Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis — Read

Everything surrounding the ship is gray or dark blue and nothing is particularly hip, and once or maybe twice a day this thin strip of white appears at the horizon line but it's so far in the distance you can't be sure whether it's land or more sky. It's impossible to believe that any kind of life sustains itself beneath this flat, slate-gray sky or in an ocean so calm and vast, that anything breathing could exist in such limbo, and any movement that occurs below the surface is so faint it's like some kind of small accident, a tiny indifferent moment, a minor incident that shouldn't have happened, and in the sky there's never any trace of sun-the air seems vaguely transparent and disposable, with the texture of Kleenex-yet it's always bright in a dull way, the wind usually constant as we drift through it, weightless, and below us the trail the ship leaves behind is a Jacuzzi blue that fades within minutes into the same boring gray sheet that blankets everything else surrounding the ship. One day a normal-looking rainbow appears and you vaguely notice it, thinking about the enormous sums of money the Kiss reunion tour made over the summer, or maybe a whale swims along the starboard side, waving its fin, showing off. It's easy to feel safe, for people to look at you and think someone's going somewhere. Surrounded by so much boring space, five days is a long time to stay unimpressed.

I boarded the QE2 still wearing the Comme des Garcons tux and I was so stoned by the time the driver Palakon had sent dropped me off at the passenger terminal on West 50th Street that how I actually got on the ship is a blur of images so imprecise you couldn't really even classify them as a montage: red, white and blue balloons floating in midair, crowds of photographers that I assumed were paparazzi but weren't, a porter assuring me that my luggage-faded Gucci bags hurriedly and badly packed-would be in my cabin when ("and if," he added) I got there, a live band playing "The Lambeth Walk. " In my haze I vaguely realized that "things" had already been taken care of, since I moved through the whole embarkation process-security, passport, receiving a QE2 VIP Gold Card-swiftly and with no hassles. But I was still so wasted that I barely made it up the gangway, and then only with the help of a couple of production assistants dressed as extras, one on either side of me, and a triple espresso from Starbucks, force-fed, as the band began playing a jaunty version of "Anything Goes."