My Cruise on the SS Carnival Masque of the Red Death

A___ had an extra ticket to a marketers’ exposition that was taking place onboard a Carnival Cruise ship.

His girlfriend didn’t want to go. His business partner didn’t want to go.

I’ll go! I told him.

So I did.

Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God, Kurt Vonnegut teaches us.

###

We were sitting in the signature restaurant on the SS Carnival Masque of the Red Death, which is kind of like a reality TV parody of fine dining.

Maybe five minutes before, I had finished reciting as much as I could remember of the plot of Benito Cereno to A___.

All of a sudden, the silent, deferential Malay waiters pulled light-up, rainbow-hued Bozo the Clown wigs from some deep pocket in their uniforms, leaped up on the tables, and began frugging madly to the strains of Who Let the Dogs Out.

(They were definitely frugging. I know the frug: It was the first dance I ever taught myself to do watching Soul Train back in the 70s.)

Weird does not even begin to describe it.



This was a nightly reoccurrence on the Carnival Masque of the Red Death, I was to discover. Oh, not the Bozo wigs and the Baha Men. But the exotic headgear, the leaping up on the tables, the orgiastic dance routines. As if some Carnival Cruise head honcho had decided that it’s not “fine dining” unless the serving staff debases itself in front of the paying guests.

The cruise was just filled with bizarre moments like this.

It was like a weeklong acid trip.

Without the acid.

For the most part, I enjoyed it.

Although the fate of the crew of the San Dominick was never very far from my mind.

###

How did I know the serving staff was mostly from Malaysia?

I asked.

It made the serving staff uncomfortable, of course. To be asked. They were supposed to function as invisible minions. It was my own patented form of exploitation, I suppose, to ply them with questions that they were uncomfortable answering, but they had received hours and hours of HR training in the fine art of subservience. They couldn’t resist me.



Cruises like this one are set up to be Pleasure Island—you know, that place in the 1940 movie of Pinocchio where bad boys congregate to smoke and drink and presumably do all sorts of other wicked things the Hays Office prohibited the animators from revealing.

The centerpiece was the food. Which was not bad although I certainly wouldn’t describe it as good. There was an endless amount of it. Twenty-four hours a day, the guests on the Carnival Masque of the Red Death had the option of loading up their plates with 10,000 calories of fried chicken and grilled pork and mashed potatoes and cakes with strange gelatinous frostings, and they took full advantage of it; they went back for seconds, thirds. Fourths! There was a salad bar, too, of course: under-ripe tomatoes, unpeeled cucumbers, designer lettuces, the usual mushroom and hardboiled egg garnishes, and the passengers helped themselves to that, too, though my survey of the leftovers seemed to suggest that the passengers didn’t actually eat the salads; they helped themselves to them for show.

By the third or fourth day onboard, they no longer felt the need for show, and from that point on, the salad bar went largely untouched.

From the looks of them, the passengers on the Carnival Masque of the Red Death were a ways from starving. A long ways.

So this obsession with food was pretty creepy.

Sinister even.

###

The Mexican ports of call were Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta.

Relatively few people cared to leave the ship.

I couldn’t wait to leave the ship myself.

And I had a really good time whale-watching in Cabo, tequila factory-touring in PV, and marching around Mazatlan.

###

In Cabo, we saw so many whales that even the tour guides got excited:



Whales migrate to the Cabo bay to give birth in its warm waters. This pod of three was a rare sighting; the tour guide thought they might be male whales competing for the attention of a female:



This is El Arco where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortez:



The slightly out-of-focus interior of Mazatlan’s 19th century folklorica Catedral Basílica de la Inmaculada Concepción. It’s an art style that’s always appealed to me. I particularly like the way the sun streams through the bright red panes of glass in the (unseen) stained glass window on the right, illuminating the—what would you call that? An archivault?—with neon intensity:



Various details of the polychrome statuary. Another style I really, really like:





Lots of gritty poverty once you leave the touristy sections of Mazatlan. (You know me and my intense adoration of urban decay.)



In Puerto Vallarta, I toured a couple of old tequila factories. Surprisingly cool experience. I started drinking at 8:30 in the morning and kept drinking steadily till 2pm but did not get drunk and had no hangover; I think maybe because we were being served 100% agave tequilas with no additives. The tequila high is somewhat reminiscent of the acid high in terms of clarity and colors, though without the hallucinations.

I should add that this was the only time I drank alcohol the entire time I was on the cruise. Alcohol is Carnival Cruise’s major profit center; they don’t allow passengers to bring their own alcohol onto the ship, and they charge unbelievably high prices for drinks. Nevertheless, staying as drunk as humanly possible is one of the chief goals of all onboard guests.

