We finally arrive at the Dolphin encounter. It is a series of wooden floating decks attached to each other forming a corral with one end open to the sea. The trainer in charge is about 18 years old and wears a whistle around his neck. Every time he speaks he lifts the whistle and blows it. I’m not really sure why as we don’t see any dolphins yet.
He asks us to form a line and we are handed life jackets. No one is allowed in without one, even though the water is about 3 feet deep. Slowly everyone creeps down a ramp that leads us into the water.
Now the trainer lifts the whistle and blows long and hard. Two dolphins swim into the coral.
One dolphin named “Jake” swims right up to us but the second dolphin named “The Fatman” refuses to swim over to us and stays at a healthy 20 foot distance. The trainer blows the whistle making Jake “perform” all sorts of tricks. He jumps, he splashes and he humps my friend. I’m not sure that the “humping” was part of the show.
The trainer blows his whistle and “The Fatman” swims up to me. He is balanced on his tail so it looks like he is standing up. The trainer blows another series of whistles and “The Fatman,” begins splashing and spitting water in my face. For this trick he gets a series of fish. It is explained to us that the dolphins are not captive mammals but are free to come and go as they please.
We wrap up the day throwing fish to a baby dolphin that giggles and spits at us.
I return home to find a message on the phone; another meeting is in the works for tomorrow. I climb into bed early, and even the shaking of my bedroom cannot keep me awake, I drift into sleep.
I rise early; the sun still hasn't come up. I go downstairs and spend 45 minutes warming up with a ballet barre. I don’t have a barre, so I keep one hand on the sliding glass door. After eating a quick breakfast, I shower, dress and mentally prepare myself for the day.
The cast have started having secret meetings to discuss meeting about the meetings that we've had before. Then we have meetings to plan about having future meetings. Nothing gets done at these meetings except we agree to meet again. Today we plan to meet to have another meeting and talk about future meetings, and then we meet to get everyone up to date about new meetings. So basically nothing gets done except that everyone is very vocal and complains about our conditions and how we are being treated. When it comes down to meeting in front of the producers, the sound of crickets drowns out our silences. Everyone is afraid to lose their job and no one speaks.
After todays cast meeting we have another meeting with the Producers and the staff. The casting director now stands in front of us.
"Hi, everyone." he says into the microphone. He is met with silence "How is everyone?" he asks hoping to get some sort of response. Everyone grumbles feigned happiness. "What I want to tell everyone is that because of the delay of the product, we all feel that everyone should have a nice break, and be home with their families for the holidays”.
The cast look around and at each other in stunned silence. “Then we will all meet in Italy,” "You all mean so much to us and we feel that a break would be great."
“When?” shouts a voice from the back of the room. "We aren't really sure yet, but we will let you know?" “Why?” shouts another. The Casting Director raises his hand and blocks the lights in his eyes."As soon as we find out,” he responds.
Not happy with the answers another person yells out “When will that be?” Now becoming agitated he shouts out "I said as soon as we find out." He has become slightly impatient with the group.
The cast agrees to have another meeting soon to discuss this meeting.
The Casting Director taps the microphone "Oh, and one more thing, I have new contracts for you to sign before you leave".
to be continued...........
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writting "Not Only Magic Floats". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent.
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