Chapter 18
My mom’s snobby about cruise ships, calling them “floating trailer parks” and “book-free zones,” so I’d never gone near one.
But here’s a related, maybe not so surprising, secret: I love malls.
I’ve hung out at every mall within fifty miles of Commack, and I’ve dreamt about the staggering Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, with its indoor roller coaster and over five hundred shops, and the American Dream Mall in New Jersey, with a ski slope and a shark tank.
Malls were the earliest video games, because they’re enclosed fantasy environments where visitors stalk the Burberry outlet and the Cinnabon.
In a way, the Vatican is the highest-end mall, and my compulsion explains how I ended up working in one of the few malls in Manhattan, although socialists sneer that the entire city’s been transformed into a commercialized theme park.
The Empress Olympia was docked in the Hudson beside a Midtown pier, and the Tuxes had been booked as a social group, as ourselves on a spree.
The boat wasn’t merely giant but perplexing: it was so unthinkably huge that it made no sense, on land or sea.
It was like something that had descended from outer space, and I couldn’t conceive of what kept it afloat.
It reminded me of a boyfriend’s cat that would curl up and inexplicably roost on my chest, refusing to move.
“Look at this thing,” said Brock, as we were issued our boarding passes. “It’s like if Vegas and Disneyland had a baby, and it crawled into the ocean.”
Once on board we stepped into a multistory, absurd central atrium lined with boutiques for buying, say, dangly earrings and straw hats to flaunt while at sea; a steakhouse, a sushi bar, and a pizzeria; sitting areas for awaiting family members; and bizarrely, foliage.
This area was designed to copy Central Park, with fully mature oak trees, boulders, lawns, Victorian streetlights, and winding brick pathways.
Like everything about the vessel, it perplexed: Why would tourists pay thousands of dollars to experience an agonizingly artificial facsimile, when they could drop by the actual park just a few blocks away, for free?
(This miniaturization of landmarks is a tradition, from Disney’s Epcot, which reduces entire nations to a single “French Quarter” café or “Taste of Austria” beer garden, to those Nevada casinos with a half-pint Arc de Triomphe or scaled-down Golden Gate Bridge.) “This is so much better than nature,” I told Brock, “because, first of all, there aren’t any cockroaches or dog poop, and secondly, it’s prettier, the way a plastic floral arrangement is stiff and fake but it reminds you that you’re in a dentist’s office.
” I was blissing out. Everywhere I turned there was a toweringly abstract aluminum sculpture topped with the words “HAPPY” or “LOVE” and an acrylic chandelier cascading from eight balconies up.
“Here’s the thing about cruise ships,” said Brock, as we unpacked in our modest yet painfully gaudy cabin (the color scheme was fuchsia and bumblebee-yellow accent walls beside swaths of wallpaper embossed with toucans perched on palm trees).
“We’re the very first people to sail on this thing, it cost over fourteen billion dollars to build, and it’s already starting to look shabby.
Ships from the 1920s had mahogany paneling and brass trim, which got burnished over time, but lavender wall-to-wall shag carpeting and chrome end tables don’t wear well.
It’s a family-style whorehouse with a twenty-four-hour, all-you-can-eat buffet serving croissants the size and texture of footballs. ”
As the boat left the harbor, we stood alongside five thousand other passengers at the outer railings and waved to everyone on shore, which gave me an existential tremor: Was this my future?
A loop of leavetakings, awaiting some higher, if potentially gory, outcome?
Would I ever return to New York for an extended stay? Was I fleeing my life or finding it?
“We’re on the world’s largest cruise ship,” said Brock, mirroring my mood. “It’s Kafka with fifteen different waterslides. Coated with other people’s fluids.”
Our group toured the ship, to reinforce our stance as drunken queer revelers, and to check out where Elizabeth’s helicopter would be landing the next day.
There were faux-weathered beachcomber-style arrowed wooden signs sending us toward the Adult Infinity Pool, the Children’s (Ages 8?14) Undersea Exploratorium, Aladdin’s Bountiful Avenue of Affordable Treasures, the Hot Stone & Laser Rejuvenation Super-Spa, assorted theaters and rinks, and dining opportunities for “around-the-world cuisine moments” calibrated for an American palate, meaning larger portions, more sugar, decorative radish rosettes, and “authentically Brooklyn” egg cream milkshakes beside “a tantalizingly Thai tasting platter.”
