Anyways those who know me will know I am a big flaming homosexual, and my experience of being such while working at sea is somewhat dramatic to say the least.
Okay, now depending on your rank, you are likely to have a room mate who you share pretty much everything with. Now I've had both gay, and straight room mates and I've never had a really bad experience with a roomie with regards to my being gay, i think if your going to work on a ship your automatically the sort of person who is fairly open minded so usually the gay thing isn't a problem. However, I find that having a straight room mate is far easier, a straight roomie will go out of his way to make sure I know that he doesn't have an issue with it. They tend to be more careful about bringing a girl back, they're not bitchy about silly little things in the cabin i.e mess or leaving the bathroom light on. Generally I've gotten on better with a straight room mate. This is because, with a gay room mate it feels like you are in constant competition with them. The ratio of gay to straight men on board doesn't exactly swing in my favour so there is a natural competition for the attention of guys. Jealousy becomes an issue, meaning bringing someone back to the cabin is of course out of the question. Now I don't mean to pigeon hole my people but the gays tend to be bitchier than the heterosexuals, so when two are sharing a room and a bathroom it gets horribly dramatic. The stupid little things keep coming up, with little remarks and comments until one day theres a massive argument and you end up having to move down to deck 3 because you can't stand to look at him.
Working in the entertainment department as you can imagine is a hell of a lot easier for the gay man. Again I don't like to pigeon hole but there are an awful lot of us in the industry. In the scheme of things I haven't been doing this for long but I can say, that while I've been in the entertainment side of things I haven't had a straight male boss which I'm not going to lie, did make me more comfortable at first. However, for whatever reason, I have ended up very often being the only gay on the team. The bosses are usually big flamers but I've seen more straight guys than ever in the 'lower ranks' of the department than gay. Maybe that's because gays tend to get promoted faster, maybe we live in an increasingly open minded world and more straight guys are applying for the job, I don't know, but there you have it.
Pic 1 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas. It's a hard life...
Now the gay scene on board is actually, pretty fantastic! The company of course has a discrimination policy and an on board human resources manager so even the tiniest hint of homophobic behaviour and that person is on the next flight home. Which is great. It leaves you totally free to be who you are. However, obviously there are a huge amount of nationalities that work on board, and some of these nations are more accepting than others. They know what the rules are and so never actually express their views, but certain cultures tend to keep to themselves. I wont say where these people are from, but there's more than one group that do this. They generally won't interact with people who are not from their own country. This is still a minority but it does happen. Now within these groups guys tend to be less comfortable being themselves as obviously, the culture of their people doesn't accept it as much. But these few individuals then find their place amongst everyone else and then its all good. I've never seen any extreme homophobia on board, another reason why I love my job! I can even DJ in the crew bar, dressed in drag as dolly parton and didn't even get a second glance, its completely the norm. As I said earlier, attitudes on board are extremely open minded across all departments, so the social atmosphere is extremely good fun!
Pic 2 - The infamous DJ Dolly from the crew's 'Diva Party'
Pic 3 - Hat party from my first contract, no idea who the guy is.......but i blanked his face just in case.
You see what I mean! FUN!
Finally, obviously cruise ships travel. You're usually in a different country every day, and of course some of these countries are less liberal than others. So, you do sometimes need to be careful depending on where in the world you are. For example, I wouldn't walk down the street in Columbia holding a guys hand or Ii might not make it back to the ship alive. One story is from somewhere in the Caribbean (I don't remember which island) I was out browsing the market stalls and I came across a little wicker hand bag which I thought my sister would like, I was with a friend and I made a joke about how if I bought it everyone would know I was gay. The woman behind the stall gave me such a look it made me step back, she then started hounding me saying things like 'god made 1 man and 1 woman in the beggining' and 'do I think that's a good way to live' I just told her that I thought it was a fantastic way to live and went on my way. Not particularly violent but uncomfortable none the less. Now this is just some countries, obviously if your cruising the USA or Canada your not going to have that problem.Pic 4 -Cartagena, Columbia. Cannon straddling.
So that's it for today, a little slice of gay life for you. I'm still waiting at the moment, I've got my contract through but just waiting for joining instructions and then I'm heading off to Australia!!! 3 weeks and counting!
ta ta!
xxx