The best tequila is made from the hearts of blue agave plants that have been grown in volcanic soil at high altitudes over 1,000 meters. The agave plants are harvested when they are 10 years old. Pre-processed agaves look something like pineapples:



Most Mexican tequilas are produced in small batches and are not imported into the U.S. They come in a variety of flavors that are very, very delicious, mimicking every type of liqueur you can possibly imagine. My favorite, though, was the unflavored white tequila because I love the taste of the agave:



My Terrible Cruise Story happened on the second-to-the-last night I was onboard when I finally got around to checking my email on A___’s computer.

It was the quintessence of all those horrors one can only keep at bay by cultivating a profound sense of irony.

I can hardly bring myself to write about it even now, even though I am quite excellent at the profound sense of irony cultivation thing.

Rutger died.

He had a stroke, L emailed. I took him to the vet. I was really hoping it was something infectious that could be cured. But, no, the vet said it was neurological. I tried to keep him alive so that you’d get the chance to say goodbye, but I couldn’t. He wasn’t in any pain—

Rutger was just a little doofus kitty. Not terribly smart. Not terribly brave. But I don’t think any other living being has ever loved me as much as Rutger loved me, and that includes my children and both my X-husbands. He tried to learn Human so he could talk to me! Every night, he would climb up on my pillow and watch Netflix with me, and while I know we were seeing different things—I was looking at two-dimensional storylines; he was looking at moving shapes—still: We were watching those things together.

I will miss him so, so much.



After I got Linda’s email, I wandered down to one of the open decks from which you could see the dark sea seemingly stretching on forever and the infinite stars above it. I couldn’t stop crying. Stop being so ridiculous, Patrizia! I chided myself. He’s a cat. If you must cry, cry for the big-eyed children being starved and tortured in places like Yemen and Syria.

“You okay?” asked someone.

I turned in the direction of the voice.

Short, husky, middle-aged guy in an ugly Hawaiian shirt. Of the 4,500 people onboard, approximately 20% of them met that description.

Not exactly the harbinger I might have hoped the universe would send me.

But sometimes God drafts unlikely messengers.

“I just got some sad news,” I said and explained.

He listened and nodded. “Every time I go on a cruise, one of my animals kicks the bucket,” he said.

“And you keep going on cruises?” I asked in some horror.

“Well, sure. I live in Coos Bay,” he said as though that explained it. “I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I voted for Trump. What do you think of Trump?”

“Uh—“

“I’d die for Trump. If I could. If I had to. What don’t you like about him?”

“Uh—“

“See. See. You can’t think of anything. All you know is that the media hates him, so you hate him. You should try thinking for yourself.”

As he talked, I noticed that he was missing all of his lower teeth. What kind of a person drops $1,000 on a Carnival Masque of the Red Death cruise but never goes to a dentist? I wondered.

“See. See. The thing is Trump talks to me. I swear to God! He uses words that I can understand. I won’t lie to you! I been in trouble plenty of times; I had to get a lawyer. And those lawyers would talk to me, and I didn’t understand one word they said. They use all those big words! I say, Fuck those big words! Can you feel me?”

God! I hoped not. I inched myself backwards just in case.

“They just keep fucking up all the good stuff. And Trump knows it. Like this boat. I been on this boat before, you know. The Carnival Masque of the Red Death! And it was decorated gold! With eagles! What color is it now?”

“Uh—“

“It’s pink,” he hissed, moving his face very close to mine so I could smell the aldehydes on his breath, see the mad glint around his pupils. “Pink! We don’t watch out, everything’s gonna turn pink! But see, Trump’s putting an end to that—“

At that point, I got up and literally ran to the covered part of the deck where the last stragglers were attacking a glistening buffet filled with cremated meats, boiled vegetables, endless slabs of floury carbohydrates cunningly disguised as cakes.

I felt like I had just encountered a demon on shore leave from hell.

And maybe I had.

###

By the next morning, my sense of irony had returned though I had a very rough night. Much as I like A___, I knew he’d be no comfort whatsoever for the sadness I felt since he kind of views emotions as though they’re a particularly outré fashion choice he’s uncomfortable wearing. I seriously considered not telling him about Rutger at all, but that would have been weird, too. So, I think I threw it out as an aside. A___’s eyes widened; he made a little sad mouth; and that was that.

I would never recommend a Carnival cruise to anyone—unless maybe they were bulking up to audition for a role on My 600-lb Life.

Under the right circumstances, though, a cruise on another line might be fun. As you get older, there’s a lot to be said for traveling like a turtle with your home on your back, and when you’re on a cruise, that’s exactly what you’re doing.