spot.� Although I was now no longer feeling afraid, I must say that I was happy to hear that.
We went along for quite a good distance and I went over to talk to Tadzio and his friend, for a while. Tadzio was in much better spirits, now, the inconvenience of the ship�s delayed departure now being more or less moot. I said, �Your parents didn�t want to go on this excursion?� He told me that they had, but by the time they went to book the excursion, there were only two places left and so his parents had said, �You guys take this one and we�ll find another one.� We talked a bit more about stuff, and then I went back to the three Texans.
We got to our snorkel spot and all of us marveled at how clear and beautiful the water was. One young man said, �This is sure a whole lot better than the ugly brown of our water in California.� Yeah, I knew what he was talking about.
The water sure felt good, swimming around in it. Unfortunately, though, the snorkeling, itself, wasn�t all that great. Really not much to see at all save for some rocks and a pretty smooth ocean bottom that was farther away than it looked. Tadzio�s friend was already trying to hold his breath and swim down to the bottom, but the increased pressure of the depth hurt his ears and he kept having to come back up. I had already dealt with ear-pressure problems from scuba diving, so I was content to merely gently swim around, looking for colored fish so that I could take pictures with my throw-away underwater camera. Since I had to leave my glasses on board in order to wear my dive mask, I couldn�t really tell if I were focusing on the fish I saw, or not. There were some beautiful bright yellow fish, and one or two gray ones circled around their edges with an iridescent blue. But soon enough I got bored and began, instead, to interact with some of the other snorkelers. One black woman was having trouble with her mask leaking water into her nose. I helped her adjust it, and then she was able to see what she was trying to look at. There was one little girl who was really quite a good swimmer, and she kept trying to touch the bottom like Tadzio�s friend had, and, like him, giving up due to the pressure on her ears. But I said to her, �You must be a mermaid, you swim so well.�
Since the catamaran�s captain had said he would take us to a beginner�s spot, I realized that we were now no longer beginners and surely he would next take us to a better spot. The crew had lowered a nifty stairs-like arrangement down from the center front of the catamaran, like a tongue, and I went over to it to climb back aboard, thinking I could start the movement toward the next snorkel spot. However, there was going to be no next snorkeling spot, that had been it. That was a disappointment. (I later talked with other passengers on this ship about their snorkel spots, and they had all been disappointed, too. One guy said that the most recent hurricane had killed a lot of the coral. So maybe Cozumel has been wrecked as a snorkel spot...and maybe for diving, too. Anyway, I guess nothing will ever be like Fiji. If you ever saw the beautiful movie, The Blue Lagoon, and remember all their phenomenal underwater swimming scenes, you will know what I experienced in Fiji--that is, minus naked underwater swimmers Chris Atkins and Brooke Shields. Cozumel definitely didn't even approach measuring up to that.)
After everyone was back on board, we set off for the beach they were going to take us to. They told us that the beach had hammocks, deck chairs, shaded tables, kayaks, a diving platform, a restaurant, bathrooms, and fresh water showers. That beach was wonderful, a paradise with pure white sand, and as we approached it, I said to the guy from L.A., �And California doesn�t have sand like this, either.�
He said, �It sure doesn�t.� And then, �What, is it the way I walk?�
I said, �Huh?�
He repeated the question, �Is it the way I walk?�
I still had no idea what he was talking about, so the Army mother clarified it for me, �He�s wondering how you knew he was from L.A.�
�Oh,� I said, �I heard you talk about the color of the water when we first got on the boat.� (I am an observing person, after all.) Then I said, �Plus, it was that �movie star mystique�.�
He said, �Now that�s what I hoped you would say.� (Truth to tell, with his pale slim body, curly hair, and soul patch under his chin, he had more of a musician�s mystique.)
We climbed down the catamaran�s stairway in order to get into the waist-deep water and it sure felt good. The three Texans found a shady spot back in the corner under a palapa and while those three lit up for a smoke, I dropped off my stuff and headed back out into the delicious water. Tadzio and his friend made a beeline for the multi-colored hammocks.
The water was great for swimming around in and the little mermaid was out there, too. Several people gracefully paddled back and forth in the kayaks.
