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‘You idiot. Can't you show any judgement at all? What are our priorities here tonight? One: money. Two: get me a girl. Where is three: launch brizgarita on unsuspecting public?'

‘You should have brought a change of underpants. As if you're ready for a girl to come your way. We should get a bag for you to breathe into, I reckon. You're looking dizzy.'

‘If they catch you, you're on your own.'

So, we started with a plan and before we leave North Quay we already have discord. I decide, if pushed by anyone who matters, to describe Frank as ‘a guy who got here at the same time as me'. I don't care if it's only a kilo of Staminade that Frank's carrying. I can do without looking like an idiot. The DJ tests the sound system using ‘Nutbush City Limits', and I'm glad. Frank'll hate that.

Tina Turner's voice screeches across the empty deck and the beats ricochet heavily around. It's going to be a dark cruise out here tonight, with everything painted black and illumination limited to the swirls of soft pink and blue light swinging across the scuffed dancefloor from two mountings high on the walls. Other than that and the strings of coloured fairy lights draped among the web of streamers, there's only the fluoro spilling from beer fridges, and signs marking the toilets and emergency exits. Those Spanish, I figure, must like their anonymity. How could you have any idea who you're bumping into on the dance floor?

The first people on board, naturally, rush the bar. They've worked out that that might let them drink forty-two cocktails tonight instead of only forty-one. My early margaritas are crap, but I work out it's easy to compensate by offering an extra shot of tequila. There's plenty of repeat business, and no complaints.

‘Nutbush City Limits' starts up properly, the serious noise begins and the
Paradise
shrugs away from the wharf.

They keep us busy, demanding cocktails by the handful and slopping them across the deck. I can't believe I was worried that even one of these people might be picky. They're not here for drink-mixing precision. Those kinds of people have probably all gone to Lennon's Hibiscus Room to drink fluffy ducks with tiny paper parasols in them, while they listen to some guy croon ‘Strangers in the Night'. The
Paradise
crowd is jumping up and down to the B-52s' ‘Rock Lobster' and getting whatever they can for their twenty-five dollars all-inclusive. They're here for the drinks, the dance floor, the dark, an incidental river, and all we have to do is keep it coming.

I can hear Frank next to me talking to his latest (female) customer and telling her, in a sly way, ‘It's more Bolivian than Spanish, if you get what I mean.'

But he's almost got to shout for her to hear him over the music and that does the slyness no good. She's looking intrigued—intrigued or confused. He says something about adding ‘a bit of crystal' to the mixture and she asks if it'd be safe to have two.

‘Get back to me on that one, babe,' he says, even louder than before. ‘Have one, get out there, have a bit of a jiggle and work up a bit of a sweat and see how you go, hey?'

She dances off into the crowd with her glass. He's telling girls to sweat and they seem to be going along with it. He catches me watching. I try to look bored.

I start mixing the drinks in beer jugs, lining up half-a-dozen glasses along the bar and pouring them in a row. ‘Nice touch,' the food and beverage manager says, taking it for theatre. ‘Just don't pour it directly into their mouths. They'll ask you for it, but they can pass bugs around that way and that only causes trouble.'

Carnage takes hold in forty-five minutes. In the distance, against the railing, I can just make out the outlines of people who may be engaged in acts that involve passing bugs around. Paper streamers are pulverised, paper plates are pulverised. This is last year's Med Ball revisited. That was the night we learned that if you blend a wide range of expensive and pulverised things together and spill a lot of alcohol, you can't tell it from any other kind of mud. But it is great for bedpan races. Most of us went home looking like we'd rolled with pigs. Maybe we had.

I go to the storeroom to get more tequila and I ask the food and beverage manager if it's always like this. ‘Like what?' he says, and he sucks on his cigarette, bored with it all.

It's my turn for a break. I pour myself an orange juice and then, maybe because I'm in the habit of adding it to everything tonight, I toss in some vodka. I decide to get away from the crowd—if that's possible—maybe get to the railing somewhere right down the back and work out where we are. We headed upstream and we haven't turned yet, but I'm not sure how far we go.

