Signing Off

August 30, 2012 – Signing Off

The cadet and I go into Hamburg together. Our cab driver is a sixty-seven year old German woman who talks aloud the entire trip; to us, to herself, to other drivers, to no one. She speaks in English at times, and in long thick streams of German at others.

“Where are you from?” she asks.

“Russia,” Nadezdha says.

“America,” I say.

“America!” Our driver comes alive. “It’s been my dream to go to America!”

“It’s not too late,” I tell her.

“I’m sixty-seven,” she says, as if that means it is too late. “It’s expensive.”

I know about traveling expenses. I nod my head. “Yeah. It is.” But I also know about dreams. “If you can you should go. You should visit.”

“Visit you?” she looks surprised, taken aback by the offer.

I meant visit the country, but visiting me is fine. Who needs a permanent address to host? I smile. “Sure!”

She seems touched in her brusque way. There’s an interval of silence as she travels in her mind.
There’s an interval of silence as we travel from street to street. She breaks it by asking, “What time do you want me to pick you up?” She weaves through traffic, scans through her GPS screen and starts to find a number on her phone. I’m glad I’m not driving but in this moment wish I was. She adjusts the wheel in time to avoid switching lanes into another car.

“Um,” Nadezdha and I say together. We don’t know what time we’ll want to go back. “We’re not sure,” I say.

“You have handy?” our driver asks me. She gives me a stern look from the rearview mirror. 

“Handy?” I ask.

“Handy! Handy. You have handy? How you call me if you no have handy?”

“Oh.” Nadezdha and I exchange a look. Neither of us have a cell phone. “No. But we could call from a payphone or a café or something?”

Our driver mumbles and shakes her head. I imagine that she’s saying, “Oh this is bad. Bad.” While we wait at a red light, she stamps her name and number on the back of an old receipt. Then she hands it back to me.

Nadezdha writes down our ship’s location from the GPS screen in her notebook so that we can tell another driver how to take us home if we ride with someone new later on.

When the light changes colors, our driver takes a left hand turn. “Scheiße!” she says. Mumbles. Shakes her head. She’s holding an involved discourse with herself as she makes a U-turn and takes another left turn, putting us back the way we’d been going. Nadezdha laughs silently from her seat behind our driver. I’m trying to keep a straight face so I don’t get in trouble if I’m caught laughing. Our driver can see me. She’s nice, but a little scary too. In a safe moment, I grin over at Nadezdha and she smiles back.

Eventually, we get to our destination in the shopping center of Hamburg and our driver drops us off. I arrange for her to pick me up early the next morning. I have a train to catch.

Once together and alone, Nadezdha and I compare thoughts. Neither she nor I have any specific places we must see.

“What do you want to do?” I ask her.

“Maybe find a park, have a beer,” she says.

“Alright,” I say. Sounds good to me.

We wander for a while. Up and down business streets, past shops, through a plaza with a garage-sale like market going on, down some residential streets. We’re just travelers getting an introduction to a city. Simply two girls out day tripping. As if our countries had never held a Cold War between them. Because what would that have to do with us, after all? We’re enjoying being outside. Nadezdha asks an old man the way to a park. He points us in the right direction. We find it no problem. It’s a nice day. Although the clouds are hanging around with stormy potential, the rain is holding off. For now.

In the park, Nadezdha absorbs the green. She stops to touch the leaves of a tree. To brush her hand over a shrub. We walk in silence. We walk in brief spurts of conversation.

There’s a restaurant across from the playground. It looks closed. But there’s a man milling about so Nadezdha asks him if they’re open. He shrugs as if considering opening just for us, glances us over as if to see if it’d be worth his while. He must decide it is because he puts some chairs out around the plastic tables, uses a cloth to wipe off the rain water from them, puts a yellow tablecloth on and with a wave of his hand invites us to sit.

Nadezdha orders us dark beer.

Over the foam, we talk about travels. She’s served on Russian ships in the past, but this is her first time on a world route ship. We talk about language. “It’s like I’m child in English,” she says. “I don’t know how to say the words. I don’t have the vocabulary.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I say, thinking back to all the ways I’d learned to talk roundabout in Spanish in order to express a word or a concept without knowing the specific term. It’s exhausting. It’s frustrating. “Your English is really good though.”

“I got really good marks in school,” she says. Conveying with her expression how different school learning is from actual usage. “But it is very difficult speaking. I don’t know how to say what I want to say.”

“Speaking is different,” I say. “It’s so much harder.”

We talk about work, the past, death, the present, life and the future. After we’ve finished our beer we get up and go. The streets lead us to nowhere, to everywhere. We cross a busy road because we’re lured by the sight of green—trees, grass, bushes—and the river Elbe lying just behind all this like a blue promise. Along the Elbe, stretched the length of Hamburg (I’m sure), lies an inviting sidewalk. It’s busy. It’s the weekend and everyone is out for a walk, a bike ride, a run, an ice cream, a sit together on a park bench, an outing. We’re part of everyone.

The afternoon lengthens, grows older.
My stomach growls. Nadezdha must be feeling hers growl too because she mentions wanting a snack. We don’t find anything suitable at the kiosks down the river walk so we head off back towards the center in search of some food. Nadezdha wants something like peanuts to have with another beer. I’m thinking second lunch sounds good.

Although we can’t find a place that serves peanuts, we finally find something that suits us both well enough. We select an outside table, glance up questionably at the sky—maybe the rain will continue to hold off—take our seats. She gets nachos. I get a veggie bruschetta. We both get another dark beer.

A guy takes the table next to us and lights up a cigarette. I just finish thinking, I wish he hadn’t sat there, I wish he didn’t smoke when Nadezdha swipes the air in front of her face and says, “Cigarette. I used to smoke, but now after I quit I can’t stand the smell.”

I give a surreptitious glance over and see the guy smile. He heard. Oops. He stands his menu up as a smoke barrier, switches his body to face more away from us. He and I catch eyes over the menu. I smile. It’s not an apology for my friend; I’m not responsible for that. But it’s a smile that says I know you heard and understood and you’re kind. He and I become friends in that instant.

The sky decides it has held back long enough and opens up and lets go. The rain shimmers down in pearls, in sheets. Nadezdha looks behind us to see if there’s a free table inside and I’m about to pull out my rain poncho when the small awning above us suddenly, automatically, magically extends to cover the entire patio. Ah! These Germans know how to make things. They’re efficient. They’re practical. This is wonderful. We’re still outside, but we’re dry.

It’s me and Nadezdha. And in this moment, I’m filled with amazement at my life. Here I am drinking dark beer in the center of Hamburg with a Russian girl. I like how all the conceptions I’ve had and have been taught, of nationalities, of nations, of people, are being stripped down and refinished as I go along. We’re two, sometimes three when the guy joins our conversation. He asks us where we’re from. We ask him where he’s from because his skin color and dark hair don’t advertise Typical German. He tells us that he’s originally from Afghanistan but that he’s been in Germany since he was ten or so. His parents had moved them all to get away from the war, to find a safe place to raise their family. This guy is beautiful. He’s got a gentle way about him. We could be friends easy. I think, I’m sorry my country has had such a part in keeping that war going. I don’t know if I’m responsible for that apology or not. He finishes his coffee and his cigarette and gets up. He was just on break. When he heads back inside, back to work, he takes our empty plates with him. But before that, we shake hands, “It was nice talking to you,” I say. The world is a simple place when there are no politics. People are wonderful. I discover this over and over again with each new person I speak with.

The rain stops as if just for us. We walk down a few more streets, take some pictures at St. Georg’s Church, and then wind up back where we started at the Hauptbahnhof Train Station. Nadezdha and I are both content with how the day has gone. It’s enough. We find a taxi driver who will take us home for the same amount we were charged on the way in. It’s fair.

This driver is also talkative. His English is more fluent than our morning driver’s. We trade off the usual “where are you froms” and then he tells us of how he used to work on a passenger ship. He knows all about the seaman’s life. He gets caught up in memory and tells us story after story, which usually involved lots of pot smoking, a love-at-first-sight experience in a foreign port that he couldn’t pursue because he had a pregnant girlfriend back in Hamburg, and more pot. He stops the meter before we get to ship.

