“If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing in style, and on your own terms and nobody goddamned else’s!” —Lucius Beebe
It was during my 64th transatlantic voyage aboard the majestic Queen Elizabeth 2 that I faced the fact that I am out of touch with reality. There I was, seated blissfully one day around noon in the Chart Room lounge on Quarter Deck, a restorative bourbon Manhattan in hand, when my contemplative mood was abruptly shattered by a young, chatty, carelessly dressed woman at the next banquette who was drinking inane mineral water and referring repeatedly to my beloved liner as the QE2. No doubt she would also call the ship a boat and a stateroom a cabin, or refer to a crossing as a cruise, or wonder why she and her equally scruffy beau would not be allowed to frolic on the prow of the ship like the pubescent Jack and Rose did in James Cameron’s idiotic blockbuster, Titanic.
I realize that after all these years I should have adjusted to the popular use of the liner’s snappy, fatuous diminutive. But the truth is that I loathe the tag (so often erroneously printed with the royal Roman numeral) as much today as when I eagerly booked passage on the liner’s second transatlantic crossing back in 1969. Why couldn’t she have been christened something more original and sensible, like Victoria? I even dislike the ship’s full name, Queen Elizabeth 2, not because I have anything against Britain’s illustrious current monarch (though, shamefully, she has never once crossed aboard her namesake), but because tacking that Arabic numeral onto the name sounds, well, tacky. I prefer to call the liner simply the Queen.
What does continue to surprise me is how others find my obsession with the ship to be extraordinary, if not wanton. Having sailed on legendary greyhounds of the past—the old queens Mary and Elizabeth, the Ile de France, Michelangelo, Bremen, and, indeed, France—I’ve always loved luxury liners with a passion, and the first and most logical reason I’m so devoted to the second Queen Elizabeth —to the Queen—is because, frankly, I don’t have much choice: She’s the only ship left to regularly transport me in comfort and style back and forth across the Atlantic—at least until Cunard’s putative plans to build a new superliner actually do materialize and promise further transatlantic service. That flying in one of those ghastly jets has never been a viable option except in emergencies should be taken for granted. Obviously, I’m just not a man of my time.
What’s important to remember is that I’m strictly a crosser, not a cruiser, and that I’ve crossed aboard the Queen with 17 of her 19 captains in every manner and under every circumstance imaginable: first as an impecunious student in the bowels of Tourist Class (stateroom 4027); then as an ambitious food writer in ordinary First Class staterooms on Two and Three decks; and eventually as a swaggering bon vivant ensconced in penthouse 8014 up on Signal Deck, with a private butler and access to the exclusive Queens Grill dining saloon.
I have no problem admitting that for years I’ve been a quasi snob aboard this ship by virtue of an extravagant habitude that has not only suited my particular brand of hedonism but led to rubbing shoulders with numerous commanding personalities: Garbo, a Beatle, Sheridan Morley, a few dukes and duchesses, a Titanic survivor. So far I’ve gone through no less than nine formal dinner jackets; about two dozen waistcoats of varying styles, fabrics, hues (and sizes); seven pairs of black evening slippers with grosgrain bows; and certainly hundreds of miniature chrysanthemum boutonnieres. I’ve squired countless fascinating ladies of both august and dubious character, danced with Petula Clark, and dined with Sir Stephen Spender. I’ve even shared Niagaras of late-night Champagne with a filthy rich, cheerful Chicago investment banker some three hours before he mysteriously committed suicide by climbing over the rail of his penthouse veranda and throwing himself into the water.
Aboard the Queen I’ve served more than once, in fact, as an official witness to burials at sea. I’ve ridden out two hurricanes and countless ten-force gales; cringed when a Royal Air Force bomb squad was deployed to parachute down and investigate threats of hidden explosives; watched davits lowered when an engine-room fire temporarily paralyzed the ship mid-Atlantic; gazed at more menacing icebergs than I care to remember; and experienced the indomitable ship’s collision with a gigantic whale, which she then carried on her prow all the way to New York. I’ve also written much of a long novel and reams of articles while crossing on the Queen, shown the head chef how to make a proper southern pecan pie, and mastered a few Bach preludes and fugues by practicing diligently on various bar pianos. I’ve lost $5,000 at blackjack in less than 20 gin-soaked minutes in the casino, spent a small fortune on dry cleaning and pressing, and disbursed maybe $20,000 in tips overall.
In the ever-changing restaurants through the years, I’ve consumed everything from kidney-stuffed Southdown mutton chops to raised duck-gizzard pie to rare Blue Vinney cheese and sapid spotted dick, but I’ve also enjoyed what must amount to scores of briny, meaty, utterly delectable tuna-fish-salad sandwiches on English brown bread as only this kitchen can make them.
My heart belongs to the Queen because, even with her minor flaws, she remains for me the sole anachronistic link between a deplorable present of Reeboks, computers, mobile phones, salsa, body piercing, sewer language, and nonsmoking restaurants and a more engaging era of just 40 or so years ago, to which what is left of civilized society wishes it might return. Gone are the days, to be sure, when, at a cocktail party on the Michelangelo, I watched an orchidaceously feathered and irate Hermione Gingold withdraw a small revolver from her purse and brandish it menacingly at a clod who kept interrupting our conversation; or when, in full evening dress on the France, I cordially offered to walk Salvador Dali’s pet ocelot, Babou, around Boat Deck, then led the reasonably well behaved cat to the corner table in the Chambord dining saloon, which I and the outlandish artist shared with a uniformed Irish Republican activist and two charming demimondaines.
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