As he opened the door to our room, Dumb Dumb flew to her feet in her Shrek pajamas and screamed, "Oh, my God, are you okay?" Then, "Who the fuck are you?"

"Calm down, mij a, I am just delivering your friend," Rico said.

"Get out," she screamed. "Heeeeeelp!"

"Yo, yo yo, chill lady, chill," he said and then turned around to leave as she picked up a shoe and hurled it in his direction.

"Thanks," I slurred as I heard the door shut. I climbed into the lower bunk bed. "Shut up, he took care of me," I told Dumb Dumb as I passed out.

When I woke up the next morning, feeling five pounds lighter, I informed Dumb Dumb that we needed to get off the ship at Ensenada and pay some Mexicans to drive us to Los Angeles. "I cannot spend New Year's Eve on this boat."

"No way, that's crazy. We could get raped," she said.

"Well, at least we'd have a good New Year's!" I yelled. Rape didn't sound as bad as spending another day on this cruise. "Think about it," I said. "I know they have those parasailing rides on the beaches in Mexico; maybe we could parasail back." Then I rolled over and went back to sleep.

"You can gamble now. We're in Mexico," Dumb Dumb said when she woke me up two hours later.

Immediately, I felt better. Since I would need a cheeseburger and a couple of hours to recover before my next cocktail, we headed to the cafeteria for lunch. I explained to her over the world's most disgusting cheeseburger that Rico had taken good care of me last night and that she shouldn't judge people based on their socks.

"I was scared. I didn't know where you were, and my father told me not to leave the cabin after dark," she said. It was no surprise to me that she had called her father. She called him several times a day in New Jersey to ask him things like whether it was going to rain in California and if it was okay to eat at Subway, the sandwich chain. My favorite piece of advice he had given her was to never use tampons and only wear maxipads because, "There's a killer out there, and its name is toxic shock syndrome. ' ' I wanted to tell her father that I was living proof that a tampon could survive inside of a woman for up to three days before any real symptoms flared up, but I was becoming more adept at picking my battles.

I asked Dumb Dumb if she thought any more about my idea for getting back to Los Angeles.

"My father said no way, it would be way too dangerous," she told me.

I thought about going it alone, but I couldn't leave her here on this ship by herself. Still, I couldn't believe this boat was where I was meant to wreak havoc on New Year's Eve.

"Fine," I said. "Let's go gamble. I'll teach you how to play blackjack."

I gambled for close to eight hours straight with Dumb Dumb standing guard. I was up four hundred dollars and was feeling great. She was too nervous to waste any of her own money, so finally I gave her one hundred dollars in chips and she played with that. She appeared to be winning, but she always bet the minimum amount, which was good because it meant she was occupied for a longer period of time.

I would have been happy gambling into the wee hours of the morning if necessary and asked our dealer how late he was open. "For the next thirty hours," he said, "until we get back to California." That's when the Scott Wolf look-alike walked past our table. I hadn't had anything to drink yet, and his presence alone was reason enough to celebrate. He wasn't as cute as Scott Wolf, but neither was anyone else on this cruise. He had lighter hair and a rather stocky physique for someone not much taller than five-five. Dumb Dumb elbowed me. We both knew he was by far the best-looking guy on this boat, and his smooth, soft skin reminded me of myself a couple of months earlier.

"Don't even think about it," I said through a tight smile. "You can have Rico."

I looked over at the boy who was saving my New Year's and said, "Excuse me, would you mind coming over here a minute?"

"Sure," he said and walked over to us.

"Is your name Kevin?" I asked him. This was my new favorite pickup line.

"No," he said.

"Really? Do I look familiar to you?"

"A little bit," he told me. That meant he was interested.

"Well this is Dumb Dumb and I'm Single," I told him.

"Shut up, that is not my name," she said.

He was laughing now and I knew I would have sex with him. "Do you have any friends with you?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. "A bunch of us will be at Club Paradise on the Upper Deck in about an hour. Would you like to join us?" I thought about reminding him that this was a cruise ship and if we did show up at Club Paradise it didn't necessarily mean we were joining him, but I kept my mouth shut.

"We'll meet you there," I said. He was very cute and I was elated. It turned out that, after all, showers would be necessary. "Let's go get ready," I told Dumb Dumb.

She was more excited than a chimpanzee holding a banana. "Oh, my gosh! This is amazing! Do you think his friends will be cute too? What should I wear? I'm so excited. I hope there's dancing."

I hoped there wasn't dancing, but I wasn't going to let that spoil my only chance of a hookup on New Year's. This would be my third New Year's in a row that I was single, and I wasn't going to let it go by without hooking up. If a fourth New Year's went by without any action I would be in an official slump.

We took showers with our flip-flops on in an effort to avoid direct contact with the carpet, and while we dressed, I drank three more plastic cups filled with vodka and switched to orange juice for some vitamin C. Having missed dinner on purpose in order to avoid another confrontation with John Ashcroft's wife, I downed a couple of Power Bars to ensure enough stamina on the dance floor. I looked hot and, most of all, skinny. I love the day after throwing up. I felt like a feather.

We went up to Club Paradise, which is an interesting name for anything on a ship that should have been sunk by a torpedo years earlier. I spotted my? version of Scott Wolf surrounded by a couple of other corpulent figures. They all had the same clean-cut college boy look going on, and they all seemed like they were in their early twenties. I was twenty-six at the time and figured I had to take what I could get at this point on my trip. It's not that my guy wasn't cute, but if we had been on land, his having a full set of teeth wouldn't have been an added bonus.

As usual, Dumb Dumb was clinging to me, so I made one of his friends ask her to dance. This gave me an opportunity to get my man alone. Plus, I don't like to make my moves in front of an audience.

His name was Les, which sounded like a child molester's name, but again I knew this was probably God testing me, and I had to take what was thrown my way. As soon as I saw Dumb Dumb start relaxing with her guy, I leaned in and asked Les if he had his own cabin.

"No, I'm sharing one," he said. "But my roommate is on the dance floor."

"Well, do you have bunk beds?" I asked him.

"Yeah, we do," he smiled in a cute, embarrassed way.

"You want to go back to your cabin and fool around?" I asked him.

"Absofuckinglutely," was his answer. I thought that was a pretty bold response for someone of such little stature. I was starting to like this guy more and more. I loved a man/ boy with confidence.

I told Dumb Dumb that Les wanted to show me his cabin and that I'd be back in an hour. She wasn't happy about it, so I gave her some food for thought. I explained that this cruise was going to be like a coming-out party for her and if she showed signs of maturing out of adolescence and into the beginning stages of adulthood, who knew how many more vacations together were in the cards for us. When that didn't seem to work, I promised her a year's subscription to Tiger Beat.

I was pretty buzzed from having almost nothing in my stomach and I needed some cardio. That's why when the door to Les's cabin hadn't even closed all the way and he had already thrown me onto the lower bunk bed, I showed no signs of a struggle. In fact, I was turned on by how forceful he was and could not imagine his penis being any smaller than a standard-sized lint brush. I was auditioning him for my New Year's Eve sex partner, and so far it looked like he was definitely getting a callback.