August 1, 2011

SEADAY enroute to ???

Had a meeting yesterday. There is a big storm in the area we are trying to get to, so it looks like we may be changing direction and heading to Cozumel and Costa Maya for our two land days. They will keep us posted. My big fear on this whole job has been being away from my home and family while a hurricane makes its way to Key West. I am constantly checking the weather now. The Bridge will keep us posted.

On brighter news, it is official…Amy was announced as pro tem Cruise Director for a couple weeks next month! 3 years in and CD. I have said it before, but that is the track I want. Richard announced this during our meeting yesterday. I am really happy for her, but happier to know that it can happen. The one thing that concerns me is the billet availability. Obviously one cannot be a Cruise Director if there are no slots available. So short of retirement or doing something incredibly wrong, there is not much movement up in that direction. I will leave it to Fate though and hope for the best.

I am now working on my third month…wow. Time is starting to fly. I have a visit this weekend coming up with Ralph, so I am obviously looking forward to that!

Last night I had a very long conversation with one of the character performers in Dreamworks. She is a singer and is looking to audition for a more vocal part than our silent Dreamworks Family. She currently plays Puss in Boots. I was asked by Joyce to come to her Karaoke show and sing, and I agreed to do so and make announcements for the Karaoke Contest on Day 4. Kay, the Dreamworks performer, agreed to sing with me. We had met up in the office and I was telling her about the BritCom, “Vicar of Dibley” and the brilliant actress who portrays the harebrained sidekick. She had an incredible monologue about “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”.

I figured it was a great comic monologue for a woman, and she came back to my room to listen to it. While there we started talking musicals, so I asked her to come up with me and sing at the Karaoke Show.

After the show we were in one of the forward stairwells and started chatting. It ended up a very long conversation about religion. She is very Christian, (Evangelical), and we debated the ability to be an actress and be true to the tenets of her faith. She does not believe in homosexuality, she believes in the literal Bible, etc. I asked her questions about whether or not, if she was offered a lesbian role, if she would take it, and how she felt about so many of her friends in Musical Theatre being, well, (whispered), “gay”.

It was a “refreshing” debate, as those who have read the Amelia Peabody Mystery Series by Elizabeth Peters, would understand. After an hour of energetic debating we agreed that it was nice to be able to discuss something like this, and that in our current Culture, it is almost impossible. We don’t have a debating Culture anymore. We are so rigid in our partisanship that there is no ability to sit and converse. The first rule is, you are NOT going to change the mind of the other person, and you can’t take personally anything that is said. That is difficult for us nowadays.

Let me add to that. Most people do not know that I am gay on this ship. They see the ring on my finger and assume that the person I am married to is a woman. All well and good, I see no reason to let anyone know anything about my private life. When I am ‘onstage’, as I am on this ship most of the time I do not feel it is my duty to bring people face to face with something they may disagree with. I use no pronouns, and let them make the assumptions they want to make. Is this “being in the closet”? I don’t know. I have struggled with the reasons and logic many times on my off hours. I will always defend, as I did last night, the rights of ALL people to their Faith and their personal lives. It is for no one to draw judgments. I will not ask them about their private life, and I retain the right to my privacy in return. There are those who know that I have a marriage, though not legally, with a man, and those who have looked no further than my façade and the ring on my finger. I am comfortable with that. There are too many cultures on this ship and amongst our guests to engage in that war of Faith and Belief. There are just too many other things to worry about and accomplish.

UPDATE – So it is official. We are headed to Costa Maya and Cozumel due to the storm in the Caribbean around St Thomas and St Maarten. Of course, now I have to watch the weather and hope that whatever the storm turns out to be it does not head towards home.
I am hoping that, since I had the day off scheduled in St Thomas that that means I have the day off in Costa Maya. Since this is a stop that is never on our schedule it is an opportunity to get off and see something that I will not likely have a chance to see again. At least not on this cruiseship.

I had a very nice compliment last night from Amy. She is already talking about me auditioning for the role of Activities Manager. There will be an opening when she leaves in February. That might cut my vacation short, and I am not sure I would want to be AM on this ship…I would really like to see other ships and how they work. I REALLY want to get into the Mediterranean…

I saw my French family again last night! They saw me from across the Promenade and ran on over laughing. Of course that meant they wanted to laugh at my French some more, so I obliged and learned some new words. I also saw Carole the other day and told her about my Box Office experience with the two French families. She and I had breakfast and we spoke French together as well. I figure by the end of this cruise I should be semi fluent. That would be nice. Cheaper than buying Rosetta Stone too! Now if I can find an Italian…

People were concerned after they heard the Captain make the announcement of our change in route. This affects our shows and our Seaday/Portday rotation as well. Our headliner is supposed to be the Texas Tenors, who some people might remember from America’s Got Talent. We were supposed to pick them up in St Thomas…well obviously that is not going to happen. So now we have to switch our Day 6/7 shows with our Days 4/5 shows. Our seadays are now going to be Days 3,4 and 7. I am hearing some complaining among the guests. They seem to feel that the Captain should have known there was a storm coming months in advance and altered the routes. They wanted St Thomas and St Maarten, not the Mexican Riviera. Honestly…the Captain has many things in his control…the weather is not one of them.