Love Boat: The Masquerade

     June 1978. A blind woman sits naked and alone in her cabin, playing solitaire with Braille playing cards. She dreams of coaching in the NFL.
     Identical twins fight over who gets to leave the room and who has to stay; they have only purchased one ticket.
     Two frat boys, hulking and privileged, wrestle in the large, Howard Taft sized bathtub of their honeymoon suit. Upperclassmen watch this homoerotic baptism into the world of their fathers with saliva trickling from their lusty maws.
     In the Coral Dining room, The Masquerade is raging and I am on a mission to find her. I pass an older gentleman dressed as Davey Crocket. He extends his hand to a seated lady, “How do you do? I’m Frank Rustler of Rustler Jeans.”
     At another table someone says, “We get our whole supply from Annabelle Fournier’s Slaughterhouse.”
     In the corner, Stubing looks smug.
     Through a jungle of embarrassed husbands and witty wives I see her, the cruise director.
     We dance and I do not regret quitting Mossad.
     “What do you think?” she says.
     “That you are everything I want to wrap myself in until I die.”