It’s Pirate Night, Arggh! I really do enjoy this silly fun night each cruise when we dress up like pirates, draw fake tattoos on each other, try to fit in as many ‘r’ words into a sentence as possible, and hear or tell stupid jokes like, “what kind of socks do pirates wear?” “Arrrggile.” “How much does a pirate charge for corn?” “A buck an ear.” I walk around with a dove from the magic act on my shoulder, pretending it’s a parrot.
My pirate night days are numbered, since it’s near the end of the season. I’m looking forward to that, knowing we will be back out again in the fall. It’s been fun, and I have some really good friends here. I haven’t done a whole lot on the correspondence schoolwork, so I’ll have a lot of catching up to do when my parents figure that out. The things I have learned are not in any of the high school textbooks stashed in the bottom of my closet.
Thomas and I are what you’d call friends with benefits. I realize that we’re not dating, or anything like that, but it still gets to me when I see him trying to hook up with a passenger. One trip, I could see he was really falling for this girl, and that it was more than just casual. I ended up becoming close friends with her. “Ended up” isn’t really an accurate statement. Truth is that I was trying to mess with him and got close to her just to make it weird. The three of us were hanging out in the lounge, and she kept asking him to dance, but he didn’t want to. So, I took her hand to dance with me instead. He sat with an awkward smile on his face, fidgeting in his chair watching us get down in front of him on the shiny brass dance floor. Despite the fact that my motives were questionable, she and I actually became good friends, too. I totally get why he likes her so much. As soon as that trip was over, he came right back to me. I know he missed her, and I kind of felt bad for him. Kind of.
Thomas and I talk a lot, and always have fun together. No pressure, no expectations. We are good friends who hang out and never really discuss the other part of our relationship, whatever it is or isn’t at any given time. Sometimes, we pick a spot in the stairwell or under a covered part of the deck with good acoustics and I play guitar and he plays the flute. Neither one of us is particularly good, but we both enjoy playing, even if badly, late into the night together.