“Thank you,” I say, surprised and grateful. The fare is just under our agreed upon amount.

“It’s been really fun remembering all that,” he says with a happy light in his eyes. He pulls up next to the gangway. “Best of luck,” he and I say to each other. Nadezdha and I get out and go aboard.

“Thanks for going outside with me,” I tell her. “That was nice.”

We go our separate ways.

I head up to my room. I’m worn out. It’s still early evening, but that doesn’t matter. I take a nap and get up long enough to put my pajamas on and go to bed. I’m glad I have my cabin and my bed this one last night, the comforts of home for just a little bit longer. Tomorrow will start the next phase of my adventure. A hint of trepidation sits in my belly next to the dark beer there. I’m heading into the unknown again and I have a conflict within myself; I want to stay here forever and I want to move on.

I set my phone alarm and fall asleep knowing that even if I sleep through it the gangway on-duty guy will get someone to wake me up when my taxi arrives if I’m not out there to meet it, knowing that the second is going to call me around 5:30.

“What time you want me to call you to wake you up?” Domin had asked me the day before when we’d been talking about my leaving.

I wake up before my alarm. I wake up before Domin’s wake up call.

“Good morning,” I say into the receiver.

“This your wake up call,” Dominador says.

“Thank you!” I say.

I’m up and ready now. I shoulder my bag. I give a final double check to make sure that I’ve got all my stuff and that I’m leaving the room clean behind me. I put the key on the table and shut the door one last time.

I’d said my goodbye and thank you to the captain the day before. I’m more or less set. In the stairway I cross paths with the AB whose name I never learn. He won’t let me carry my own bag and takes it from me. I follow him to the poop deck. Domin is in the ship’s office and I stop to wave goodbye. The AB tells me he’s taking my bag all the way out. “Thank you,” I call after his retreating back. The third is just up to go on duty and comes into the office looking bleary eyed and sleepy. I probably look the same. I don’t get off with a quick goodbye. Both the second and third escort me out. Just as I open the door to outside, Jake reaches for the handle. We all stop in the entryway. I shake Jake’s hand. “Take care,” I say. I’m glad there’s no chance for a more sentimental moment from him and feel a little bad that this is all the goodbye he gets. I don’t know if he watches me walk across the deck or if he goes right inside. I don’t look back.

There’s a bunch of guys hanging about the gangway. All of them my friends. I shake hands down the line. I say things like, “All the best.” “Thank you.” “Take care.” They stand shoulder to shoulder shipside and watch me take the metal steps out then walk across to the waiting taxi. They watch and wave and watch me leave.

I record their faces in my memory. The third, still half asleep and serious. The second, my good friend. Charlton, with a smile for me. The other guys who are used to goodbyes, trying to give me a nice sendoff. I’m going to miss them all.

My bag is put in the trunk. I get in the car and twist around to look back one more time. I wave.

I blink a couple times hard.

Behind me the boys fade from my sight, the DALIAN gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Then she’s out of my vision, and I’m out of her life maybe forever.

Last Stop Hamburg

August 26, 2012 – Last Stop Hamburg


It’s crowded on the bridge when we ride up the Elbe into Hamburg. We’ve already passed the Rickmers main office. The CFO, at the Captain’s instruction, sounded the horn in greeting as we passed. Three times short, one time long. We all waved. But it’s Saturday and, most likely, no one was at the office to hear. “I’m not there anyway,” the CFO said. He’s enjoying his brief sea adventure with boyish enthusiasm.

Nadezdha and I are standing shoulder to shoulder watching some ducks scramble-swim out of the way as the DALIAN edges close to the dock and the lines are tossed out and tied up.

“The sun’s out!” I exclaim. It’s been cold and cloudy since Belgium.

“Yes, it came with us. It’s out because we’re here,” Nadezdha says with a smile.

We’re friends now.

“Are you staying on ship until you leave Hamburg?” she asks me.

“I think so,” I tell her. “If the captain will let me. If they don’t need my room. It’d be better than getting a hotel.” My train leaves out Monday morning early, two days from now, and I’m not ready to leave the comfort of my cabin, I’m not ready to venture off into a hostel world. 

“It’s good,” she says. Then she pays me the greatest compliment. “It’s like you are crew,” she says.

“Are you going outside here?” I ask her.

“Maybe tomorrow. Maybe if you go outside, I go with you,” she says.

“That’d be fun,” I tell her.

And it’s more or less arranged.

This night though, I’m going outside with Ian, Francis, Val, an unnamed AB, and Jake. There’s a complimentary transport for seamen here also, like in Antwerp, to and from the Seamen’s Club. Earlier in the day, Ian had asked me if I’d go outside with them and I’d agreed.

For now and until our leaving time, I’m content to hang around the office area and watch the activity while I wait for the immigration officers to come and stamp me into the country. There’s a lot going on. “It’s always like this in Hamburg,” someone tells me.

I take a seat out of the way but with a good vantage point.

When Josko comes in and sees me in that spot he shakes his head. “Just like a spy,” he says. “Always watching.” He perches against the desk and I finally get a chance to ask him how to totally destroy all the world’s water.

“You can’t find something nicer to write about than this?” he asks me.
I have the decency to look sheepish. He tells me that electrolysis is the way to go. I nod. I’d collected a lot of information about electrolysis when I’d done my research bout in Antwerp. Then he’s off to initiate the new second engineer and I’m left to my observations.

Immigration comes and goes. I’m Germany official. I run upstairs and grab my bag.  

I’m heading down to the gangway when I realize I’d better find the chief engineer and tell him goodbye. He wasn’t sure if he’d be staying on ship tonight or not. There’s a shortage of rooms with all the inspectors, Hamburg Rickmers guys who always flood the ship when it’s here at home base, the HR lady who is conducting interviews with everyone, new crew coming on and old crew still around. Josko’s flight home to Croatia leaves early in the morning and I don’t know what time I’ll be back tonight, or if he’ll even be here or awake if he is.

It’s the first of the official goodbyes.

I stick my head inside the office on the poop deck level. The captain is there.

“Have you seen Josko?” I ask him.

He hasn’t, but he knows that Josko’s still showing the second engineer last minute helpful things. He calls down to the engine room. “The passenger Amanda is about to go outside and she wanted to tell you goodbye.” He listens for a second then hangs up. “He’s coming up,” he tells me.

“Thank you,” I say. I lean up against the wall and wait.
A few short beats later, the hall door opens and Josko steps in. “Ah,” he says, smiling, “it’s my favorite American spy.”

I grin at him. “Well,” I say. I want to tell him he’s been my best ship friend and that it’s meant a lot to me, but that seems girly and sentimental. Besides, I dislike goodbyes. I prefer see you laters. I think we say, “All the best,” or something along those lines and then we shake hands like gentlemen, like officers. I turn and walk away, wave my hand behind me in a goodbye salute.

The door clicks shut behind me and that’s that.

I leave emotion for my writing and walk down the metal stairs. The complimentary van is idling, waiting for us. Francis is by the podium, there ahead of me. I climb up to the where the gangway is set up. It’s higher than usual to account for the changing tides.

When Ian arrives he tells me to throw down my camera so he can take my picture from below. Jake rushes up to get in the pictures with me.


These are my boys.

We make our way together, a posse, to the van. The driver greets us with genuine friendliness. “Who all do we have here?” he asks.

“Four Filipinos, one Ukrainian, and the princess,” Francis tells him.

I feel like their princess. And, against all that I am, all the tomboyishness I’ve made to be me, this title doesn’t ride me wrong, doesn’t rile me up. It makes me feel special. What’s happened to me? Who am I?

“Are you a ring?” Ian asks me, he leans up from the back seat to touch my shoulder. I turn in my seat to face him.

“Why? What?” I say.

He grins that infectious grin. “Because you are My Precious,” he says.

I laugh.

“Are you Santa Claus?” he continues.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because everywhere you go people are happy and joyful.”

“Do you have an endless supply of these?” I ask him.

