Alice in Ship Land: Ahoy Family

This was a special week because my mom and aunt were on board! They booked a cruise for a relaxing vacation and, of course, to witness me firsthand entertaining the masses.

A Sr. lives her best self 

These updates will be getting less exciting seeing as I will have significantly fewer new experiences each time I repeat the exact same itinerary. I am in Middle America Vacation Groundhog Day.

Some highlights of my fourth cruise in the Western Caribbean:

-walking around Belize with my family while we all drank out of coconuts a dude hacked up right in front of us, shavings flying wildly

-my cast taking advantage of Mom and Aunt’s dining package, getting to dine at the “fancy”* Italian restaurant with unlimited apps and ‘zerts!

-my aunt winning the spa lottery on Sunday and booking an hour massage for me! I live on a cruise and somehow the masseuse told me, “You are incredibly tense. Especially your calves.”

-Over two scones, ZPill and I contemplated how greatness happens. His metaphor is there is a huge dogpile of humans, and one finally stands on top, making the best thing. But, that person couldn’t be there without stepping on a million other people. My idea is societal needs show up as big holes, and we all create rubber band balls of our experiences. Sometimes because of who we are and what we have, our ball is too big or too small and either slides through the gap or rambles over it. But someone out there creates something just right that gets lodged in place. That’s greatness.

-drinking a peanut butter latte on a porch in Cozumel

-I’ve been wearing my pearls and my pearl shimmer lip-gloss a lot. At the pool is Costa Maya my cast tells me I look like a Kennedy.

-ZPill and I walk down a hall on Deck 6. A girl whispers as we pass, “That girl is so funny!” ZPill turns and smiles at me, says, “I just love getting compliments.”

-I’ve finally started wearing my jean shorts. I’ve been avoiding them because sweatshorts are also a thing. Everyone comments as they see me, “New shorts?” We all know every outfit.

-serving as a “celebrity judge” of the dance off competition for the first time. An old man won mainly because he successfully executed the lift in the Dirty Dancing number.

-wearing my new chocolate perfume on show night. MB asked me if I was eating a brownie every time I went offstage because when we passed each other in the dark I reeked of cocoa.

-the night the cast passed one slice of pie around the single we all crammed into, the night ZPill was sad and wrapped an éclair into a pizza slice and ate all of it

-the time I locked myself out of my room and couldn't get to my laundry for hours--when I arrived in the facility, it was all out of the dryer and folded

Another note: Very consistently I am finding when men come and talk to me after shows they talk about their own experiences. Ex: how much they like SNL, their favorite sketch, the work training they did once with improv, their college theatre group. Women ask a lot of questions. They rarely think to mention anything about themselves besides the initial "I enjoyed the show." Then they launch in to learning. So far, there are no exceptions to this rule.

*still on a cruise ship

Alice in Ship Land: Week Three

-Sunday was frightening. Suddenly, the ship went from average age of cruiser 65 to 22. Spring Break is here and the swarms of college kids have descended upon us. There were so many bikini-bods holding pink frosty cups running around the pool deck. This is a new era. MB and I holed up in our cabin putting on face masks and eating the wasabi peas from crew mart.

-A few of us went to a sit-down restaurant one night, and I realized just how blasé I feel about ship life suddenly. A photographer asked if I would get up from my seat to pose for a photo and I just honked, “No.”

-This go ‘round in Cozumel I had the major urge to find a donut. I hadn’t had a donut in almost a month. Tuesday morning I got a major bee in my bonnet and was determined to find one. I Yelped around on pirated Wi-Fi until I found a bakery a mile up the coast. My gang wanted to visit the cemetery, so I conceded to that stop. It was colorful and kind of cute with wild lizards roaming about.

-Finally we got to this hot room full of pastries. I bought a cheese pocket and a sugar donut. I ate them with spiced ice coffee. We meandered and I felt the fuss creeping up in all of us. Only three weeks in and irritability rises. MB and ZPill want stuffed peppers. I wonder if I should go on my own for a bit. I am right on the edge of saying “I’ll leave you here,” but I don’t. I sit down in the restaurant and the clouds open. It pours.

-Tuesday night I was in the library trying not be distracted by the pack of middle schoolers who were lounging on the couches when Bril came rushing in and told me we had a show in half an hour. The seas were rocky, so it wasn’t safe for the aerialists to perform. I zipped up my stuff, ate four bites of a calzone, and rushed to get into costume. My hair was in knotty braided pigtails, but no time for curling iron. I slapped on lipstick and sped through the finale song. There were a lot of drunk frat boys, but it’s good to have a challenge. Every audience shouldn’t be good. Then I’m not getting all I should be out of this job.

