12b- A little update

I have been on the ship for almost three months. Jo is still the same except for her skin, which is turning yellow looking as the jaundice sets in. Neil and I are still together but his contract is up in one week’s time. Greg is still with his hairy and spends most of his time between cabins. It gets crowded at times in the hairy cabin now that Derek has copped off with Greg’s hairy cabin mate. Paul is still still working it and on it. Allison is happier now that we are leaving Alaska and off to the Caribbean and the sunshine, which is a turning point for all of us; it means we make more money. Trevor is on his fifth written warning for sleeping in for work and should have been sent home after the third but no one seems available to replace him. Vanessa, well I don’t think I will ever really know how she is and Debra is still with the little Italian from the night of her party.

Being with Neil has helped the last weeks go by much quicker. It’s difficult to describe the relationship we have. It’s not normal by any means. We both go about our jobs and when we want to see each other we go to the crew bar. When he doesn’t want to see me he goes to a passenger bar. We never have to phone each other and ask what the other wants to do that night because it’s already planned out, for me anyway. I work. If I get a break I will either run ashore if I get time or go to my cabin. I go to the crew mess and if the smell is ok I go in, if it’s not I go to suicide. Suicide takes place in the bar next to the mess. Its called suicide because if you start drinking during the day and work the hours that we are all expected to do and go to the crew bar every night and expect to get up in the morning for work and do this for six months, then that is suicide. I try not to do suicide but other than that, the rest is my day.

Neil however has a different schedule. Besides his photography work he gets off in nearly every port and can spend as much time as he likes around the ship. Even at sea in Alaska he got to go up in a helicopter to take photos of the ship and the glaciers.

The only thing that we have in common is that we like each other. He hasn’t given me any indication that his feelings are any stronger except for one night when I was asleep he came to the cabin and woke me up. He was very drunk and I was very annoyed because I hadn’t seen him all day and I ended up spending another night in the crew bar getting drunk and waiting for him.
“I love you Ginny,” he said, kneeling down of the floor and stroking my forehead.
I woke up in the morning and he was laying of the floor, fast a sleep.
It was never mentioned again, if anything it only made things worse.