“I’m always making thing up to make people laugh,” he says. He gets a serious look. “I just have one thing to ask you. Can you make me a character in your book? I can be—I don’t have to be a good one, I can be the bad character,” he says.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “You can be a good guy.” He already is.

At Duckdalben, Francis and I take our computers into the internet room and he goes to pay for our access privileges. He won’t let me pay him back. We sit side by side and check our emails. He shows me pictures of his sisters and his fiancée. I show him pictures of my family. The other guys go to call their families or find some kind of diversion. Eventually we all end up together on the patio. Ian comes out with beers for all of us.

“How many beers until you are drunk?” he asks. He’s already had a couple.

“I don’t actually know,” I say.

“We can find out tonight,” he says.

Val, the Ukrainian, joins us around the start of the second round and he buys us a darker, better German beer. Jake is full of restless energy. He finally alights at the table and I lean across to hand him the second light beer that had come my way before the dark arrived. It’s still full. I can’t drink them all.

“Did you talk with your wife?” I ask Val.


“Yes,” he says. “She said it hailed and much of the garden is ruined.”

“Oh no,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I have a silent moment for the passed away vegetables. But the guys are too full of silliness, fun, and stories for anything serious to stay serious for long.

The sun disappears and the air chills.

“Here, Amanda,” Val says from beside me. He’s taken off his jean jacket and helps me into it. I don’t even try to protest. I can’t turn down his gentlemanliness. I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. But I watch him carefully to make sure he doesn’t get cold in my stead.

Snacks are eaten, beers drunk and jokes told and laughed over. We’re the last group taken back to our ship. We watch the other crews leave. We enjoy our time together. Eventually though, the time is out and we climb into the van and get driven back to the familiar beauty of the ship.

I give Val his jacket back. We part ways at our various floors.

As I step over the threshold, I close the hall door gently behind me.
Not sure who’s sleeping.

It’s late, but Josko’s door is open. I don’t know if the new chief is moving in or if Josko is still around. I look in as I start past, nosy as always, and see a familiar figure.

“Hey,” I say. “You didn’t leave.”

“Hey,” Josko says. He’s standing in the middle of the room and looks a bit bored.

“You want company?” I ask him.

“Yes,” the word is out of his mouth almost before my question is finished.

“Sweet,” I say. “I’ll be right back.” I go dump my bag in my room and then go back and get in my usual chair. Josko’s already got the glasses out and has poured the very last of the Johnny Walker. He’d told the replacement chief, “This one destroyed my bottle of whisky,” when he’d introduced us. Now it’s completely gone.

I’m thinking it’s a good thing we’re out of alcohol and that it’ll be not too late of a night when the captain comes around. “I’ll bring something nice,” he says, and soon returns with a bottle of white wine and some spritzer. “This is how we do it in Romania,” he says. It won’t be an early night after all.

The guys gossip about everything that’s happened. The ship’s drama. The meetings they’ve had all day with the lady from HR. Of the time between when they’ll work together again, the overlapping months between duty and holiday. I sit back and enjoy this last night. This last wild round of drinking. Try to keep up.

The captain drinks the wine like it’s juice. Josko and I go at it a little more slowly. We’re not as big fans of white wine. When we’re near the end of the bottle, the captain looks at us, at Josko, and demands, “What are your intentions?”

At first I’m taken aback by the question, but Josko knows what he means. “I’m done after this,” he says.

“Me too,” I say quickly. Right right, drinking intentions. I can’t hold much else.


While they’re exchanging contact information I go grab my camera. I snap a couple pictures when they’re not posing then the captain takes my camera, tells us to sit together, and says to Josko, “Don’t worry, we won’t show these pictures to your wife.”

When the captain’s drink is gone, he bids Josko goodbye and me goodnight.

I don’t know if it’s the beer, the whisky or the wine that’s gone straight to my head. The room spins and I sit back in my chair for a last time moment with the stories, told and untold, connecting the space between me and my friend. 







 

Sail On, The Last Leg

August 25, 2012 – Sail On, The Last Leg


The days we spend in Antwerp stretch into lifetimes. I’ve never known any other way. My home is this ship. My house is this cabin. My family is this crew. My world is bus rides and walks with Filipinos, brick buildings, cathedrals, outdoor cafés, dark beers and wandering. I pretend the future—my signing off—is someone else’s reality, a dream, an imagining.

But it’s not. It’s mine. Time catches up. The mooring lines are untied, the door to the bridge unlocked, the stations manned, the pilot called and the tugs put to work. We sail away for Germany.

I’ve only got a few days left on the DALIAN. I want to lengthen the moments. I want to stay a little longer. I want to give a small thanks to all these guys for making me feel a part of things. I want to thank them for their friendship and their love. I don’t want to leave. But I know that things won’t stay the same. The chief engineer is signing off in Hamburg as well. “We sign off together,” he’d said with a grin. He’s been a good neighbor and my friend. It wouldn’t be the same on ship without him around. A new chief officer and new second engineer are coming aboard along with Josko’s replacement. New people, new dynamics. Part of me is glad to leave with the change. Nothing stays the same. That’s one thing I learned from the ten day Vipassana sit I did so long ago in June. Things rise and fall. Things are born and things die. Each here and now I can enjoy, knowing that it’s transitory and fleeting and leaves a mark on me like the imprint of a pillow on my face when I’ve slept too hard. And as the future slides into the present I slide with it as gracefully as I can.

It’s tradition on a birthday or when a magnanimous officer is about to sign off for the celebrator or officer to buy a beer for all the crew. It’s a way I can say thank you. Just before lunch, I find Joe and tell him what I’d like to do. He’s in charge of the ship’s store and of arranging the set up at the tables. We both agree to double check with the captain that a beer for all is okay, and leave it at that.

Later that afternoon, I’m writing, maybe pretending to write in my room with the door open when I hear the familiar jingle of keys. That sound tells me it’s the captain and no one else. I jump up and go into the hall. The captain and Joe are arranging things in a box and searching through the storage closet for tape to send gifts back to Romania for the captain’s one year old grandson.

“Is it okay if I buy a beer for everyone tonight?” I ask. “Because I’m signing off soon….”

“Of course,” the captain says. “I’ll add in some good wine or something with it.”

“What kind beer you want?” Joe asks. He lists two beers.  

I shrug. “Whichever one the guys like the most,” I say. I’m not really a beer expert. I can order a Bolleke now, I know what I like when I taste it, but other than that I’m pretty much at sea.


“The Becks,” the captain dictates. “That’s a better beer.”

“Okay,” I say. Joe and I exchange a look and it’s all arranged. “Thanks!” I skip off and they resuming the packing.

I’m the first one in for dinner. The beers are next to the water glasses at every seating. Joe comes in. “Good evening!” he sings at me, uncaps the beer and pours it for me before I can tell him I’m going to save it for later, give it to the chief engineer. Too late. “Salamat!” I tell Joe (thank you).

“Salamat po!” he returns in Tagalog (thank you very much).

He goes back to the kitchen. I’m suddenly nervous. I feel left out in the spotlight. Too much in the open. Like the center of attention when I’ve got mismatched socks on. I prefer to be backstage, observing or doling out my thanks one to one. I can’t go back, the beers are there. Just then, in my mid-embarrassed thought, the cadet rushes in, hovers near my elbow. “Happy birthday!” she says. She has her unopened Becks in hand.


I hadn’t anticipated the misunderstanding. “It’s not my birthday,” I tell her. “It’s because I’m signing off soon.”

“Oh,” she says, a little relieved. “I was thinking I needed to get you gift.” We smile at each other. It’s our first real connection. “Thanks for beer,” she says, and floats out again.

Right after her, the bosun comes into the officers’ mess room, stands next to me, and shakes my hand. He smiles his shy, shy smile. “Happy birthday,” he says.

“It’s not my birthday,” I tell him. It’s going to become a much used phrase over the course of dinner and the next day. “I wanted to thank all you guys, I’m signing off soon.”

“Okay,” he says—I’m not sure if he understood me—and he’s gone.

I fill my salad plate with salad. Pile the olives in a mound. Drizzle on some olive oil.

The third officer and the electrician come in together. “Good appetite,” we all say like a choir. I twist around so my back isn’t completely turned at them.

