Micha Berman remembered well the horrifying scene in “The Shining” when the Overlook Hotel’s grand elevator burst open, expelling torrents of viscous red blood.
Then he found it happening to him. Except it wasn’t blood spewing from the elevator — it was vomit. Gallons of it.
To put it mildly, it was a choppy day at sea.
Berman had engaged in a marathon campaign of letter-writing, cold-calling and brazen self-promotion to land himself this gig on a cruise ship. And now he was witnessing elements of life afloat that — for good reason — are not portrayed on your standard Kathie Lee Gifford musical cruise ad.
The San Anselmo resident winces at the memory. He was about to learn that the existence of an assistant cruise director is not always glamorous (even though he would soon referee the hairy chest contest and beer-drinking Olympics).
Berman, 39, was born in Israel. His youthful memories of the Jewish state are mostly olfactory: He recalls the distinct scent of bomb shelters and the crisp smell of fire and smoke as the neighbors roasted potatoes on open pyres for Lag B’Omer.
He pronounces his first name “Meeka.” He discarded the Israeli pronunciation with its Hebrew “ch” sound, he says, because Americans tend to unintentionally cough up a few ounces of saliva when attempting to say the name.
Berman has documented his yearlong sojourn afloat in a memoir titled “Permanent Passenger: My Life on a Cruise Ship.” To head off the obvious question, yes, the TV program “Love Boat” was startlingly accurate overall.
“Every man on ‘Love Boat,’ whether it was the captain or Isaac or Gopher, were all obsessed with women. And they were all obsessed with trying to meet a woman in different ways: Isaac with his drinks, and the captain with his old debonair, pathetic self.”
In this case, art imitated life. One of the cabin stewards on Berman’s ship kept a miniature photo album in his back pocket. On the first page were snapshots of his wife and family. On page two through God knows how many, were pictures of his cruise girlfriends — scores of them. More than a few hoped aboard for second and third cruises just to cohabitate with the virile Nicaraguan.
The white-suited Italian officers were the top of the food chain when it came to scouring the crew for eligible women. Still, between the crew and the single women, Berman isn’t sure who were predators and who were prey. All he knew was that the officers always had a women on their arms, and seldom the same one twice.
Of course, shipboard romance can often lead to heated emotions — in one case, quite literally. Berman remembers the night two crewmen brawled in the galley, dousing each other with boiling water.
Then there was the common crewmember pastime of gambling away one’s salary in the casinos dotting the islands where the cruise lines make port. Berman notes that a portion of every employees’ salary is paid by check and a portion handed over in huge wads of cash — which all too often found their way into the hands of the blackjack dealer.
Berman managed to save enough of his money to earn a master’s in social work. He is now the director of Let’s Be Healthy, a program primarily aimed at San Francisco’s elderly Russian Jews. For a while, he admits, it was hard to sleep in a room that didn’t rock back and forth — but he has managed.
Even those who have taken a cruise “wouldn’t know about the secret life of crew members,” he said. “There’s a whole world they never see.” Including the brig, which, he acknowledges, does get used.
“Permanent Passenger: My Life on a Cruise Ship” by Micha Berman (128 pages, lulu.com publishing, $12.50)