After a while, I had had enough, so went back to the shore and found the fresh-water shower and cleared all the salt water off my skin. Sitting at a table near the facilities building were an �approaching-elderly-age� couple that I had seen on the catamaran. The woman wore silver jewelry that looked beautiful with her white hair and there was just something cool about her and her husband that made me like them�perhaps it was simply the mere fact that they had chosen this particular excursion to go on. I gave them a special smile whenever I passed them, and, then rejoined the three Texans under the shade. They were discussing real estate prices. In Texas, too, real estate had gone up in the past few years, but I was still envious of how much they could buy for what in California sounded like such little money.
All too soon (it had been an hour), it was time to get back on the catamaran and head back to our ship. Everybody was in high party spirits and the music they played on the boat helped keep everybody up. Also, I won�t deny that all the free frozen margaritas, beer, and soft drinks you wanted helped considerably! People were drinking, dancing, or standing around. I roamed around with my video camera and caught on tape the Army mother and daughter, their Dallas friend, and Tadzio and his friend. The Army daughter went up on the top deck of the catamaran and wanted me to film her dance, which I did. Every once in a while she would throw me a kiss.
Another woman on the main deck did a slow, sensual dance, and it didn�t seem to bother her that I was filming her. She then proceeded to do what looked like a lap dance and I moved the camera away from her. It ended up that she was from Russia, but not really very friendly. I said to her, �There are lots of people from Russia on the ship,� but she said, �No, there isn�t even one, except among the crew.�
�Well,� I continued, �there�s a woman from the Ukraine on board, does that count?� This fact seemed to interest her, so I said, �If I run into her, I�ll tell her to look for you.� Then I went to get another margarita.
I went up to the front of the boat to film and saw a pile of torn-apart flour tortillas in the corner of the deck. Sitting over on the other side of the deck were Tadzio and his friend, so I went over to them, smiling, saying, �I have a quiz for you. You know how in most snorkel spots, they will attract the fish by offering them pieces of bread?�
�Yeah,� said Tadzio�s friend, playing along.
�Well, what do you think they used here?� I asked.
�I don�t know,� said Tadzio, �chicken?�
�No,� I said, �tortillas, isn�t that cute!�
�I thought it was chicken when I saw it,� repeated Tadzio.
�Well, it looked like chicken,� I said, �it was chunks of white, but it was really flour tortillas, there�s a pile of it over there on the deck. I thought that since we're in Mexico, using tortillas was somehow appropriate.�
Well, they weren�t as excited over that little fact as I was, but then again, to me, even the smallest detail can have major importance.
I continued to talk with them for a while, making sure that I paid as much, if not more, attention to Tadzio�s friend. Probably in that setting I needn�t have worried about him, and who knows what life is like for him back in his normal world. But I have my eyes open for people who are the friend of a celebrity or a glamorous one. The two walk down the street and everyone pays attention to the glamorous one and completely ignore the friend who is also standing there. I purposefully will not do that, making sure to include all parties.
And the truth was, the friend was pretty hot in his own right, although in a different way. While he wasn�t a beauty quite like �Tadzio,� and had more of an �alternative� look with some dark facial hair, I did think that it was weird that although we had been in the water snorkeling and now were sitting in the sun on a boat, he had never once taken his shirt off, but continued to wear, instead, some red-patterned tight latex zip-up-to-the-neck pull-over shirt much like something a cyclist would wear. He also wore longish, tight, black lycra cyclist shorts. Clearly he had a good body underneath all that form-fitting lycra, but I nevertheless did have a feeling that he had felt inferior in comparison to his more glamorous friend. And he did seem to welcome my attention and be grateful for it.
I said to him, �We know all about what a great singer he is (indicating Tadzio) and how he�s going to be going to this great music school in a couple of weeks, tell me, what about you, what fabulous plans do you have for after the end of the summer?�
He told me that he was going to be starting at the University of Texas and will have a double major in music and business administration, because he wanted to get into music marketing. At first the combination of �Texas� and �music� didn�t compute in my head, but I said, �Ah, I have a sister who got a PhD from the University of Texas,� and as soon as I said that, I remembered that it was located in Austin, which I knew had had the reputation for at least at one time being one of the great seed grounds for some great emerging bands. So I said, �Oh yeah, Austin, I understand that you could find some great emerging talent coming out of that town.� I then went on to talk about how I had once taken an extension course at U.C.L.A. on the subject of how artists should promote their work and the segment on music marketing had been taught by Quincy Jones, �And as you know, he produced the top-three best-selling record albums of all time, Michael Jackson�s Thriller, Off The Wall, and Bad. It seems that one of the tricks of Quincy Jones�s success is that he and the artists retain the ownership of their creations instead of signing them off to the record company.
