Sage Tyrtle
On November 6 we went to the open mic at Harvey Milk’s Bookshelf. The store was festooned with glittering streamers for the celebration everyone thought was coming but now our voices were an elegy. A mourning. Eagle got up and started to read a poem, then put her phone in her pocket. She said she was buying a gun. AJ and I looked at each other and all I could think was how Eagle and I had marched together after Apalachee and behind the microphone Eagle said isn’t a gun for when you don’t feel safe? Well, she said, I don’t feel safe.
After the open mic AJ and I went home and turned off the light and lay in bed. We stared at the ceiling for hours and whispered our terrors into the dark and watched them float upwards. When there were too many to bear, I fetched the laptop and we poured our savings into a four year cruise. Typing with frantic fingers before our morning selves could stop us.
The decimated remains of my anti-vax family were throwing election parties while AJ’s sisters attended Green Party meetings and called us traitors to our country. So it was only our friends at the goodbye potluck (we forgot to email Eagle, and it was probably an accident) and Lisa brought a rainbow cake but there was something wrong with the icing and the colors melted into one another, making a dark green mess. We all would have laughed, another day.
When people started to head home everyone asked where AJ was and I pretended I didn’t know, but I did. They were sitting in the oak tree in our backyard. They said they didn’t like goodbyes, but I suspected they were terrified of being seen crying. I hugged everyone once, then twice, we all swore we’d post to the group chat every day. Gertie whispered that she didn’t want us to go and we stood in the too-warm November dark with our foreheads touching until Lisa threatened to make us eat the rest of the gloppy cake.
A week later AJ drove us through three states and across California to the docks. The ship stretched above us, a sideways high rise. Every window and water slide casting a nimbus of light into the dark sky. We pulled our two small suitcases to the end of the ticket line, nudging each other every time we saw another queer couple. We stood in the doorway of our cabin and looked at the moon reflected in the water. AJ said the view was amazing and I said the desk space was ample, and neither of us talked about how we’d traded a three bedroom ranch for three hundred square feet. Besides. It was nonrefundable.
The ship ambled around the coast of South America and we disembarked at every opportunity, learning fast to avoid the Libertarians who kept getting heat stroke from wearing suits and pantyhose regardless of the temperature. We joined a cadre of queer couples and muddled along with our high school Spanish. At first I checked the group chat all the time, but Gertie and Ann were sharing protest march info and Lisa was talking about the second hand van she’d found on Facebook Marketplace so she could drive women to Planned Parenthood and no one had heard from Eagle for weeks and I looked at the photo I’d just posted of AJ wading in turquoise water and deleted it.
In Peru, Sunita and her wife with the very long hair tried guinea pig with us, which tasted kind of like rabbit. But even the tiny fishing villages had flat screen TVs mounted on the walls, forever tuned to the news. So it didn’t matter that we hadn’t checked the news sites since the cruise began. The country we’d left was ever present.
So instead we sat by the salt water pool and read the books we’d been meaning to read. We ate braised duck in the dining hall and currywurst on the Street Level, which was open to the sky and had streetlights and real trees. One day when I’d stayed in our cabin with cramps, watching lion cubs learning to wash themselves and wild dogs hunting an ostrich, AJ came home blushing. They said they’d gone to an improv workshop and accidentally joined the ship’s improv troupe after the teacher saw how funny they were. I kissed them and said I wasn’t surprised. I brushed up on my childhood ice skating skills and AJ swore they saw Holly Near eating churros on Deck 8. On a night with no moon we stumbled across a secret crew get-together, a space on the top deck where they’d turned off the lights. We could see the Milky Way like a sparkling scar across the sky.
The second year I managed a clumsy single axel and was hailed as Tara Lipinsky for weeks. After the Marias told us we couldn’t miss the SkyBike, AJ and I went to the top of the ship and mounted the bikes, which looked like they’d been stolen from the set of Tron. AJ started off first and soon they were far ahead. The track was wider than the ship, and when I looked straight down all I could see was the white toothpaste wake below. The little speaker on the bike buzzed and the attendant said there were others waiting and that I had to keep pedalling. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped. AJ didn’t go again, but I started riding the SkyBike in the early mornings when no one else was awake. Hovering over the water. Listening to the brightening sky.
In November we docked at Miami. I checked the group chat for the first time in months to let everyone know and the last post was from Gertie, saying she was planting bulbs in preparation for spring. AJ said maybe they’d started another chat without us. I typed Hey! Where did everybody go? and deleted it, and typed it, and deleted it. AJ had to renew their passport so we made ourselves disembark. After so long at sea our legs were wobbly and we clutched at each other like new born colts, giggling. We booked a Waymo and told it to drive us to the passport agency. When we got out of the car there was an awful smell like burnt hair. AJ dug through their pack for the package of N95 masks they’d packed just in case. But neither of us moved to put ours on. I’m scared, I said. AJ nodded. They put the masks back in their pack and we went inside.
