Long Legs and Tall Tales: A Showgirl's Wacky, Sexy Journey to the Playboy Mansion and the Radio City Rockettes (40 page)

The show must go on. And so it did. We sang and danced in some form or another to every number. We filled the space of ninety excruciatingly-long minutes with some form of entertainment. We faked it until we made it. We actually lived through that terrifying performance in spite of flubs and flaws. What I learned from that mortifying experience: Chill. You won’t die of embarrassment. A year later the whole darn mess will be a funny story in your book of tall tales. You might as well laugh and get on with it and do the best you can. The worst part was that we still had to finish and rehearse the show. We still had ages before we would feel comfortable and get in our groove. We still had to repeat that experience twice a week for the next five months. And we still had “Let’s Dance!” to debut that week as well as the two bumpers. Our job was far from over.

High energy seemed to be Anita’s secret to a successful show, so all the songs were played at warp speed (any zippier and we would have sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks), and the dancing couldn’t be done big enough or fast enough. Our shows were so dynamic that people could have had heart attacks simply from watching us. Either that or the particularly worn-out patrons would actually sleep through most of the production. You see, the average age of our passengers was about 72. A tuckered-out gent would be snoring away in the front row, and we’d dance over and tap him on the shoulder. Startled, he’d awaken from his dream only to find himself in the middle of a nightmare of forced audience participation. (We could be devilish and sneaky.) Part of me was offended that our show put some to sleep—not exactly the reaction we were going for. But, more likely, they were overstimulated and exhausted by our relentless, high-speed, breakneck movements. Those poor, tired souls deserved to relax and get a decent nap in, and if I could help them in that pursuit, all the better. With so many people wheeling oxygen tanks behind them, I hoped our show wasn’t to die for. It would have been awful to hear the announcement of a “Bright Star” over the intercom—code that someone had passed away.

The old folks weren’t the only ones who couldn’t catch their breath. It took weeks before I could dance full out (high kicks and all) on a moving ship and simultaneously sing full out without hyperventilating. There was almost no down time during the shows. Our costume changes were mere seconds long, so we huffed and puffed then, too. The girls’ dressing room was the size of a small storage closet and was so hot and stuffy, we may as well have been three people simultaneously trying to change clothes in a one-seat sauna. My hair was drenched with sweat. The shows were only ninety minutes, but we worked our hardest each and every one of those minutes. The crowd certainly got their money’s worth; we packed a pile of exceptional entertainment into that hour and a half.

Performing on a moving stage was an especially difficult task, especially since the shows were challenging for me even on solid ground. Surprisingly, dancing was actually easier than standing still. Trying to balance in a beautiful pose while the floor rocked three feet to the right like a teeter-totter took all my strength. I understood why people have swivel cup holders in their cars to keep their Big Gulps from spilling. Thankfully, I managed to remain fairly upright the entire summer. After the show, we had to lug our own costume racks back to the storage room (a bit of a trek), but my back and the balls of my feet were so sore and tender from gripping the stage so I wouldn’t fall over that I could barely walk. Real, hard-soled shoes were out of the question; I had to wear my softest slippers to cushion my aching tootsies. I hobbled through the halls like one of our frail, elderly passengers.

It was stressful enough having to perform a show we barely knew. It was stressful enough learning how to dance on a rocking ship. It was stressful enough adjusting to ship life, castmates,  and shipmates. To top it off, we were terribly sleep-deprived from middle-of-the-night rehearsals. Add a persistent, pounding, seasickness hangover to the mix, and jumping overboard sounded like a sensible alternative. The changes and challenges were tremendous.

My job was made all the more painful when Anita dubbed me dance captain/company manager. I appreciated being selected for a leadership position but was so stressed about performing the show and adjusting to living on a ship that I could barely deal with the additional duties of payroll, costume cleaning and repair, and “ratings” meetings with the cruise director. (It was all about the ratings. After each cruise, the passengers rated everything. And if they got a week with bad weather they rated everything down. We could have given the performance of our lives, but it was cold and drizzling while they were in Juneau, so they didn’t enjoy the show as much.) Add to those responsibilities clean-up rehearsals, mediating among cast members, and sending weekly videotapes of the show and show reports to L.A. I lasted no more than a couple of weeks, and then fellow castmate Bob bravely took over. Good riddance to that job!