Tadzio�s friend seemed to like that, while his friend was content to just lean back and display to me his considerable half-naked beauty (if, indeed, he was conscious that that was what he was doing), so I continued, �And if you want to read a really good book on immense success in music marketing, you might want to check out Losing My Virginity, the autobiography of Richard Bramson, the founder and owner of Virgin Records, Virgin Megastores, Virgin Airlines, and now, he even has Virgin Railroad! While I really like movies, myself, Richard wrote that that industry is bad for investment, because, truly, nobody really has any way of knowing whether a film will be a hit or not, whereas with music, you just know when something is truly good.�
Tadzio�s friend was smiling broadly.
�And when music is a success, it keeps on being sold forever. Bramson is still making money off of his company�s first hit, Tubular Bells, which made its artist into a multi-millionaire many times over. If you really want to make it big, I think it is a good idea to study the works of those who made it big.�
I would have then gone into asking him what he thought about the brave new world of music marketing over the Internet, downloads and so on, but then he asked me a question: �So, what do you do for a living?�
Now, of course we all ought to know that that is a bad question for polite company, but I honestly don�t think he meant anything bad with it, it was, after all, a pretty reasonable segue from what we were already talking about, and besides, I suppose one can argue that I had done the same to him by asking about his college plans�although in my experience, young guys are way more willing to discuss their educational plans and life ambitions than older guys are willing to discuss what they do for a living. Anyway, regardless of his motivation, his question hit me as if he had reached backward into the water, pulled out a jellyfish or a man-o-war, and whipped me across the face with the stinging tentacles.
In the face of talking about somebody else�s immense success, and in my generative attempt to help this young, up-coming person with his, his question made my own sense of personal failure (and perhaps lack of proper but unnecessary credentials to even discuss the success techniques of others or anything else I have some understanding about, which is, itself, a very sore point) stand out in sharp relief and I really had no quick, acceptable, pride-filled answer for him, although if I had thought about it and had prepared a decent answer, I probably could have come up with a good one. Instead, all I could answer was a wan �Well, I never made it big, myself� and gave him a lame answer as to what I actually did for a living (which didn�t sound like much), and our conversation was then pretty much over.
This time I went down to the galley for a beer, feeling like I had enough margaritas. I then went back up onto the deck to film some more of the goings-on. The Army girl was now surrounded by a bunch of the hot Texan boys, the ones with the tattoos marring the clear view of their abs. They were standing around posing in casual semi-flex, that unrelaxed �sucking it in� peacock pose that guys cannot seem to help getting into when females are around. Meanwhile, Tadzio and his music friend were now standing in the middle of the deck surrounded by what looked like some females on the make. It was interesting to note that while the Texan boys were �sucking it in� in the presence of the Army girl, Tadzio and his friend were totally relaxed without a single taut muscle in the presence of their girls. While I particularly envied Tadzio�s demeanor of evident beauty despite not making the slightest effort its direction, I also couldn�t help but observe it was probably because neither he nor his friend cared one iota about the girls who were talking to them, and by that, I mean any girls.
Then a kind of a derelict-looking guy climbed up to the deck from the galley and stood next to me, sipping a beer. I saluted him with my beer and said, �Now I can see why the children�s prices were so much less than the adult prices for this excursion.�
�Whaddya mean?� he asked.
�All this booze�the kids can�t drink it.�
�Why, that don�t make no never-mind, they charged me full price for my son and he�s only fourteen.�
�Oh,� I said. �That doesn�t seem fair.�
I went back to staring off into the distance, but distinctly felt the guy�s eyes boring holes into my cheek. Finally he said, �I just have to ask you, do you know who you look like?�
Now, I have heard that question countless times before, and nearly always the answer had been a good one. But I hadn�t heard it for quite a while, mainly because nowadays the answer can�t be a good one, so it either doesn�t come up, or else people are too polite.
