A reluctant gay cruiser finds the right mix of culture and camaraderie — and still gets to sleep by midnight.
Related
Out at Sea
The Pride of the Ocean film festival aboard the Celebrity Summit cruise offers a rich diversity of subject matter. More…
The cruise industry seems to cater to just about every interest. Whether you love the Coachella festival, you're a big Disney fan or you simply can't sail without your motorcycle, there's a cruise for you. And of course, cruise lines have had gay and lesbian offerings for years. But for my husband and me, gay travel still involves a lot of questions: Will the destination be accepting of us? How do we surround ourselves with like-minded people but not feel cut off from the larger group? We're not prone to excessive shows of public affection, but we think about that too. And then there's the fact that we don't fit any of the gay prototypes. We don't have four abs between us, let alone 12, and our evenings end before midnight, not start after it.
So it was a tall order for Steve, the travel agent in our relationship, to find us a trip. We considered an RSVP Vacations trip to the Mediterranean, a Cruising with Pride journey to Alaska and a Pied Piper jaunt to Nova Scotia before settling on the Pride of the Ocean, a gay-and-lesbian film festival aboard the Celebrity Summit on a June cruise to Bermuda. There were about 50 of us on a ship whose occupancy is around 2,200, so it seemed like the perfect recipe for being part of a group while not feeling like the ship was Fire Island at sea.
We set sail from Cape Liberty, N.J., and in no time we spotted two men, in suits and bow ties, being photographed for their wedding. We took it as a good omen. At the Pride group's welcome party, we met Jim Pollin and John Scagliotti, the co-presidents of the organization, and their aide-de-camp Geisha Cumberbatch, who served as ground control for the week's events. This was the group's third Pride cruise. The previous ones, in May 2010 and May 2011, had sailed to Bermuda with Norwegian Cruise Line. Next year, the group will head to Alaska in August.
The idea for Pride of the Ocean began at the Vermont Bear Film Festival, which Scagliotti co-founded. Pollin had attended one and "was so taken by the combination of film and community," Scagliotti said, "he came up with this concept that would never occur to me: take the programming and have a little relaxation, too."
That balance is a delicate one. Over the course of a week, days at sea might have three events — a film, a guest speaker and a critique — while days at port would begin with an early screening followed by time off-shore. The movies, a mix of fiction, documentaries and Web shorts, were generally excellent. And the discussions were educational: we learned about the growing use of crowd-financing sites like Kickstarter; why Canada is so supportive of independent filmmakers; and that it's possible to make money on nonpornographic Web content. Occasionally, though, they felt too insidery.
"The beginnings have been very filmmaker oriented," Pollin said, adding that they are aiming to bring a wider variety of attendees and create more of a film-festival atmosphere while focusing the networking and seminars on the professionals. The men would also like to foster a sense of community. "Film festivals are about the only thing we have left in Vermont," Scagliotti said. "The bars are closed. We're in rural America. The festival allows people to come together."
The movies were like snapshots of the road to acceptance traveled by many gays and lesbians; they went a long way toward strengthening the group's bond. "Vito" was a documentary about the film scholar and activist Vito Russo; "Wish Me Away" told the story of the country singer Chely Wright's struggle to come out; and "Gen Silent" explored the difficulties faced by older members of the L.G.B.T. community. The serious topics were balanced by some romps, including "The Oldest Lesbian in the World!" about the life of Bobbie Staff, who was born in 1913; even its title sequence was uplifting. And then there was "eCupid," a romantic comedy about a couple in crisis.
There was also plenty of jocularity at the bars, where "Friends of Dorothy" happy hours gathered kindred spirits on the ship. A group of us also headed to the Crystal and Fantasy Caves in Bermuda's Hamilton Parish to see the incredible stalactites and stalagmites. For the forthcoming Alaska cruise, Pollin is excited about a group excursion from Skagway on the White Pass & Yukon Route railway and up, nearly 3,000 feet, to the summit of the White Pass. "There is fantastic narration about the history of the railroad," Pollin said. "We'll have a whole car for our group."
It was nice to have a tribe, but we never felt cut off from the rest of the ship. Whenever we ran into the straight couple from Pennsylvania, whom we met while waiting in line for barbecue, we would chat about the best dishes we'd eaten that day. Non-group members were welcome at the larger screenings as well as at the closing-night cocktail party.
The true delight of the trip was not the quality of the festival itself (the richness of Web content being developed was especially amazing) but the friends we made. Steve and I crossed paths a few more times with the two men we'd seen getting married. We finally said hello. They live in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Mark, the younger half of the couple, and I quickly realized that we shared similar taste in television, superhero movies and music. We also have the same birthday. Later, in September, it didn't seem like much of a coincidence when we realized, thanks to Facebook, that we were both at a Madonna concert at Yankee Stadium on the same night. After all, cruises, movies and Madonna have always brought gay people together.
Related: Agenda: Cruising
Haute cuisine, stars at sea, spectacular suites, onboard fitness and new ports. More…
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
T Magazine: All Aboard
Dengan url
http://travelwisatawan.blogspot.com/2012/11/t-magazine-all-aboard.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
T Magazine: All Aboard
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar