Sochi Dolphin Love

I peered out from the glass panels onto the bustling port. The dock extended outward, flanked by moored vessels of various sizes, their masts reaching skyward like sentinels guarding the harbor. Beyond the immediate dock area, the Black Sea expanded under the rosy apricot sun, and sailboats bobbed rhythmically, their white sails billowing and pulsating like jellyfish wings.

The ant-like locals, tourists, and vendors bored me.

I slumped back into the radicchio suede couch and sighed. Cruises always disturbed me, and this one was no exception. The only difference between a cruise ship and a prison is that the prisoners pay to be on a cruise ship.

The promenade floor was composed of Dalmatian jasper tiles, and the crimson casino was filled with overfed geriatrics pissing away their children’s inheritance one spin at a time.

Slouched in plush chairs and hypnotized by the neon glow, they stared blankly at the reels of slot machines, their eyes glazed over with a mixture of anticipation and ennui. Some clutched glasses of champagne or whiskey, their rheumatoid arthritic hands shaking slightly as they raised the drinks to their lips, while others absentmindedly tapped at the buttons on the machines, their movements slow and uncoordinated.

Occasionally, a droplet of drool escaped from the corner of a slack-jawed mouth, trailing down wrinkled cheeks to stain the collar of a Tommy Bahama shirt. But such displays of bodily decline were quickly brushed aside as the game's allure took hold once more, making them oblivious to the sun-drenched locale they ostensibly paid to visit.

I averted my gaze from this disgusting display to another scene that was less revolting—a cloth-covered table with what I initially presumed was a very realistic wax bust. As I approached, however, I realized it was not a wax bust but an actual embalmed head, a brown man’s head, preserved with his tongue sticking out and his eyes rolled back, frozen in the final throes of life. He looked like a figure from a Caravaggio painting. The blood from his severed neck had stained the tablecloth, which was a saffron and blue Nishan Sahib bearing the emblem of a khanda. Atop the severed head, his hair was styled like a miniature stadium, with a ring of greasy, gelled-up jet-black hair surrounding a shaved down, dyed green "turf" with sprayed-on white lines—lists and tilts. Upon this ethnically ambiguous man’s head, numerous giant lice—giant for lice, at least—formed teams and were jousting against each other with very tiny Sikh daggers, or kirpans.

The casino’s bar stood near the table, and I was parched. I walked to the sleek ebony countertop and asked the Romanian bartender for one of my go-tos, Freixenet topped with Campari. He refused in a thick accent, saying, "You are a child so I can only make you a Shirley Temple."

I used to drink a lot of Shirley Temples as a kid, especially on cruise ships to feel like an adult.

So there I was, sipping my Shirley Temple, feeling utterly Oedipalized and sober, when a guy approached me. It was the Old Wykhamist, the posh boy I had a dalliance with in London and Victoria Water one summer.

"Hey," he waved, "You look nice. Want to come to my suite? It’s very litty lengy."

"Sure," I obliged, shrugging while sipping my drink. "Why not?"

I followed the Old Wykhamist past the veranda promenade and into the elevator. He pinched my bum, and we ended up at his room. As he opened the door, he uttered, "Behold the Cotswolds’ Suite."

And what a suite surprise it was.

It was less of a suite and more of a dungeon. The musty room had no windows and was made of reinforced concrete with an angry dripping pipe and a standalone sink with a rusty mirror. The room seemed to widen at the door, which was also concrete. There was a hook with a stately Barbour wax coat hanging on it, forest green, of course. The Old Wykhamist was admiring the coat, fondling it, caressing it.

"Why does your room look like this?" I gestured to our surroundings.

"To keep the ghouls out," he responded. "But look. Look at this coat!"

"Umm, yeah, it’s a nice coat—"

"This coat is the British economy," he interrupted me. "It’s all we have."

"What?"

"Yes, the entire British economy!"

"What ghouls are you talking about?" I backpedaled, eager to learn more.

"The ghouls in London and Rotherham," he replied, looking at me as if I were crazy for not knowing. "The ghouls with kebab shops."

"I don’t know if this is going to work," I said, struggling to open the door. "May I politely excuse myself and leave?"

"But the ghouls!"

"Let me out. This place is suffocating, and you can’t hide here forever."

"Fine."

I hurried to the elevator and ascended to deck ten, where I encountered a corpulent, pink-skinned boomer man with a jelly-roll nose lounging in a hot tub with a dolphin. Both wore helmets with antennas, and I could see the frequencies buzzing between them.

The sky mirrored the Flammarion engraving, split between day and night. The sun illuminated the vast sea, while fluffy clouds dotted the horizon. As night fell, stars emerged, and the moon bathed the waters in silvery light.

"EEE-EEE-EEE!" exclaimed the man, stroking the dolphin’s rubbery dorsal fin.

"SKREEEE-SKREEEE!" responded the dolphin, splashing playfully.

"KLIK-KLIK-KLOO!" mimicked the man, a smile spreading across his face.

"EEEK-EEEK-CHIRP!" chirped the dolphin.

"SQUEEE-EEEE-EEEE!" laughed the man.

"SKREE-EEEE-OOOO!"

"KLIK-KLIK-CLACK!" the man continued, now caressing his companion’s pectoral fin.

"KREE-KREE-SQUEEE!" the dolphin nuzzled the man with her rostrum.

"OOO-EEE-EEE-CHIRP!" the man said, nodding as if they shared a secret.

"EEE-SKREE-OOOO!" the dolphin nodded back.

"KLIK-KLIK-KLOO!" the man now stuck his finger in her blowhole.

"CHIRP-CHIRP-SKREE!" the dolphin emitted a shrill cry, its meaning uncertain—whether it signaled terror or ecstasy, I couldn't discern—before the man unsheathed his junk from his swimtrunks and directed it towards the dolphin’s slit.

"Hey! Hey!" I exclaimed, my voice filled with incredulity. "I'm usually open-minded, but why?"

"Don't you know, kid?" the man turned to face me. "The souls of the damned often reincarnate in animals."

I was at a loss for words.

"Yeah, quit being so judgmental. This is my dead wife," he continued, a mix of pain and conviction in his tone. "I met her in Lazarevskoye Cove and immediately knew it was her. She has the same soul…and even the same pussy."

And then I looked, just because.

Tiny labia. Barely any lips. Light pink labia minora. Sideways.

"That's a dolphin," I countered.

"You still don’t get it, kid. My dead wife was an Asian. A Nippon if you will," the man explained. "It actually makes sense that she’s now a dolphin."

"Why?" I inquired.

"Because dolphins, like the Japanese, are very smart, rape for sport, and tend to be hairless and glassy-eyed," the man chortled.

"Why can’t you just find another Asian wife? Why is she condemned to be in a dolphin’s body?"

The man sighed heavily before answering. "Interpol is after me, and I’ve been banned from Vietnam and Korea. This Japanese wife is probably damned in a dolphin’s body because she helped me kill the previous Vietnamese wife, who was beginning to overrule my life. And I just don’t feel like getting a Filipina or a Cambodian—"

As the man's explanations trailed off, I turned on my heel and retreated into the ship. The veranda promenade had been transformed into a drawing room with sumptuous velvet and brocade upholstery, intricate wood carvings, and gilded accents. At the center of the room stood a porcelain nativity set featuring Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, draped in lit-up string lights that resembled a spider web. For some reason, I felt compelled to touch baby Jesus for my salvation, especially after everything I had just witnessed.

I got down on all fours and was about to crawl under the net of string lights when the mahogany door came crashing down. To my shock, police officers dressed as Cossacks—complete with papakhas, fitted tunics, high leather boots, and armed with shashkas—burst into the room with a battering ram. None of them were ethnically Russian or even vaguely Slavic; they were all mestizo, and one even looked like the spitting image of Evo Morales. Not a single one stood over five foot four.

"Estás bajo arresto," declared the Cossack policeman who looked like Evo Morales, "por intentar tocar al niño Jesús."

"I just wanted to be saved!" I protested.

"Cualquiera que intente tocar al niño Jesús enfrenta el destino de ese hombre de allí," Evo said, gesturing to his right. Sure enough, there was a naked man on a stretcher, his wrists and ankles bound, and his manhood erect against his will.

Clad in a gimp suit, the other man administering punishment wielded a gigantic rusty nail, resembling those used during Christ’s crucifixion, along with a comically oversized hammer. He poised the hammer directly above the bound man’s urethra, ready to strike...