Congratulations on Making Being a Sailor a Little Bit Gayer, Homo!

There’s nothing gayer than the ocean. All that water rubbing up against other bits of water? Who knows what’s going on there. It’s safe to assume that some of that water is gay.

Also, isolated conditions and relatively loose sexual morays have perpetuated a stereotype, be it warranted or unwarranted, that most sailors are gay or like gay sex even if they aren’t gay. We’re not sure how the second part of that works.

Recently New York state has forwarded the ocean’s gay agenda, making matters worse by legally recognizing gays as people with rights like marriage, having sex and privacy when they’re not having sex. It’s kind of a boondoggle, and it’s been hotly contested by assholes, shitheads and fuckwits alike. And today you’re going to make it that much worse.

You’re a riverboat captain who works primarily on Niagara Falls, captaining tall ships that sail magnificently near the base of the falls. You do a lot of weddings and a lot of parties, but you’ve always maintained a strict “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for both your crew, and the attendees of those parties. You genuinely don’t care if the people you marry live, die or get divorced, so you haven’t thought overmuch about whether or not any of them are faking being straight.

But today your beliefs are going to come crashing down around you when a gay couple boards your ship and very politely asks you to be married.

For the first time in the history of your career as a captain who sails ships near or around the Great Lakes and marries strangers who wanted to have small ceremonies where they’re doused in water your heart will melt a little. These young men will have a look to them like they’ve been together for years, maybe even a decade. They’ll have a surety to their presence around one another that few of the straight couples you’ve married will have possessed, and they’ll look at one another with such love and passion that it’ll be impossible not to feel something powerful welling up inside you when you look at them.

You’ll acknowledge their request by officiating their ceremony with tears welling in your eyes. You’ll hope that everyone just assumes that it’s the water so that your crew doesn’t think you’re a big old homo, but as the ceremony rushes by they’ll all appear on deck, applauding the two young men before you and their love.

“Bless you both!” one of them will shout.

“Lock that sugar down, honey!” another will cry at them.

A third man will whistle, and your remaining crew members will smile at one another awkwardly and wink.

At this point you’ll realize just how gay your whole life has been and burst into tears, sobbing through the final intonations of the ceremony.

“I now pronounce you man and man. You may kiss the man.”

Congratulations on Making Being a Sailor a Little Bit Gayer, Homo!