Cruising

[mccutcheon]

Cruising
By McCutcheon

On my dad's 60th birthday my family celebrated by taking a pleasure cruise to Alaska. The ship departed from Seattle. Boarding was an unpleasant experience. We were shuffled like cattle over the gangway. Most of my fellow passengers were well into adulthood. Their bunions or other old-age ailments must have been acting up because they were in foul moods, especially surprising since they were supposed to be on vacation. When senior citizens retire they need to find new ways to take up their time. This seems to be done by complaining about everything. It was early in the morning so I put on my sunglasses and tried to shut my ears.

I didn't have the right papers. I had to stand in a special line for over an hour. There were more complaints and misunderstandings. My mum is Irish, the reason for the wrong passport- as I was told, even though there is nothing wrong with an E.U. passport that hasn't expired, and my father is a wealthy American businessman with many dealings around the world. This unique and not exactly exotic pairing has allowed me to grow up and study in such exciting and culturally rich places like London, Paris, New York and Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

I have the international view of a nomadic traveler. I am sensitive to other cultures and their people. I traveled around the world a few times and have done it mostly on my own. I'm not a fan of the prepackaged tour- The Blitzkrieg of seeing Europe in five days.

This was my first cruise. I found out rather quickly that I don't like traveling in large groups. It reminds me of when I lived in Paris and a huge tour bus would stop on a small side street and all these Americans would exit the bus and immediately begin to grumble.

If a question was directed at me as I was passing I pretended I didn't understand English. They were usually asking where the nearest McDonald's toilet was. McDonald's toilets come with a bowl to sit your ass on, instead of the Parisian Turkish style of two-foot rests and a hole, found in most cafes. This lesson should have taught me that when Americans travel they want to see something new as long as it doesn't lead to any inconvenience. American tourists want their foreign places to be different and exactly the same.

The crew on the boat was young and international. They all wore polyester uniforms with nametags that stated their birthplace. Most came from impoverished Asian countries or old Eastern European blocs. There was stratification reminiscent of the class struggle in India, a strict caste with no upward mobility. The crew was expected to know their place.

The captain and his mates were the heads of State, tall proud Norwegians who have diplomatic flair. The captain made reports on the loud speaker and gave public appearances. You could have your picture taken with him if you wanted.

The few Americans, British, and Swedish were the cruise directors. They tended to be social butterflies and had endless patience. I stayed far away from them. I don't trust people who have permanent smiles.

Then there were the servers who I interacted with, friendly and devoted young people from The Philippines, Russia, China, and Poland who worked in service, in the bars and restaurants or in the gaming room. They always had a drink ready for me. I wasn't allowed to tip but once in a while I threw in a few bucks which I think they appreciated. A smile and a ‘thank you' were always welcome, but U.S. currency goes farther.

The ships' equivalent of The Untouchables, the lowest class, was a random group mostly from North Africa and Sri Lanka. These people were left to clean the room, change the linen and perform other tedious tasks day in and day out.

There was a young chambermaid and everyday we exchanged glances. I hoped these might be meaningful glances full of offers of lustful intimacy but I think she was just another pretty girl being shy and polite, going through her routine, not sharing her far away private dreams.

They say that 80% of Americans are obese. I think that all 80% of those Americans were on that ship. At first I was a little overwhelmed and wondered how we were going to stay afloat. Some of the passengers seemed to have come on that cruise for the sole purpose of eating.

When they served lunch, many people trampled to the buffet. I soon learned that many of the passengers on the ship suffered from a condition known as Buffet Aggression Disorder. B.A.D. happens when too many people try to stuff their faces too quickly. They act like they are starving and that the food is in low supply, when in reality they ate to major capacity only a few hours prior and there is no way the ship is going to run out of food. There are mounds of the stuff.

I sat back and observed in disgust. A poor Chinese crewmember was trying to make peace while the fatties were jockeying with their trays to be first in line. Her eyes widened with panic, as she was stricken with an anxiety attack. I'm sure she had never experienced anything like this before in her life. All the pre board training she went through couldn't possibly prepare her for the spectacle of people suffering from B.A.D. I'm sure the poor girl ended up in the psychiatric sick bay.


My family and I skipped the buffet and hit the top deck for drinks. There was a pool, a few hot tubs and shuffleboard. A band played Stayin' Alive in the sunshine. It was good to be back together again. My sister lives in Dallas and my parents are in Wisconsin. My brother and I live in Seattle. It was the first time in ten years we all got together when it wasn't Christmas.

