A couple times each year I leave NYC and go out as part of a Dueling Piano show headlining on a cruise ship for a month or two. A year ago, while I was working a Europe run I wrote the following:

Living on a cruise ship is like a suspension of reality. Other than the 14 hours each week that I am doing our Dueling Piano show, the rest of the time is free for whatever. It’s very easy to sleep until the afternoon, and stay up into the morning hours drinking or just chatting with your ship mates. You make friends very fast, and then they disappear as their contracts finish, or yours does. This particular ship is a bit of a prototype in that they are the first cruise ship in this company to offer the type of branded entertainment you might see in Vegas or New York. Every night there are 4 or 5 shows that the guests can choose from in addition to the standard lounge acts and bands you would expect to encounter on a cruise ship. As an entertainer, living and eating (and if you get lucky, sleeping) with all of these other musicians, actors, dancers and entertainers, it is a rich life. Most of my onboard friends are in the entertainment staff and have made names for themselves outside of the small world of ships, and are truly interesting people.

Of course it’s not all fun and games. Not everyone gets along with everyone else, and we all bring our personal demons with us, some of which can be pretty hard to hide. Right now, there have been two separate incidents of very talented guest entertainers having too much to drink and bothering the guests with their behavior. One entertainer got so drunk that he bit (yes, with his teeth) one of the guests. I’m sure he thought he was being funny, but the guest complained and he was thrown off the ship the following day, along with his innocent partner that worked his two-man act with. In another incident only a couple of nights later, one of the guest entertainers got blind drunk and insulted a guest so much that the guest complained to management. The only reason this entertainer was not fired immediately was because he was a member of a 4-person tribute act that would not have been able to function without all 4 members. The fallout is affecting all of the guest entertainers, but that’s a separate story.

Sometimes all of the travel can be lonely too. In spite of the fast and interesting friendships I’ve made, there are moments when I long for my dear friends and family back home. At night when I’m lying in my bed alone, I think about home and my people that are waiting for me to return. Yesterday I had made plans to go to Capri with a couple of new friends who had to bail at the last minute. I decided to take the ferry over and go by myself. It was a solitary and introspective experience, that gave me time to think and enjoy this new place without the distraction of another. I was alone, but not lonely.