�No, I mean it,� continued the man, �you look so much like somebody that at first I was afraid to talk to you, thinking you just had to be him.�
In the past, who people always had insisted that whom I looked like was Jan-Michael Vincent, �when he was young and cute.� At first whenever I had heard that, I wouldn�t believe it and sure couldn�t see it, but people kept saying it so much that pretty soon I got used to it. I even managed to get this apartment where I now live because of it. They have strict credit requirements here, because so many come to Hollywood with the false dream of making it big, and then they can�t afford to stay. I, too, had moved here from North Carolina and hadn�t had an apartment in my name for many years, so I am sure my credit wasn�t good enough, either, but the apartment manager said, �You�re so good-looking, you�re one who actually might make it, you look like Jan-Michael Vincent when he was young and cute, so I will take a risk and go ahead and rent you the apartment.�
Well, I didn�t make it in Hollywood (not much, anyway, although there were several movies and TV shows in which I could be seen and a couple of programs in which I had speaking parts), and I (temporarily, at least) lost the Jan-Michael Vincent looks, but at least renting the apartment to me had been safe!
Oddly enough, in the 70s when I had longer hair and a moustache, people used to think I looked like Charles Bronson. So now I could say that at various times of my life, I looked like both of the leads in the movie,
I couldn�t help myself, when this man asked me if I knew who I looked like, I had the false hope that he would actually say, �Jan-Michael Vincent.� But I really should have known better. Instead, he said, �Stephen King.�
Steven King! So this was the second time on this excursion (in a row!) that I was (perhaps inadvertently) insulted. I felt like saying to him, �A little word of advice, next time you tell somebody they look like somebody, make sure the person they look like isn�t ugly!� But this guy didn�t seem to have much awareness as to which men were good-looking and which weren�t, or if so, it was irrelevant. To him, Steven King was a much-admired celebrity and it was a complement to look like him. I guess it was the glasses�during my Jan-Michael Vincent days, I didn�t have to wear glasses�although mine currently didn�t have thick Coke-bottle lenses like Steven King�s that would give my eyes a beady look.
Even worse than my being told by a man that I looked like somebody ugly (I more or less accepted that I didn�t look good, anyway), was that this person now associated me so much with Steven King that he now wanted to discuss him with me, and I wasn�t willing to reveal that I had actually never read a single Steven King book, all I knew were some of his movies. This was similar to people learning that my name is the exact same as the former Nebraska football coach, so then they wanted to talk football with me.
However, I was able to more or less carry on a conversation about Steven King based on the things I did know about him, but ultimately I was saved by the man�s fourteen-year-old-full-excursion-price son who had come up to join his father, and who was singularly unimpressed that his father thought that I looked like Steven King. Apparently the boy didn�t see the resemblance, or else hadn�t the slightest idea what Steven King looked like. With his flaming skull Harley Davidson motorcycle t-shirt, I didn't peg him as being much of a reader.
I will confess that once I got back home, I studied pictures of both Steven King and Jan-Michael Vincent along with various photos of me over the years, and I must say that I can actually say that I can now see what it is that people see, or saw, when they have seen those resemblances. Actually, when you study him, Steven King isn�t all that bad-looking of a guy and particularly if he didn�t wear those Coke-bottle glasses, he could actually be handsome--in fact, he might be surprised to know that he, himself, could look like Jan-Michael Vincent.
I�m now wondering if I ought to consider Lasix surgery. Losing weight would be more to the point, though.
We all got back to the dock and I realized that short of having my feet stand on white beach sand, I never really had set foot on Cozumel island. The Army mother and daughter wanted to go back to the ship, shower and change their clothes, and then go back into town to go shopping, but all I wanted to do was to exchange my coupon for a free �Del Sol� tote bag with its picture of the cruise ship and possibly buy a color-changing t-shirt. The map that the excursion director had furnished us looked like the store was only a couple of blocks away, so I told the Army women that I was just going to go on ahead into town right now. I knew that once I was back on the ship, I wouldn�t get back off of it today.
But, nasty trick, there was no way that you easily go from the ship�s dock to the main shopping street. Instead, you had to go up several flights of stairs and work your way around and through a brand new, fancy shopping mall that featured lots of American brand name establishments, before you were able to make it down to the shopping street. I resented that, and I wasn�t dressed for a long walk. Instead of my good walking shoes, all I wore were very uncomfortable thongs that had been appropriate for the catamaran, not walking long distances.