It took the entire first month for us to polish our shows only to lose our two straight, male cast members. One resigned. He was sort of a loose cannon so we weren’t totally surprised. He had worked on ships before and, perhaps, realized he just couldn’t take another voyage. And one was “released.” This guy was, shall we say, “movement challenged” from day one. He had a beautiful voice but two, or maybe even three, left feet. Everyone was hoping that, with enough practice, over time, he’d get in step with the rest of us. Alas, he got canned like a tuna, because even after three weeks, he never did get up to speed. We spent
another month
training and rehearsing two new dudes, Tom and Craig. How frustrating! My lips spewed so many expletives that I sounded like a gangsta rapper.
Would this rehearsal nightmare ever end?
The bonus prize was that these guys were adorable, great performers who were easy to get along with (but both gay, by the way, so no hope for a hook up).

The new boys’ friendly, cooperative personalities were probably more important than their talents, because the tempers of castmates could make or break the trip. If you got cast with a bunch of immature, gossipy, back-stabbing monsters, it would be hard to have fun and even harder to last the entire five months without wanting to push each other overboard. Directors casting for ship shows had to take into account attitudes, how the performers got along with others, and whether or not they seemed suited for ship life. The last thing they wanted to do was to have to replace someone three weeks after the shows opened (like we did), but replacements happened all the time. Someone would get injured, they’d have a death in the family, or they couldn’t stand being stuffed in a shoe-box size room for half a year. Our new cast had a much better chance of survival than the first one.

After a few weeks performing together, the shows started feeling comfortable. I had improved a lot and could sing and dance at the same time without losing my breath. Moreover, for the most part, I was able to have
fun
performing the shows—something I had previously thought would only happen after hell froze over and pigs flew. “Birth of the Blues,” which had been like a ship in distress at the beginning, turned out to be my favorite show. I actually
enjoyed
it, even my little singing solos. Unlike “Let’s Dance!,” it wasn’t all about the quick costume changes. Because we were only alternating accessories on top of one costume, we could focus on the actual performing. After all the chaos and cast changes we suffered at the start, the shows finally pulled together, and I, for the most part, felt confident and competent.

Once our shows opened, Anita and her assistant went back to Los Angeles. She only returned to the ship periodically to check on the quality of the shows, and we’d have to perform all of them for her at midnight right after completing two real shows for the passengers. We were expected to perform full out with stage presence and more energy than the Energizer Bunny. Those were rough, ultra-exhausting near all-nighters. “I can’t believe how clean you girls are!” she marveled. “Clean” meant the three of us were perfectly in sync with our choreography. High fives all around. (Physically, we looked very different from one another: short, voluptuous Dana with her smooth, red bob; thin and muscular, medium-height Candy with a shoulder-length black do; and tall, long-legged me with long, blond hair. But our performance skills were well matched.) It was a stressful time when Anita came aboard. We wanted to be at our very best, and, thankfully, our shows were shipshape.

Once out of rehearsal hell, our schedule was pretty easy breezy, especially compared to other cruise ship gigs. Monday night we did two seatings (8:15 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.) of “Let’s Dance!” Wednesday nights we did two seatings of “Birth of the Blues.” Thursdays we did the “Elvis” bumper before whatever act went on, and Sundays we did “The Tonight Medley” bumper before the main act. A couple hours before every performance, we were also expected to meet and mark through the show we were to perform that night. It made sense that we might need a brush-up since a week went by between shows. We dutifully, robotically went through the motions, but after a few months it felt like a waste of time since we could now do the shows in our sleep.