Charlton leans through the window separating the kitchen from the mess room. “Happy birthday,” he calls in at me.

“It’s not my birthday,” I say with a smile.

“Joe said it was your birthday.” Charlton turns around to talk with Joe in Tagalog.

I just shake my head. Third and Marius chatter in Romanian. I dig into my salad.

Third eats rapidly. When he’s finished, he takes his plate in to the kitchen sink. He comes back through, stops close to me. “Thank you for the beer,” he says.

“You’re welcome,” I reply. I want to tell him thank you for everything; all the conversations, the explanations, the jokes, the easy camaraderie.

“Good appetite,” he bids again and steps over the threshold and out.


The newest passengers, the father and son arrive at the same time as the captain. I’d met them when I went on bridge to meet the river pilot and watch us leave Belgium. Best I can guess, the son, not a young child like I’d anticipated, is in his early forties, and he’s actually the CFO of Rickmers, the company who owns the shipping line. He’s traveling partly for fun--bringing his septuagenarian father along for the ride--partly because he’s never traveled on one of his ships before, and partly for business.

I want to sit him down and tell him how to make things better for the crew. I want to tell him all the guys should have cabins at least as nice as mine. That the Filipinos shouldn’t have to share rooms unless they want to. But I’m not quality control. I’m not the HR manager. I’m just a passenger with four week’s experience. What do I know? 

He’d told me of his very successful life and told me that persistence pays off. Given me his card.

I’d been reminded of the contrast between workers and management. Between the crew and those in glass buildings who’ve never been to sea, never oiled a crane’s coils, never battled rust or heights, only crunched numbers and made executive decisions. Reminded that I’m just an observer of both worlds.

But I like the CFO. He’s personable. He’s well intentioned. He’s working at something he’s good at and enjoys. He’s a business man.

As they settle in their seats the electrician turns to me. “That’s what I like about you,” Marius says, he stands up, taking his beer in hand, “you don’t buy the cheap American beer. You buy the quality kind.” I puff up at the compliment. Thanks to the captain, I think. Don’t forget that, I remind myself.



The captain has brought two bottles of wine with him as promised. They’re good ones. A Merlot and a Cabernet Sauvignon. He opens them both and we sample them, decide which ones we’d like. Joe brings in my food. Joe brings in their food. We talk of wines and business and livelihoods. Or mostly the men talk and I listen. The CFO’s father sits in the cadet’s seat at my right hand side. He and I trade whispered sentences. “This is very good,” he tells me of the wine, holding up a thumb, “very good.”


The mess room door opens and the third steps in. “I need to make your photo,” he says. I look up. “Of all three of you,” he motions me, the CFO, and the CFO’s father. “To make IDs.”

“Okay,” I say. “Now?”

“No, no, you can finish up,” he says.

“Now is okay by me,” I say. It’s okay with the other passengers too.

Dan runs off to get the camera and is back soon. I stand against the wall and get my mug shot taken. Dan shows me the result and I say, “It’s good enough.” The CFO follows and then his father.

We linger over dinner, finish off the wine. The CFO, the father, and the captain leave their beers and I snag two of the bottles to take up for Josko. When I’d gone into Antwerp on the last night I’d asked him if he wanted me to bring him anything back. “A cold beer,” he’d said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I’d replied. The seeing hadn’t done a thing and I’d returned empty handed.

When I get up to our floor, his door is closed. He’s busy working, filling in the hours, unusual at this time of night, but necessary for the work that needs to get done. I leave the beers in the plastic mail inbox outside his door.

A bit later, I hear the hall door wheeze open. I poke my head around. I trot down the hallway and nearly collide with Josko as he steps out of his door. “You give me heart attack,” he says.

“I brought you some beer,” I say, pointing at it.

There’s a red mark on his head. I stare up at it. A trail of blood is in the process of drying. “What happened?” I ask.

“These Chinese made ship,” he says. “My brain is leaking out.”

“Head wounds bleed the worst,” I say. It’s not dripping in his eyes. It’s not gushing. Ancient female nursing tendencies bubble up from somewhere deep inside me, but I sweep them away. I’m one of the guys, not Florence Nightingale.

I pull the beers out of the inbox and start to hand them over. Josko takes one and steps back inside. I keep the second one and follow. We settle into our spots, open our drinks. He tells me stories of the ships made by the Japanese and the Chinese. How they don’t fit well with his six foot four height. How on one Japanese ship he’d had to sleep cattycorner on the bed and even then he’d draped over. We finish the beers.

Josko touches the trail of blood where his hair meets his forehead. It doesn’t leave a mark on his finger that I can see.

“Is it still bleeding?” I ask. 

He looks at his fingers. Gives a negative motion. “Maybe I get stitches tomorrow,” he says. “I don’t tell my wife…”

“Or she’ll freak out,” I put it.

The hall door opens and the jingle of keys heralds the captain’s entrance. His figure silhouettes between the frames, and he comes in. He sits with us for a moment, makes a quick assessment of Josko’s head, tells a story then is off to do more captain things. It’s busy times.


“You want Johnny?” Josko asks me. He pushes his empty beer bottle to the center of the table. I push mine to join it and shrug an okay. Why not? We’ve nearly worked our way through the Johnny Walker whisky bottle. We’re all old friends by now.

The hall door opens and the cadet zips by, heading for my cabin. She sees me and come to a halt, backs up.

“I need your thumbprint,” she says. “For ID.”

She places an inkpad on the table and I stick my thumb down in the red and press it against the paper next to my printed out photo. It’s light, faint. “I don’t know if that’s good enough,” I say.

Nadezdha (pronounced Nadia by us all) looks at the result and says, “Maybe do it again.”

It won’t be an accurate print, but what the heck. I double print it. It’s not like I’ll be using the ID to get on or off the ship. It’s more for a memory.

She takes the paper, the inkpad, and is off.

Before we’ve gotten half way through our drinks, Nadezdha returns. Dan had decided the double print was a no go and reprinted my photo. So I make a better mark this time. Use more force, more ink.

The captain passes Nadezdha in the hallway on his way back to kibitz with us.

“Did you get it?” he asks me of the ID.

“Not yet,” I say.

“She only has one day until she signs off and now she get ID?” Josko teases.

“Nadezdha just came to get my print,” I say.

“Why doesn’t she like you?” the captain asks me.

“She likes me,” I say, without defensiveness. But I know what he means. There’d been a hint of wariness. There’d been the possibility of jealousy. The touch of resentment at not being the only girl on ship, of having to compete. Only I’d taken myself out of the game, removed any type of threat I could have been to her, stepped into the shadows. I did this because I’d tasted the bitterness of that resentment for one tiny moment when I found out another girl was onboard, and then I’d laughed myself silly for being absurd. I’d left the window open for friendship and realized that most of her standoffishness was a language barrier problem. I know what it’s like to be limited by words. She and I had orbited each other for the past four weeks and only now, with days left to go, is a true rapport starting to form. 
All this rushes through my head. I feel it’s too wordy to explain and wonder how to sum it up simply.

But the captain is past the IDs, past Nadezdha and me, and into another story.

Josko pours us more whisky. The captain waves off the offer to serve him some. Says he has to leave anyway.

I’m mixing a lot of drinks tonight and I wonder if I’ll feel it tomorrow. I’m certainly feeling something right now. Something like a mixture of contentment and the sentiment I sense in the captain’s words when he and Josko and I are standing in the hallway the next day talking about future plans. “We will miss you,” the captain says, and pats me on the arm.

It’s the best sum up possible, simple and truthful. It’s exactly how I feel.

I’ll miss you guys too.

End of the World

August 22, 2012 – End of the World



The world didn’t end in 2012. Nor did it end in 3012 is how I begin the second short story chapter in the book I’m writing. I type up a few pages and then get stuck. I need a manmade disaster. Two, in fact, that occur sixteen years apart. Something not cliché, not previously used, and one that is shameful. How the heck can I make stuff up without the help of Google? I lean back in my chair and stare out the side window at the ship that’s parked across the water there.

The answer to this is easy. Ask an expert.

