Sailing, Takes Me Away...

Back in the 80s to 90s, I was a crew member on a very large cruise ship, and I can tell you that the passengers have absolutely no clue what happens below deck. 

I'm sure this part can't be occurring anymore, with stricter environmental guidelines in place and hefty fines, but late at night we used to dump our garbage off the ship right into the ocean.  Big black bags of it, just coming right off the back of the ship.

But I'm sure this part still happens: the crew and entertainment workers are like one big incestuous family.  We had our own bar on a lower deck, nothing like the ones the passengers go to - ours was (and I'm sure still is)  a bare bones, low class gin-mill type of place.  The crew gets drunk just about every night, and you never knew who would wind up in what bed or who they would wake up next to.  What makes that even more raunchy as I look back on it is that the crew stayed in rooms of 2 or 4 people each.  So there was no privacy for these shenanigans. There were even occasions when a crew member might manage to rotate through all four beds and all four roomates in one drunken night.  The top billed members of the entertainment groups would usually have a single room, and people would hook up with them not due to attraction, but for the chance of a night of privacy.

The drunken fights were pretty legendary, too. 

The better looking male crew members (alas, I was not one of them) would have women passengers throwing themselves at them.  From the very young to the very old, it seemed a badge of honor to 'get' a crew member.  These male crew members were used to this, and used to have a standard line of "I've never gotten together with a passenger before, but you, I couldn't resist."  (Insert major gagging and barfing sounds here.  Thanks.)  Of course, little did the women know they were just one of hundreds, maybe thousands to hear the same routine.

Ah, we were young and crazy.

Young, crazy, and most likely disease-ridden with livers ready to go on strike.

Hope you had huge supply of condoms and penicillin in those days, CruisingMan.