-My eating has taken a bit of a tumble this week. I’ve had late night pizza three nights of the week. ZPill explained it well, “At home there’s the difficulty of getting junk food at night and a financial drawback. Here it’s like ‘Oh, do you have sixty seconds?’”

-Beach day in Roatan. Frazzled ship exit. Security telling me I couldn’t get off the ship, my roommate already off and calling from the gangway, finding a cab, paying for the beach, but finally we were there. The sand was soft as silk under my toes. The ocean warm and welcoming. The sun drying my hair in minutes. I drank out of a coconut and answered emails about an essay I am publishing in spring.

-Once a month the spa is open for crew. The hot tub is splashy in the rough waters. I take off my suit and wear a towel in the relaxation room. Ah.

-I finally set foot in Belize. It’s the hardest port for crew to get to because passengers clog the exits for hours. We take a tour with a woman who has never known another home. She tells us about the culture and her life from inside her car. The south side is broken, the north side corrupt. I drink lime juice and eat a grilled conch from lunch. Plus plantains. Oh plantains! I ask about feminism. She tells me men used to say “Jump” and they’d ask “how high?” Now, men say jump and the women climb.

-We rehearse, he have long lingering dinner, we do our show, late night cheesecake, the first upset, the patching it up, the sleep. The glorious sleep of being in the belly of the sea.

-Our “family friendly” show. Woof. It was my first time hosting and thirty seconds in a spring breaker screamed “gynecologist” at me. I did make two horrible puns and got literally boo’d by hundreds of people, but my third joke was pretty good, and I was cheered like Rudy.

-It took me two weeks to do a total revision of my musical. Cheers to the ship library. When MB wants to find me she walks in, says deadpan, “You’re so hard to find.”

-During the Murder Mystery the audience participates in questioning the perp (me). A big ol’ southern boy asked for my number in the middle of the show.
-The adult show was BONKERS. There were hundreds of people packed into the bar. Our perfect demographic. Afterwards the high fives were endless. A girl came up to me on the dance floor and said she loved us and when she turned around and thought I couldn’t hear: “Y’all, my heart is beating so fast!” The truth is, we’re good, but we don’t warrant this kind of affection. But, still, it’s a fun experience for a week at a time.

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!

Alice in Shipland: One Week Down

Some things that have happened so far:

-In the middle of the week the producer took the cast out to a fancy French Bistro on board with SC footing the bill. I ordered four desserts.

-We have to wear Britney mics for our shows.

-I made friends with a guy from Albania during lifeboat drill.

-I accidentally fell asleep in a deck chair for twenty minutes on the first day at sea, and my right leg only got sunburned.

-In Mexico my roommate and I went to Cozumel Kmart for “essentials.” I bought a Hello Kitty pillow for my bed.

-I sleep on the top bunk, which is like a soft coffin. The ceiling is right in my face, but the room is pitch black at night, and the boat rocks me to sleep. Pictures of my friends surround me. And now I cuddle Hello Kitty’s fat face.

-The social dynamic within the cast is so specific to this experience. I don’t know some basic facts about most of my crew, but if something personal sprouts in the conversation everyone pretty much goes there because, well, we’re going to be together on this floating rock, so there’s no use hiding.

-Anxieties I haven’t felt since high school have reared their heads. I worry no one likes me.  Or I like everyone too much. In the wide world, none of that matters, but in ship world where there are SIX OF US, it can be scary. I have more empathy for people from small towns and the emotional turmoil that must entail.

-Crew bar is very cheap and very friendly. Everyone goes and hangs out there late into the night. One night the bar was moved from under the ship to above the pool deck. The wind was whipping so hard my hair grew a dreadlock, but I was outside in February, in shorts, laughing with new people, zooming over the ocean at 1 AM. Not too bad.

-Things felt a little weird until our first show. I don’t do well sitting in situations where my purpose has not been revealed yet. The sketch show—while a typical canon of safe and family friendly jokey joke scenes—felt huge. Hundreds of people were hooting at us. Surreal.

-I am nobody until show night, and then I am a mini-celebrity. Especially if a couple or more of us are walking through the pool deck, passengers smile and wave.

-In real life I listen to Spotify for all my music needs, which means I’m usually pumping whatever tunes have recently caught my ear. Now I am alone with my iPod that hasn’t been updated since college. I run the track above the food court and remember all of the albums that meant so much to me at a very different time.