Josko, the chief engineer, will know. But his door is closed. He’s in the engine room working. Damn. Everyone is working. Double damn. I take my notebook up to the pilot deck and sit in the sun and let my own slow thoughts clink into place, thick clog by clog. I’m working too.

End of the world? Why? What is Lila’s importance? Instant world-wide water vaporization? The tragedy of 3080 has to be something shameful in order for it not to be talked about. These are some of the musings I write down and thoughtfully chew upon.

Nuclear disaster. Natural disaster. Pollution. No more water.
Josko will know how to vaporize water. I’ll wait and ask him.


I take my chair around to a new spot, in the sun or out of it at varying intervals, it’s a warm day. I’m watching the cranes work. Their stringy arms move slowly, the stevedores or crew who hook them up to the giant objects we’re taking on board wait over half their working time. Wait for the crane to grab, to release. It’s slow, slow work. It’s dangerous work. It’s no wonder these ships are filled up with ghosts. A Belgian is running the shore crane. I can’t see through the ship crane’s reflecting glass to see the operator’s face, but I know he can see me. I shade my eyes and glare. It’s no good. I wish I’d brought out my binoculars. I wave at the ship’s crane operator anyway and hope it’s Ian. He’s the most fun of the ABs (Able Body Seamen).

What is Lila’s importance? It’s a hard, but extremely vital question. I leave it to tumble in my head and go to lunch.

Marius is at his place. First as always. No one else is there.

“Good appetite,” I say, and take my seat.

“Good appetite,” he says.

Before he can tease me about Texas BBQ, I twist around and ask, “I need your help for a story I’m working on. If I wanted to vaporize all of Earth’s water how would I do it? Does it have to be a nuclear disaster?”

He’s an electrician and should know a lot of the same things an engineer knows, I figure. He should at least know about the power of sabotage, about people’s propensity to create mishaps. Marius isn’t taken aback by my question. This endears him to me. He pushes back into his chair and thinks. “An asteroid,” he says.

“That’s a good option,” I say. Poor dinosaurs. I pause for half a beat. “I need it to be human error though.”

“Oh,” he says. He eats a couple bites and ponders. Joe brings me a plate of vegetables and I dig in.
Over our lunch, Marius and I talk about catastrophes. The heated core of the Earth. Of ways to make the water sit in a never-raining cloud just above the ozone layer. Of nuclear mishaps that tear the Earth’s atmosphere in order to make that never-raining cloud possible.

He’s a perfect brainstorm companion; willing to play my What If game.

Lunch doesn’t last forever and we bid each other good afternoon and I take my ideas and go work a little more. It’s no good. I need more solid information. I need time to let these suggestions take root.

I leave my computer and go sit at the gangway.

One of my nameless friends (the “I like you very much” guy) is on duty. He greets me shyly and I take a seat next to him. He reads a seamen’s magazine and I sit next to him, comfortably silent in his company. There’s a swarm of activity. Filipinos pass by, pausing to get a smile from me or exchange some words, on their way to and from tasks, stevedores come on ship to complete or start jobs, inspectors and supervisors come and go, a group of Filipinos including Charlton and the bosun come up the gangway from outside.

“How was outside?” I ask them.

“We went to Sunny Europe,” Charlton says. Sunny Europe is a Duty Free shop where seamen can buy all sorts of things for themselves or to send to their families. Charlton had told me about it earlier.

“What did you buy me?” I tease. Then they’re gone.

The chief officer marches by, walkie-talkie in hand, he pauses when he sees me. Not sure if he should banish me from the deck or make me wear a hardhat. He decides I’m safe where I am, but tells me not to venture out on the working part of the deck.

“I’ll stay here,” I say.

I-Like-You and I exchange a look and he goes back to his reading.
Ian walks by. Full of energy, smiles, laughs. He sees me and I-Like-You and asks me, “Are you a library?”

“A library? A librarian?” I’m not sure where he’s going with this.

“Are you a library?” he asks again. I’ve got a deer in the headlights look in my eyes. “You say

‘Why?’” he instructs me. He tries again. “Are you a library?”

“Okay… why?”

“Because this guy is reading a book and being quiet around you.”

I laugh at his joke and he leaves happy.

I-Like-You notices my tattoo. “You have tattoo?” he asks.

I turn my foot to show it off better and say, “Yeah. Do you have any?”

“I’m a good boy,” he says.

“No earring?” I ask, looking at his ears.

“No,” he says again, “I’m a good boy.”

I wonder what that makes me with a tattoo and two earring holes in both ears. I revel in my sudden wickedness. I should spike my hair.

A Sunny Europe van pulls up and I stand up when I-Like-You does to watch the guy walk up the gangway. I squeeze up against the check-in podium so I’ll be out of the way. The delivery guy is young and open-faced friendly, we strike up a conversation while he waits for the papers to be signed by the bosun and for the guys to come get their boxes.

I feel this is my house and I’m in position to be host to all who enter, to bid good luck, good living to all who leave. I love this place. I love this ship. I love these guys.

Jake walks by. He has his full facemask on. The Filipinos cover up when they work, long sleeves, head wraps, facemasks. To keep cool. To keep the sun from burning them. That’s just the way they do things.

“Are you cold?” Sunny Europe asks Jake. It’s a warm day and there’s a hint of incredulity in his voice.

“It’s because I have an ugly face,” Jake says, and walks on by.

The bosun and Charlton and the other guys show back up and the paper gets signed and the boxes brought on ship. Sunny Europe and I wish each other Best of Luck and then he’s gone.

I leave my duty just before dinner. “See you later,” I tell I-Like-You. He nods in response.

I’ve decided I’ll take my computer, catch the 6:30 bus, and go to the Seaman’s Club to get online. I need to know exactly how nuclear energy, fusion, and fission work. I need to search for ways to completely vaporize water. I want specifics, scientific facts, nerdy language. “Need more input!” as Johnny Five said in the movie Short Circuit.


Val, the Ukraine crewman is waiting at the stop already with a cloth bag in hand.

“Good evening!” I tell him.

“Good evening, Amanda,” he says. 

The bus arrives soon and we sit next to each other and talk about cargo ships and container ships, his garden in Ukraine, his wife who’s tending the garden, his daughter, of dark beers. He tells me that I should try Köstritzer, a good German beer, when I get to Hamburg. I write it phonetically in my notebook. He also recommends Leffe, another dark beer, and I store the name in my head. He shows me the book in his bag that he’s going to exchange for a new one from the free library at the Club.

When we arrive he steps down off the bus first and when he reaches his hand up for mine, to help me
down, I take it. It’s an old courtesy, an ancient kindness, a chivalry, an unknowing (not contempt) of modern feminism. It’s not a disregard of me—not a commentary against my ability, it’s just old world kindness. And I’m okay with it. He treats me with a respect that is antique and doesn’t strip away anything that I am. I have nothing to prove.

Val pauses to let me go inside first. I feel like his daughter, his sister, his friend. He’s being decent and I’m thinking up ways to destroy the world.

Alone in Antwerp

August 21, 2012 – Alone in Antwerp

About coffee time I get a call. It’s Josko. “I can’t come outside with you,” he says.

“Okay,” I say. This doesn’t come as a surprise. I’d had a premonition.

There’s been a problem with one of the engineers and Josko has to fill in his duty slot. “You come down and take coffee?” he suggests.



“I’ll be right down.” I’d already made some coffee in the lounge and I take my cup with me as I descend into the bowels of the ship. I only get turned around once in the labyrinth of levels, machines, and stairs before I find the engine room where Josko and Marius the electrician are.

I step inside and take out my earplugs. “So you’re actually having to work now?” I tease Josko. I take a seat and get comfortable. “So what’s going on?” I ask.

They tell me in full gossipy detail and then move on to speculation. From there they segue into tales of death, accidents, and officers who’d been sent home early for all variety of reasons. I listen. I don’t even need to put in a word in edgewise to keep them going. It’s better watching, better listening than TV.


