Jailbait and Flaming Democrats

I am currently on the Serenade of the Seas cruising at a comfy twelve knots en route to St. Maarten. In the meantime, I thought I will fill everyone in on the wonderful atmosphere of the ship and the locale, as well as the utterly horrible company I am keeping aboard.

First of all, this is a much younger cruise than I had expected. There are tons of young people here with their families. When I was boarding the boat, one man asked me my age, and when he heard he said I was in the "vulnerable" group. He continued by saying that I was vulnerable because of all the "jail bait" on board the ship. I didn't think of it much at first but upon boarding I knew what he was talking about. There are literally hundreds of teenage girls trying successfully to look much older than they do. You can pick them out because the run in packs and never carry more than a Coke around the ship with them. Still, I can see men with less perception succumbing to these girls.

I was in the cigar bar tonight and I overheard the only other people in the bar talking about "flaming Democrats." They proceeded to rate each other based on their "cylinders;" that is, they counted how many cylinders the various cars, boats, planes, etc. they owned had and whoever had the higher number won. Then they talked about how hard it was going on cruises because they didn't trust their mexican gardeners around their multi-million dollar homes. I eventually got sick of it and went over to speak with them. The first thing I said was "Hi, my name is Drew." They looked a little shocked that someone a 30 years younger would want anything to do with them, but they entertained me. I started to ask them very "Whitman-ey" questions about why they thought they needed all that shit, and it was surprising to hear these rich Bush supporters stutter over their words when they actually had to defend themselves in front of someone with opposing viewpoints. They were used to preaching to the quoir about how hard it was to be rich, it would seem.

Last night in the late-nite club a Long Beach State cheerleader who broke her ankle came up and introduced herself to me. Upon hearing that she was a Long Beach State cheerleader, I was a bit skeptical of where our conversation would go. She seemed pretty cheery and intelligent at first, until I asked her what she was going to do with her free time since her ankle was broken. She told me she was going to lay out by the pool. "Are you going to just read some good books?" I asked. "Books? No way." was her response. I felt bad for literally laughing in her face, but this girl is the norm of the people my age I have met on this boat so far. State-schoolers who enjoy nothing more than getting fucked up and chasing tail. Hopefully I'll meet some people who are interested in browsing the islands for cool art and chilling and listening to the piano in the cigar bar.

I've racked up about $10 of internet fees typing this, so I'm off. Expect another post in a few days.