I skirt the dance floor. Fail to skirt the dance floor. A yellow glow-in-the-dark feather boa loops around my neck and almost takes my head off, and I'm dancing. A girl puts her hand on my shoulder and shouts into my ear something like, ‘Your cocktails are fantastic'. I'm pulled by the neck into the middle of a hens' night crowd, and it's the bride-to-be who has pulled me there. She's wearing a condom pendant and waving a large glow-in-the-dark drink-bottle penis, into which someone has poured a lot of cocktail. She's gripping her boa with both hands and working it round my neck like a fanbelt. The penis, in her right hand, keeps thrusting forward, spurting cocktail. I know I'll dream about this. Her friends are around us, clapping. They pick up the pace, she picks up the pace. I'm trying to break free before she breaks skin, but I think my struggle might look like dancing, almost like real non-white-man dancing. It hurts, but I'm good.

That's when Frank turns up and I shout, ‘Thank god, the cavalry.'

No one hears. Frank pushes in, they push him away. He pushes forward again, they move to repel boarders. No one's getting aboard this hens' night, with the exception of the hens and their close-enough-to-virginal human sacrifice. Frank reappears, dancing in an overtly suggestive way, with his shirt knotted around his waist and a pineapple held on his head. It's confusing as hell, but I give him a thumbs up for this valiant attempt to distract them. They move in closer to me, dancing right up against me. Frank's gone again. The pineapple bobs around the circle like a trophy, like the head of an enemy taken in battle. One of them holds a brizgarita up to my mouth and it pours down my chin. The song ends.

I duck, push under the bride's flailing penis, and I'm out of there, catching a spurt of cocktail in the hair as I go.

That's enough time off for me, and I escape to the safety of the bar. Frank's there already, tucking his shirt back in.

I'm about to thank him when he says, ‘I hope you feel cheap, flirty boy.'

‘What?'

‘You could have shared them around.'

‘What?'

‘Not cute. Don't play cute with me. You were an animal out there.'

‘No, I . . .'

It's no good. There's too much noise to explain, so I just have to shrug my shoulders as if it happens all the time. Me? Animal? Sure. The lion auditioning the lionesses, that's what it was. So Frank has come at me with a mixture of admiration and jealousy, and I'm not used to either of those. Nothing I'm used to was happening out there. My neck feels like it's copped a carpet burn but, for a moment, I stopped trying not to dance. I set down the white man's burden. And I became flirty boy. That's Flirty Boy. It's a superhero's sidekick's name—Love Master and Flirty Boy, by Mattel. Comes with cape, mask and special Flirt Power Boaª. Detachable arms sold separately for daytime use.

I mix drinks with new enthusiasm. I watch flashes of glow-in-the-dark yellow over on the dance floor—the boa, the penis—and this could be looking pretty positive. I can pour, perhaps I can dance. These people don't know me at all, and I've started well. My cocktails are fantastic, and it wasn't even the bride who said that. It might have been someone single.

Even Frank's treating me differently now. We're working like a team at the bar, both pouring drinks by the row. He's the only one spooning powder out of his pocket for girls but, other than that, we're a team.

Victoria Bridge passes overhead. We've turned somewhere upstream and come back. We're halfway through the cruise.

A woman leans over the bar, shouting. I hold up a drink, but she shakes her head. She says something about med students, and a friend who's sick. It's help she wants. I signal for her to come around to my side, and she follows me down the corridor to the storeroom.

‘What are you after?' the guy there says.

‘Someone's sick. I'm a fifth-year med student. It's too loud to talk out there.'

‘No worries.'

It turns out I've been followed by two women and, in the storeroom lights, they both look drunk but not sick. We shut the door and the volume drops.

‘You're the one we danced with,' the one who spoke at the bar says. ‘Our friend's throwing up over the side. The bride, Belle. Someone said you guys are med students, and that maybe it was something you'd cooked up in biochem.'

‘What was something we cooked up in biochem?'

‘The um . . .' she looks at her friend.

‘Brizgarita.'

