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Destination
Nowhere PAGE
TWO: The Adventure of the Sea boasted, among other things, three pools, seven dining rooms, a rock climbing wall, three theatres, a casino, a shopping mall and its very own ice skating rink. It employed all of South America and most of Queens. Also in line to board were 5,000 other people. Apparently the trip had been offered to the entire New York Fire Department and they all seemed to have accepted, which was a wonderful thing for them. Not me. Widows I can handle. Macho, emotionally fragile firefighters in Jacuzzis, not so much. Still, I, the Gay Husband, waited in line with the other men for three excruciating hours, cursed with low blood sugar and chapped lips. There is little worse for a gay man than chapped lips except, of course, for being in line with thousands of men who use the word "fag" like cheap toilet paper. Finally, with boarding passes between my cracked lips, I dragged our four stuffed suitcases up the six-story ramp. It was at this point, I believe, that I was knocked over by a pack of squealing men in spandex. In a cloud of designer cologne, the all-male Ice Capades dance team trampled me. I was left splayed like gay roadkill. As I rose to my feet, from the pockets of my brand new Dolce and Gabbana puffy white ski jacket fell Aidan's Star Wars action figures. Screaming, he ran up to me and accidentally squirted me with his Verry Berry Juice box. All over my brand new Dolce and Gabbana puffy white ski jacket. Tears of frustration welled up as I tried desperately to keep it all together: my emotions, my hair, my outfit. Aidan then hit me because "Queen Amidala got all messed up!!" "Not the only queen," I thought. At last we boarded the ship. The glorious ship! The interior looked as though it had exploded out from the asses of Siegfried and Roy: murals of swirling jungles and glittery galaxies, teams of bouncing European acrobats, barber shop quartets, two-story chandeliers, and neon, and jazz hands, and American flags everywhere, and metallic everything, and kids screaming, and widows crying and firefighters guzzling beer. My very tasteful gay male aesthetic began to have a sort of panic attack amidst this heterosexual theme park. So I just chanted the mantra I had chanted since the beginning of all of this, "This is about Marian, not me. This is about Marian, not me." I took a deep, calming breath and we set sail. To nowhere. And if you're wondering just how long it takes to sail to nowhere, the answer is about 18 hours. Which is distressing because it's taken me over 35 years. Devastated by the fact that there was no tan to be had on the November seas of the Atlantic, I rallied for Marian as best as I could. She introduced me to the firefighters as her Gay Husband. I curtsied politely. But no one got it. No one got me. No one got that I hadn't been around another gay man for three months because I'd been putting Aidan to bed, because I'd been cooking and cleaning, because I'd been giving Marian foot massages like her husband used to, because I'd been providing her with support, sympathy and sleeping pills. And I looked around and saw that I was the only Gay Husband on board. I was the only gay anything. And what began to come into focus was that, surprisingly, there wasn't a high demand for a Gay Husband in the world of a wife of a firefighter. Which is odd because, with all due respect to the wives of firefighters, these women could really benefit from our help. Really. Just that first night I offered my services to a chubby widow, a Catherine Herrera of Staten Island. We were chatting over Red Bull Mai Tais when I suggested, "You know, Cathy, you're really much too pretty to be wearing THAT much lip liner. Just soften it. It looks like you've been giving head to a car exhaust." Well,
I could tell by the tears that she didn't care for my humor. Back
in Brooklyn I made sense in Marian's life but on this ship I was
as useful as roller skates on a quadriplegic.
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Cruise
day arrived as did Marian, Aidan and I at Manhattan's Pier 58. It
was a splendid day for a sea outing with 343 widows: 35 degrees,
windy and sleeting. The ship, called "The Adventure of the
Sea," was so enormous it seemed like a joke. (Had we learned
nothing from Leo and Kate's ill-fated nautical romance?) Eight blocks
long and fourteen stories tall, there was no doubt that the ship
was visible from space. 
