Listen to more stories on curio. This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again. The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter.
There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel.
The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.
Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands.
By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship.
