I tried to write from Juneau today on my one hour off, but found that my keyboard was broken. I couldn't write a thing EXCEPT FOR LIKE THIS. Anyhow, I sneaked into the ship's office and publishing what I can- notes I've taken throughout this week, week 3 at sea.
Today at dinner the assistant engineer unpeeled a mostly raw
hardboiled egg and stormed out of the dining room. To date, this is his second
storming out of the dining room episode.
He’s a big guy with a Mohawk but he’s very sensitive and he takes the
terrible food personally.
Dave Horner is back on the ship for a week. Dave is another engineer and they asked him
to come back because the ship is in such disrepair. I begged for him to come
back because we became close friends instantly in ship yard. He’s got one of
the guest rooms, which means two real beds and a window and a space where
guaranteed nowhere is going to find me.
I have Dave for a week and whenever I see him on the ship I
feel like I’ve won the lottery. Last
night I brought mango juice up to his room and he had bought watermelon in town
and these little packs of gummy fruit, so we ate fruit till we felt sick and
then we sat on the beds- you can’t sit up on the beds in crew quarters so even
sitting was exciting- and told stories till 10pm, which is the latest I’ve
stayed up on the ship, ever.
Bumbee left yesterday for another ship for six weeks . He
walked away in a handsome pea coat, looking just like a sailor. I ran after him
on the fantail of the boat, tripped on a taut line and fell across the entire
fantail and landed with my body half out of the ship. He used to leave me notes
all over the ship, stuffed into my radio and coat pockets. After he left, I
found my waterbottle I’d misplaced but found I couldn’t drink out of it. Bumbee
had rolled up a note into a plastic back, rolled it up tightly and stuffed it
into the straw.
We like to pretend that we have a choice about everything.
“This was a good restaurant.” We’ll say after dinner. “Want to meet here
tomorrow?”
“You know, that sound great. There are a few other places
I’ve been meaning to check out, but I really like this place. Same time?”
In the evening I’ll say to Dave, “Do you want to go out
tonight? Maybe grab a drink, see a movie?”
And Dave says, “You know, we’ve just been going out so much
lately. What say we just stay in and
watch a movie?”
Two days ago I was nearly crying to Bumbee and Scott and
told them I was going to quit. And Scott, who is a former police officer who
used to train Iraqi police officers in Iraq, talked me down so patiently and
gently you would have thought he was a saint.
The crew and their infinite patience! The stewards who make
this special effort to bring me things- cookies, food, stuff. They steal it
from the kitchen and slip it into my pocket. I’ve grown to love them
immensely. When I got to Juneau I went
looking for things to give to them. Buy bags of cookies to bring to the
stewards when they are polishing silverwear at ten o’clock. You start looking
for nice things to do for one another and those things become your sole purpose
for being on the ship.
After 12.5 hours on your feet with all these strangers
asking me questions I don’t know, by the end I feel like I will burst out into
tears at any moment. It doesn’t matter how much I love anybody.