This entry is the one I have simultaneously been the most excited and most scared to write. This is the real shit, the big feelings, the source of the most delicious tea, the reason for my own personal emotional shift last year and the main reason I initially tried in vain to stay anonymous. Relationships. All of them. Friendships, working relationships, enemies and of course lovers, both real and imagined. We live in a bubble, only the people onboard truly understand what it’s like to live and work here. Intimacy develops quickly. Your life on land seems to be very far away, on another planet even. All that we have to do here is work, complain about work, fuck and gossip about who’s fucking. I want to be real with you, but I also don’t want to blow up anyone’s business, so I will do my best to paint an honest picture whilst also being somewhat vague.

When I came onboard last year I didn’t know anyone at all. I met my show partner Charlie in rehearsal in Florida before we arrived so at first he was all I had. Making new friends can get trickier as one gets older and I was genuinely worried that I would end up depressed and alone in my cabin all the time, so I really prioritized getting out and making friends. Almost to a fault. It felt like high school, which was amplified by the fact that I was at least a decade older than most of the people in my department. Chasing after the friendship of a 25 year old when you’re 37 is humiliating and for me it lasted about one week. The real ones found me.

That’s the thing about being an adult that I appreciate so much. I know who I am. Making friends took me a minute but the people who stuck, stuck hard. I consider about 3-4 people that I have met here to be my real true people that I will keep with me after I leave. There are about 5-10 people who’s company I really enjoy, who’s energy brings fun and balance and good conversation, who I will reach out to when I visit their cities, but who will probably always be location dependent friends. And then there are the people who run in the same circles, who share meals and go to the same birthday parties or movie nights but who aren’t for me on any kind of deep level and that’s fine. It’s to be expected. Considering it’s a microcosm of real life I think I’ve done a pretty decent job.

It can be tricky for some people to suss out what’s real and what’s circumstantial. I suppose that can be true anywhere but it’s particularly amplified here. We are sharing space with the same 1000 people every single day and night for months. Break that down to the people you actually spend time with, those in your department, and you’re looking at more like 75 people. Hanging out with mostly just the performers? that’s about 30 people. Just your cast? In my case it’s just the two of us, but usually that means about 10-15 people. So you can understand why things can intensify quickly. We eat, sleep, socialize, adventure, work and relax with the same 10 people everyday for 6 months. Crew members come and go constantly but when you’re working in entertainment and hanging out with your cast, those are your people for the duration of your contract. It can take a minute to figure out if you genuinely like someone or if you just lack options.

I’m grateful to have developed pretty good instincts about who I gravitate towards. Last year my friend Vikki came onboard with her partner in circus and in life. They were immediately two of my favorite people to hang out with, we just vibed. Vikki’s partner was injured early on and he had to leave the contract which was a huge bummer but is also probably why Vikki and I were able to develop such a close friendship. She came to visit me in NYC last winter and I look forward to many more hangouts with her either on her coast or mine in the future. We like to sit next to each other in silence on deck 7 while I read and she knits. It’s awesome. Another favorite person is Arthur, he’s a brilliant, hilarious, handsome sweetheart who also happens to be my next door neighbor. He’s the tits. He lives near Sheffield in the UK and is coming to stay with me for a month in NYC this winter and I genuinely can’t wait to take him fabric shopping in midtown. He just finished editing a new hosting reel for me out of the kindness of his heart. That’s love.

I am incredibly lucky to have been matched with my show partner Charlie. Our show is a two hander, it’s just us up there. The dynamic between us is what makes the show work. I can’t imagine how brutal it would be to be cast with someone you didn’t like. He and I have very different energies that compliment each other perfectly. We also have a very loving and relaxed way of being friends. We share meals, we share excursions, we share secrets and fears and triumphs, and we also leave each other alone. It’s a beautiful partnership for which I am grateful. He’s also coming to visit me in NYC this year and will be dragging me kicking and screaming to see the musical adaptation of Death Becomes Her on broadway. That’s what friends are for. The other bestie is Jen, the general manager of the ship. When we met last year she was the entertainment director, but was quickly promoted. She’s extraordinarily busy when she’s onboard but we do occasionally get to share meals and the STORIES this woman has are BEYOND. I can’t go into detail but you would be shocked by the crazy shit that happens on a cruise ship. From suicides and stow aways to severed fingers and rogue poop, her job is wild. I look forward to visiting her new home in Vegas in the fall.