Soon enough though, break time is over and Marius stands, replaces a vent cover on an open shaft and holds up a screwdriver “See what these guys did to my screwdriver? It’s always like this. They don’t take care of anything.” The screwdriver is bent and looks a bit stripped. I smile and keep my mouth shut. I don’t tell on the guy I’d seen yesterday who’d tried to fit a giant hook back into place with the aid of a very small screwdriver. It can’t be the same one.

Josko stands too. “I go up to my room for something and then I’ll be back,” he tells Marius.

I follow Josko through the maze and we head upstairs together.

“Ship needs elevator,” Josko says when we’re at the top.

I’m catching my breath and trying to pretend I’m not. It’s a lot of stairs. “You want anything from outside?” I ask, huffing.

“Some good chocolate,” he says.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I say.

I collect my stuff and go to the gangway. I’m feeling lethargic and unhurried. Lazy.

Jake is on duty. “You go outside?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say, and take a seat next to him on the plank bench against the wall. At this rate the day will be over before I do anything. The air is not too hot, not too cold. It’s easy to sit here. Comfortable. I joke with the guys that walk by on their way to new tasks, on their way back from old ones. I smile at the stevedores that come onboard. Eventually I get up.

“Don’t go,” Jake says, catching my hands.

“I’ll come back,” I say. I pull my hands away. “See you later.”

“Okay.”

I cross the dock and knock on the window to the guard shack. The guard is kind enough to call the taxi service for me. He lets me sit in the small lobby and we chitchat in between his business of letting trucks in and out of the area. Then my taxi arrives.

“Have my guys been good?” the driver asks. He’s the owner of the company.

“Yes, they have,” I say. I don’t mention that all his drivers drive fast like hell (as Josko would say) or that the first of his drivers that had taken Josh and me to immigration had had a touch of a road rage problem. He’d mellowed by the end of our trip and actually worked it out with his boss (my current driver) for me to pay a little bit less for my trips. Every euro saved is a euro I can use somewhere else. How could I tattle on him after that?

The owner drops me off at the café I’d selected. I bid him thanks and bye as I hand over the money and get out of the car.

I make myself at home at the Café Berlin. They’ve got free Wi-Fi and Kombucha. It’s a good combination. I call my mom, my grandmother, my sister, my sister-in-law, check up on emails, post pictures, work out my next trip step itinerary and exhaust myself at the computer screen. I have a late lunch of veggie lasagna with a glass of wine and feel grown up and sophisticated.

When I can’t stand sitting any more I pay my tab and venture out into the daylight.

One of the drivers had given me a good list of things to see which had compared very well with what the Flemish pilot had suggested. The Cathedral is a must see according to all, the MAS (Museum Ant de Stroom) is especially appealing with its panorama view of the city from its rooftop, and there’s the central transit station set in the center of a pleasing plaza.

I can’t make heads or tails of the map I have. The street names are long as my hand and none of the streets seem to actually connect to others. The names on the map don’t ever appear to match the street names I see on the signs or sides of buildings. My head is too fuzzed from computer work to think any more. I fold up the map, stick it in my bag and decide I’ll just wander around.

The cathedral is easy to find. It sticks out. But it’s just after five o’clock and the inside is closed off to those who aren’t coming to worship. I take pictures from the outside and from a small patio I sneak into. The doors that I try are locked. This is okay by me, I’m content enough to stay in the open air. I make the full circuit, seeing the cathedral from all angles. The side streets are lined with cafés and restaurants. They all have outdoor seating with people eating, drinking, chatting. This is exactly as I’d imagined Europe would be. I can’t believe I’m here.


In the square in front of the entrance to the cathedral I find a chocolate shop and buy some dark chocolate for Josko. A saxophone player is playing his own concert from the center of the square. He’s good. He plays the Pink Panther theme song, something jazzy, and as his last song, John Lennon’s Imagine. When he comes around to collect change from us listeners I give him a couple coins.

“Can I have your body too,” the sax player asks me, “or just your money?”


“Just the money,” I say quietly, wonderingly, and he’s already gone.
People are so strange, I think. I look for my reflection in a window to try and see what he’d seen. It’s fleeting and shadowy. And I’m easily distracted.

I find a bench facing the central transit center’s plaza. I sit and people watch. I listen to the Babel diversity of languages. Occasionally I write something in my notebook. I take a picture every now and then. The benches are arranged all around the plaza and people come and go. Sit next to others, sit next to me, and leave again. Two guys have been sitting together at a bench several benches away from me since I arrived. I’m cautious to not catch their eyes, to not be too friendly, to not smile at them. I don’t want conversation right now. I just want to observe.

A flush of guilt warms me. I should be up exploring. I should be finding my way to the MAS—I do want to see that panorama—then I realize that it’s Monday and the museum is closed. I shoo the guilt away. Take regret with you, I tell it. I have no use for either of you.

I sit where I am and Be. I want to enjoy the moment for exactly what it is and where I am.

So I do.

The cathedral’s bells chime the hour. It’s six. Maybe it’s seven. I steal a glance at the watch the guy on the bench next to me is wearing. It’s almost seven. I’ve sat here long enough. I’ll find a patio to sit on. I’ll get a beer or a coffee. I’ll be European too.

I’m halfway down the street when I see a word on a sign at a pub. Bolleke, it says. I laugh out loud. Not ball licker. Not bolleker. Bolleke. It’s the nickname for the De Koninck ale I’d had at the Irish Pub. I take out my notebook to write it down so I won’t forget it, won’t lose the word. I’ve flipped to a blank spot and started to write when a guy steps in front of me and starts talking. I’m only four letters into my scribing. I look up from the page and I recognize him. It’s the guy whose eye I didn’t catch. Who I didn’t smile at. He’d followed me. I don’t feel alarmed and wonder if I should. He’s talking to me in a language I can’t comprehend. It doesn’t sound Flemish, French, or German. It’s certainly not English. It’s probably Flemish.

“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh, you speak English.” And he talks to me. Almost so fast I can’t keep up, his accent is tricky to follow. “Where are you from?”

“I’m American,” I say. “Where are you from? Here?”

He shakes his head. He tells me where he’s from. I don’t understand. But I think it’s somewhere Middle Eastern. He tells me he works here at some business he’s made.

“What were you laughing at?” he asks me.

I’d laughed? I’ve already forgotten I’d just laughed over Bolleke. I think back. Laughed? I’d smiled several times from my bench vantage point. At people’s interactions, at my own thoughts (which are usually too complicated or obtuse or silly to try and explain the humor of), at life.

“I’m just enjoying myself,” I tell him. It’s the best explanation I can come up with at the moment. It’s the truest one.

I write the “eke” to finish the word in my notebook and close it up, put it away.

“You’re very busy,” the guy tells me. He talks in paragraphs, in pages. He seems to think I’m friendlier than other women. That’s what I catch from his sentences. I don’t completely follow him although I’m trying. Friendlier? I think, it’s because I let my guard down when I’m in my own company. It’s because I smile when I want to. Most times. It’s because I laugh when something strikes me funny. Maybe this isn’t usual. Maybe this isn’t adult. It’s just me.

“Are you here alone?” he asks.

This I understand. And every now and then I can lie when I’m supposed to. “No,” I say. It’s not really a real real lie. I have a ship full of friends I’m here with. “I’m here with friends. Actually I’m just about to meet up with them.”

He looks disheartened. It’s taken a lot of nerve for him to follow me. To talk to me. I know this. It breaks my heart.

“I said to my friend that I was going to talk to you,” he tells me. “He told me to get you to come
back.”

In another life I would, I think. I can’t now. I kill this potential with my words. “I’m meeting up with my friends.”

“Okay,” he says. Rejected. Let down. Rejection. I know that pain. I’m so sorry, I think. I’m sorry. “I understand,” he continues. He does and he doesn’t.

He goes back to his friend and I go to my imaginary ones. It’s hard to be a girl.
Then I shrug off my remorse at not being able to make all people happy. I tell myself that he’ll find some prettier girl. He’s find some girl who can understand his words. He doesn’t realize now how much a plus that’ll be, I reassure myself. He’ll be happy somewhere down the line. You’re not responsible for that.

Thank goodness, I reply.

I find a patio café filled with people and select a seat for myself. I order a Bolleke.

