Turbulence At Sea, or…
(Innocents Abroad, part 10)
…Around The World in 80 Days 1980
(You can catch up on our misadventures by reading parts 1-9, or read on from here.)
The remaining days at sea between Hawaii and Japan took a decidedly downward turn, my mood chilling along with the weather and my emotions growing as turbulent as the ocean swells pitching the ship.
Living in tight quarters with 800 other humans was wearying for an introvert like me, even if the adventure of travel was invigorating. Having grown up in a family of eleven people, I was no stranger to close confines and a dearth of personal space, but as a kid I did spend a lot of time in closets, hidden away in the attic, or up a tree somewhere around town.
Luckily there were also several fairly reliable spaces onboard the SS Universe where I could retreat to escape the maddening crowd. One of them was the ship’s library on the top-most deck; few students frequented it, and I had the key so I could go there anytime—even in the middle of the night.
Wednesday the 20th of February started out like any other day at sea.
I arose, had breakfast with my roomie, Lucy, and did my two hours of library duty as a work-study student sailing the world on scholarship. Afterwards I went to Core, but didn’t stay long. Core presentations were the (often optional) morning gatherings devoted to educating students on important aspects of the next country we’d be visiting.
A good indicator of my blackened mood was left in my journal when I jotted, “At 10:00 I went to Core, but decided if I had to listen one more time to Wilcox talk about Nōh and Kabuki, I’d barf.”
Instead I went to pick up and pay for the rest of my scheduled in-port trips. The man to see about that was Larry Parlette, whose title might have been purser. I wrote that he was “Roddy McDowall’s local look-alike,” which, being a fan of actor Roddy McDowall, meant I liked him.
After that I read Chūshingura in my cabin till class time, then attended all five of my courses (apparently an event rare enough it warranted a mention in my journal). After classes I studied for a Geology test with a fellow student who was at such a complete loss over the material that I wanted to pull my hair out.
But I liked my hair, so I faced down frustration by binging on junk food instead.
Later, back in my cabin and trying to studying there, my nerves were frayed by a cassette tape Lucy was listening to. She had it turned so low (I’m sure she was trying to be conscientious) that I couldn’t make out the song from my bunk—only the whining white noise of the tape recorder’s motor.
Somehow I managed to get in some guitar practice (probably leaving the cabin to do so), then I closed my account of that Wednesday with a scribbled emotional reveal: “I think I can feel the wrenching tightening of my lungs squeezing the life out of my heart.” I added, “Both Luce & I are depressed slightly. We both get depressed easily & alot (sic). We’re very much alike. We both cry easily, too.”
Yeah. Anxiety was rearing its ugly head, and I caved, downing a Valium—my first since October.
Till I re-read that old journal entry, I’d forgotten I was ever on stress meds. I think it was my senior year in high school when the shit hit the proverbial fan and I found myself hospitalized and heartsick.
Earlier that school year (1976) I’d been excited to win a different scholarship—one to study in France as an AFS student—but things hadn’t gone well.
My host family had kicked me to the curb after several months, and I was shuttled to another home where I was just as unwelcomed.
Then I caught what was probably pneumonia after swimming in a heated outdoor pool in Rouen (it was November)—though at the time I thought the misty swim was pretty awesome—and night after night I lay coughing on the mattress the family had put out for me on the living room floor.
“Tais toi!” the mother yelled over and over from her bedroom, uninterested in seeing if I had actually coughed up one of my lungs. “Tais toi!”
It means, “Shut up.”
After days of worsening and nights of “Tais toi, cochonne!” they finally took me to see a doctor and get me some medicine.
It was supposed to be a temporary home, so I refused to let them enroll me in school; I’d already been yanked out of one school and away from all the friends I’d made there.
I said, no, I’d wait till they sent me on to that supposed host family they were finding for me down in the Pyrenees region. I knew I didn’t need the credits, so I wasn’t worried about that; my high school back home had told me I’d already earned all the credits I needed to graduate by the end of eleventh grade, so I could take any courses they threw at me in France; they wouldn’t count anyway.
Weeks passed.
Finally that family temporarily housing me (who were part of the AFS-Français administration) said, “Alors, we can’t find any family in all of France willing to host a cochonne like you, so you’ll just have to stay with us the rest of the year, sleeping on the floor by night and hiding by day from our forty-kilo German shepherd who keeps humping you while we laugh.”
Um. No. Say it ain’t so, Maman. Tais toi yourself, already! So I said that was it, I wasn’t staying. I was going back to America.
And I did.
Only, I thought I was done with high school. My alma mater, though, said, “not so, sweetie”—even though I needed no more credits. I wasn’t happy. Not by a longshot.
So yeah, stress.
And that hospital stay didn’t help alleviate my stress one bit because the jackhole ER doc kept insisting the wrenching abdominal pain I’d developed (later diagnosed as colitis) was the result of an ectopic pregnancy. Said so before I’d even been examined. Insisted it, in fact—despite my assurances to the contrary, since I was a virgin—with my very horrified, very Catholic, parents standing right there.
“You just don’t want to admit you’ve had sex in front of your parents,” he said.
