Chapter 1

My name is James Rockton. I came on this cruise to honor my dead partner, belatedly, and then, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, to join him. I booked a cabin with a balcony, near the stern of the ship, for just this purpose.

He died quite a while ago, and I’d thought I’d be all right without him. We’d had a good run, for our age. We’d met at college back when it wasn’t safe or wise to be out and were very lucky to have found each other and to have been together so long, so comfortably. In the eighties, shortly after we met, he got AIDS. I had it, too, but only a very mild case. His wasn’t.

Even so, he hung on decades past when the doctors thought he’d die, gone with the evil wind that blew out so many fine, bright young candles in that decade. But no, he’d weathered on, struggling from time to time, making me think it was over several times, too many, to where I didn’t think I could stay with him through another. Yet I couldn’t leave. We were two halves of one whole, and at our ages—at my age—I could not conceive of starting over.

He was the one who’d always wanted to go on a cruise, a gay one, he’d specified, but I was too tied to work and too worried about his health. We had let the time go by, too much time, as it turned out. I miss him so much, I talk to him, well, write him letters, as if he were just away.

* * * *

Monday, March 27:

Last night, I so badly needed a member of the fashion police. Anyone, even the lowest recruit, could have made this arrest. I’m going to be very catty here, Richard. This woman was as big as a cow and wearing the most revealing little black tent, as you would have called it. If only you could have been here and we could have been boys again, with that fearless sense of bitter superiority we (and so many of our friends) had back then. Do young queers still have this acidic tongue? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

“Does this muumuu make my ass look fat, John?” I picture the woman saying to her husband.

He raises his eyebrows, tests his will to live, and replies, “No, Buttercup.”

Hysterical laughter ensues (for us).

Oh, dear Richard, you would have laughed again at me. I got up the courage to go to the hot tub. I was just getting a towel when a very heavy-set woman headed up the steps. I wondered what you would have said about water displacement, and I nearly choked and repeated the thought out loud. I would have died if she’d heard me. You know I don’t exactly look svelte and handsome myself with my surgery scars, pot belly, and funny hairline (nor have I shaved my chest since you left me). But you know what, once I got in the tub, we all had so much fun laughing at the temperature and daring each other to get into the ice-cold pool behind us, which was sloshing and rolling, that I forgot to be embarrassed about how I looked.

I was reminded again that it’s what’s in a person’s heart. If there’s a sparkle in their eyes, that matters, not what our physical body looks like. Mine, I would say, looks like I have lived. You were still so handsome when you died. Me, it’s probably a good thing my hair was going gray early. I never did appreciate whatever Irish ancestor gave me the red hair and freckles. I’ll keep the green eyes, though. Now that my ass is no longer my best feature, I do like my eyes.

I’ve had some funny glances come my way, you know. I do look like what I am, stereotypes and all. I try not to look gay, but I just can’t help being what I am after the childhood and teenage days when we tried so hard to not look like what we are. For God’s sake, our lives depended on it in those days. Now I’m either too old to care or just sick and tired of not being seen. I want to be a visible man, a visible gay man. I don’t think anyone will pitch me overboard because of it, but it’s sad that the thought even has to be in our minds in this day and age. I had such hopes for us, for the younger us coming up, but youth today are still being mocked, beaten, and kicked out by their parents. When does it end? Goddamn it, when does it ever end?

While we’re being morose, you know I’ve come on this cruise not just to place your ashes in the ocean, but to join you. I don’t know when, but you can imagine why. My dear, I’m unable to see any reason to go on without you. Nobody wants me, nobody cares about me, nobody will miss me when I gone. I’m too old to say, “I’ll die and then they’ll be sorry,” like we used to as kids, but just quietly slipping overboard in the dark of night…well, then.