Cruisin'

By Nick B
(C) 2007

Kim Heasman won the trip of a lifetime in a competition and everything looked like it was going to be plain sailing, but things don't always go according to plan do they?

Thanks Kris for giving this the once over - as usual, another stirling job...

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Chapter 1

I still don’t believe it happened.

You see I won this trip, well cruise - in a competition; one of those: “your name has automatically been entered into our grand holiday prize draw. You could be sailing off on a luxury cruise to New York...” I dutifully ignored this, like you do. I mean, no-one ever actually wins, do they?

Well now I know.

They do.

I did, though when you get to hear what happened with my luggage, I’m sure you’ll agree that ‘win’ might not have been the correct term.

There I was, looking forward to a luxury cruise on a luxury liner called the Paradise. As I walked across from the car park to check in I could see out onto the pier where she was berthed. She was huge, perhaps bigger than any hotel I’d seen, but then I live on the south coast of England and nothing’s particularly huge or grand there.

I was collared by a smarmy looking bloke in a cheap suit who stood with another bloke who was holding a camera and looking bored.

“Mr. Heasman?” he called. I went to him. “Judd Nelson.” He was a representative of the company that ran the competition and he stuck his hand out to shake mine - very limply.

“We just want a snap before you go — for advertising you understand. It's all explained in the conditions.”

“Oh. Ok, no problem.”

“Just one thing.” he said. “I think it would be much better to see you in more ‘holiday’ oriented clothing.” I didn’t think that was a problem either, so I took my suitcase to the lavatories, changed into Bermuda shorts, beach shoes, a gaudy Hawaiian shirt and went back for the snapshot.

They were calling to board by the time they’d finished and I didn’t know which way to turn.

“It’s that way.” said Judd.

“What about my bags?” I asked, flustered.

“We’ll sort those out.” he assured me. “Now go on, go have fun.”

I strolled up the gangplank and onto the deck, shaking hands with one of the officers as he said “Welcome to the Paradise. I hope you enjoy your trip.”

Sounded good and the butterflies in my stomach told me that even though I had always viewed these cruises as “not my scene”, I was definitely excited by the prospect of three weeks sailing across the Atlantic - all inclusive. Well mostly.

I went to one of the many bars and enjoyed a few drinks after talking to a gentleman and his wife who, by their own admission, were “old hands” at this cruising. It apparently always took a while for the cases to be sorted and delivered to the cabins so I stayed with them, enjoyed their hospitality, bought some drinks and then went off to find my cabin.

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I followed directions that seemed to take me further and further down into the bowels of the ship and when I finally found the door to my cabin, I expected to see the prop shaft twirling away through the middle of it. There were no windows that far down, but I figured, how much time would I be spending there anyway? However, there were no suitcases, no sports bag — no luggage at all.

All that I possessed was what I was stood up in and the small bag I carried over my shoulder that held my camera, documents and money. With just one pair of Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of sandals, how was I expected to last the trip?

Panic!

If being in the murky depths of the ships hull wasn’t bad enough, I now found I had no clothing either. I asked for the crew’s help in locating my lost baggage, but all they could do was tell me to wait. It had probably been delivered to the wrong cabin.

Still it wasn’t so bad I thought. I have three weeks of lounging around on deck, playing quoits or anything else they have to offer — provided I could afford it and well, aside from the location of the cabin I was still excited.

That was until I heard the engines start. I thought the baggage was a bad start, but the throbbing that was thundering through this tiny little cabin was almost too much (to even hear yourself think). I wondered just how I was going to sleep. It was like sitting inside a giant vibrator and I don’t mean one of those slender things that ladies use (or so I’m told), I mean the sort that gets the air out of concrete. I stood it for about ten minutes before I just had to get out of there and went up on deck, just in time to see Southampton slowly disappearing.

Momentarily, I forgot all about the lost luggage, the orthopaedic vibrating cabin and got into feeling the wind in my hair, the feeling of salt spray on my face and looked forward to the cruise.

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Later and feeling slightly cold, I went to see if anything had transpired about finding my stuff. They had no knowledge of my baggage and this made me angry. The officer to whom I was speaking took it all rather well I thought.

“Look, leave it with me, Mr. Heasman.” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

It sounded promising, though I suspected that I was shouting at the wrong person and he just wanted to get me out of his hair. I went back to my cabin and sat on the bed, the sound of the throbbing engine making more noise than I could cope with and I ended up in a bar, sipping beer well into the early hours.

I staggered from there and the thought of the noise in my cabin just turned me right off. I had to find somewhere else to sleep that wasn’t freezing and to that end, I found a quiet corner of a lounge and fell asleep there.

