Brisbane to Los Angeles - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 103

AFTER we leave Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands, the next stop is America. But getting there means
six full days across the ocean with no land in sight. And here the despair begins to creep in.
Aboard this ship, I live a wholly unnatural life. All food is free, including twenty-four-hour room service.
At any moment I wish I can order a filet mignon, or whatever gourmet dish I please, delivered directly to
my cabin.
All liquor is also free. I pick up the phone, ask the porter to send a glass of scotch to my room, and . . .
ding-dong, there's the door, and here's my scotch. As a result, my alcohol tolerance has grown frightening.
Rebecca and I generally hit one of the ship's bars for a drink before dinner, order a bottle of wine with our
four-course meal, and then drink at another bar until we stagger back to our cabin at the end of the evening.
To enhance the ritual, I tend to pick a random signature drink each night—white Russians on Wednesday,
champagne cocktails on Thursday, cognac on Friday.
The ship's amenities are amazing. There is a full-service gym with on-call personal trainers a mere four
hundred feet from my cabin. Satellite Internet in the computer lounge. Trivia quizzes and sports challenges
all day. Professional entertainment every night in the theater.
And yet I want nothing more than to be off this ship. I wouldn't stay aboard the Mariner past Los
Angeles even if my passage were free. It might be hard to understand that from where you're sit-
ting—assuming you're sitting in a place where people don't bring complimentary shrimp platters and
champagne to your door twice a day. But I can assure you it is possible to grow resentful of comfort.
In part, I've been put off by the chilling vision of human nature that the ship has offered me. When
people—and even more so, smart, wealthy, accomplished people—are thrown together for two intense
weeks in a bounded space, they inevitably form cliques. They cultivate enemies. They look for ways to
entertain themselves by stirring up conflict. (Often under the guise of partner-based card games.) It's not
pretty to watch, and I've had my fill of it.
There's also the depressing realization David Foster Wallace put his finger on. That however many awe-
some things we have, we will forever crave the next awesome thing. And that even when all discomfort
is eliminated, and life is “perfect,” less-than-perfect emotions will persist in our stubborn brains. Which
calls into question just what the fuck it would take to make you happy. Try pondering that sometime when
you're on your seventh free mojito in the harbor of a South Pacific island, and perhaps you'll know how I
feel.
THE last night of the cruise, the ship takes on a loosey-goosey, end-of-high-school vibe. Though I wouldn't
have previously imagined it possible, people are accelerating their gluttony into the homestretch—eating
and drinking at new, uncharted levels of excess. We've also all gotten suddenly social, emboldened by the
knowledge that after tomorrow we'll never need to see each other again.
Somewhere toward midnight, Rebecca and I find ourselves drinking mai tais at the bar in the disco club.
We're chatting with Max, the very cool drummer from the ship's jazz combo. Max wears a Hawaiian shirt
and a pair of hipster eyeglasses. He's twelve to fourteen drinks ahead of us, but we're catching up fast.
Max tells us he took this job at sea because it gives him a steady paycheck, so he doesn't have to struggle
for wedding reception and nightclub gigs from week to week. When we ask him for some juicy, inside
cruise ship gossip, he obliges by describing the never-ending feud between the Mariner 's staff (who sleep
in stacked bunks down in the bowels of the hull, observe a curfew, and eat in a staff-only cafeteria) and
its entertainers (who, though they're likewise getting paid to be here, live like passengers). He also points
out two older women shimmying out on the dance floor. He tells us they propositioned one of the other
musicians with an offer of a Xanax and a threesome.