Tuesday, March 15, 2005

St. Lucia and Grenada

It’s another early get up since I have an excursion planned for St. Lucia. The ship is actually anchored out, so we have to take the tender (or ferry, and don’t go there) to the port. When I woke up, I opened the curtains on the window and saw one of the ship’s lifeboats being lowered. All but one of the tenders are from the ship. The whole thing is amazingly well organized. When you get your ticket for the excursion, it tells you what time you need to be in the lounge to get assigned to a tender. We make it the port and then get onto our bus. It’s another "tour the island and then go lay on a beach" trip. The lay on the beach part is always good, the tour the island, not so much. To be honest, I really don’t care about their school system, or the local politics, or even the history of the island. Yes I’m a big bad selfish American, but I’m on vacation and I really don’t want to know all of this little arcane useless trivia. I’ve met this couple (Tom and Joe) and we keep making snide comments about the boring commentary and the passing country side. I know, bitchy gay men, can we be more of a cliché? But it is fun. We stop at a batik shop where they give us a quick demonstration of how they make batik prints. The shop is nice, but how many batik print dresses do they think they are going to sell to a tour bus of gay men? Wait, don’t answer that. I do find a cute batik shirt for Carter that will be perfect for his birthday. After the shop, we get back on the bus and head towards the beach. I’m talking with Joe and I notice he keeps rubbing my arm, shoulders, etc. It feels nice and he is hot in a muscle bear kind of way, so I just let it go. We get to the beach and lay out. We get the obligatory rum drink, I lather up in sun tan oil and then go into a deep sun baked coma. The weather is perfect, hot, sunny, a little bit of wind. The beach is beautiful and the water is the clear light blue color that’s so pretty. We’re close to one of the Sandals resorts, so you know it’s nice. Tom and Joe are lying out next to me and they head into the water. A little bit later I join them and we’re talking a bit. Tom goes for a swim and Joe goes in for the kill. He starts to rub my shoulders, and then lower, and before this gets crazy, I’m like, “What about Tom?” And the response: “Tom saw you first and thought you were just our type.” Sure enough, Tom comes back and he’s very friendly also. Since this is St. Lucia, not Ptown or Key West, we just talked a bit more and then went back to the beach to dry out. Then it’s back on the bus and time to go back to the ship for the Dog Tag T-Dance. You get dog tags and then they put a colored dot on them: green = “available”, yellow = “buy me a drink and we’ll see”, red = “not available”, and two greens = “meet me in my stateroom in 5 minutes.” Okay, that sounds like a reasonable and easy system. So I get up to the dance (DJ Joe Gauthreaux who ROCKED!!) and then I see: green & yellow; green, yellow, and red; red, yellow, and red. I’m SO confused. But boys will be boys. So it’s late afternoon and it’s sunny, we’re anchored out and there isn’t a lot of breeze, and there are several hundred shirtless men dancing and writhing on the pool deck. HOT! HOT! HOT! Sometimes life doesn’t suck. More great music. After the dance, I hook up with Tom and Joe who are kind enough to show me their cabin. They are on deck 7, so they get a balcony. The room really isn’t that much bigger, but the balcony is nice. After the tour of their room (and did I mention that every room has these huge floor to ceiling mirrors on one wall?), it’s time for dinner and then I go see the “Spotlight Broadway” show. It’s okay, but broadway stuff isn’t my thing. Then it’s time for a quick nap and then it’s the Fire Island Party on the pool deck. More hot shirtless men dancing. This is such a boring cruise.

I think I went to sleep around 3AM, but am up at 8AM. By the time I open the curtains, I can see we are moored at St. Georges, Grenada. I have no excursion planned today, but I’ve heard the thing to do is walk into town and then get a water taxi to a nearby beach to spend the day. So after a leisurely breakfast in the main restaurant, I get cleaned up and head for the beach. I make it off the boat and then follow the signs for the water taxi. There is an Italian cruise ship moored opposite of us, and somehow I fall into a group of couples from that ship. We board the water taxi and set off across the harbor. Grenada is green and lush and very beautiful. But apparently it got hammered during the last hurricane season. There is construction going on everywhere and I later hear that on one of the tours they see a sail boat upside down on one of the mountains. How’s that for insane. The boat drops us off at a very nice beach. While all of the straight couples walk to the right down the beach, I see a group of guys to the left and walk over to them. Sure enough, this is “our” section of the beach. It’s sunny, hot, and I’m on a beautiful beach jamming to my MP3 player. This does not suck at all. I’m using SPF 15, but after a couple of hours, I’m starting to feel the burn, so I head back to the ship. Then it’s time for my massage by Alex. There’s this pretty decent spa on the ship and it was very popular (according to Malcom, there were more pedicures given on this cruise compared to any other cruise that Celebrity has had). So after a rough day in the sun and then a nice massage, it’s time for the disco nap. Up for a late dinner in the restaurant, and then it’s the Tropical Heat Party. Have I mentioned the hot men on the ship. Okay, they aren’t really all hot. There is a fairly decent mix of guys. So here is my very unscientific analysis of the various subgroups:

Muscle Marys: You know the types. They’re so huge they couldn’t put their arms next to their sides if their lives dependent upon it. They are hot, and they know it. And they only stick to their own kind.

Twinks: Thin, young, not really developed. Kind of like female gymnasts. Think young A&F types with lots of energy.

Gym Bunnys: In shape, not huge, but nice builds. Usually friendly.

Normal gay guys: Not fat, but not gym bunnies. Just kind of in between.

Big gay guys: Bigger than a normal gay guy, not as big as your average bear.

Bears: Big, furry, friendly, and they’ve never seen a pizza they didn’t like.

And the age range was pretty interesting as well. Here are my informal statistics:

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