After Mr. Garland posted the original story, people piled on to hear about the rest of the story. He magnanimously complied.

You asked for it. So here goes.

Let me begin by describing the typical passenger(s) on the Seabourn Sun.
Most passengers were married and a surprisingly large number of married couples included a husband of about 75 to 85 years old and a very well preserved (through plastic surgery, exercise, cosmetics, etc.) 60 to 65 year old wife. Half of the 700 passengers were Brittish and half of these literally spoke the "Queens English".

The general atmosphere on this ship was friendly but very reserved. Many of the passengers had sailed numerous times on the ship and one couple whom we befriended occupied the penthouse suite for four months every year. This particular couple actually left their clothing on the ship year round. The highlight of the day for most passengers was "team trivia", played every day at noon.

Most of the crew were holdovers from the Royal Viking Sun. Some very important priorities for this ship included order, politeness, and CONSISTENCY. I have two examples:

1. One night after dinner, a group of passengers stayed around the piano that was played outside the dining room. When they began to sing along with the pianist, they were quickly and politely silenced by the cruise director.

2. On the eveing that I discovered and reported the shit (about 8:00 PM), the elevator involved was taken out of commission until after midnight. This was not because it took them four hours to clean and fumigate. Rather, it was because the shit was located on on a removable piece of carpet in the middle of the elevator on which the day of the week was embossed. It seems they only had enough daily maps for each elevator. Thus, rather than confuse the guests for four hours with the wrong day in this elevator, they decided to take it our of service for four hours.

Back to the fantom shitter.

Two days afer I discovered the shit, I was again in the elevator alone on my way to the dining room. (Eileen is an addicted gambler and when we are not dining, dancing, sleeping or romancing, she can always be found in the casino). When the elevator doors opened, I found myself face to face with this woman (or perhaps a man I thought). She was in her mid thirties, very tall, and butt ugly. She was dressed in a black leather miniskirt, a red halter made of ostrich feathers, and she donned long blue satin evening gloves on her arms.

When I described her to my tablemates, one of the couples who were actually the bridge instructors on the ship, indicated that they knew exactly who I was talking about. They stated that this woman was married to a 100 year old man whom she had met one year earlier on the ship. They went on to tell me how mean she was to this guy and how the dealers in the casino had complained about her behavior. It seems that every night, she would come to the casino and and sit at a blackjack table with one leg thrown over the lap of her wheelchair bound, 100 year old husband. The dealers reported that she never wore any underwear and she cursed like a truck driver (sorry for the cliche but that's how it was stated) whenever she lost a hand.

That night, I witnessed the scene firsthad in the casino. I even got Eileen to look away from her video poker machine for a few minutes.

Within days this woman had become the talk of the ship. And she was obviously the fantom shitter, because she had both motive (she was completely insane) and opportunity (she never wore underwear). By the second week of the cruise, she was banned from entering the casino.

The story continues.

On day 13 or 14, we arrived in Casablanca. The 100 year old man got very sick and was taken to the hospital. His devoted wife was quoted as stating that there was "no fucking way she was staying in Morocco with him". She got back on the ship by herself. That same evening, it was reported that during dinner in the dining room, she removed a mirror from her purse, ran three lines of cocaine on the mirror, and began to snort the stuff.

She was immediately put under house arrest and locked in her cabin (there is no brig on the Seabourn Sun). For the remaining five or six days of this cruise, she spent hours on end, kicking her stateroom door and cursing at the top of her lungs. This was very disturbing for the guests who occupied nearby cabins but very amusing for the rest of us.

So that's the true story.

Howard Garland