“I love that everyone’s already wearing T-shirts from the different hangouts,” said Timothy, in a rainbow ombré tank top reading “Life’s a Parfait at the Parfait Pavilion Party Place Plus!”
Reggie had reminded us to get appropriately rowdy, and passenger comments spanned “I love your diverse spirit!” to a muttered “There are kids here, you know.”
That night the overdressed Tuxes occupied a long table in the central atrium for the Welcome to the Wonder of the Empress Olympia banquet, as the waitstaff brought “pork & pineapple Polynesian kebabs” ignited for our pleasure.
I was sitting in between Pei-Sze and Mikaela, so to juggle my romantic befuddlements, I asked them how long they’d been married.
“Together for eight years, legal for three,” said Pei-Sze.
“We took our time getting hitched. We met in college when we were both applying to med schools. My parents are Pasadena-Republican-honor-roll commandos, and they wanted me to get a residency with a top-tier hospital by the time I was twenty-five and also marry a rich man who owned at least five vehicles. They were hideously upset when I got my real estate license, that is until I sold a downtown office building for a seven-figure commission. I told them, ‘See, I am a rich man and let’s take a spin in my Lamborghini. One of my Lamborghinis.’ ”
“My moms thought I’d be running a free clinic in Haiti,” said Mikaela.
“They opened a restaurant outside San Francisco. It’s not only vegan but fruitarian, which means they only use apples and oranges that have dropped naturally from the trees, without the trauma of being picked.
The place seats eight people at a time, and if anyone’s wearing leather they have to leave it in a barrel outside the front door.
Even the barrel’s made from reclaimed timbers.
They said I should help people, but I told them, ‘I help people get walk-in closets, and temperature-controlled wine cellars, so the wine doesn’t suffer. ’ ”
“Mikaela actually says things like that,” said Pei-Sze, “and her moms beg us to stop coloring our hair because it’s symptomatic of the oppressive male gaze. We mentioned the Tuxes but we called it a humanitarian aid organization, which it sort of is.”
“Last year Pei-Sze clobbered this guy with a nine iron on a very exclusive Palm Beach golf course.”
“Which was an anti-capitalist gesture.”
“Because he was a VP at Boeing who ignored safety standards and arranged the murder of a whistleblower, and it was his own nine iron.”
Pei-Sze and Mikaela’s banter had a knowing rhythm, and their glamour wasn’t conventional, because it wasn’t intended to please straight guys.
They were both in sinewy great shape, like coordinated art deco hood ornaments.
They belonged together, so I wondered, “Was it love at first sight? How did it happen?”
They paused, assessing each other. Most longtime couples, I’ve noticed, will unreel an agreed-upon origin story, but Pei-Sze and Mikaela were more considered.
“I was attracted to Mikaela, but once we started talking I thought, She’s very opinionated, so she’ll be fun to argue with. I never tune her out, or predict what she’ll say. Because she keeps surprising me.”
“Sometimes I catch sight of Pei-Sze from across a room, and I think, I’d cheat on my wife with her.
Then I remember, she is my wife. And if I’m being honest, the Tuxes revitalize us.
We practice martial arts together, and when she was wearing a nun’s habit, and jumping onto that cardinal’s back in Rome, it was so badass.
But I thought, Maybe I don’t need to tell my moms about this. ”
Mikaela was nudging Pei-Sze’s shin with her foot, and their shoes alone had a torrid pulp-paperback combustion, from the ankle straps and black satin.
Could this be my life with Luc, and his offhand of-course-I-can-wear-my-double-breasted-jacket-over-my-shoulders-without-looking-like-an-asshole Parisian chic?
Before I could lose myself in this visual of hooking up with my French lover, both of us under assumed names, in a Hong Kong penthouse (which Pei-Sze and Mikaela would be showing to a Syrian pop star later that afternoon), the dinner was interrupted by the piercing, booming agony of someone yelling, “I HATE MY LIFE AND I WANT TO DIE!”
The voice was unmistakable. Everyone in the atrium, on each of the many balconies, peered skyward. There she was, leaning over the glass boundary of the uppermost walkway: my cousin Jenn, in her wedding gown.