With my feet stretched out and a drink in front of me, I look out at the statue of Brabo throwing the giant Antigoon’s cut off hand into the river and smile. I’m so European.
 

Ennui Can’t Last in the Red Light District

August 20, 2012 – Ennui Can’t Last in the Red Light District


I wake up from a strange and complicated dream to discover my ennui has made it through the darkest part of the night and into the dawn. Though, it’s long past dawn. I’ve slept past breakfast and past my “go get ‘em” plan to be up early and out exploring Antwerp. I lie in bed and procrastinate. I don’t feel like spending the thirty plus dollars to take a cab by myself, and, besides, I’m in need of some solace. More than buildings, cathedrals, museums, lace, diamonds and chocolate shops I want human company. So I get up, get dressed, and go in search of some friends.

Port time is different from sea time. The officers’ schedules go from four hour to six hour duty stretches. The bridge gets locked up and even the door to the pilot deck stays bolted unless someone is out there. The crew supervises and helps the stevedores load cargo at what scheduled hours I have no clue. Someone’s posted at the gangway 24/7. Room doors stay closed and locked and visitors need a Rickmers badge to come onboard.

Key in hand, I lock my door and head down the hallway disliking portside security and the shut-outness of everything. The chief engineer’s door is closed and I figure he’s down in the engine room supervising repairs and getting ready for the inspection scheduled for later in the day. I’m not sure when I’ll see him. Maybe at lunch.

The captain’s door is closed. The owner’s room (used for guests) is closed. The lounge door is closed. I’m sure if I went all the way around I’d see that Josh’s old room is also closed up. All the doors say “Keep Out!” The hall is sterile and unfriendly this way. I leave it behind me. 

We came across the Atlantic with a fairly empty ship and here in Antwerp we’re getting filled up to the gills. There’s a lot of cargo to load. We’re also getting loaded up here with “guests” as well. 

The Supercargo, who I’d met briefly the day before, is a Polish ex-captain with a wiry beard, an occasional smile for me, a head full of stories and a no nonsense attitude towards his work. He sits next to me at meal times. We chat like auld acquaintances not forgot. I never learn his name.

“Do you miss being out at sea?” I ask him at some point.

“When I miss the sea,” he tells me. “I go out in my sailboat.”

We’ve got a German guy from the Rickmers office who’s in charge of operations and dangerous cargo. His name is Anastacios. He came onboard demanding a room, a shower and some water to drink and I’d thought him mean, difficult and quintessentially German. But first impressions don’t always hold their mold. I like him more and more as I get to know him. He takes Josh’s place at the table for meals. He’s handsome; dark haired and clean cut and our conversations never get the chance to go as long as they’d like to go.

We have inspectors and special workers coming and going. Some of them are staying the nights on ship, eating at the table with us and filling up the space in the offices and at the conference room table.

We’re also getting two passengers. “They’re going for the fifteen hour trip from here to Hamburg,” Josko had told me in a tone that implied the strangeness of this method of travel for such a short distance. All I know is that it’s a father and son. I imagine them as a father with his young son taking an interesting trip from one city to another. Time will show them to us as they really are. 

Even with a people full ship, I don’t encounter anyone on my way to the mess room. 

I go through the stairway door, cross the short hallway and head through the mess room door. Joe is at the sink and turns when I come in. I don’t stop at the table; I step over the threshold into the sacred kitchen area.

“Good morning,” I say.

“Good morning!” Joe says enthusiastically, almost singing it. He smiles at me. “You go outside?”

“I did last night,” I say. “It’s nice out there. I don’t know about today. Maybe I’ll go out later. The taxi is very expensive though.”

“You should go with Jay,” Joe says. “He wants to go later. You want coffee?”

I do want coffee, and Joe gets me set up. Jay comes around the corner at the sounds of his name, wiping his hands on his apron.

“Morning,” I say.

“Good morning,” he says. “You go outside?”

I tell him what I’d told Joe.

“Come back here,” Jay says, he motions me with a hand. I follow him back into the cooking kitchen part. The stoves are filled with pots and I go peak in them. There’s a watery cabbage soup, the boiled, bland meat special cooked for Josko, and other mysterious concoctions. We talk while Jay watches water levels, adds vegetables into the meat-filled pans, and checks the macaroni that’s cooking in the oven. Joe comes in. “You want cheese?” he asks me, setting the plastic wrapped plate of sliced yellow cheese on the counter in front of me.

“Thanks, Joe,” I say. I take the plastic off and help myself.

Joe sets up the rice to cook--“There’s always rice,” the captain told me once when I asked Joe if there was any to go along with my stir fried vegetables—“You go with Jay outside?” Joe asks me.

I look at Jay. He looks back at me to see what I’ll say. “Sure,” I say. Why not? “You coming too, Joe?” I want him to come, to get a break from the constant work. He’s always busy.

They explain that we’ll have to go after dinner and everything is cleaned up. “Maybe 7:00.”

“I can help clean,” I tell them. “That way we can get out of here faster. So we don’t miss the bus.”


There’s a bus that comes at 6:30 for the seamen and takes them, as a courtesy, to the Seaman’s Club where they can get online, play billiards, makes phone calls, change money, send money back to their families, drink, buy snacks, exchange old books for new ones, and visit with other seamen. Then, at 11:30, the bus brings everyone back to their own ship.



If I help clean up then maybe we can make the 6:30 bus, if we don’t then we can split the cost for a cab. They go for this idea, especially after they find out I already have Euros. “We can change money with you?” Jay asks.

I shrug. “Okay.”

Joe goes back to his part of the kitchen to finish the two salad bowls that go on the officers’ tables and Jay and I talk about all things and nothing.

Some of the crew filter in for an early lunch. “You want to eat?” Jay asks.

My stomach says yes. I grab a bowl and go around to the crew mess room. A handful of guys are sitting around the main table eating meat and rice. The Ukrainian, Val, who had given me the video of Neptune’s Initiation Rite sits by himself at a table in the corner. I wave at him as I fill my bowl with rice and then put cabbage soup over it, Peru soup style, avoiding the meat. At the table I spice it up with some Chinese hot sauce.

“That’s hot,” Ian tells me as I turn the bottle over and pour. He’s got a worried look on his face, thinks I’m crazy. Who puts rice in their soup?

“I know,” I say. I’d taste-tested it first. I’m missing my own cooking a little. Missing garlic and ginger and cayenne pepper. This improvisation hits the spot. I finish my soup and go back for seconds. The guys come and go. They’re happy I’m sitting in their room. Some of them are shy. They eat and leave without so much as a word, but their company is just exactly what I need.

When they’ve all gone and I’m alone, I take my bowl to the sink and wash it before Joe can stop me. There’s a few guys smoking in the break room and I sit with them; Charlton and Alaska and another Able Body whose face is familiar and whose name is forever unknown to me. They don’t have much time and when their cigarettes are smoked down I’m left alone again.

Just as I’m wondering if Joe and Jay will get sick of me, regular lunch time clicks up on the clock and the officers start to arrive. Marius, the electrician, usually the first in at mealtimes, is already at his seat.

“Good appetite,” I tell him through the window that separates the kitchen and the mess room.

“Ah, good appetite,” he says, looking up, surprised to see me on the wrong side of the room.

The Supercargo comes in and sits and Josko follows shortly after. I’ve already eaten, but I need the nourishment of these guys’ conversation. I go sit in my seat. We all exchange “Good Appetites.”

“The police were looking for you,” Marius tells me.

Josko raises his eyebrows. We all pretend I’m a spy. None of us explain to the Supercargo what Marius means. But he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to be listening. He keeps to his own business.

“Did you tell them, ‘Amanda? Amanda who?’” I ask. The joke goes on a beat or two longer.

“And your friend?” Josko asks, motioning Josh’s place with a turn of his head.

“He left,” I say.

There’s a touch of silence.

“You don’t eat?” Josko asks me. He cuts his boiled meat. The meat we joke about looking like dinosaur meat.

“I ate already,” I say.

The Supercargo picks and eats his food. I think up something to ask him. Something about our route, our cargo, our schedule for Antwerp.

