Tableaus of Life at Sea

Heaven is packed with people.

Wall to wall, bodies wag and twist on the dark warehouse floor. Pink and green lights pass over bare shoulders and necks and half empty drinks. Familiar pop vocals and EDM beat drops giddy the room. Hips do figure eights. Cracked voices add shouts and cat calls to the room roar.

A stage is set at the front of the throng with a floor-to-ceiling pole and a line of drag queens in chairs.

Heaven is a gay bar. A long time London staple with a maze of rooms. Open until 6am. Cover on a Thursday night is 3£. The beer is cold and the shots are warm. We have found our way to a balcony bar above the main crowd. The stage feels 100 feet away, but our view is decent, and TVs mounted to the ramped ceiling above us play the events in real time.

Porn Idol is about to start.

It is Porn Idol that has packed the main room on a Thursday night—well, technically it’s a Friday morning. Contestants of Porn Idol have exactly two minutes to dance and striptease for the crowd, but they must be completely naked by the end of the two minutes, or they’re disqualified. It is unclear whether they have a say in what song they get naked to. Afterward, they stay 95% naked as three judges in drag take turns making savage comments on their act. The queens write a monetary offering on a card and the contestant guesses who has offered them the most prize money, which they get to take home. Most of the competitors are college kids, hungry-looking and pasty. They are offered 5 to 50 quid based on how enthusiastic and “snackable” the judges find them. A final winner out of all the contestants is chosen by audience applause. I’m not sure how much the final winner receives because the tequila has kicked in at that point, and I’m less invested because my friend has woven his way through the massive crowd only to miss, by a hair, being cast as the wildcard Porn Idol entry. He is a spin class teacher with a ballet degree. We both know he would have brought the whole of London to its knees.

They must not be ready for him on this fateful Friday morn, we silently agree.

Still, it might be the best 3 quid we’ve ever spent.

24 hours ag0, we were still confined to the ship. To KN95 masks everywhere, to socially distanced meals and drills. The crew bar was closed. The windowless crew gym was accessible for two hour slots each day, after which it had to be thoroughly sanitized and fogged from the top down.

We held an endless “working quarantine” status, meaning we could only leave our cabins to work and eat. We could also walk along the top decks.

Sometimes I forgot to go outside for a day or two, caught in the habitual fog of work, sleep and meals. When I remembered, I’d step into the breeze of an outer deck and the whole world would open up. “The sky exists!” I would remember, “and birds, and wind!” I’d pinch plant leaves with my fingertips and whistle to the waves.

After six weeks of ship slog with the occasional bird sighting, the bigwigs announced they would be opening up shore leave. They didn’t give a date, so I assumed our freedom would be decreed on some distant horizon. The end of March seemed like a reasonable guess. The next morning, in Tillbury, UK, a rumor flew through the ship like a static charge. “People are saying we can just get off today. No restrictions.”

I gazed through the glass at the little seaside town. Seemed as good a place as any to trod solid earth. There was already talk of a neighborhood pub in walking distance…The World’s End, just like the Simon Pegg movie. I could already see fellow crew members waiting on a street corner. For an Uber, probably. Or a bus.

I remained skeptical. It couldn’t be that easy to just grant leave after all those days of lockdown. The weeks and weeks of hurried meals and starchy masks scratching the bridge of my nose. Besides, I had a full day of work ahead, a rehearsal until 930pm.

Over pizza on an abandoned patio at 7pm, my friend (the spin instructor, who is also the ship Foodie) realized we were 40 minutes outside of London. Our ship was docked for two nights. The pub at the end of the road was eclipsed by a night in London. Within a half hour, he had booked a hotel in SoHo and I was frantically packing a bag. We sat on our hands in rehearsal, counting down the minutes. A third friend was scooped into the Uber. Our plan was mainly to drink champagne in the hotel room (and maybe take a bath). A fourth friend told us about Porn Idol.

Now, with a gaggle of gays, I drink a beer and munch a Brazilian guy’s pistachios while several Brits get naked for a crowd of hundreds. I haven’t been to a bar since before the world ended. It reminds me of Thursday nights in my early 20's in the Vancouver gayborhood. Shower Power at the Odyssey Night Club. Dudes would strip and do pull-ups in real glass shower pods above the crowd.

I remember the Odyssey has been closed for a decade, and also that I am technically old now. I also take the tequila like a champ, so perhaps I am actually the perfect age.

Later, I will take a bath in a real tub and regale my boyfriend across the sea with stories through my phone screen. I’ll pass out on a hotel bed, only to be stirred by three tired boys and a warm McDonald’s mozzarella stick around 430am. (No that's not sexual code for anything. It was a real cheese stick and it left a classic fried-corn taste in my mouth). The following afternoon, I will traverse the streets of SoHo for coffee and bao buns, before heading back on the tube to Tillbury.

For now though, I’m in a dark and sweaty Heaven, watching English dicks swing around to commemorate my first day of freedom.

Definitely worth the 3 quid.