Me Tarzan, Few Abstain

It’s easy to get laid on a gay cruise.

The second night of the Atlantis Freedom 2009 Caribbean cruise, the party theme was Brazil. Everyone always dresses up for all the themes, some wearing crazy, over-the-top outrageous costumes, most wearing something that suggests the theme but shows a lot of skin. It just so happened that my costume last Halloween was Tarzan, so when I read about the Brazil theme, I threw my loin-cloth-skirt-thing into the suitcase and was ready to go.

I was only on the pool deck that night for about 10 minutes, cocktail barely begun, when I spotted a young, twinky, half-naked boy with sandy blonde hair. Wearing a Tarzan costume. It was almost too easy.

I walked over, said hello, and made some comment about too many Tarzans. He laughed, smiled, touched my arm. We chatted, drank, found excuses to touch some more.

“What’s under your skirt?”

“What’s under yours??”

We danced face to face, hiding growing excitement. In less than 2 drinks, TarzanBoy and I decided to leave the dance floor.

On an Atlantis cruise, everyone shares a stateroom with a roommate. TarzanBoy seemed certain his roommate was still up on the dance floor, so we headed to his room. Sure enough, it was empty. At first. We were in there for a good 15 minutes, long enough to lose both Tarzan costumes, but not quite enough to get into too compromising a position. Which was lucky, as of course we heard the keycard in the lock, and in walked the roommate.

He took in the scene rather quickly, muttered drunkenly “Don’t mind me, nothing I haven’t seen before!” and stumbled directly to his bed and pulled the covers over his head. He may not have minded, but it had been too long since I’d been in a dorm-room-with-roommate-in-the-next-bed-pretending-not-to-listen situation. Fortunately Tarzan felt the same.

“I’m sorry,” he mouthed silently. “Your room?”

I nodded. As we pulled on our loin cloths for the starboard journey, I wondered about my own roommate. I had left him up on the pool deck at the dance, and I hoped he was still there. We arrived at my stateroom and I slid the keycard into the lock. Darkness.

Again we lost the costumes. Again we jumped on the bed. Again, after 15 minutes, we were interrupted by the door. My roommate. But this time – it was a knock.

Two days earlier, knowing that there would be a slight possibility that I might have the opportunity for a nautical trist while on a week-long cruise with 3,700 gay men, I’d come up with a plan. When we first got onboard, my roommate and I decided that if either of us brought someone back to the room, we’d simply put up the Do Not Disturb sign. Of course it wasn’t fair to kick the other out of his own room for hours, so if you were to come back and see the sign, you would simply knock, and come back 15 minutes later.

It was a brilliant system… except that I felt a bit guilty as it was the second time my roommate had been made to knock. That day. So, I jumped up, grabbed a towel, and answered the door.

“Hey I just need my wallet,” Roomie said. “I’m going to the casino. I’ll be gone a couple hours.”

Music to my ears. After Roomie left with his wallet, TarzanBoy and I had a lovely, uninterrupted 2 hours of fun. We were just getting out of the shower when there was another knock. I let Roomie back in, and TarzanBoy left a few minutes later.

“Wow,” said Roomie when the door closed, “I can’t believe he was here all that time.”

I looked at him. “It was only 2 hours. You do KNOW what we were doing, right?”

“Duh. But I dunno, 2 hours? After like 45 minutes I just get bored.”

I rolled my eyes, thinking ‘45 minutes? Me Tarzan, you lame.’