My dad was not the only one celebrating a birthday. There was a group of young girls who were fifteen and wore bathing suits. The girls looked very alive and sensual with youth, their bodies full and fit. I was glad I brought my sunglasses.

The birthday girl was tall and built for her age and had brilliant dark twinkling eyes and a broken arm. She would sit in the hot tub wearing a skimpy bikini, with her cast wrapped in a towel. She sipped Diet Coke and watched me typing. I would often lose myself and look back at her through my sunglasses. If I were her age she wouldn't have the time of day for me and would have broken my heart.

That night we found the Monte Carlo Casino. My sister Rachael, my brother Zac and my dad all put down $500 for chips. I wandered off to get free drinks. Everything was getting put on the ship issued card, which goes to the cabin bill, so for me it's FREE! Rachael asked why I didn't want to play Blackjack. I told her betting is a lowly addiction of the common man. In reality, I don't have the money saved to gamble. I'm not telling Rachael that. As my little sister she loves to brag about the difference in our incomes, how much more she makes than me.

For a nightcap the pills came out. My brother had broken his leg snowboarding a month ago and my sister had a recent cosmetic surgery, so they had trouble sleeping. They had a pharmacy of Vicodine, Percoset, and Valium. When they weren't looking I stole a few pills from each bottle. I wasn't in any pain, but it always helps to be prepared.

The first morning I got up and went running around the ship on deck 6. The weather changed and was a bit cool. We passed desolate islands lush with green shrubbery. After the run I went to the gym. I decided to get my upper body conditioned. At my age, and with a diet that includes as much beer as I drink, it's easy to get flabby before you know it. Seeing the people on that ship I knew what I didn't want to end up looking like.

At the gym I learned of an on board Ping-Pong tournament. I was thinking I would teach these grandmas something, but when I got there, three Asian guys with their own paddles were doing calisthenics and warm up exercises. I have seen people show up to play tennis and pool with their own rackets and sticks, though this is the first time I ever saw Ping-Pong paddles protected by expensive leather. I was out of my league and lost in the first round.

I signed up to take a glacier helicopter excursion. I looked at the brochure. It said all helicopter passengers weighing more than 250 pounds will be subject to an extra charge of 1/2 the ticket price. I hoped I wouldn't get a fatty next to me. Once on top the glacier you could go for a dog sled. I hoped for the dogs' sake there wouldn't be any 250 pounders for them to pull.

Getting five individuals who have nothing in common but shared bloodlines together was an interesting sociological experiment. Trying to organize the whole family to meet and eat at the same time proved difficult. This didn't deter my father though. He kept telling me to "wait here" while he went to search the ship, a vessel of over 4,000 people and 12 decks. The rest of the family would arrive and my dad was now lost. To keep my sanity I smiled and continued to "wait here". I never went far without reading material. There is a lot of waiting around while traveling in a group.

On the second night I walked around by myself to get some solitude. I saw a man videotaping the buffet. I went to get a piece of fresh fruit. The man was getting a close up shot of the mound of mashed potatoes. As I walked out with my banana he put down the video camera and grabbed his regular Instamatic to snap a photo of his wife. She smiled and dove into her heaping plate. The Chinese crewmember was nowhere to be seen.

I went back to the casino to try my luck at Blackjack. Rachael saw me and asked about my convictions. I told her it's not a gamble when you know you are going to win. Of course, I didn't tell her I learned you can get a cash advance on the ship card and I am hoping for beginners luck. Rachael went away shaking her head, and it's a good thing she did. My luck ran out fast. I don't even know how to double down properly.

My mum went to bed early. She doesn't yield to the addictions the rest of us do. Zac was at the bar hitting on a bartender. My dad and Rachael continued to play. They are talented at cards and meet up at The Bellagio in Las Vegas a couple of times a year. They always play for hours and win loads.

The first port we landed at was Juneau, Alaska. While the ship came through the narrow passageway it was breathtaking. I was outside on the top deck. It truly felt like God's country. The scenery was overwhelming in all its majestic glory. It gave me chills, and then I realized I was in shorts and a tee shirt looking at snow covered mountains and glaciers.

I gave up on Ping-Pong. My next sport was to join a free throw contest. All you had to do to advance to the next round was make one basket out of three chances. I swear the ship moved every time I took a shot and that it stayed still for all the smug 16-year-olds that made all three baskets. I went out in the first round again. I started to feel like that kid Max in Rushmore- enthusiastically trying all activities and failing miserably. The sports coordinator hung her head in shame and all she could say was, "not again".

