Well no one told you life was gonna be this way
Your job’s a joke, you’re broke
Your love life’s DOA
Seems like you’re always stuck in second gear
When it hasn’t been your day your week, your month or even your year
I’ll be there for you….
So many people find it difficult to grasp the concept that I have male friends who are just friends. Especially on ships, it’s difficult to be seen leaving a room with someone without everyone else assuming there is ‘something’ between you, rumors around here can spread faster than untended flame, and friendships can be flammable. Never the less, I do have a few close friends who just happen to be guys. Alanse of course is one of those…and Seregon is one…though we rarely see each other.
Whenever Seregon comes on the ship, tongues start to wag. For some reason the team refuses to believe that we’re nothing more than friends.
So, I bet you’ll be at the show tonight eh missy?
Don’t start! It’s not like that and you know it!
Uh-huh…
It’s been happening for so long now that we simply laugh the whole thing off.
As an aside, Seregon is the reason that this blog exists, and by association is also the reason why the book of the same name exists as well. It was all his idea, and it’s all his fault. Something for which he is loath to take credit because he doesn’t remember the conversation in which the idea came up (I blame it on the vanilla vodka, which he also doesn’t remember, which makes me laugh for some reason.)
When Seregon came back on board this week (for a grand total of four days! No fair! Guest Ents…good grief), it was like a breath of fresh air. It’s so easy to forget what it’s like to have just a normal friend around here. Someone you have no emotional tangles with, no expectations from, but who’s just genuinely glad to see you. Not that I don’t have friends – because that’s not exactly the case – it’s just that you never really know who you can trust ship-side. If you tell someone something in confidence, you may well find that they confide in someone else in some misguided attempt to ‘help’ you, and you find yourself in a worse tangle than when you started, so you simply learn to keep yourself to yourself for the most part otherwise your life turns into a game of Chinese telephone. So yes, I have friends on board, but they’re somewhat superficial friends – the kind of friends you hang out with over the occasional drink or dinner and recap your day with, but not the kind of friends that you can break down in front of. There’s a difference.
I trust Seregon. I always have. The downside of that is that he often sees the side of me that’s most difficult to deal with, something I’ve often felt slightly guilty about. Okay, perhaps more than slightly.
He doesn’t think the flagship is good for me; he worries that my health may be suffering as a result of the long contracts and equally long days. He’s not the only one that worries that of course. Sometimes even I worry it. But every time it comes up he just looks at me and shakes his head, he knows where to find me, because he knows I’ll never leave. Leaving the flagship would be like leaving home – she changes around me, the team is different each year and the décor is due for a refurb, but she’s home. I know her.
There’s comfort in routine.