Cruising: They Could Have Danced All Night
It seemed as if a goodly number of the single ladies on board my cruise ship intended to dance the night away.
Their dilemma was, though, that like on so many senior cruises, about 95 percent of the passengers were women.
Men? Forget it. Single men over 50 just don't go on cruises by themselves.
So, a number of cruise lines are offering free trips to men willing to, well, dance all night. I signed up. My job was to cha cha, rumba and fox trot into the wee hours as our liner steamed from Nassau to New York.
As a "dance host" I agreed to dance five hours a night with as many females, aged 50 to 80, as time allowed. That meant before dinner, during dinner and after dinner.
There were eight of us men on board, all retirees, and 140 unescorted women who couldn't wait to get us on the dance floor.
I thought I was going to help these lonely women. Be sort of a maritime therapist easing them through the despair of lonely manless lives. How wrong I was. It was the women who helped us men, who led rather limited lives ashore, feel like celebrities.
I received eleven pages of instructions before boarding which made it perfectly clear what my mission was: "Given a choice between your sparkling conversation and a turn on the dance floor, most of the women will prefer to dance."
Many of the women, who did everything back home from running a cattle ranch in Montana to running the marathon in Minnesota, loved the fast numbers and they didn't quit. The shiny glass dance floor of the Calypso Lounge was just as jammed at midnight as it was at dinner time. We hosts got to calling the place the "Collapsible Lounge."
One host, a retired salesman, recalled that on a past cruise-hosts usually stayed on board at least a month- "my legs were cramping up. This time, I started to do a lot of walking the week before, going up and down stairs."
But the women- many danced back home- didn't seem to have any cramping problems. Clearly, they were in much better shape than we were.
None of the dancers was more enthusiastic than a whitehaired Whittier, California woman who loved to float about the floor like Isadora Duncan. She had a lot of practice. It was her 23rd cruise. In fact, half of the passengers had taken at least one previous cruise on the line and many were "multi-repeaters."
She told me one day, after a particularly lively turn on the dance floor, "You hurt my reputation. Somebody my age is not supposed to dance like that."
I fitted into the "average dancer" category but I was no match for my roommate, a retired financial supervisor at an oil company, who was a veteran of Arthur Murray classes.
"If in doubt, do the merengue," he advised.
I wondered aloud to one ballroom whiz if she wasn't a little perturbed when it was her turn to dance with, well, an average dancer like me.
"It doesn't bother me. I think you've been doing real well," she said. "You've improved this week." (After 500 dances, I had to make some headway.)
Wise guys back in my office started calling me "Joe the Gigolo" as cruise time approached. But those who expected the ship to be the Loveboat missed the boat.
"Romantic attraction between a man and a woman is one of the greatest gifts of life, and its rewards are far greater than a free cruise," that instruction sheet advised. "But you can't have it both ways."
Hasn't romance crossed the minds of the hosts? "Sure, it's gone through my mind," said one man, 71, "but I haven't become involved with anyone. Getting married is not an objective, not at my age."
Information about signing up as a dance host.
Books
Find these books online at Barnes and Noble.com.
- I Danced Around the World: As a Gentleman Host Aboard Cruise Ships. Angelo D. Curty, Kay Curty (Editor). Ken Cook Company. April 1997
