A Gay Cruise???!!

I know. You're snorting with derision. That's understandable.

I snort derisively when I hear someone mention a gay cruise, too. That's not my idea of a vacation. My idea of a vacation is to Travel. As in, hello Ho Chi Mihn City! Or Prague, Moscow, Belize, the Canadian Rockies, New Orleans, Portland... And it's all about unmediated, non-massed produced experience. It takes extensive research beforehand, and while you're there, keep your eyes and ears open for quirky stuff that only a handful of the alternative-lifestyling locals think is hip.

I had lunch in Taos, but spent a day and a night hiking up a butte outside of Abiquiue, New Mexico, where Georgia O'Keefe used to go for walks. I skipped the tourist choked Ring of Kerry and spent my time in the gorgeous desolation of Connaught and the Burren. And Georgia was amazing, with such highlights as meeting a creepy guy who had donated blood to Flannery O'Connor during her last illness, spending a week in August camping in the Okeefenokee swamp, and having fine barbeque experiences. I became a devote of the Sandunovskii Banya in Moscow, so much so that I once sat with the Moscovites who were regulars and snickered at the ineptitude of some touristii amerikanskii. Then there was my near-death experience in Death Valley ("Hi!" I said to the woman at the ranger station, "Can you suggest a hiking trail? I'll have about five hours." "Are you out of your mind?" came the reply, "It's 112 degrees outside. There's no hiking going on today." "Uh huh. Okay. Well, where could I fill up these gallon jugs with water?").

Okay. I'll readily admit that there's a seemy underbelly of adventure traveling. Namely, when you get back, you both make people jealous and demonstrate how smart and cool you are.

That's how the game is played, and it's a good game.

So when I woke up this morning, While in that not-quite-awake-not-quite-asleep stage, I was getting all excited about the idea of going on a Gay Cruise for my fortieth birthday in October.

I'd go, soak up the sun, work out at the gym, eat food, get drunk, maybe snorkle at some island where I'd meet exactly none of the locals (who would probably be brimming with resentment of the wealthy American homos who try to bed their teenage sons in exchange for ten dollars), and have sex with a gay cop from Tulsa, Oklahoma. And when I got back, I'd have no photos, no pottery made by local artisans, no cool new wardrobe additions that I'd never wear, and no but-can-you-top-this? stories to tell.

I'd have no unique memories, just the generic recollections I'd share with the thousands--nay millions of men who have also taken the same gay cruise as me. And there'd be all those tedious jokes those queens would be making about Julie, Isaac, Doc, Gofer, and the Captain.

So what's the draw? Well... It would be warm and sunny. I probably wouldn't be able to blog [g]. Relatively inexpensive. Easy to manage. The chances of scoring some boypussy are good. And difficult entanglements are easily avoided as it's a big ship.

I've always thought of gay cruises as the domain of unimaginative, middle-of-the-road homos who live in the suburbs of secondary cities in flyover land, for whom just being in the company of more than the fifteen guys they see at the seedy local gay bar constitutes a big thrill.

Huh.

Am I that guy?

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