New York Times
“Leather jacket at 5 o’clock,” my friend John whispered. I scanned the room and located the young man in a sleekly fitted jacket. Amid the 2,000-odd crowd of passengers waiting to board the Queen Mary 2 at Southampton, England, heading to New York, it’s not hard to spot those of eligible age for our kind of “cruising,” which happens more often in clubs or on Grindr than aboard luxury ocean vessels. One has only to scan for heads without white hair, as John wasn’t in the market for a tryst with someone twice his age.
“Definitely gay,” I agreed. We watched him turn to an older man seated beside him. “Is that his dad,” I wondered.
“Or his daddy?” John asked.
During our 40-minute wait, we spotted a handsome young couple with tidy haircuts and matching suits, a gaggle of bearded men whose American voices rang boisterously over the sea of seniors, and a towering Clark Kent look-alike accompanied by a man thrice his age.
“Daddy,” we whispered in unison.
No one takes the Queen Mary 2, or QM2 as it’s known, to get lucky, unless it’s in the casino. John is a regular on cruises by virtue of both a plane phobia and a book he is researching in Greece. Most passengers, however, take the QM2 to revel in the 151,000-ton homage to an antiquated ideal of British luxury. People take the Queen Mary to be served — by Eastern European waiters in white gloves, Filipino stewards who hover in the stateroom corridors, British performers with feathered headdresses, and “dance hosts” hired to steer the many eager dowagers around the ballroom. (The hierarchy of the crew on the QM2 is clearly delineated by nationality.) But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to cruise more than the King’s Buffet on the famous luxury ocean liner. And I would prove it by playing Cupid for my friend, whose Midwestern home base is less than a thriving metropolis of gay culture.
When I was 9, my entire family had crossed the Atlantic on my father’s cargo ship, and I had just finished writing a book that described it, along with my last passionate love affair. If anyone could help John, I could. A true extrovert, I also manage to fall a little bit in love everywhere I go. This mixed gift is the reason I was on a six-month stint of voluntary celibacy. I had been in consecutive monogamous relationships since the age of 15, the most recent of which had been catastrophic enough to write this new book about, and to inspire the much-needed hiatus.
“I’ve 86ed myself,” I explained as we boarded. “But, by God, I’m going to get you some action on this boat.”
“Let’s hope you don’t get seasick,” he said, trundling up the gangway.
It was hard to imagine the inside of a ship as a luxury hotel until I saw the six-story Grand Lobby atrium with its 22-foot bronze relief mural of the ship itself, Art Deco chandelier and white grand piano. If ships are female, the QM2 is the biggest, baddest drag queen — the RuPaul of sea vessels.
It was quite a contrast to the memory of my father’s ship. The Leslie Lykes carried only 50 people, mostly crew members, and was the length of two Statues of Liberty laid torch to toe. The QM2 is far longer — a bit more than a horizontal Chrysler Building. Yet when I stepped out onto the deck, the briny wind whipping my hair, I felt the same spark of excitement in my chest.
Of the seven restaurants on the QM2, Britannia, which seats 1,347 and serves twice nightly, is the most popular. Formal nights are for evening gowns and tuxedos; and after 6 p.m., shorts are “not considered appropriate within the ship.” Luckily, I was one of those rare Sapphic feminists who looked forward as a girl to dressing like Barbie in adulthood.
John was wary. Attendance at our L.G.B.T. cocktail hour — coyly called Friends of Dorothy — had been poor. On his previous voyage, one of John’s dining tablemates had given an impromptu lecture about the dress code, fuming at how a single person wearing shorts in the dining room “just ruins it for the rest of us.”
“Just like gay marriage,” John had quipped.
“Hear, hear!” the man agreed.
As we approached our table at the Britannia, I saw three gray heads and one bald. While two of our tablemates readily cracked some wry jokes, the other two left much to be desired in the realm of dinner conversation. At best, it was a stilted gathering punctuated by starch-based courses and interludes of excruciating awkwardness.