-I love my roommate MB. I missed female sounding boards when I left Arizona, and I feel like the world plopped this queer tiny room with two people situation into my lap as a response. We slap on pjs and girl talk into the dark tiled void.

-I like the rest of the cast too--including the producer and director who were on board for the first week. Some highlights include doing magic tricks and playing late night celebrity in a conference room, sitting in the swanky Star Bar after our first show, rehearsing a murder mystery in a restaurant alcove.

-Once a week I visit port in New Orleans, which is where I write this now. I have felt fidgety a few times, maybe fussy, but back on land perspective flows easily, and I am so looking forward to the rest of this adventure.

Happy Is What Happens

Yesterday I sat in the big fancy conference room with my coffee mug filled with the last of my Starbucks birthday card Macchiato and signed my name to contracts to literally work my dream job. And then, we rehearsed. Dreams come true are curious creatures. Is this the dream? The closer it gets in the first place, the less glowing it seems until for lunch you are eating a cold piece of avocado toast and highlighting haphazardly.

But I DO still feel full of something--zip or zest--that tightens around me. This was day two of rehearsal. I woke up early to run lines on the gym elliptical. I ate a spinach bowl. I answer emails furiously on the train. I laugh a lot. I think a lot. I try a lot. I wonder a lot. Everything you get you once wanted very much, and that is strange.

There's a kind of a sort of cost--

There's a couple of things get lost.

Thursday at the End of Days

I take off for a big adventure in two short weeks. There is so much to do before then and now. I see the endless appointments and dinner dates roll on for miles of my paper planner. I have a real makeshift artist schedule these days. It's not my favorite way to live, but it beats a lot of ways to live.

Typical Thursday began yesterday with a 7 AM alarm. I rowed, ran, and stretched at the gym and hustled back home to shower in under one song. I sprinted to the bus. The driver couldn't help but stop in the middle of the street for me. I was flailing. I read the news on the short train ride north to meet a fellow teaching artist. We drove to a high school at the edge of the city. We couldn't find the main entrance and snuck in a side. It was a passing period. We were half an hour early. We wanted around getting backpack checked looking for the library.

We discussed local theatre politics and ate from the tubs of tiny Trader Joe's cookies I brought for the meeting. The two drama teachers arrived. We discussed the residency about to take place and felt a shallow kinship of People Who Care About Teenagers Learning Monologues. We took a tour of the auditorium (with a balcony!). This is the school the play Grease was based on. We were spit out into the winter sun and rambled home.

On the couch I answered work emails and ate a spinach bowl. Bisque edited spreadsheets and Portlandia played. Later SNL. I felt restless and walked to the library where for no reason my late fine from the book about tennis I kept a week too long was waved. I sat on the second floor in a study carrel and felt very much like it was my first year of grad school again. I updated files and wrote documents for my soon to be non-job. I took twenty minutes to brainstorm a new sketch idea I had. A woman barked fifteen minutes until close, and I scampered home in the dark.

My mom called me from her train. We discussed the weekend. I combed my hair. Bisque and I walked around the corner to the vegan place we've never tried. It was small and smokey, but played Bright Eyes over a loud speaker. My aunt and uncle met us, and we ordered too much delicious cheese-less pizza. I took home a big cardboard box.

KK invited me and Nep to her studio in Old Town for face masks and gossip. I took a six dollar Lyft and we squealed and gabbed in the kitchen. My mom texted she was on a bus headed back to my place, so Nep and I split a cab back north. I jumped out at the bus stop at midnight and waited for a lady who I knew would be carrying too many bags to emerge from transit. We chatted and tottered down Belmont. Made it up the three flights. I put on gym shorts. I cozied into bed. I checked Instagram. I fell asleep.

Beat So Wild

There are so many wonderful fantastic things. There are all the adult things--the networking emails, when you can expense cookies for a meeting, getting your ears cleaned at the minute clinic. There are the potential things. What if this opportunity opens and blossoms right before my eyes? What if I was meant for something I have yet to realize? And what if we met? Control. I seem to have no control over so many of the wonderful things because they are all a puff of dust away from not even existing as things at all. But there are the also the simple things. My favorite college album, blankets, walking Clark street, pink neon signs. These things can not be taken away. The risks seem smaller, the jumps mere steps, remembering that.

Me dying. Sketch show last October.

Am I just confused
Or did our hearts that beat so wild and free
Forget who they beat for?