In addition to performing and rehearsing our shows, we had a few “cruise staff duties.” Some ships required the entertainers to act like cruise directors Julie and Isaac from
The Love Boat
and run limbo contests, skeet shooting, and other recreational activities when they weren’t on stage performing. We were spoiled, because each of our cast members simply had “library duty” a few hours a week, which involved sitting at a desk twiddling our thumbs or reading, and, on the rare occasion, helping a passenger check out a book or movie. Or, if we wanted a more active alternative, we could teach a few country line-dance classes in the ballroom. I dusted off my cowboy boots and rustled up the gumption to try to wrangle a herd of passengers with two left feet into a troupe that could trip the light fantastic. Many just tripped, and I often preferred to zone out in the lazy comfort of the library.

*******

The ship was like a mini floating city, with a population close to three thousand. About two thousand were passengers who stayed for a week or two at the most, leaving little time to forge relationships. Besides my cast, the remaining, “permanent” population included about eight hundred crew members led by a much smaller group of officers. The officers were all Dutch because the
Noordam
hailed from the Netherlands. I had nothing against the Dutch, having always enjoyed their wooden shoes, tulips, and windmills (although I was never too fond of herring), but these particular Hollanders were stern and, in general, didn’t like us. “This is a
ship
!” these seafarers would say with disgust every time we land lovers slipped and called it a
boat
. The men in white uniforms either despised us for having such an easy gig and so many privileges, or wanted to sleep with us. Not always sure which was the case, we walked on eggshells, afraid of angering our superiors, who could make our lives a shipwreck. We decided early that it was best to give a wide berth and steer clear of them or make a concerted effort to stay on their good side. Dana did such an excellent job of getting on the good graces of the officer in charge of food and beverage that they started dating. Consequently, she was able to score refreshments and bakery treats off hours. Bonus! When having a fling, it was a definite perk if the lover could extend special benefits. It was all about who you knew on the ship.

Unlike the officers, a high percentage of the eight hundred crew members on board were Indonesian and Filipino. These folks were hired to do the hard labor, like maid service, cleaning, and waiting tables. They took year-long contracts and sent most of the money they earned back home to their families. When not working, they were banished to the bowels of the ship and even had their own special mess hall, so we didn’t have much opportunity to mingle with them. Once in a great while they got permission to go into port and would return with boxes of electronic appliances. Unlike our cast, they had no special privileges and were required to be invisible on their free time. We heard a story of a guy who committed suicide by jumping off the back of the ship into the deep blue sea. I worried that they would be jealous of our charmed life and would want to spit in our coffee. In an act of good will, our cast went down, down, down to their deck and performed our show for them late one night. The place reeked of clove cigarettes—a smell I remembered so well from my trip to Indonesia. It felt good to do something nice for our hard-working shipmates, and I think they appreciated our efforts. I surely appreciated theirs.

*******

Life on the high seas was far from normal and definitely not for everyone. It was a cross between prison, an exotic excursion, and a
Love Boat
shagfest. For me, one of the worst parts was my lack of privacy. Because we were confined to the ship much of the time, we could not get far away from passengers, castmates, officers, and crew. Think living, sleeping, eating, breathing, playing,
and
working with your coworkers for nearly a half year without getting time apart. I was extremely fortunate to have an enjoyable, friendly cast, but even being around the best people 24/7 can be too much of a good thing. Occasionally, I needed my space, but I could rarely escape on my own for a moment of peace.

Some of the passengers also proved to be a source of irritation for me. (Although I should have been more thankful for them, because without them, I’d have been out of a job.) Most cruises were a week long, so we took on new passengers every seven days. The first couple days of a new cruising group were the best, because most of the passengers didn’t realize that I wasn’t just another passenger. Once they saw me perform in the show, however, I was famous. After that, they watched my every move—what I ate, said, wore, and did. I had to be dressed appropriately and behave appropriately at all times. Not that my behavior was bad by any means, but I didn’t like being scrutinized and eyeballed all the time. I couldn’t leave my room without being observed by passengers who would then report any questionable shenanigans to the officers.