Now understand. I am not a hater of my fellow man. And I am all too versed in the shortcomings and challenges in life. My own, especially.
It is with this proviso that I approach my last night’s encounter with a dear guest on board. She is a woman who will never live up to her idea of herself, and that’s unfortunate – as I’d like to meet that woman, and perhaps serve in her royal court as a jester or some other sycophant. She complains readily and just a little too much about how I lavish her too much with compliments, but she most certainly does NOT want me to stop. She knows everything about everything, including what I’m sure is a gigantic trade secret – that being our cruise company’s bottom line figures and occupancy.
You may or may not have read in these pages by now, how I’ve had an escalating relationship with my sinuses and how they plague me with fits of gagging at the most inopportune times. I’m starting to notice that it usually occurs when I’m getting ready for a show or a function (this should read ‘psychosomatic’ to you, but whatever), but the back of my throat starts to feel like it’s ratcheting down, and I start to gag. If it happens close enough to a meal time, I can produce what must seem like a fat ballerina’s dream, but usually I’m relegated to just dry heaves, feeling like my head is going to come off, and a giant red face of tears.
So I’m standing with our lady friend, and she’s telling me that her husband (ex or dead, I’m not sure which – I didn’t care enough to ask. Too much information about someone that I will do my level best to never see again) complained of her not being able to dance, so she doesn’t and is convinced that she can’t. Now, she’s from New York, and she’s my most favorite kind of New Yorker – the kind with the accent, pronounced nasal monotone, who happens to be an authority on everything, and if you agree with them, you’re wrong – somehow.
While she’s telling me about how she loves to dance, but she can’t, (“You dance beautifully.” “No I don’t.”) and she’s got bad knees because she’s fat (“You look great, and that dress looks great on you.“ ”This dress is huge!“), we’re talking about my general distaste for the monkeys (they’re called ”apes“ in all the tourist things, but they’re too small for apes, I think) of Gibraltar and how I won’t be visiting the top of the rock as I don’t relish the thought of being pawed by some rabid, louse infested kleptomaniac who will try to steal my camera.
”You’re descended from those monkeys…“ she snorts at me. While I’m ”sympathy swaying“ with her while she jiggles to the music of Latin night that is playing, I deem it ill advised to challenge her to a Biblical, more importantly Christian discussion of my own beliefs of just how deeply my familial relationship goes with our simian brethren, but still I try to make my point. I simply don’t want to go up there, and catch lice, or worse.
”Well,“ I offer, ”I just don’t care to be around the stinky, filthy little things,“ which, as I said it, seemed suddenly unfair. I’ve never seen these apes. I don’t know if they’re dirty OR stinky. They may be regular bathers. They may be little people in monkey suits for all I know. I just could not get past spending good money and time climbing to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar to be molested by hairy backed, pink faced larcenists.
Pushing what I’m sure was a barely thought out evolution belief on her part, she again offered something to the effect that all of us on that ship are of the same ilk as those magical little apes. In my exasperation, I went for the dark joke, and said something to the effect that she’s right, there are plenty of stinky little monkeys on board with us for this cruise too! An imagined laugh was implied, and I was expecting her to smile and for us to both knowingly drop our verbal swords.
Unlike many of the stereotypes that she was representing for me, she surprisingly made it about herself. ”I hope I don’t smell.“ (She did.) ”I’ve been on a protein diet and I’m in Ketosis!“ The ”out of the blue – ness“ of the statement made my brain stumble a bit. I was suddenly more grossed out, and was beginning to rack my brain for an exit strategy, a clumsy one would be fine.
But again – I’d like to reiterate. I don’t hold bad breath against everybody. Someone like me – middle aged, living in a modicum of middle income comfort, not being raised by wolves – I think I’m a perfect candidate for being required to pay attention to the smells that one’s oral cavity is pumping into other people’s airspace. I do, however, have a gentleness for a limited few – the aged, the infirm, and the incapacitated. I even enjoy, from a distance, halitosis when someone beautiful is guilty of it, as I’m relieved that there is something about them that is indeed not perfect. A toned, dark featured man in a nice suit with a full head of hair, nice teeth and a winning smile is secretly made somehow less hate-able when I encounter his breath that may have the sickeningly sweet smell of his just having been eating a dead raccoon in the road. Or hammer toes. Just something to remind me that God is just and fair.
Now, prior to this exchange, I’d had to excuse myself twice to go to the service kitchen to wretch uncontrollably for a few minutes, only to return with red eyes and a slightly snotty nose. She was knee deep in ketosis indeed, and I could smell the pounds melting away. Good for her!
I assured her that she was indeed NOT emitting a smell that resembled a gut pile behind a butcher shop at high noon during a scorching Tempe summer day. I reported that there was nothing at all in the air, and good for her drinking so much water to keep things at bay.
As I excused myself, I thought of the monkeys and how they probably had fresh breath, stealing all those mints from pilfered purses on top of the Rock. ”See you tomorrow!“ I sang.
I went back to stave off my gagging in the service kitchen until she left for bed, and dry heaved through the tears trying to smile at what a nice person I am.