(What sick-o has sex in front of their parents?)
It was infuriating not to be believed by some jackhole med school drop-out, but even more infuriating not to be believed by my own parents—and then to have them agree to pay for a totally unnecessary ultrasound just so the doctor could try to prove he was right.
Afterwards I was kept overnight for “observation,” rooming in with some high school sports star who’d broken her leg. Past my bed paraded her friends and family all evening long and the next day as well, her side of the room a veritable hothouse of flower arrangements and balloons, cards and caring.
Not one person came to see me. No one. My folks probably kept their lips zipped about my being there, certain I’d fallen irretrievably from Grace despite the negative results of that investigative ultrasound.
I ended up walking right out of that hospital like I’d exited France—on my own authority—the staff apoplectic. “You haven’t been discharged! You have to leave in a wheelchair!”
No wonder I wound up on Valium.
But I digress.
The point is, I’d been meting out those Valium like precious gems for a long time, and on that night, three years later, when I went to sleep—bobbing on the Pacific almost exactly halfway around the world from Rouen, France—I still had one Valium left.
And apparently I needed it.
My darkening mood had its origins in the previous day, though, a day I’d dubbed “hellishly real” in my journal.
Breakfast, library, then a Core presentation on Japanese calligraphy began the day just fine, but in Psychology the group assignment I’d been part of barely garnered a passing grade. I saw my 4.0 average slipping away before my eyes.
“When you think you’ve got a grip on something,” I wrote in my journal, “& it’s wrenched from your hands like they were rubber, it hurts more than when you felt your grip was precarious all along.”
I’d mistakenly believed I had a good grasp of the subject matter; after all, our group had made me the leader. I’d let them down. We had the worst grade in the class.
I knocked off my next class and nursed my wounded pride up on the Sun Deck, riding out the raging wind and surging crests of waves in solitude; no one else was stupid enough to be outside. They probably had better sense.
And better grades.
Sure, I knew the seas were especially rough of late. I’d heard the crew had initiated the stabilizers, and I’d certainly sat through all the lectures on safety at sea, but that short time spent topside—facing down the wildly rising and dipping horizon as though it were some charging enemy combatant I refused to surrender to—did my soul considerable good.
Unfortunately the renewed equilibrium of emotion I felt was a bubble about to burst.
That’s because when I went back inside I happened across a new posting: an announcement for a new daytrip being offered to interested students—to Iran.
Too excited to read the notice all the way through, I hurried off to see the dean about signing up as the notice instructed.
When you have a crush on someone (see part 4) the last thing you want is to appear foolish in front of them, but Dean Tymitz was highly amused by my inquiry; I was the only student who’d been gullible enough to believe his posting. It’d been a joke.
Embarrassed, I was in no mood to attend the “Ugly American” party being held in the Student Union just then, a party hosted by my Sea (see part 6). Seas were designated groups similar to dorm floors on a land-based campus, each one assigned an R.A. (resident assistant).
Back in part six I hadn’t been able to recall or find a reference to our Sea’s name, but it’s mentioned in my journal on that day, and I’m sure it felt apropos when I wrote it: Indecen-Sea.
I wound up outside the cafeteria instead, where I encountered my friend, Linda Lane, and we fell into conversation.
I didn’t hear someone approach from behind, so imagine my surprise when suddenly my braids were yanked, my sweatshirt hood shoved over my head, and I was gathered in a headlock, someone’s elbow cinching my neck.
I didn’t know who was holding me till a mirthful voice announced, “This kid wants a date with the Ayatollah!”
Dean Tymitz.
Really? At least he spared me the noogie. Was I supposed to be grateful?
A rush of conflicting emotions poured over me. I had a major crush on the guy, and he’d just taken me in his arms—kinda. And I knew he’d meant it playfully but also knew it’d been totally inappropriate. I mean, he wasn’t my wrestling coach, right?
Still, I couldn’t figure out if I should feel titillated or angry—on top of feeling like a dumbass.
Deeply embarrassed by the whole miserable thing, I was glad only Linda had been there to witness it.
My journal picks up next in the wee hours of Friday, February 23rd, at 3:55 AM.
Having sought refuge from all the pre-port hubbub, I’d sequestered myself in Classroom 8 out on the Prom Deck along with a supply of Oreo cookies and Tab soda. The muted voices of a few leftover partiers back in the Student Union still reached me—diehard celebrants welcoming our impending arrival at Kobe, Japan.
Docking was scheduled for 7:00 AM.
The 21st must have been fairly uneventful, since I write nothing about it other than to mention the movie that evening had been The Orient Express (and that the one on the 20th had been Meet Me In Saint Louis). Of the 22nd , however, I had much to say.
After my usual morning routine of breakfast and library, I finished reading The Elephant Man and Chūshingura before getting a dismal 83% on that Geology test. Then we apparently had wine in Theatre class, though I can’t imagine why that would have been, and I don’t elaborate.
Odd.
In Music we saw a movie on Chinese Opera, in Psych the prof merely “gabbed” the whole time, “and in Sex,” (as I’d come to refer to my Women’s Studies course, Sex Roles and Stratification) I wrote, “we were given our take-home test instructions.”