In Juneau there was an old time saloon where they have a gun from Wyatt Earp hanging over the bar. After the OK Corral the government put out a warrant for his arrest and set a posse on him. He came up to Alaska to become a U.S. Marshal. In the corner of the bar a man in red and white checked shirt and a top hat was playing piano in the old style of the era. I moseyed on over casual like for a closer inspection of this relic and I saw he was playing a Kurtzweil K2000, the kind of sophisticated keyboard that people make modern dance music with.

Earlier, a girl working at the local pub told me every season people perish in violent ways. I decided to have five beers for courage. The girl wasn't helping the situation. She said planes and helicopters fly into the sides of mountains they can't see. I told her I'd be back and come say hello when I returned.

It wasn't until I was actually in the helicopter flying over glaciers and snow-covered mountains that I remembered I am afraid of heights. When the turbulence hit I thought I was going to lose my lunch. I wanted to go higher so we wouldn't run into anything. I wanted to go lower so when the engine stopped we wouldn't fall that far. And there was no visibility. How can you fly through clouds when you can't see? Won't we run into the mountains?

We finally reached our destination. The pilot let us off and said we had an hour to go exploring but the weather wouldn't hold so the dog sledding was cancelled. The first thing I did was to find a clearing to drain my bladder of beer. After the hour of half-heartedly looking around we returned to the pick up area. The pilot didn't come back. I looked through the skies for the helicopter and all I saw was a thick white haze. It took another five hours before it was clear enough to be picked up. Most of the people in our group were stricken with grief and a lot of them started swearing. There was a lot of muttering God's name, both in prayer and in vain. Just about everyone said Jesus Christ in one way or another.

The people who weren't swearing were talking survival tactics. This scared me because it had been the longest a few of them had gone without a meal this week and at any minute I thought they would draw straws and revert to cannibalism. It was with great relief when I first heard the choppers coming to the rescue. It reminded me of those Vietnam War movies where the pilots come to the rescue of the hero (I was the hero) under heavy artillery and pull him out in the last minute as the Vietcong surround.

When we landed back in Juneau I went to look for the girl in the pub to tell her she could stop worrying for my safety. I had made it back alive. Her boss told me she had ended her shift half an hour ago and had gone home. I'm glad she didn't needlessly worry about me.


The next town was the once booming, Skagway, Alaska, the gateway to the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. It's a beautiful tiny town at the tip of the Glacier Bay passage, surrounded by mountains and waterways, a once lawless startup full of gamblers, prostitutes and drinking. It sounded like my kind of place. Now about three families live there, and only during tourist season.

I took a train into the backcountry. It moved at a snails pace and once again the view ignited synapses in my brain and sent shivers down my spine. Alaska really does feel like the final frontier- but with bears instead of Klingons.

One night was a bit magical in The Catcher in the Rye sense- when our young depressed anti-hero Holden is out playing catch with friends after dark. I had the same kind of fond memory with my brother Zac. We were playing shuffleboard and it got dark and started raining and it was very cold. We had a few beers and kept playing late into the evening.

Zac and I have always had a strained relationship and usually when we play sports it gets even worse, us both being competitive and the whole older brother younger brother conflicts that go along with life. But this night we must have played fifty games and we talked about life and laughed at life and didn't mention anything from the past. It just felt really good. And no one got mad at losing. Probably because I won all the games, so I thought Zac was a better person than I am.

Later that same night Zac came home pissed out of his head. In the morning I woke up around 4am to the sound of Zac actually pissing all over the cabin. He was stumbling around in a drunken stupor and never made it to the toilet.

"What the hell are you doing?" I screamed.

"Playing Blackjack," he mumbled.

Once again the booze disoriented his infantile mind. I couldn't get back to sleep after that. As I was fuming I decided that he isn't a better person than I am after all.

By the fifth day it was still cold, overcast and raining. At ten in the morning I had already had four wonderful warm drinks with hot cocoa, rum and whiskey called Chocolate Corvette, served to me by a friendly Jamaican woman who called both males and females ‘Man!' The drinks helped me stand outside in the freezing downpour as I took in the scenery.

We sailed through Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, once called Thunder Bay- this wondrous blue ice land encompasses 3.3 million acres. The waterways provide access to 16 of these glaciers, 12 of which actively calve icebergs into the bay. Calving is when huge chunks of ice fall off the glaciers and plunge into the water. It is awesome-I had never been so inspired by our dynamic planet.

I was really getting back to nature and started to understand the call of the wild, the muse of wilderness. I thought about packing up and leaving the city life far behind. I would move to the Yukon to become the next Jack London. The Chocolate Corvettes were revving my imagination. My plans were all set in my head when an elderly woman came up to me.

She said to me, "I don't know about this, I don't like this one bit."