Three hours later, John and I (both meticulously healthy eaters) shoveled salad into our faces upstairs at the King’s Buffet. “I’ve never stuck with a dud table like this before,” he said. “But I’ll do it for you.” Once I started laughing I couldn’t stop.
We headed to the ballroom, where we spotted Leather Jacket seated with a large group. On the dance floor one man stood out for his relative youth and perfectly tailored suit. As the song finished, he pecked his partner on the cheek and threw his head back in laughter.
“Gay,” I whispered, sotto voce.
The adjacent disco was virtually empty. Several nearby video monitors played a live feed of the dance floor, where a few of the bearded gay men boogied to a Rihanna cover. John would rather have died than join them. “Do you think Cunard allows dancehall?” I asked him.
I woke up the next morning rolling around the bed that occupied most of my windowless room, the foremost cabin on the ship. Nauseated and disoriented, I groped for a light switch. As my father later explained, windowless cabins and those at the fore of the ship are the worst for seasickness.
“How are you feeling, sea captain’s daughter?” John asked when I staggered out of my room for our Flying Solo singles event in the disco, where attendees formed a circle that included 20 elderly women and the dance hosts, who were far from the dashing gigolos I had imagined. I begged one for some ballroom gossip.
“Well,” he finally conceded, lowering his voice. “We have to make sure everybody,” he glanced around the circle of women, “gets the same. Otherwise, there are complaints.”
“Gay,” I whispered to John after he left. Spotting the beautiful dancer I had last seen in the ballroom, I waved him over as John blushed. David was from Philadelphia but spoke with a British inflection. “What do you do in Philly?” I asked him.
“I’m focusing on my charity work.” He toyed with a pearl choker around his neck and then wandered off.
At the afternoon dance lesson, I navigated us toward Leather Jacket and his sister on the lurching dance floor. I struck up a conversation, and Leather Jacket explained that he and his father had been enjoying golf on the upper deck. (It turned out Leather Jacket was traveling with his entire family.)
“Sold!” I said, though neither John nor I had ever held a golf club.
We found a crowd of men crammed in front of a simulator screen. They drove the balls against the cartoon green, each thud met with a chorus of awe or chagrin. When the last gentleman finished, the crew member pointed at me.
The whole cast began clapping and I had no choice but to step up to the tee, where I whiffed twice and retired with the lowest score on the board. John had no choice but to follow, blushing furiously as he approached the tee.
“You just have to beat the missis!” someone shouted. He didn’t.
I headed down to work out. As I was finishing, the floor tilted drastically starboard. I ran into a bathroom. When I emerged, John was waiting outside.
“Let’s go get you some medicine, sea captain’s daughter,” he said.
The last night in the disco was lively, despite the empty dance floor. The most handsome of the bearded gay men sidled up to us at the bar. He ordered a shot, batted his eyes at John and recounted the Botox injections he had been talked into at the spa. “This is the most expensive vacation ever,” he said.
I agreed. And I wasn’t going to fork over thousands for a trip that didn’t include my kind of dancing. I begged the D.J. to play some dancehall.
The cute bearded man whispered: “Your friend is adorable. I’d love to get him alone on the dance floor.” I didn’t tell him that dancing — as well as facial hair and Botox — was a deal breaker for John.
When the opening notes of the latest Sean Paul hit sounded, I handed John my stilettos and stepped onto the empty stage. When I hiked my gown to mid-thigh and dropped it low — a floor-sweeping move more familiar in the lesbian clubs I frequent in New York than on any cruise ship — the older folks gaped for only a few moments before my people rushed the danced floor.
When we arrived in Red Hook the next morning, I nearly kissed the Brooklyn sidewalk. Although I didn’t find anyone for John, I had a fabulous time. At the taxi stand, John and I shared a fierce hug. Before his cab pulled away, his head popped back out of the open window. “Love you!” he called. I blew him a kiss and headed home.