A few years ago, we decided to go on a sea cruise for a week. My wife saved up her beer and cigarette money for a long time and paid $1500 for the whole fam damily to ride through the Caribbean for a week on a little tub called the La Boheme out of St. Petersburg, Florida. I was the pastor of a small church at the time and $1500 a week was an incredible amount of money for an $18,000 salary. I had heard from many a soul that a cruise was essentially nothing more than a floating, non-stop cornucopia of gluttony and hedonism. So I was determined to get as much of my money back as possible by eating everything in sight. The ship pushed backed from the dock on Saturday, and I basically stopped eating on Wednesday. By the time I had lugged the bags into the hull, I was so weak that I could hardly stand up. Linda escorted me to the dining room entrance so I could bolt through the door as soon as the dinner bell rang to fasten on the feed bag and begin the marathon of eating myself into money-saving history.
No sooner had the ship cleared Tampa Bay than somebody was on the horn inviting the first round of contestants who wanted to be on “The Biggest Loser“ to somewhere in the back of the ship. Apparently most of the people on board had thrown out their bathroom scales too and were prepared to eat themselves into oblivion as I was because I heard an army of passengers stampeding past me like Haitians who hadn’t eaten since the last earthquake. I flew behind them in their wake and came around the stern to behold a veritable banquet that surpassed all I had ever heard described before. I passed through the line multiple times like it I was mounting a roller-coaster at Six Flags, reloaded my plate, and packed in hors d’ oeuvres, dips, champagne, salads, fish, hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, tacos, pastries, nuts, papaya, and pop. I consumed everything visible and finally dropped into a deck chair to start the digestion process so I could be nice and ready for the next round at dinner in a few hours. But no. I no sooner let out my belt, lighted, and crossed my buckling legs than the same voice that had called us to the first all-you-can-eat buffet issued the first call for dinner. I checked my watch thinking something must be wrong. An Old Country/HomeTown Buffet with a Thanksgiving dinner on its heels? But the floor beneath me shook as the ship’s passengers thundered for the dining room like people running down Topanga Canyon ahead of a fire storm. I jacked myself from the lounge chair and charged into the formal dining room right behind them. The feast in the back of the ship was like war rations compared to what was offered up to the starving patrons in the chandelier-bedecked seafood and steakhouse that surrounded us. I have not forgotten it to this day. With full array of elegant table linens, maitre ‘d, and towel-draped waiters, I nearly choked myself on succulent lobster with drawn butter, soup, pasta, vegetables, baked and mashed and sweet potatoes, sour creme, chives and bacon, cold butter cubes, wine, filet mignon, rolls, salad, mangoes, and some lemon dessert that was on fire. They almost had to carry me out. I was so bloated that Linda and the kids got under my arms as I lumbered from the dining room with my arms folded and resting on top of my stomach.
They escorted me into the open air and laid me back on a chaise lounge so I could recover for the next day’s meals. I had just laid my head back to shut my eyes when some moron nonchalantly broadcast on the loudspeaker that a new smorgasbord had just opened somewhere near the bow. I remember thinking, “I am not even hungry. But I have $1500 in this cruise, and I am going to try and get my money’s back.” All I could think of was that when I wasn’t eating, I was losing money. I couldn’t understand why anybody would even think of quitting now when his life’s savings were literally on the table. So again I pushed aside my pleading family and slowly bolted down the side of the ship passing other gas-filled customers pretending to be ravished but merely trying to recover the cost of the cruise. Professional Islanders hired for the cruise were pounding on the steel drums to set the dining mood while I was pounding down scallops, shrimp, shark nuggets, smelt, tuna, squid, perch, watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, bleu cheese dip, ice cream, pastries, and olives. It was now Midnight. I hadn’t been hungry since the noon buffet when the ship fired the opening salvo in this consumption madhouse. But I was eating like it was The Last Supper. I had been pumping my right and left biceps to my lips for twelve hours, and I was dead tired. The family had retired long ago. So I finally started for my suite and to bed. I was about ten feet from the room when that same imbecile was back on the microphone again declaring the Midnight Feast! was now being served. I want to tell you that this declaration gave me pause. This whole thing was now beginning to become incomprehensible to me. But I swear the ship listed to the left and creaked like the Titanic as twelve hundred people ran like looters through New Orleans after Katrina for one of the five hundred restaurants on board. And I joined them because I was going to make these people pay as I tried to recoup some of my money. I came into a room lit like a Las Vegas casino with tables weighed down with gourmet fare topped with ice-sculptured porpoises. I popped filets of salmon, cod, halibut, herring, and flounder like candy. Dip flowed like lava down my arm. Punch and champagne poured, gurgled, and arced from fountains like falls. I slurped bowls of clam chowder like I had never eaten before and shoved it all down with relishes and sourdough bread underneath layers of butter, golden cheeses, sardines, cold cuts of ham and turkey and roast beef, and mayonnaise followed by a stream of sangria and champagne. People who weighed 400 pounds were moving their arms like fans and lifting shovels of food into their faces.
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