We are a few hundred miles south east of Kamchatka, headed for the Tsugaru Strait, 9 days from Oakland, it’s Ronald the Able Seaman’s birthday, and this boat has finally broken me down enough to try Karaoke.. how great of a feat that is I will explain later.
Today had been an annoying day for me.. I mean, I don’t have much to complain about.. I am seeing a part of the world very few people see, I am literally in one of those places on the map you don’t even contemplate, the kind of place I dedicate my life to getting to, and I feel alive every time I feel the boat move, but today, and it was a kind of passive move, and only the second time there have been any restrictions placed on me, I was barred from going on deck because of 36 knot winds and some crazy waves.. might not seem like a big deal.. sounds dangerous in fact.. we are a thousand miles from nowhere, in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean, a floating island loaded with industrial exports, and likely some empty containers headed back to the world’s greatest industrial mecca, the Pearl River Delta of China, but I woke up this morning dreaming of roaming the decks on what to me seemed like one more Alaskan day, but the Romanian Officer on Watch had other plan for me. My frustration was compounded by the gym being a construction site when I woke up.. the grapevine told me that some leaky sewage pipe had been discovered when they were moving the punching bag the other day, so I was kind of pent up, and of all things, after we passed a frontal boundary that had scared the shit out of the crew on the weather report, the day broke beautiful and sunny, if a bit windy, and I was left to roam the ‘accommodation’ the super structure of the ship that is like a condo complex, after three days of hibernating in the gray and ticking off the stack of old movies I had brought with me and scrounged.
Ronald was one of the more irony blessed of the Philippians, meaning one of the most easy to talk to. If you have spent a lot of time in the third world, you lean that abstract thought is not a given for huge swaths of the world, and conversations often never get past exchanges of well published facts, lot’s of awkward nodding, something I am well familiar with by now. I had had high hopes for him until some lunch banter turned into his explaining that the Philippians was being hit by so many natural disasters because they worshiped too many god’s. Alright, so too much for hoping Ronald and I might get sarcastic together, a pent up need of mine that had been growing for the last few days, a need to vent my sarcasm that builds up, to purge it somehow, a natural need for the New Yorker in me like bathroom breaks and the occasional sexual act not with a computer screen in front of me for my general humanity. Anyhow, Ronald still was nice enough, fun enough, and I had noticed during our hilarious emergency drill a few days before that he had suited up as one of the 4 firemen, meaning that he had some experience on the high seas that was noticed. So I had decided I liked the guy, so when he invited me to his birthday party in the crew club, literally 4 feet from the crew mess I had taken to eating in to escape the endless pseudo dramatic banter of the Romanian officers I am supposed to eat with, I consented, although I planed to stay about two second flat.
You see, I know what a Filipino party means.. I had been listening to them for days on the ship, and I had been avoiding them in various forms for the last ten years as I roamed the earth.. drunk and geeked out coke smugglers on the coast of Colombia, morose Chinese tobacco workers in southern Yunnan, Mozambiquan Yuppies trying to forget that they are too educated to be in such a backwards place by singing Tupac, all fucking karaoke parties are the same.. it’s dudes singing bad music off pitch acting sad about things that I would likely not think more than a second about in the course of my life…the room always smells of smoke, and especially in Latin America, it usually lulls people drunk and sad enough to come out of the closet to me in ways that are as horrifying as my mom telling me my cat was dead for the 6th time by the time I was 10.
I had decided to join the German Technicians for dinner hoping they could help me vent some of my vitriol for the night… one of them actually speaks English like a thoughtful Welshman (due to his favorite band, The Streets I learned, an interesting white hip hop crew from Brixton and Birmingham), even though he and his crew are 6 huge former merchant mariners turned welders and electricians who picked up a gig installing a 7000 volt shore service plug, the first they have ever done, as part f the fight against global warming.. it’s gunna take them 17 days, about the time it will take us to get to out first port in china, to basically wire a plug, turning this 360 m vessel into some weird massive version of a Prius plug in. I had been avoiding eating with them until recently, knowing they needed to bond, plan, and decompress after their shifts working in the ear splitting noise of the gear box room on the tail of the ship, but I figured by now they had their shit together and could handle me the interloper. As we were casually joking about my lack of German Language Skills, and Viking sacks of Rotberg, all of them but one the size of Refrigerator Perry and looking like a Norwegian Death Metal Band, Ronald showed up at our table and made the invite..
I decided if they were actually going to go, it wouldn’t be so painful, and we had been on this boat long enough there was no way out of me hanging with the Philippine portion of the crew this way.. anything else would be like kicking a puppy. Painful as it would be, there was no way to politely get out of it.
After all of us peeking in, the Germans made the excuse of needing to shower.. it was obvious to everyone I didn’t need to shower.. I sit around al day, and the nearest female is a whale, make that I didn’t shower, so that excuse was gone, and I found my way to a seat and worked up the courage to embarrass myself with a little Karaoke, figuring that if I could do an Eric Burden song, We Gotto Get Out of Here by the Animals, it might kick the party into another zone with me the crazy white guy passenger making an ass of himself for the hope of the team. My biggest fear was drunken puppy sadness for round after round of Filipino equivalents of Celine Dion songs until I could crawl out. As I came into the lounge, half the guys, about 6, were playing cards and the birthday boy and a few of the others were around the couches and the bar manning the machine. There was the regular endless supply of Milwaukee’s best which they delighted in me calling ‘The Beast’, which must have been the cheapest beer they could buy through the supply services in Long Beach or Oakland, but there was the additional wild card of a 50 dollar bottle ( the label was still on it, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the foggiest) of Ketel Vodka that made me realize this party might go someplace.
Somehow as much as I might cringe I this situation under normal circumstances, my social isolation, our collective isolation from all humanity ( I can calculate that the one building air base on Adak in the Aleutians might be the closest collection of humanity, 1000 miles away, and likely in a similar state, as I had read that the whole base lives in one large building that they only rarely leave during winter. That or Kirabati or Midway.. someplace like that..) made this mission to Mars a good time to perhaps get over my fears of Karaoke, just give in to the lowest common denominator, before I travel once again through the wilds of Asia where it will be frankly fucking everywhere. I can’t beat them, so I am joining them.
I’m on the couch with Ronald, belting out sad sad songs.. about girlfriend leaving for Manila, and rice farmers with broken hearts… and I uncharacteristically volunteer for the book, more as a way to stop the bleeding of whatever song he’s is singing in the dim light of our plastic wood lined parlor. My plan comes to fruition when I find We Gotto Get Out of This Place is in the system.. I can lead a little self righteous baby boomer rebellion of my own after months of rejecting their arrogance from one end of California to another, thankfully with Eric Burden being the least affected of all of those 60’s voices. The crowd goes wild… Tom the Passenger can sing a little Karaoke, in English of all things!.. he can lower his guard… he can be goofy… he’s one of us now…
The Germans make good on their promise to actually show up a few minutes later, (yah… why not.. where else could we go?) and it’s on… a thousand miles from nowhere and we roar.. toasts and cheers and jeers… and lot’s of yuk yuk yuks…
I conclude my night a half hour later with New York, New York, to round applause… for some reason I can’t sing it without doing a Sinatra immigration, or Piscapo from the 80’s ding Sinatra (the only thing he did well on Saturday Night live if I remember).. it’s in my blood from seeing too man Yankees games to the final out, and make my leave… the Filipinos go back to chocking cats sadly and calling it music, and the Germans tap along with a wry smile, and I understand now the wisdom of the Romanians never to come to the crew lounge… but I’m almost half way to Hong Kong and I can’t help but admit I am having fun…