Ship to shore
S.O.S.
Three short. Three long. Three short.
If you find this message in a bottle, please contact the proper authorities immediately. We have been taken hostage by the Carnival Cruise line and are currently surrounded by hordes of drunkards and shirtless men wearing backward baseball caps and screaming obscenities at the tops of their lungs.
This is hell on earth.
This is Spring Break.
As soon as you step onto the ship, they can charge as much as they want for alcohol and Dramamine. These are essentials.
Food is free because it’s something you can live without. But when the swells pick up and the boat teeters back and forth between port and starboard, you’re very much thankful for the pills and the brut you used to chase them down.
Off in the distance, those are the sounds of gulls, which means we’re not far from land. At sea level, the farthest you can see in any one direction is 13 miles and most nights we’ve been able to see the orange glow of tourist towns, however faint, through Pacific haze. Still, we are far enough away from the good ole U.S. of A. to be in international waters. Maritime laws apply and that means chaos reigns.
Those are girls, however beautiful, walking past me along the deck and that’s the salt water breeze that turns the pages of books and newspapers.
These are the Ides of March. Beware.
A few on the ship have started to go crazy. I know that sounds ridiculously overdramatic for a four-night stay on a ship called the M.S. Paradise, but it’s the horrible truth.
Our parents have all expressed concerns about the voyage as there has been a rash of mysterious disappearances on cruise ships lately. At night, it’s tempting to stare across the horizon forever, or watch the black waves work themselves into shore-bound breakers, and for some I suppose it’s even more tempting to grab those unsuspecting sons of edited words by their ankles and flip them overboard.
Little do our parents know, it might just be safer on the ocean’s bottom. The harder fall is from higher horses and some in our party are beginning to realize that Sodom and Gomorrah floats and is currently drifting slowly away from Ensenada, Mexico.
In this world, discretion is a word reserved for customs stations where prescription pills and Cuban cigars are best tucked away out of sight in some swim trunks.
Around here, shame only leads to hung heads and hung heads may cause you to miss any number of underage girls dancing topless on a Mexican barstool.
Below deck, on my bed, the ships’ cleaning crew will have folded white bath towels eerily into the shape of a rabbit or a pig or a swan. Next to those towels will be a comment card.
For the sake of future generations, I will have no choice but to mark every service unsatisfactory and demand that fire be set to this vessel at once.
In the interim, I will go back to burning flairs and sending ship to shore S.O.S. distress signals.
Three short. Three long. Three short.
S.O.S.
Aaron Falk is the news editor for The Utah Statesman. Questions and comments can be sent to acf@cc.usu.edu.