You didn’t come here to read about my easy friendships and I didn’t come here to write about them. We all want the gossip. Thank god for other people’s drama, it is the spice of life here in the middle of the sea. There is nothing more fun than finding out who’s hooking up with who this week. Or better yet who cheated on who or broke up with who or which two people requested to link contracts after fucking for two weeks. It is wild to me how quickly people “fall in love”. I have to remind myself that when you are young, things can feel very intense, and as previously stated, that is amplified here. If you connect with someone and the sex is great and you suddenly spend every single night together and share every meal without taking a break, it can feel like love very quickly. I’m also impressed at how quickly people get together and then split up and move on. It makes my head spin but it certainly keeps me entertained.

I am going to be very honest with you now. I can be very judgmental of people who can’t be alone. This is a flaw in myself that I am trying to work on. I see these hot young babes focusing all of their attention on getting a man. They go to crew bar every night or they spend all their time at a party dancing up against some guest musician who just came onboard instead of talking to their friends and I can’t help but see a weakness in character. In reality I’m just jealous that I’m too shy to do that sort of thing. But it also feels to me that women do this because they’ve been told their entire lives that being alone is bad. They can’t imagine spending six months not having the attention of a man.

The men onboard know it. Especially the men in positions of power. I’ve watched these men use the entertainment department like their own personal fuck buffet. Men in their 40s sliding into the DMs of ten different 22 year old dancers until they find the one who’s the most vulnerable. Again, life here is merely a microcosm of the world at large, but that doesn’t make it any less gross. That said, I have had an absolutely massive and unrequited crush on “the hot captain” for well over a year now and I only just got up the courage to introduce myself to him a week ago so really I’m just bitter.

To be fair, there isn’t much else to do here other than fraternize and if that’s what tickles your fancy, by all means this is the place to do it. Although when you inevitably break up with your ship thang you have to see them everywhere everyday until one of you leaves. And then repeat that process for every subsequent contract. My friend Whitney refers to these ship ex’s as ghosts, which is the perfect allegory. They float through your life on the daily and they may give you a chill but you can chose whether or not to acknowledge them.

I’m not completely cynical about this shit. Sometimes people really do fall in love. The same way a few of my friendships here feel very real and long lasting, the same is true for some ship relationships. Last year my beautiful friend Katherine was keeping an open mind and an open heart about dating and finally expressed her interest to her ship crush. Six months later they were engaged. True love works in mysterious ways. I could tell you at least five similar stories. Will they all last forever? Who knows! But that’s true no matter what circumstances people meet under. It reminds me of the quote from the 90s hit film “Speed” starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock: “Relationships based on intense circumstances never work”. And as we all know, 90’s movies starring Keanu Reeves should be the basis from which we all plan our lives.

A very fun thing about working on a ship is how many different nationalities work onboard. Different departments host different types of people but there are definitely some countries that have a stronger seafarer tradition and therefore are heavily represented. First there are always a lot of Filipino and southeast asian crew members. There are a lot of people from the Balkans, aka the countries bordering the Adriatic Sea – Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, etc. There are lots of Brazilians as well as Spaniards and Italians. The more senior officers tend to be Italian, Scandinavian or British. We’ve got some Germans, South Africans, Indians and Americans. Americans tend to be in the entertainment department or in management roles. It can be really fun to make friends with people from all over the world and learn about different cultures. I’ve gotten pretty good at distinguishing the difference between a northern and a southern British accent. If you do end up fooling around with someone from somewhere else, hearing your lover whisper sweet nothings to you in Ukrainian or whatever can be a real gusher, at least it is for me. My personal favorite flavor is Italian but all the good Italian men are married or gay because of course they are. Most of the straight men are married and love to cheat on their wives.

There are about a hundred examples of love and hate that I didn’t cover because there’s literally something new everyday. Every vague reference I made has at least 20 real life examples behind it. Like the girl who got engaged to the community dick and then he cheated and bragged about it one week before she got back onboard so now she has to suck it up and walk past him everyday on the A1A. Or the babe who finally stopped fucking the hot dish washer and went for the “nice guy” and fell for him and linked contracts with him and then decided a few months later that she didn’t want anything serious and left him hanging while he was visiting her in another country. Or the two guys who used to date the same dude and were super catty about it but then suddenly fell in love with each other and are now planning their wedding for next year. It’s a juicy, delicious, caffeinated, sexy soup we live in and I have a front row seat and know exactly where to get the popcorn.

PS. If you think I’m talking about you specifically in this post, no I’m not.