“She already knows,” Josko tells the Super. “It’s a good cover question,” he tells me. “That’s smart. Trying to make it seem like you don’t already know.”

I shrug. Smile. Act mysterious. Act natural, just like a spy.

I stick around until they all excuse themselves and go. Then shortly after, I head back up to my room. I can face my demons now.

Josko’s door is open. He’s on the couch, watching something. It’s the usual after lunch pattern. The regularity of it comforts me. I pause at the opening. “Are you going to get to go outside?” I ask him.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he says.

“If you want company,” I say. “Let me know.”

He shrugs, raises his eyebrows. Says something that I don’t quite catch but that sounds something like “It’s good, it makes me appreciate my wife,” or “It’s good, gives me break from my wife.” Josko says whatever he’d said with a twinkle in his eye. I don’t know his wife, but I love her anyways. He loves her way more, but we have that understanding in our friendship and I’m happy.

“I stay home until I start to piss off my wife and then I leave again,” Josko had said when we talked about the hardship of being away from family for long stretches.

“Maybe after breakfast,” he says. “We have inspection in engine room this afternoon.”

“Good luck with that,” I say and leave him to the rest of his lunch break.

I start a book by Gertrude Stein. I take it, my notebook, and my camera up to the pilot deck to sit in the sun and recharge. When Gertrude keeps on with stuff like, “Anyone can be certain of something. Some can be certain that loving is existing. Some can be certain of anything” and doesn’t let off that style for pages and pages I set the book aside and put my own words down. It’s a pressure release valve that sprays my emotions out of me into the atmosphere. “Better out than in,” an old boyfriend had told me about something else much less figurative.

I write:

Because a rejection makes me feel
inadequate
unable
boring
uninspired
mediocre
And that—mediocrity--is what I dread
more than anything in the world
Even more than rejection.
It’s all a matter of what I believe about myself.
These rejections make me doubt my self-belief.

Help me in my unbelief.

I watch a duck dive in and out of the water. I watch it swim and vanish. Reappear and disappear again. I may not laugh out loud when I think, “Do you ask a bird how it flies? Or a fish how it swims? No, they do it because they were born to do it,” (from Willy Wonka), but I smile. My sense of humor is on its way back and I’m grateful. Life ain’t no fun without a sense of humor. I watch the bugs, all the different types of bugs flying and crawling and buzzing around me. I’ve seen more insects now, and in these past twenty-four hours, than I have in the past twenty-one days. A ladybug lands on the cover of my notebook and cleans itself. “Do what you gotta do, ladybug,” I say.

The afternoon expires. Dinner passes by with the help of stories told by the captain, Anastacios, and
the Supercargo. They go back to work and I go to my room and read and wait for my phone to ring.

Eventually it does. I jump up and grab it. “Hello?”

“You ready?” Joe asks.

“Yeah!”

“Okay, we meet you at ship office in five minutes.”

I’m the first one down. I wait and finally the door opens and Joe arrives.

“Is Jay coming?” I ask.

“Yes, we meet him by gangway,” Joe says. We take off together.

At the gangway Jay and Mark Anthony and two other guys (more of my nameless friends) join us.
We bid the gangway duty man goodbye and walk down to where other of the DALIAN’s crew waits. The bus is running late, and this seems like good fortune for us while tough luck for the others who’ve been waiting for at least half an hour.

When the bus arrives we get on. As we make the rounds through the docks, picking up all the seamen, Mark Anthony takes the seat next to me and we talk about him, his life, his family. His dreams. The fact that he’s supporting his two siblings through college. He’s only twenty-five. “Even though that guy [his brother] is older than me,” he says. “I just finished school first.”

At the Club we get off, thanking the driver as we go.

Joe takes me under his wing. Sets me down at the bar, buys me and him a beer—Jay isn’t drinking—and goes to send money to his family. When he comes back he sets a hat on the counter. I touch it.

“You bought a hat,” I remark brightly.

“It’s for you,” he says. “A souvenir.”

I turn the hat. Sure enough. It has to be for me. It’s a black hat with Belgium cursived in dark pink sequins and topped with a sparkling crown. Lord, have mercy, what a hat. I adjust the back strap and put it on. I want to cry. To laugh. To tell Joe he’s family and I love him. To kiss him on the cheek and give him a hug. I say, “Thank you very much,” instead.

We move to the table where the nameless two (NT) are sitting and we all share pistachios. Mark Anthony is at a different table with his computer. The NT are restless, they don’t want to linger indoors. So Joe and I slurp down our beers. We collect Mark Anthony and the six of us head out into Antwerp.

Joe’s been here before and he leads us around with a guide’s expertise.

It’s both mine and Mark Anthony’s first time to Europe. He and I walk side by side, pausing often to snap pictures. He’s got a fancier camera than I do. The NT walk way at the front of our group with Jay. At a crossing, Joe ducks into a side store and comes back out with canned beer for him and me.

“Kampay,” I say. It means “cheers” in Tagalog. He’d taught it to me earlier. I’d made him write it in my notebook so I wouldn’t forget.

“You want Filipino boyfriend, Amanda?” Jay had asked me one day when I’d called out a cheery and heartfelt “salamat (thank you)” after lunch.

“What?” I’d asked.

“You learn Tagalog,” he’d explained, as if there were no other reason to learn a language except to impress a boy.

Now, I sip my beer slowly and I’m still only half way done when Joe throws his can into a trashcan.

We turn a corner and suddenly we’re there. In the Red Light District of Antwerp. I’d read about it. Someone had asked me if I was going to go. The guide books had said it was an interesting place and best visited by the safety wary in the daytime.

“…Antwerp's little red light district became Europe's most High Tech Brothel. If you intend to be a patron of the Red Light District, be wary of women who beckon you towards their kamers and invite you in without discussing a price. In many cases, these women will charge a greatly inflated rate once they have you inside their kamer. Even if you have no intention of partaking in the festivities, it is worthwhile just to actually see the spectacle that the district is. 200 women all in their own window dressed for action,” WikiTravel says.

Joe hints at me and Mark Anthony that picture taking probably isn’t allowed. He worries about the beer in my hand too. I tuck both items up against me, as out of sight as I can. Police patrol the area with serious frequency to keep illegal activities from occurring. I wonder what’s considered illegal. I certainly don’t want to get in trouble. Though it’d certainly make for an interesting call to my parents. “Well, wha ha happened was…”

I smile the thought away.

From glass fronted stores, women in lingerie of all types are selling themselves, packaged like Barbie dolls set in a long row on some toy store shelf. I don’t know whether to look or look away. So I look. Some of the women are very beautiful, some are average, some aren’t so great to look at. Some of them turn on their high heels to put their bodies in the best lines, some talk boredly on phones, one girl files her nails, another straightens her hair with a thick iron.

I don’t know how I feel. Even as the primal female part of me compares my own body against these women’s, I know I wouldn’t want to stand behind that glass, turn my skin bare for men to consider, twist my face into an expression that would entice someone to shop with me. But if these girls enjoy their work, if they make money in this way and it makes them happy, I don’t have a problem with it. Why should I?

Maybe I’ve just had two beers too many to care about the ethics of legal prostitution. I’d much rather be with these, my Filipinos, walking Antwerp and window shopping in the Red Light District.

“We’re your five bodyguards,” Joe says to me. I think maybe here among these wares, the boys need a bodyguard and not me. With them, here, now, I’m content. A surge of possession hits me. They’re mine. My family.

Joe stops to talk with one of the girls. The rest of us walk on. The guys joke about Joe and quick times with the ladies before Joe catches back up. Down a side street, we go by a glass pane with a dark headed girl standing behind it. “She must be Chinese,” Joe says. The boys talk about her and as we pass her window she leans out and calls after them, “Spanish, not Chinese.”

We giggle like kids caught doing something bad and skip ahead.

And then, we’re out and back into regular streets.

It’s starting to turn dark and that means it’s getting close to time to head back to the Seaman’s Club. We don’t want to miss the bus.

We don’t. All together we get back home. Up the gangway and through the doors. Goodnights are no big ceremony, we’ll see each other again tomorrow.