She was talking about the ship sailing in iceberg-infested waters. I didn't think she had to worry. We were only traveling at a few knots an hour.

She added, "I mean didn't we learn anything from the movie Titanic. You look like a smart boy, did you learn anything from the movie Titanic?"

"Yes," I replied. "I learned Kate Winslet has great tits."

Our final stop in Alaska was Ketchikan. It was the first town founded in Alaska. I talked to a kid on a skateboard. He had floppy hair and was wearing a Kurt Cobain tee shirt. He thought it was cool that I lived in Seattle. He wanted to move there someday. I asked him what life was like. He said, “It sucks. There ain't no chicks.�

In Alaska, the male to female ratio is six guys for every girl. The dating ritual is very incestuous. The guys say ‘you don't lose your girlfriend you lose your turn' and the girls say ‘the odds are good but the goods are odd'.

Ketchikan gets an annual rainfall of 12.5 feet. In July the average temp is 32 degrees- in January it's 53 degrees. They only get 15 sunny days a year, and when the sun does come out everything shuts down. Banks and schools close and the population rushes to be outside. Basically it's the opposite of a snow day. And I thought Seattle was bad. I would not want to live in Ketchikan. I give up my dream of writing the next White Fang.

That night at dinner I had too much wine to drink (something I love to do) and started taking cheap pot shots at my family. Only I thought it was funny. I was trying to get back at them because the night before at dinner we were talking about my writing and what a failure I am. I told my dad I hope I make it as a writer before he dies so he can be proud of me. He smiled politely, like I had no hope of that. So I have changed my mind. I hope I make it before I die.

Rachael wants to put a gag order on me. She said she would hire a lawyer and sue my ass for any slander that could hurt her career. I don't think she understands where I am with my writing. I told her I'm not selling like David Sedaris or Peter Mayle, but if she sues me and I call the press-- sister sues brother writer-- it might be good publicity, the best thing that has happened to my career. I told her to mellow out and get a grip. She should think it a privilege to be related to an artist.

My mum is trying to take stock in her kid's love lives: I'm thirty-three, Zac is thirty, and Rachael is twenty-eight. We are not deformed or yet married. The neighbors are starting to talk. We are the cause of rumors. Something is amiss. There must be some dark sinister secret if the McCutcheon kids aren't getting hitched. My mum wants to know when her children might be getting married. She started with me.

"What's your girlfriends name?"

"Amanda."

"Oh! I love Amanda. That was your great grandmothers' name. What's her last name?"

"Capobianco."

"What's that?"

"That's her last name."

"Oh, she's Italian?" she asked defeated. I think she has been watching The Sopranos.

I was talking to Rachael about how our mum used to warn us not to get married too young and now I can tell she can't wait to become a grandmother. My sister said she might join a dating service. I'm not sure how a twenty-eight-year-old successful businesswoman could get so desperate. Her shrink thinks it's a good idea.

I was just starting to feel sorry for her when the conversation continued. She said a lot of her girlfriends in Dallas were thinking of doing the same thing. Seems the girls in Dallas are horny and single (and lonely?) Sometimes when then go out they play a game: you can't leave the club until you kiss someone. Sounds sad and stupid to me. Rachael said she told her friends about her older brother-Me. She explained I was handsome like a male model and had a great sense of humor, but alas, I was poor. The girlfriends were horrified.

Doesn't he have a job? They wanted to know.

Rachael set them straight:

“Oh he has a job; it's just that he isn't into making money. He even runs a web site that he pays for, without making any profit. He actually loses hundreds of dollars a year! And what he really wants to do is be a writer.�

The girls couldn't believe this. They think doing something that doesn't yield a profit is as stupid as those liberal art students who went to college to actually get an education- to them the best reason to go to college was to find husbands.

“It even gets worse. He says he does it for free aesthetic expression and thought. My brother a writer! You sure can't choose your family.�

The girlfriends hung their heads and commiserated. Another eligible bachelor lost, not to homosexuality, but even worse, to art! It's hard to find true meaningful love in this world.

It finally stopped raining and I went back out onto the basketball court with the 16-year-old Kobe Bryant wannabes. We were playing half court three on three when I got the ball around the free throw line. I went for a fade away jumper when the ship rocked and a gust of wind took me from behind. I went flying over all those smart-ass kids and SLAM-DUNK! The next thing I know I was hanging from the rim holding on for dear life.

"Aw man, shit that was cool!" the kids yelled.

"Yeah," I said.

“Do it again!� They all screamed.

"Naw," I said trying to play it cool and not let on how shook up I was.