I can just hear that jackhole ER staffer, Dr. Wannabe, had he gotten a gander at that! Take-home test instructions handed out in her Sex class? Get an ultrasound tech in here, stat!
At some point Lucy and I asked our Geology prof, Dr. Novotny, if we could treat him to dinner in an upcoming port, and plans were made for an evening meal on Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak. It was pretty much the only good thing that happened that day.
I studied from 5-7 in the library, where I’m sure I was the only student present, then sought out Linda for another chat—this one not interrupted by noogie-noggined college deans.
“I like Linda so much,” I wrote in my journal, “but she always seems so sad & on the verge of confiding something secret in you. She’s so nice & she’s intelligent & gentle & fun to be with.”
Linda isn’t someone I stayed in touch with after the voyage, and I’m sad for that. Through the passing years I’ve often wondered how she was. Lucy was the one I stayed in touch with the longest; we crossed the country multiple times to visit one another, and she even made it to Pennsylvania for my wedding.
Now, though, we’ve lost touch; I’d love to find her, but it doesn’t help that I can’t recall her married name!
That evening an “in-port tips” session was held at 8:00 in the Student Union, of which I remarked, “Tymitz was as cute as ever,” so I guess I settled for titillation and set the anger aside.
During the session there were standard pre-port ceremonies like the “passing of the baton” and the awarding of the Egor the Ugly Frog statue, (aka The Dum-Dum Award). That night it went to a student who’d forgotten to turn in his ID badge back in Honolulu prior to departure; a large portion of the staff had combed Hawaii for him lest he be left behind, but he’d merely fallen fast asleep in his bunk, his ID badge still around his neck.
The Leisure & Society class closed by leading everyone in a song called “Brothers Around the World” as the Japanese cultural guests, Reikko and Myko—who’d enlightened and entertained us the last ten days—were feted with gifts and standing ovations.
After the in-port tips session was a debut: the first annual SAS (Semester At Sea) Gong Show.
In need of lightening my mood, I stayed, hoping to be entertained, and wasn’t disappointed.
The student Emcee did a rendition of Steve Martin’s King Tut and everyone loved it. Later he was a Conehead from SNL At one point he came out wearing an umbrella on his head and proceeded to pour a can of beer down his shorts.
I have to wonder now how many beers he poured down his gullet first.
There was a Gladys Knight and the Pips act (it got gonged), a clever “slide show” act done with live tableaux, the stand-up comedy stylings of the teacher who led the Leisure & Society class, and something called “Right on Target,” which I think was presented as a humorous news broadcast (think Chevy Chase on SNL) that covered everything controversial going on aboard the ship.
The news act even came complete with its own hilarious “commercial” for American Express.
The commercial featured a pair of students who parodied the Fantasy Island characters, Mr. Roarke (actor Ricardo Montalbán) and Tattoo (actor Hervé Villechaize), who turn away our other dean, Mr. Stevens, for having the wrong credit card. A third student impersonated actor Carl Malden (The Streets of San Francisco), who narrated those American Express commercials.
Some of the “news” that was covered in “Right on Target” included a cheeky takedown of Mr. Diamond, the Psych prof, for not actually being married to the woman who came along on the voyage as his “wife,” as well as a takedown of some dude named Janis I’ve no recollection of, but who was apparently known widely for having tried to bed just about everything in a skirt since embarkation day. I don’t recall if he was student or staff.
The final event for the Gong Show was none other than Dean Tymitz, who emerged in a stunning full Chinese Opera costume and performed a traditional dance. It was spectacular.
Afterwards Lucy and I—out to hunt down some cans of Tab—ran into a very upset Linda; her roommate had thrown her a “birthday party” that left their room trashed: chips, smooshed cake, and spilled booze everywhere. We decided to reconvene in the quiet of the Mandarin Lounge to study, but before long Mr. Wilcox (the Theatre prof) showed up.
We persuaded him to pop some popcorn in his air popper, and we all retreated to the privacy of the faculty lounge to enjoy it with fresh cups of coffee. Dr. Ehlers was there, and she joined us, making for a nice visit and chat with faculty before returning to my books at midnight.
I studied two hours before heading off to Classroom 8 to write in my journal.
From the sounds of it, I must’ve planned to just stay up all night, since the coast of Japan was already in sight.
I could do things like that all those years ago without so much as batting an eyelash—pull all-nighters studying, then energetically explore a new country as though sleep were an inconvenient option.
Of course, the coffee at midnight might’ve had something to do with it too.
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Thank you for visiting with me on another Monday morning (or whenever you’re reading this). I know I promised Japan this week, but I’m afraid this post unexpectedly turned into an essay I should’ve titled My Moments in Mental Health History.
My apologies.
Hopefully next week we’ll be onto recalling misadventures in The Land of the Rising Sun.
Meanwhile, I hope you’ll do one of three things for me:
1. Consider buying a copy of my #kidlit #adventure, Shay the Brave, and donating it to your public library or to one of your local school district libraries; or
2. Check out these contests I’m currently running and consider entering one; or
3. Share some of my social media (I’m on Facebook, Insta, Twitter, and—of course— substack).