How to Go on a Cruise
Access a rare brand of inner peace in just 21 simple steps.
1. Going on a Seven-Day Caribbean Cruise is a complex undertaking. It involves a mix of willingness for indulgence, a comfort with open waters, and a certain cognitive dissonance about colonization in general — in particular, re: the Columbian Exchange.
a. What will help most in grappling with that complexity, of course, is if the cruise is free. This could happen for you in any number of ways, though I can advise on essentially none of them. Good luck.
2. Once you have accepted that your fate includes getting to go on A Free Caribbean Cruise, rise to the occasion by buying a new swimsuit. Aerie always has really fabulous sales, so go ahead and get a cute little mix-and-match number and call it a day. Oh, wait — you’ll want a little wrap-around striped sarong as well. Add to cart and click “Buy Now.”
3. Pack your suitcase and then re-pack it. What will you need? It’s impossible to know. Ask Hannah, who will be your companion, and who has been watching many Tik Tok videos that talk about The Cruise. Bring a little bit too much, as you usually do. Unzip the special “expand” zipper.
4. Go early. Fly out two nights before. You have nowhere you need to be, in so many senses. Relationship over. Job over. Grandfather on his likely deathbed. The winter is ending and it’s raining in San Juan. Go down to be there briefly on your own. Sit solo at the bus stop with your eyes closed.
5. When Hannah arrives, jump up and down. Spin in a circle like you did when you first met — now more than ten years back. Eat at some fancy hotel. Walk the lonely beach in the night. Disbelieve that you actually might get to go on The Cruise. You won’t believe it ‘til the boat is moving.
6. Wake up the next day with the roosters. Wander the streets. Buy sunscreen and Dramamine and a poorly written romance novel. Take an Uber to the cruise terminal and gape at the size of the thing. It’s monstrous, all decked out in a thousand red hammocks. Laugh. Point. Marvel.
7. Once you’ve boarded — can you believe you two idiots considered not bringing your passports? — unpack right away. You now live on this boat, and they’ll have to drag you two off here. Find a nice home for everything. Watch the safety video and wonder whether you should be at all afraid. Take an edible. It seems ships don’t sink very often these days.
8. Let the next few days wash over you in one big mélange of sunshine and laying supine. Lather on sunscreen and crack open your book’s spine and find it absolutely perfect. Fall asleep. Wake up. Eat. This is living, you think — your phone forgotten and who knows what time it is, even?
9. At the Aruba Butterfly Farm, hold the just-hatched atlas moth when offered. Sleep on the beach. Cheers with a piña colada. Drink barely enough water. Look: your freckles are finally out to play.
10. Get off the ship at each island, of course. Wear your good clothes with your most comfortable shoes, swimsuit tucked against skin. Find a hundred places to sit down and turn up your face to the sky. With feet planted on the soil of each place, look up its history and read it aloud. Spit on Columbus’s name.
11. In Curaçao, eat rice and beans. Don’t let the red ants bite you. In Martinique, speak French to order your smoothie. Attend on accident a Catholic mass and almost understand what is said. St. Kitt’s might lend you a new blue dress but remember your place. If you walk on the less busy road, then realize you might not be welcome there — your blonde hair, your blue eyes. The less traveled road cannot always be yours, despite all the greed of your ancestors. Bow your head gentle. Silently apologize and go.
12. Go stargazing solo when Hannah gets seasick. Wonder at the width of the world and how old it is. You can’t really see the stars in New York City and somehow you don’t know much about them. This is very unpoetic of you — very out of character. Resolve to change it and know that you probably won’t. That’s life, you guess. So many projects and so little time. At least you can see the Big Dipper.
13. Eat at every restaurant. Order dessert. Dress in red when they tell you to and let yourself feel beautiful. Bat your eyelashes. Admire your own tan and Hannah’s, too, which is olive-deep and lovely. Love her with your whole heart — so much you might die. Try not to and dance on the pool’s edge instead.
14. Consider karaoke then don’t do it. Resolve to sort out your relationship with music and wonder if that might, in fact, be doable. Take a shot. Another. The guy passing trays of them says they’re $9 — but for you, actually, they’re free. That seems to be the theme of everything lately and you wonder if you’ve got some guardian angel. Think of Charles Dickens, ridiculously, and out of the blue. It was the best of times, he said. It was the worst of times. Understand all at once that this is true.
15. On the last day, tap into your sixth sense and text your mother. You feel you should and likely need to. You were right: she says you should call; try and fail because of course you’re on the open seas. You need WhatsApp and last week you deleted it, trying to distance yourself from the stress of your just-over job. Use Hannah’s phone. You can cry now. You’re saying goodbye.
16. This is where you pay for all this relaxation — you weren’t ready, hadn’t prepared, don’t even have some final words to say to your grandfather as he’s dying. Opt in to ask your grandmother to give him a kiss for you. Try not to be disappointed in yourself for this.
17. Go out and toast him over margaritas. Know he’d think they weren’t strong enough. Know he’d want you to be off galavanting, chilled out and drunk. Play a board game. See the stars. See a show. Pack your suitcase. Don’t think too hard or too much.
18. Against all odds, feel ready to go. They don’t even have to drag you off the boat as you thought they might. You’re all sun-kissed and your bones are heavy, and you miss the light in your apartment. Wish that those islands were free. Wish you’d seen the real heartbeats of them.
19. Make your vlogs. Laugh a lot. Cry a little in the Uber on the phone with your cousin. Buy a ticket back to Denver to sit with your grandmother. Wonder if you should get a tattoo.
20. When the plane takes off from San Juan, imagine your grandfather flying it. Captain, my captain, Walt Whitman said. You’ve been in constant transit — from one island to the next, one spit of land southern to the one up north now and then back to the mountainous center. Shed your skin. Lick the present. Forgive everything. Except Columbus. Fuck that guy and everything he did.
21. Sea and air hold you together now. You can sense that The Free Cruise changed you — maybe saved you. Everyone could have predicted that. Will you finally relax? they might ask when you see them. Will you finally start living — I mean, really? Whatever the lesson’s been, take it with you. It’s a blessing: just to be here, alive.