"Yes, mija, would you like to take a puff?" I had learned my lesson the hard way about laced marijuana and was too drunk to smoke marijuana that wasn't laced.
"No thanks, homey. You guys heading back to Mexico?"
One of the guys came over. "My name is Rico," he said. He wore white volleyball socks up to his knees with cutoff tan Dickies and a thick black belt. A white wife-beater tank top completed his outfit. His head was shaved, but he had a bushy mustache.
As Rico sat down next to me, I leaned over and violently threw up. His three friends backed away in disgust. I felt embarrassed but I couldn't stop heaving. I vaguely remember the three guys saying something about leaving, but Rico opted to stay by my side and hold my hair.
He finally moved me to where I could throw up over the balcony, and I spent the next four hours doing just that. I couldn't move an inch and he understood completely. At one point he took a rubber band out of his pocket and put my hair in a ponytail. This guy was turning out to be very dependable. Without him, there was a good chance I would've fallen overboard. He looked through my pockets to find my key, and around midnight, he said it was time for him to take me to my cabin.
"I'll sleep here, just leave me alone," I cried.
"No, mij a, you cannot sleep here. You will freeze like a turkey."
It was pretty cold, but I doubt I would have frozen, and I wished he hadn't brought up Thanksgiving.
After another hour I agreed to let him carry me back to my cabin, which was not an easy route to negotiate considering the narrowness of the hallways. People glared at us as he strode inside with me in his arms like a scene out of The English Patient and asked if everything was okay. I tried to answer them but could only slur.
As he opened the door to our room, Dumb Dumb flew to her feet in her Shrek pajamas and screamed, "Oh, my God, are you okay?" Then, "Who the fuck are you?"
"Calm down, mij a, I am just delivering your friend," Rico said.
"Get out," she screamed. "Heeeeeelp!"
"Yo, yo yo, chill lady, chill," he said and then turned around to leave as she picked up a shoe and hurled it in his direction.
"Thanks," I slurred as I heard the door shut. I climbed into the lower bunk bed. "Shut up, he took care of me," I told Dumb Dumb as I passed out.
When I woke up the next morning, feeling five pounds lighter, I informed Dumb Dumb that we needed to get off the ship at Ensenada and pay some Mexicans to drive us to Los Angeles. "I cannot spend New Year's Eve on this boat."
"No way, that's crazy. We could get raped," she said.
"Well, at least we'd have a good New Year's!" I yelled. Rape didn't sound as bad as spending another day on this cruise. "Think about it," I said. "I know they have those parasailing rides on the beaches in Mexico; maybe we could parasail back." Then I rolled over and went back to sleep.
"You can gamble now. We're in Mexico," Dumb Dumb said when she woke me up two hours later.
Immediately, I felt better. Since I would need a cheeseburger and a couple of hours to recover before my next cocktail, we headed to the cafeteria for lunch. I explained to her over the world's most disgusting cheeseburger that Rico had taken good care of me last night and that she shouldn't judge people based on their socks.
"I was scared. I didn't know where you were, and my father told me not to leave the cabin after dark," she said. It was no surprise to me that she had called her father. She called him several times a day in New Jersey to ask him things like whether it was going to rain in California and if it was okay to eat at Subway, the sandwich chain. My favorite piece of advice he had given her was to never use tampons and only wear maxipads because, "There's a killer out there, and its name is toxic shock syndrome. ' ' I wanted to tell her father that I was living proof that a tampon could survive inside of a woman for up to three days before any real symptoms flared up, but I was becoming more adept at picking my battles.
I asked Dumb Dumb if she thought any more about my idea for getting back to Los Angeles.
"My father said no way, it would be way too dangerous," she told me.
I thought about going it alone, but I couldn't leave her here on this ship by herself. Still, I couldn't believe this boat was where I was meant to wreak havoc on New Year's Eve.
"Fine," I said. "Let's go gamble. I'll teach you how to play blackjack."
I gambled for close to eight hours straight with Dumb Dumb standing guard. I was up four hundred dollars and was feeling great. She was too nervous to waste any of her own money, so finally I gave her one hundred dollars in chips and she played with that. She appeared to be winning, but she always bet the minimum amount, which was good because it meant she was occupied for a longer period of time.
I would have been happy gambling into the wee hours of the morning if necessary and asked our dealer how late he was open. "For the next thirty hours," he said, "until we get back to California." That's when the Scott Wolf look-alike walked past our table. I hadn't had anything to drink yet, and his presence alone was reason enough to celebrate. He wasn't as cute as Scott Wolf, but neither was anyone else on this cruise. He had lighter hair and a rather stocky physique for someone not much taller than five-five. Dumb Dumb elbowed me. We both knew he was by far the best-looking guy on this boat, and his smooth, soft skin reminded me of myself a couple of months earlier.
"Don't even think about it," I said through a tight smile. "You can have Rico."
I looked over at the boy who was saving my New Year's and said, "Excuse me, would you mind coming over here a minute?"
"Sure," he said and walked over to us.
"Is your name Kevin?" I asked him. This was my new favorite pickup line.
"No," he said.
"Really? Do I look familiar to you?"
"A little bit," he told me. That meant he was interested.
"Well this is Dumb Dumb and I'm Single," I told him.
"Shut up, that is not my name," she said.
He was laughing now and I knew I would have sex with him. "Do you have any friends with you?" I asked.
"Sure," he said. "A bunch of us will be at Club Paradise on the Upper Deck in about an hour. Would you like to join us?" I thought about reminding him that this was a cruise ship and if we did show up at Club Paradise it didn't necessarily mean we were joining him, but I kept my mouth shut.
"We'll meet you there," I said. He was very cute and I was elated. It turned out that, after all, showers would be necessary. "Let's go get ready," I told Dumb Dumb.
She was more excited than a chimpanzee holding a banana. "Oh, my gosh! This is amazing! Do you think his friends will be cute too? What should I wear? I'm so excited. I hope there's dancing."
I hoped there wasn't dancing, but I wasn't going to let that spoil my only chance of a hookup on New Year's. This would be my third New Year's in a row that I was single, and I wasn't going to let it go by without hooking up. If a fourth New Year's went by without any action I would be in an official slump.
We took showers with our flip-flops on in an effort to avoid direct contact with the carpet, and while we dressed, I drank three more plastic cups filled with vodka and switched to orange juice for some vitamin C. Having missed dinner on purpose in order to avoid another confrontation with John Ashcroft's wife, I downed a couple of Power Bars to ensure enough stamina on the dance floor. I looked hot and, most of all, skinny. I love the day after throwing up. I felt like a feather.
We went up to Club Paradise, which is an interesting name for anything on a ship that should have been sunk by a torpedo years earlier. I spotted my? version of Scott Wolf surrounded by a couple of other corpulent figures. They all had the same clean-cut college boy look going on, and they all seemed like they were in their early twenties. I was twenty-six at the time and figured I had to take what I could get at this point on my trip. It's not that my guy wasn't cute, but if we had been on land, his having a full set of teeth wouldn't have been an added bonus.