On the last day the bill was coming. I was running out of time. Of course, I haven't paid attention to how many receipts I racked up at the bars. I always threw those away to get rid of the evidence, free my pockets and drink without a guilty conscience. I knew that the tab must have been in the hundreds. It had been too easy to just sign away and not think about it.

I did have a plan, one that backfired radically. My idea was to win back the money I was drinking away with my newly acquired skills at cards. I thought if my dad and sister could do it, so could I.

So there I was on the last night, drunk, depressed and completely broke. I was wandering around by myself trying to figure out how I lost that last grand so quickly when the birthday girl came out of nowhere and sat down next to me. I looked at her blearily. She was full of promise, probably never had a bad day in her life. It will be a life that will stay relatively easy. It always is with these beauties.

“It's a pretty night,� she said and smiled, hands pulled behind her back, breasts stuck out.

“It's pretty late, shouldn't you be in bed?� I didn't have sunglasses on. I stared deep into those radiant brown eyes and at that budding chest.

“Naw, it's not that late.�

“How did that happen?� I pointed to her arm.

“I fell in cheerleading,� she said.

“Uh-huh, well it's pretty late,� I stupidly repeated.

“Not really.�

“It's after two in the morning.�

“That's when the fun starts. I can stay up as late as I want.�

“Oh yeah?�

“Yeah. Can I kiss you?�

“What?�

“I want to kiss you.�

“We can't do that, I'm too old for you.�

“No, you are not, what, are you like nineteen?�

“Only mentally.�

“What?�

“I'm thirty-three.�

“Wow,� she said not as shocked as I thought she would be. “I still want to kiss you.�

“I can kiss you,� I said.

I leaned over and kissed her softly on her cheek. It sounded like she actually purred. I envied her honest overwhelming emotions.

“Thanks,� she said. Then she stood up and pranced away.

I was left alone to contemplate if I should I jump overboard to avoid the inevitable huge debt. And I wondered what the legal age of consent was. It might be different at sea.

[martino]

McCutcheon,

this is a fine and amusing story. The messages you sent from the ship to the BB were already pretty hilarious, and it was interesting to see how you put it all together.

Are you in the mood for some more detailed opinion? I know criticism is hard to stomach, especially from someone who is as unqualified as a critic as I am. English is not my first language and I'd be the last person to criticize someone who has written such wonderful stories as the various ones you have put on exhibit on the PA website.

However. The story gives the impression that you are trying to be a little bit too nice to your family; that you don't want them to be unhappy when they read the story. It suffers from being slightly less personal than many of your other stories.

All too understandable! In your shoes I would totally chicken out!

Obviously, there is no way around this problem, so my points are probably moot. Still, I think the story might be even better if you took the following into consideration.

- Dialogue
You have such a wonderful ear for dialogue and I for one would enjoy reading more of the spoken word. How does it sound when Zak speaks when he is drunk? What does your mother say, and does she say it with an Irish accent? Does your sister talk with the nasal voice I imagine her to have? How did the dinner of drunken career-comparisons develop?

We are all fascinated with people, with family and friends in particular, and it is much more interesting to hear them talk (filtered by the brain of the artist, of course) than to read something like "a family trip is a unique sociological experiment". Of course such a trip has its sociological points of interest but many readers would like to reach that conclusion themselves, after seeing how you describe your family.

- Sensual impression
When reading travel literature, we want to know how it feels like to be there. How does the air smell? What kind of light is there? Do the ships walls vibrate from the diesel engine? Did you dream of your girl friend on your bunk during the night time? (You might have invented an alter ego, another traveller who told you about his girlfriend and family.)

How was it for the 15 year old girls? What was going on in their minds? You're a writer, so ask them; put yourself into their minds. (Too late now, of course!) To me, this is much more interesting than the undoubtably true fact that earth is a dynamic planet.


Sorry for this unrequested bit of unqualified criticism and if it is annoying, I promise I won't do it again. And please remember, I am writing this as a founding member of the (MMAS) Matthew McCutcheon Appreciation Society, European Chapter, so I think I can take some special liberties.

[Sloth]

Martino, I think McCutcheon and myself definitely suffer from the fact that both of our entire extended families read this stuff (except for Zac of course).

[mccutcheon]

Alas, Zac never learned to read. And my sister is suing me.

[martino]

OK

[Sloth]

I hope that's a joke!

Tell your sis she can't take it with her when she goes... and that the pursuit of knowledge and art is its own reward. I already had my caviar days as a kid - been to DisneyWorld 10 times - and all it ever brought me was an intense desire to escape reality and kill myself. Alas, I wish I could be a student forever.