Three grown men stood on a stage wearing matching sailor costumes on a cruise ship in front of hundreds of screaming women. No, they weren't strippers. They were Backstreet Boys. AJ and Nick were working the crowd that surrounded the stage, while Howie was off to their right, slumped over the railing getting drunk off of the rosy coloured punch that tasted like pineapple. The other two members of their group were off on the other side of the stage quietly doing their own thing, but the three Backstreet Boys up front were getting the fans excited for the party that had just begun, and wouldn't end until they all got off the ship in a few day's time.
"I've been out on these waters so nothing will happen," Nick said into his microphone reassuringly, waving a hand over the crowd.
"It's Aquaman!" AJ interrupted and reached over to put a hand on his friend's shoulder, receiving a laugh from a few in the crowd, but Nick ignored his comment.
"But if God forbid... I got your back, okay?" He said, pointing at nobody in particular in the crowd.
"Nick will give you mouth to mouth resuscitation" AJ said seriously, his hand outstretched. He wouldn't have been able to figure out who he was really teasing with his addition to Nick's ramblings; The fans, or Nick.
"It may require that, I'm just being honest"
"It's a slight possibility"
Then suddenly Howie spoke up, saying,
"And your front he's got!" And,
"Oh no" immediately after. The man was a bit slow in his tipsy state. A confused and bemused AJ laughed and said,
"What!?" And once again Nick didn't acknowledge the strange comments from the others and went on to talk of his own nonsense and unintentionally putting on a funny voice. The fans were digging it.
"Hey! But you know what? I got friends. They're called sea turtles. All they gotta do man, they come up and just float up, we jump on 'em, we ride 'em" he said, miming riding a horse for some reason.
"Who are you, Captain Jack?" AJ spat.
"All the way to a little island, where we all live together... Happily ever after" Nick finished, deepening his voice and once again waving a hand over the crowd for emphasis. This received a massive uproar from the fans. They really were teasing them.
"Are you Nemo?" Came another odd, but relevant reference from Howie.
"This is Jack Sparrow over here apparently" AJ repeated with a shrug.
"Backstreet-! Hey who wants to go to Backstreet island? It's like Gilligan's island, but it's Backstreet island?" The screams from the fans went up a few decibels at this. Howie, with his hat tipped over his eyes jokingly said,
"We got a island? Where's the island at?"
His voice was higher than normal, his now prominent Latin twang resonating through the sound system. Again, Nick was so focused on his imaginary island inspired by a 60's sitcom, that he carried on, getting even more excitable now. He pointed a finger at AJ beside him, as he said,
"Well, we need Ginger, so you're Ginger, 'cause you're the-
"I am not Ginger!" AJ interjected, truly offended.
"You're the closest girl in the group" Nick finished, though his reasoning seemed a little flawed.
"There's nothing 'Ginger' about me!" AJ rebutted, saying the character's name as if it were a dirty word. But Howie seemed to agree with Nick.
"Yes, you're a Ginger" he said, and the crowd was laughing the whole time. Nick went on to shout into the microphone and point straight at Howie as he got a new idea.
"Brian is definitely Mr Howell!" and the three turned to find Brian somewhere behind them to see him chatting away with the DJ, totally oblivious to the conversation that was being blasted through the speakers.
"Brian is Mr Howell for sure!" AJ agreed with a nod. Nick turned back to the crowd in front, and the others with him.
"Um, Kevin is..." He trailed off, trying to think which character the oldest Backstreet Boy best resembled, but AJ was still hung up on being named after Ginger. He hunched over and put his hand out, really wanting to convince Nick, and shouted,
"No, I'm Dobie Gillis! I'm Gilligan, dude!"
Nick shrugged, and said with a calmer tone,
"Yeah, yeah you are"
He could see the resemblance. In his younger years, AJ did look a lot like the character- more so than he did Ginger, he'd give him that. He'd probably still look like him if he shaved his face clean, grew his hair out at the sides and flattened it.
"Oh whatever! Stop fighting over the damn parts! Who gives a shit?" Howie ejected, amusing himself more than anyone else, though the women directly below him were screaming with laughter. They were already quite drunk themselves. AJ came up with Nick's Gilligan's Island counterpart and shouted in his face,
"You're the skipper! You're the skipper, dude!" But Nick was distracted by a guy walking past the bar behind the crowd wearing fluorescent orange swimming trunks with blue tropical flowers on them. The ugly shorts had caught his eye, and he stared after the guy for a second, wondering what the hell he was doing there at a Backstreet Boys party, and figured his wife must've dragged him there or something. It wasn't that he minded having male fans, male fans about his age at that, he just thought the shorts were so damn ugly.
"It's not fuckin' Gilligan's island, what the hell?" Continued Howie, starting to slur his words a little.
"You're the Skipper" AJ repeated. This time Nick heard him, and he was equally offended as AJ was with being called Ginger.
"I'm the Skipper!? Skipper's fat!" Nick said, almost screeching. Under his hat, Howie rolled his eyes, exasperatedly saying,
"Oh my God you guys are five years old!"
"You're my best friend!" AJ reasoned. This was enough to convince Nick, and the younger friend wrapped an arm around him and proudly announced to the crowd,
"Hey, man! This is Skipper and Gilligan"
"Yeah, buddy!" Laughed AJ, and the two separated again.
They went on to perform Everybody (Backstreet's Back)- the 'old school version' as Nick had called it, and their other bandmates had joined them, though they were still not aware of what had been going on on that side of the stage just a minute before. The Kentucky cousins were becoming oblivious in their old age. At least, that's what Nick would retort later when he brought up the idea for 'Backstreet Island' again.
As they set sail, they knew that this cruise was going to be one hell of a party.
Author's Chapter Notes:
This is basically just a fleshed out transcript for a moment that happened on the 2013 cruise. You can find clips of it on YouTube.
Chapter End Notes:
That's it for now, but the concept of 'Backstreet Island' is intriguing... Stay tuned and maybe there'll be more...
