Ten cents a dance
that’s what they pay me
gee how it weighs me down
Ten cents a dance
Pansies and rough guys
Tough guys who tear my gowns
I’ve said before that balls are a job of work, many times I’ve said that. During this part of the cruise though, they’re more of a challenge than usual. We’re tired you see, we’re not supposed to be, but we are. The energy of the team is flagging to the point where the cruise director hauled us all into a meeting and collectively rapped our wrists for letting our personal exhaustion show on the work front. We pulled ourselves together after that, exhaustion has its place, and it’s not on the public decks.
I love the theme night parties, and last night’s St Patrick Day celebrations were actually a lot of fun. Half party, half show, with a good deal of laughter and a good deal of sparkle. The guests enjoyed themselves, which is of course the point.
Most of you know that I would rather dance than breathe, for me to sit out a dance is an indication that my feet literally won’t let me move for the duration of a song. The thing is, the balls are work, and the dancing involved in them is work as well. There are no female dance hosts you see, though there are several gentlemen on board who are sailing without their wives, or whose wives choose not to grace the floor. So it is that the female members of the entertainment team fill the vacant slot. We fox-trot, we waltz, we guide elderly gentleman who barely know their left foot from their right around the floor in such a way that it makes them feel like they’re Fred Astaire. We are pinched, prodded and held too close by a dozen different strangers in the course of an evening.
Look available, but never *be* available
Basic rule of thumb.
Most of them are sweet and harmless and it brings us joy to bring a little light into their lives. Many of them are even friends, well, as much friends as we can consider guests without crossing the very delicate invisible line that exists between A-deck and the rest of the world.
A few people ask how we keep up the perfectly painted, perfectly coy smile, how we keep our eyes sparkling when we’re longing for a hot cup of tea and a warm bed. It’s simple – they don’t pay to see that we’re tired, they don’t care that we are. Just like triggers in theatre, you find something that you can bring to mind that will make you smile. A real smile. You think of something, anything, something a friend did that made you laugh, and there will come a smile.
But at the end of the night, once you step into the crew elevator and slide out of the public eye, smiles give way to rueful expressions of exhaustion, ringlets get combed out and silk stockings tossed carelessly in the laundry hamper to be dealt with the next day.
Around here, we know how to make magic, but only when we find it’s absolutely necessary 😉
Seven to midnight we hear drums
Loudly the saxophones blow
Trumpets are crashing my eardrums
Customers crush my toes…