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Destination
Nowhere PAGE
THREE: And then, like a gift from the gods, Marian heard this beat, a disco beat. Directly above us was a disco and, it sounds so queer, but Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer's "Enough is Enough" started playing. The 70's anthem infected Marian. She squealed, "Let's dance." "I don't really," I said. She grabbed my tie and we were off. The disco was called "Jesters" and it was booming, filled with medieval "artifacts": stone walls, gargoyles, stained glass windows, axes, dripping candles and dry ice. Nothing says disco quite like the Crusades. Marian immediately began dancing while I went at it with a pouty, half-assed Jewish wedding dance step, uncomfortable in this disco filled with heterosexuals, draft beer and Christian instruments of torture. I was about to flee when I heard the pitter-patter of Patti Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" begin. This was my song. This was the song that was playing when I came out to my best girlfriend, Natasha, 20 years ago. I fell into its gay disco trance, a trance that transformed those Staten Island widows into drag queens, and Jesters into the Roxy. I was powerless to Patti and took to the dance floor like Helen Keller to a plate of cake. Across from Marian I grooved and gyrated and twirled as months of despair and sadness dripped off us -- in the middle of this dance floor in the middle of this ship in the middle of fucking nowhere. And suddenly it no longer mattered where we were or what kind of cruise it was because my best friend Marian and I were dancing, we were having a good time, we were laughing and she was smiling and sweating and we were mouthing those immortal lyrics, "Gitchy-gitchy-ya-ay da-da!!" And for a moment it felt like nothing had changed, that in the words of Gloria Gaynor, "I Will Survive." And then who should spill out onto the dance floor but the entire all male Ice Capades Dance team. Nine men in make-up and sparkly costumes. I was stunned because I hadn't spoken to another homosexual for three months. I observed them curiously; so intrigued by their movement and pageantry. I was in conflict -- I wanted to dance with the Ice Capades dancers, but I was dancing with Marian. Ice Capades, Marian, Ice Capades, Marian. The music was blaring and she saw my longing and motioned to me with her hands as if to say "Go Jason. Go. Be with your people." And so I did. I introduced myself to the skaters as a Gay Husband and one of them, wearing a silver headdress, said to me "Like Liza and David!" And we all laughed and I felt fantastic until I looked over my shoulder and saw Marian alone at the bar, sipping a watery Cosmo and wiping her watery eyes with a tattered cocktail napkin. I began to walk over when this fire captain -- this handsome fire captain -- approached her with a fresh drink. She blushed. And that blush punched my gut. "Of course," I realized, "Of course, eventually I'm going to be replaced." There was a high-pitched "hoot" behind me because a Cher song had come on and recharged the Ice Capades dancers. And the one with the silver headdress asked me if I wanted to dance. I looked at him and then I looked at Marian. I looked at him; I looked up at his headdress. I mean, come on, he was wearing a silver headdress. So I said, "Sure."
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The
second night started off even worse. Marian and I left Aidan with
another mom and dined in the Grand Ballroom. Admittedly, it was
nice to see that Barbie's interior decorator was still working;
glass elevators and bubbles always bring a space together. During
our crab bisque the orchestra played Marian and Dave's wedding song,
"At Last," and like a house of cards, Marian's face fell.
We decided to take a stroll on the deck. The cold air outside was
playful and distracting. I gave Marian my jacket. We rested our
elbows on the rail and gazed at the winter moon glowing over the
black waters. The romance of the setting was embarrassingly obvious
and I saw that Marian was about to cry again. I had now learned
to gauge her emotional moods like a seismologist reads a Richter
scale. So I searched for something funny to say. "It's like
our gay honeymoon." She forced a giggle and then went away
in her mind to a place even I couldn't get to. I stared ahead into
our destination, nowhere. And for the first time I began to miss
my old life, my old self-obsessed, narcissistic, no room-for-anyone-else-but-me
kind of life filled with my own depressing issues of self-hate,
loneliness and tanorexia. Clearly we should have both been there
having that moment, but with different people. Her with her husband,
Dave, and me with -- I don't know, the all-male Ice Capades dance
team. And I started to wonder, and maybe it was selfish, but I wondered
whether this was all that my life was going to be now? Was I just
a gay man married to this wonderful yet kind of high-maintenance
woman? Was this what it's like for Star Jones and Al Reynolds?