‘Oh, okay. I wouldn't worry. We always had to cheat at biochem. The stuff in the brizgarita's more an upper in the post-sport sense. Nothing too dangerous.'

‘But you guys are med students?' the first girl says.

‘Yeah.' And it seems as though that's newsworthy in itself so I add, as if I'm channelling Frank's wanker side, ‘But biochem was years ago. We're practically finished now. I've just come off a twenty-four hour shift in Labour Ward at the Mater.'

UCLA comes to mind, I fight it off. Get back, you big lying Love Master, get back. Leave this one to Flirty Boy.

‘I'm Jacinta,' she says. ‘In case you were wondering.'

‘Phil. Hi.'

Played cool. Very cool. Her friend is more attractive, so I don't get her name and she doesn't talk. That's a tribal law we established back in the school-dance days, and we all know it. At least, it's always looked like some kind of law as far as I've been concerned—the really attractive girls stand back and have a less attractive emissary do the talking for them. Jacinta has dark curly hair and slightly buggy eyes, but in a way that's far from unattractive itself. Her mute friend is of the type often described, I think, as willowy. Tonight, though, the willow is swaying and has a few small greenish bubbles clustering at the corner of its mouth. She's looking risky, and maybe conversation isn't an option.

They take me to their friend, the bride, who is clinging onto the railing at one of the less noisy parts of the boat. She's still clutching a plastic cup in one hand, and I take a look at it to see what she's been drinking.

‘I didn't know there was punch.'

‘Um, no, there's no punch,' Jacinta says. ‘There's sangria, but Belle's been drinking brizgaritas.' She takes a close look at the contents of the cup. ‘That's just, well, backwash. She's a bit of a mess. Stuff goes down, stuff comes up, you know. And she's never been good with seafood.'

‘I don't feel good,' Belle says, sounding angry and sad and sick and showing me her cup of prawn swill. ‘And I've totally lost the penis.'

‘Belle,' Jacinta says firmly, ‘don't worry about the penis. We've got a doctor here instead, and that's what you need right now.' Belle looks no happier. Jacinta turns to me.

‘I always wanted to be a substitute for a penis. Thank you.'

‘I'm sure you can be a real penis if you try,' she says, and laughs. ‘Or maybe that only happens when you graduate.'

We take Belle to the storeroom and clear the bottom shelf so that she can lie on it. We find a bucket she can throw up into, I pour her some water and I tell the others to keep her on her side while I go to check with the manager.

It turns out he's more than happy with how it's all being handled. In fact, he's impressed. He asks if they've got our contact details, and how we feel about weeknights.

By the time I get back, Frank's in the storeroom and turning on the charm, despite days of telling me he's not interested at the moment. Straight away, I feel like the substitute penis, and Frank's definitely behaving like the real thing.

He sees me and says, ‘The man. I've just been telling these ladies about that time you saved that guy with the ruptured triple A.' What is it with this lying? I don't think I've ever even seen a man with an aortic aneurysm. Frank's turning on the charm on my behalf. Suddenly, the situation's slipping out of control, and I don't think I like it. ‘Cool Hand Phil, they call him. He always downplays things. Don't be fooled by that. He's a man of action—a man of total action—when it counts.'

‘Yep.' What can I say? I can't come up with a second syllable and that makes me completely Cool Hand Phil by default, just when I was starting to grow into Flirty Boy.

‘Anyway, we should be getting back to business. You know where we are, girls, if you need us.' Frank leads me out the storeroom door, and it shuts behind us. He claps his arm around my shoulders. ‘Man, you're looking good with that chick with the eyes. Hope you didn't mind the triple A story. I just figured a little help wouldn't go astray.'

‘No, that was great. In fact, I think you've helped me so much—so much—that I should really try to take the next step alone. There comes a point when you've got to fly solo.'

He looks at me with something that might be a glint in his eye, but it's hopefully just a trick of the light. I'm willing him not to say he's proud of me, and somehow the message gets through.

‘Hey, the brizgarita,' he says. ‘It's working.'

‘Working? What do you mean?'

‘They love it. Like,
love
it. And people keep hitting on me for drugs, all the time now. All the time.'