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I was woken at heaven alone knows what time. I do know I woke up feeling stiff, uncomfortable and like I hadn’t slept a wink all night. I smiled a bit sheepishly at the porter who was trying to rearrange everything for the morning’s onslaught and went out on deck.

It was cold, overcast and I wondered what I was going to do with the rest of the day. That compounded with the thought of having nothing clean or more appropriate, wasn’t the most auspicious of starts to another day on Paradise.

“Still,” I thought, trying to take a positive tack. “One thing at a time.”

Breakfast and dinner were part of the deal and I went to see what time breakfast/ s would be served, especially since I hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

I looked rumpled and attracted a fair number of stares as I sat, savouring the fried eggs, bacon and sausage. I had four pieces of toast and told them to keep the tea coming. The result was one happy camper, or cruiser in this case.

The orange juice in the lap was something I hadn’t bargained for.

I jumped up and saw a child of about six just about ready to bawl, holding an empty glass, followed swiftly by his or her (it’s difficult to tell) mother.

“I’m so sorry.” she said, swiping up a napkin from the table and reaching out to dab the offending liquid from my shorts. I darted backwards out of her way, just before her napkin brandishing hand made contact with my nether regions, slipped and wound up sitting in four pancakes covered in liberal quantities of maple syrup.

The ensuing madness gave rise to some pretty heated exchanges between the mother, her now screaming child and the pancake owner's mother too. I got out just as things were starting to turn nasty, the pancakes still dropping from my sticky posterior as I entered my cabin.

This really wasn’t turning out as planned at all.

I looked down at my yellow-stained shorts and as it turned out, stained shirt too. I had to get out of these things and immediately went to the basin to try and rinse them out.

With the dripping items hanging from the shower rail, I sat on the bed and waited for them to dry, the thrumming of the engine rattling my brain.

Ten minutes later and it was quite obvious that waiting until things were dry was going to drive me insane, so I looked around the cabin for something to do. I fiddled with my camera for a while, but about forty-five seconds later, I tossed it onto the bed and looked around for something else.

I spotted a leaflet and picked that up. Inside, it gave all the on-board phone numbers. My eyes rested on “Radio Paradise” and a thought came to me.

I picked up the phone and it was answered by a bright sounding woman, well girl really I think and I asked her to put a message out for anyone with any spare clothes to drop them at my cabin. I described myself and my predicament, told her my name, my height — five eight, my weight 120 pounds, shoe size - seven and thanked her. I didn’t know whether it would have any effect whatsoever, sighed deeply and went to lie down on the bed.

I was pretty knackered after last night’s escapade and what amounted to about two hours fitful sleep and I dozed off despite the constant thrumming of the engine.

I awoke several hours later feeling better than I had and wondered what effect the call to Radio Paradise had had. I went to the door and opened it.

Outside were little piles of clothes and my heart jumped.

“At last!” I exclaimed, grabbing the clothes before anyone saw me, which was silly since I didn’t think anyone went that far down into the ship unless they’d been bad.

I dumped the clothes onto the bed and started to sift through them. There was a lot more there than I thought and as I started going through them, my smile turned to a frown.

Every item was for a girl.

I suppose you could call the t-shirts unisex, but most of those were in pastel colours and the majority had some sort of slogan on them that sort of pointed to there being a girl on the inside.

There were shorts, even shorter shorts and skirts; panties — new — I hasten to add and even shoes — some were heels, some flats and even a pair of Nike trainers. In a bag that accompanied all this were new pairs of panties in a packet, tights and stockings and a couple of bikinis. My heart couldn’t take this. With the thought of my own missing stuff was the thought that I was banished to the cabin, since there was no way I was going out in this stuff.

I sat back down on the bed, my head in my hands and was nearly in tears. I considered that although this wasn’t the best of times to be having, as soon as my own stuff was dry, I could then go back out, but for the moment, here I was on what was supposed to be a luxury cruise and wasn’t even able to go outside.

There was a knock at the door.

“I’m looking for Kim.” said the brunette outside, holding another two bags, presumably with more clothes in.

“I am he.” I said, trying to keep my naked body from her view.

“He? Well where’s the girl who needed the clothes?”

“Can you hang on just a moment please?” I asked, closed the door and went and grabbed the towel from next to the shower. It wasn’t that big, but it covered most of what I didn’t want showing. I invited the woman in.

I guess she must have been in her early thirties at a push and she looked around the cabin disdainfully. I stood holding the towel around me, clasped together at the back.

“I think there’s been a big misunderstanding.” I said.

“Oh? How so?” she asked.

“Well, I am the one who wanted the clothes. My name’s Kim Heasman and I’m here because I won the trip in a competition.” I said and went on to explain what had happened.

“You really are in the shit aren’t you?” she asked.