On the way back as we got closer to the dock there were protesters on the sidewalks, and then protesters in the streets. All of them facing the ship. AJ wondered if it was about some new, horrible law, but then we saw a sign. TRAITORS. And another, COWARDS. As the car crawled through the clogged streets we could hear them chanting OSTRICHES! GO! HOME! I grabbed for AJ’s hand. What do they mean by home, they asked, and I couldn’t think of an answer. The car kept starting and stopping, so many times that a human called on the car speaker to make sure it wasn’t malfunctioning. After another ten minutes we gave up on the car and got out. The smell was so bad now that I wished we’d been brave enough to wear the masks. We bulled our way through the crowd, heads down. I gripped AJ’s pack and kept hold of it as we were jostled through, the smell of burnt hair and sweat and fury choking me. What’s wrong with you, said a man with a bushy beard. Why aren’t you chanting, and AJ put their arm around me, started moving faster. When we came up on an empty alley I ran in and threw up next to a dumpster. AJ gave me travel Kleenex and I wiped my mouth.
On the ship we ate dinner at the Cafe Parisian on the Street Level as the ship swept us back into the Atlantic. We ate hazelnut meringues with grated Parmesan on top and all we could smell was salt water and sugar and cheese. AJ said you know that photo of me at Disney World. and I nodded. They are in a flouncy pink dress. They have a bowl cut. Behind them, their sisters and parents are beaming. AJ said it was one of those week long family deals. That even though the kids were in their own hotel room, they could hear their parents screaming at each other in the room next door for hours. What if this is Disney World, they said. I gestured to the meringues, the ocean, I said, if the options are this or Miami, I pick this. AJ rubbed their eyes.
As we headed toward Lisbon, AJ learned a new format with their improv group. Sometimes on the SkyBike I couldn’t remember how long I’d been riding over the blue, under the blue. How long we’d been on the ship. During meals in the Grand Concourse everyone was complaining about spotty phone service. One of the Marias said it had taken a week for an email from her son to get through. By April there was no phone service at all and the crew promised, promised it would be back soon. But when we docked at Lisbon there had been no service for over a week. We walked down the empty sidewalks and found a payphone outside of a small grocery store. AJ called their sisters and got a disconnected recording. For both numbers. We tried Lisa, and Gertie, and everyone else and we’re sorry, this phone number has been disconnected and finally I called Eagle but a man with a gruff voice answered and I hung up.
In our cabin we lay on the bed and cried. It wasn’t until the ship had already left the dock that we thought of calling the police, of wellness checks. But phone service didn’t come back. The ship didn’t stop at Angola, or Oman, and the crew said they didn’t know why. When the ship finally docked at Sri Lanka we left our cabin, armed with water bottles and protein bars. We were going to find a phone. On the boarding ramp we could hear far away screams and intermittent pops. Firecrackers, I said. A parade, said AJ. But we went back to our cabin, closed the windows, turned on the air conditioning. Told each other the disconnected numbers were probably just part of the phone troubles everyone was having.
At sea again the improv troupe disbanded because three of the members had gotten off at Sri Lanka and never come back. They were adventurous types, said AJ, in the dark, at three o’clock in the morning. I’m sure… it’s probably…
We tried being drunk for the month of July. It didn’t help.
On a day when our temperature gauge said 73F inside and 104F outside we lounged in bed, eating the rest of the chocolate cake we’d ordered for breakfast. We were watching the X-Files. The ship was docking somewhere, who knew where. Our curtains were closed. We were pretending it was the 90s. The PA sputtered into life and I paused on Scully pointing her gun.
The PA informed us we were listening to Third Officer Devi, who sounded on the edge of tears. Third Officer Devi said that the cruise was over. Over, the end, everybody go home. I’m sorry, said Third Officer Devi, we can’t — his voice cracked. The PA went dead and didn’t come back.
I pressed the space bar and Scully shot a former FBI agent and we ate chocolate cake. By the time the hum of the air conditioner stopped we’d started season 3. Crew knocked at the door. We pretended we weren’t home. They came back with security officers as Mulder was eating sweet potato pie and opened the door with their master key.
And we kicked and screamed and said they couldn’t just throw us out like garbage. We said we’d paid for four years, we were going to get four years but by that time it was 106F inside and 102F outside and we were so sad, so scared, and after AJ punched one of the crew members they backed away, they apologized, they promised we’d leave.
That evening we sat on the dock with our two small suitcases, listening to the waves. AJ said, ostriches don’t put their heads in the sand when they’re scared. That’s a made up thing.
One by one the cruise ship lights went dark. A steady stream of people got in taxis or walked away or just stood, doing nothing.
They lay eggs in the sand, said AJ. They have to rotate them. That’s what they’re actually doing.
I put my head on their shoulder. We sat on a dock somewhere in the world, somewhere that wasn’t the country we’d run from. We watched the sky turn from cornflower to plum.
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Sage Tyrtle’s work is available in New Delta Review, The Offing, Lunch Ticket, and Apex, among others. Words featured on NPR, CBC, and PBS, and taught in schools. Read more at www.tyrtle.com.