The town there, whatever it was called, was pleasant enough. It wasn�t like Tijuana�what it actually reminded me of was Papeete, the capital city of Tahiti, although Papeete has a French feel, whereas this was Mexican, and Papeete is much larger, of course. Of course, there were the usual Mexican barkers and hawkers trying to get you into the stores, and everything seemed to be diamonds, other gems, and silver, none of which interested me nor could I see buying that kind of thing there. All I wanted was my free tote bag that was supposed to be black and white indoors, but when you took it out into the sun, it would magically turn colors. A stupid gimmick, I knew, and I was a fool to fall for it, but it did get me to see some of the town, which I might not have done, otherwise.
After walking for what seemed like forever, I finally got to Del Sol. I looked at the t-shirts they had on display, and saw a beautiful one with leaping dolphins against the background of a multi-colored sunset sky. I found the uncolored version of the shirt in my size and held it against a black-light-looking lens to see how it would change color. Only a pale imitation of colors appeared. I asked the sales clerk what I had been doing wrong, �It�s not turning colors,� but she said it was doing what it was supposed to do. �It�s supposed to look like that,� I said, pointing to the brilliantly-colored dolphin one on the wall.
�Oh, that one is painted,� she said, �it doesn�t turn colors.� I thought that was a very stupid way of marketing the t-shirts, to put on display one that is way more beautiful than their color-changing ones, so I said, �Just give me this,� and handed her the coupon for the tote bag. I figured that it was their fault, I had been willing to buy something if they had actually sold something good, so I took the free tote bag without guilt. The final joke was that even the tote bag was painted, it was not one that changed colors, either. And really, what did I need with yet another tote bag? But at least it made it so that I didn�t have to buy any other souvenir item with the ship and NCL logo on it.
I then trudged back to the ship, angry at myself for falling for �walking a mile to just get a free tote bag�, wove my way up and around the modern shopping mall again, and then finally got back on board the ship.
By now I was ravishingly hungry, having skipped lunch, and as I couldn�t see waiting for it to be time for dinner in the main dining room, I opted for ribs at the barbecue out by the pool.
I got there just in time for one of the ship�s crazy passenger-participation events. This one was the �Crown the Carmen Miranda 2004� event. Four guys had entered the contest. The first guy was a black man wearing skimpy gold lame hot pants, high heels, had some kind of a cape, and a headdress made from plastic fruit. He danced some kind of shimmying rumba, and really was pretty cool.
The second contestant was a pretty old guy who looked nothing like Carmen Miranda, but was wrapped up in towels and a bedspread. I guess the point was to come up some kind of a costume based on whatever materials were on hand. He could hardly walk, let alone do any kind of a dance. Still, I give him credit for even making an attempt.
The third contestant was simply a guy very much in �fag� mode. Otherwise, there wasn�t much about him that was like Carmen Miranda. He had on a Speedo and a tight mid-riff-cut t-shirt and some dangly earrings. He flounced around with his hands on his hips and invited guys in the audience to come up and make it with him.
The final contestant wasn�t much different from the third one, except that his gimmick was to keep molesting the announcer, trying to squeeze his butt, pat his crotch, and kiss his cheek. The announcer very definitely was not amused and at one point I thought he was actually going to punch the contestant out.
We all were to vote via our applause, and the first guy won hands down. He was, after all, the only one who even approached actually looking like Carmen Miranda, whose signature item was that basket of fruit on her head.
That being done, I finished my barbecue dinner, went back to my stateroom for an after-beach shower and clean-up, and then went up to one of �my� private spots, this time at the starboard forward of the Sun deck, buffered from the loud reggae music down on the Pool deck by the fitness room and the golf net. I lay back in a deck chair with a book and enjoyed the approach of the evening. A couple of teens came up to use the golf net, but were pissed that the clubs had been taken back away. I commiserated with them, so one of them said, �Look, see what I can do,� and proceeded to show me that he could light matches and then put them out in his mouth. I was suitably impressed, so he showed it to me a couple more times, and then they went away to find something else to do. Later I saw them on a stairway and I said to the one, �How�s your tongue doing?� and he said, �It�s fine.�
The entertainment that night in the main show lounge was a juggler/comedian. I didn�t expect to care that much for him, but he really was very good, doing things that I wouldn�t have thought were actually possible, plus he really was very funny. So I enjoyed him a lot more than I thought I would.
After that, I retired to my stateroom. Tomorrow was Roatan, one of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras and, unlike today, we were to arrive early. So I went to bed, setting the alarm for an early wake-up.
END OF DAY THREE
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