![]() ![]() My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD, or forward. ![]() It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. “Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. ![]()
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