Alice in Shipland: Week Two

-Sunday afternoon felt strange. I put on my new pink tank from Forever21 to feel like a normal human who can exist off the sea. We bumbled down the Mississippi. Am I doing this again? Oh, and then ten more times? For the first time in what feels like my whole life I wonder what I will do with all my time. I have buckets and buckets of time. I have like six projects I’m working on, but I only have two rehearsals and five shows a week. So. I do four miles at the gym and sit on the floor on our tiny room in the corner by the wardrobe. It’s a two foot by two foot open space of tile. We’ve dubbed it the “yoga studio.” I write a new scene for my new play. ZPill and MB come in giggling about the huge (free, always) dinner they ate. We put on face masks and pore strips and talked for hours. Something incredible is happening to me, which is, I really don’t care what time it is almost ever.

-Monday we had a cast dinner. We sat talking with nowhere else to be until the dining room cleared out. Savage Garden played quietly from the speakers. Someone started half-heartedly singing along. Then two. Then all six of us at a table in the middle of the ocean were screeching, “I WANNA STAND WITH YOU ON A MOUNTAIN.”

-I invited a word: shissed. It is short for “ship pissed” which is a hilarious and terrible inevitability of living on a vacation machine. Like, everything is gravy and then someone on cast will not be able to pass the ancient couple walking (are they even walking technically at that slow speed?) in a hallway, and suddenly a demon is unleashed. The demon says things like “Why do I live here? I hate people. This is the worst.” If you’re doin alright, it’s hard not to laugh at shissed people. If you’re the shissed, oh boy. Different story. I got shissed for this first time this week when security blocked off both hallways in front of and behind the exact staircase I live on. I wandered all over the boat for half an hour trying to find the one roundabout way in. It’s not like I was in a time crunch (that is never), but I got fussy. Shissed.

-I know exactly when and where the cookies are set out in the buffet each day.

-Cozumel port day was the bees knees. Four of us found a cultural wasteland of a beach that we got into for only the price of one drink and the cab ride there. I slurped coconut water out of a giant green coconut and ate fistfuls of nachos and swam in the ocean like a dang mermaid. I sat by the pool and listened to Coldplay. I left hot pink. It was worth it.*

-One night we huddled in a conference room to watch a stream of the Oscars. I feel full of confetti when Adam McKay won Best Adapted Screenplay. Here we were, a cast of SC, watching an alum of SC win an Oscar.

-I might already be in overload of beauty. I walked around Honduras Wednesday and if I really focused I would notice how absolutely breathtaking everything was, but only a minute later…poof, I was back to planning out the essay I’m working on.

-I have been spending at least a few hours every day in the library to write. Without fail, every hour some older person approaches me and asks how I get online. I say I am only writing—not online. They pause, ask, “So can you help me get online?” It’s as if I have “Millennial—Ask Me Anything” tattooed on my face.

-It’s a very confusing feeling to do a sketch for the umpteenth time and still get a giant positive reaction. I get that to me it’s very old and to the audience it’s very new, but man, it’s weird.

-Costa Maya = an hour massage for thirty bucks, swimming in an ocean pool, drinking summery slushies out of palm tree glasses. MY LIFE!

-Yesterday I got to teach an improv workshop in the lounge of the ship. About 40 people came out, and my heart exploded with joy. I have really missed teaching. I’m glad I get this mini outlet here.

-Saturday night is a barrel of fun. Everyone is getting one last wild ride in. We do an “adults only” set, which obviously very quickly (at the whim of the audience’s suggestions) spirals out of control into a trashy blue comedy blob. New friends are made! Fans even. We dance, we sing, everything is loud, we scream over the music. Everyone will disappear in less than ten hours.

At least twenty times a day I am filled with immense gratitude that life has taken me here.

*Don’t worry, Mary, I am wearing sunscreen!