“Gee thanks.”

“Well you are, aren’t you?” she said. “But I think I can help.”

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“No way!!” I almost yelled. I wasn’t worried about being heard yelling. The noise from the engines was so loud that I figured that anyone who wasn’t deaf before they entered one of these lower cabins would be by the time they left it.

“Come on, it’ll be fine.” she said. I was resolute. The answer was “no, not on your life”.

“Look, the first point is that you’re not in a position not to. You can’t stay in here for the entire cruise, you’ll go deaf and secondly, what have you got to lose?”

“My self respect?” I asked. She shook her head.

“I think that went in the breakfast room this morning.” She said, observing my still dripping clothes.

“But I’m not a girl.”

“No-one needs to know that.”

“It’s not going to work.” I said, though the conviction was leaking away faster than I could plug the gaps.

“It’s going to work fine. Now put these on, grab the rest of the stuff and come with me.”

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I don’t think I can adequately describe what a fool I felt going from my cabin to hers and no, I didn’t know her name yet either.

I had on a yellow t-shirt with some slogan or another that was only marginally less embarrassing than “My Little Pony” in multicoloured glitter, some pale blue shorts with a pair of the panties underneath and my new Nike’s. I couldn’t look at anyone, not that there was much to see of me behind all the clothing I was carrying, but I was so relieved when we finally made it to her cabin.

That was an understatement too — cabin. It made the thing I came out of feel like a bloody broom cupboard. Hers had rooms in it.

It had windows too.

“Right, there’s no time to waste, get those off and go in the bathroom.”

“Er, just a minute. What’s your name?”

“Didn’t I say? It’s Donna. Donna Elliot. Now scoot!”

I went into her bathroom, itself bigger than my cabin and through the door, she shouted “Use the Nair.” and then it went quiet.

“Nair?” I said to myself. “What the hell’s Nair?”

A bottle on a shelf answered that one.

“Don’t forget to do under your arms and make sure you get right up to the crotch, in fact, just smear it on liberally all over.” she shouted through the door again. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Hair remover?” I thought as I looked at the innocent looking bottle in my hand. “What on earth?”

Suddenly, Donna’s plan seemed far too real, far too much for someone like me. I didn’t want all this, I just wanted to enjoy the cruise and having got this far, I didn’t see why I should go to such great lengths to see it through to wherever it ended.

I sat down on the toilet and worried; the Nair bottle still in my hands and not a trace of it on me. I had had nothing but weird since I started this and far more than I thought right for one person.

“You alright in there?”

“I can’t do this. I’m really sorry, you’ve all put yourselves out, but I can’t do this.”

“Course you can. Look I’ve brought help. If these people can’t put you right then no-one can.” she said. There was the muffled sound of assent from behind the door. “Look, I’ll help if it’ll make it easier.”

“Er, no thanks. I think I can do it.”

“Attaboy!”

Twenty minutes and a shower later, I emerged completely devoid of what little bodily hair I had. It felt weird. I had been waiting so long for that hair to grow, because as slight as I was, I thought it made me more manly, now all of that had gone; washed down the drain with the rest of that foul stuff.

Wrapping a towel around me, I stepped out of the bathroom and it was like one of those old westerns where someone walks into the saloon and everything stops. I stepped into the main room and everyone stopped and stared at me as I changed colour to something that neared purple.

“There we are. Didn’t hurt, did it?”

“Well it stung a bit, but no, I suppose not.” I said in a small voice.

“She’s even more perfect than you let on.” said one of the assembled ladies.

“Who you calling she?” I asked, my hackles rising. Donna laid a hand on my shoulder and shook her head at the woman, whose name was Margaret and she quietened down almost immediately.

“So who’s going first?” asked Donna, retaking command of the situation as I cowered just behind her.

I think the rest of the afternoon went past and I never saw anything other than the five ladies I was ensconced with. They started on my head and worked their way down to the tips of my toes and by the time they had finished, barring the makeup, which I wasn’t looking forward to, I had false boobs, smooth skin (my fault), bright red nails on my hands and feet, a new hairdo — which they wouldn’t let me see until I was dressed and made up and a new feeling of dread.

Half an hour later, I was dressed and made up. The lipstick tasted strange, but not unpleasant, just strange, but the strangest thing of all was my perception of myself and how it took a matter of seconds before I recognised that the girl in the mirror wasn’t a girl at all, but me.

“What do you think?” asked Donna as the other four ladies were busy congratulating one another.

“I-I don’t know w-w-what to say.” I replied, my voice once again very small and timid. “Is that really me?”

“Damned right honey!” said Margaret to hoots of laughter from the others. I tried to smile, but succeeded only in turning red again. I was getting very good at that.

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To be continued...