Masters of Atlantis
& other notes from Nassau
1.
I remember seeing ads for it as a kid in the nineties: the pink skybridged towers, people swimming with dolphins, the Indiana-Jones vertical waterslide. My parents never would have taken me, even if they could have afforded it. And I think, on some level, I too already sensed its affront to good taste—that it sat on the opposite side of the cultural spectrum from the shabby living room full of Oxford editions where I consumed its faux ruins, glowing newly inside our wood-paneled TV.
But the place is an easy flight from DC and I’m a bigger sucker than my parents, too intent to delight my five-year-old son while healing his winter eczema. So I hold my nose as my less-snobby husband books us a long weekend at the Atlantis Bahamas.
—Have low expectations, he says, and it will be fun!
2.
I have to admit: the weather is perfect. I generally approach this word with caution if not outright avoidance, but in this case it feels apt, like any other would fail to convey my meaning. It’s not just the temperature itself—74 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit—but the narrowness of this range: throughout the day; in clouds and sun; with every flutter of the breeze. I’m equally comfortable in my light jacket leaving the airport and in a wet bikini. My son’s eczema starts improving in a matter of hours, and I’m reminded of the centuries (and enduring literary glamour) of climate’s role medicinally. My thoughts turn briefly to Ralph Touchett, Sebastian Flyte, et al. I have always been better able to bear illness when I think of it as convalescence—and this is the rare sort of parental wisdom I feel qualified to impart.
When we get to the room, we turn off the air conditioning and open the balcony doors and it’s heavenly. In this sense, and probably this sense alone, Paradise Island is not a misnomer.
3.
The resort is old enough now that its real historicity has started permeating the fake. We are staying in both the newest and least synthetically antiqued part, so I only realize the full extent of this incrementally. The further we drift from our semi-isolated enclave, the more aggressively Atlantic things get—and the more 1998. A relatively nondescript colonnade gives way to a luxury shopping mall and a few themed restaurants and then wham I’m standing in front of a twelve-foot scale-scrolled throne ready to cosplay Triton. It’s monstrous, but not nearly as ugly as the ensuing rotunda; the lurid dome uncomfortably recalls its Greek antecedents, which we tend to forget were garishly painted. I imagine the hotel swallowed by sea, the ceiling washed of its pigments and rediscovered in awe after a couple millennia, and start feeling a little—what—wistful? But don’t worry, this melts into condescending pity as we pass through the casino.
4.
Apparently there is a guest caste system, enforced by glossy colored wristbands. Think something between the flimsy paper bracelets used at concerts and the industrial plastic ones for hospital patients. I thought they were just for the water park, but learn of my error when I’m stopped by “security” while trying to check out the adults-only pool, an ostensible benefit of the hotel in which we are staying.
—Pink wristbands only, the guy says to me, as if I am an inferior life form.
I show him my key.
—Oh, okay . . . but you need to go get a pink wristband.
His manner, though, has entirely changed toward me, because the pink wristbands are the best. I am a Master of Atlantis. I mean this literally—in an ironic, Charles-Portis-esque sense. And yet, attuned as I am to the place’s bogus Gnomonic effect and the dubiousness of my pre-eminence, I’m still relieved to be counted among its elect, its pink-wristbanded. The line at the correct towel hut is long enough to deter me in the moment, but we make it a point to be there when it opens the next day. I present my wrist and the attendant adorns it, in a pink Jimmerson Spiral.
5.
We expected the food to be a racket, and it basically is. Our intentions of taking a cab to the local fish fry evaporate in the face of a hungry little boy; the resort’s pastel facsimile is too much easier. We shell out like a hundred dollars for a slice of pizza and a couple conch salads in plastic cups, and it’s becoming clear our best option will be that other storied pillar of Bahamian gastronomy: Shake Shack.
I’m only half kidding. How many Shake Shacks feature a full-story aquarium? My son was transfixed—and ate his entire lunch—while a diver cleaned the inner glass.
But honestly he’s transfixed by almost everything. He points urgently at every shark and ray in all the faux-rune encrusted aquaria. The manufactured river rapids elicit a continuous stream of delighted squeals. Every pool and water feature. The room’s jacuzzi bathtub. Even the “Adventure Kids” childcare center is a hit—because, he explains, they have Legos and MarioKart.
6.
The ostensible benefit of “Adventure Kids” is time at the adults-only pink-wristband pool, where I am hoping to relax and read Portis (for all my architectural bitching, I can’t resist an on-theme book). It’s a beautiful pool, with geometric palms and comfortable chaise lounges and no fake hieroglyphs. Unfortunately, even at 10am, the music is ntzah-ntzah-ntzah-ing relentlessly—part of a strategy, I surmise with the hourly volume increases, to set a club-like mood to push overpriced drinks. Fine, I think, and order us Piña coladas and fish tacos, which are fine. But with the 12pm volume increase we are done for, and head back to the room.
7.
We take my son to “Poseidon’s Playzone,” which is like a mini-version of the larger waterpark designed expressly for little kids. Predictably, he goes wild with excitement—which is very cute—but also an oversight challenge. Various slides exit in all directions, and I am in constant motion looking for his blond head.
It’s not until my husband takes over that I realize the structure is topped with huge togaed goddesses and a plastic Trojan horse. They appear so grotesque to me that I’m forced to reassess the depths of my paganism. My problem isn’t just that it’s in bad taste, but in violation of my dearest cultural touchstones specifically. These Gnomonic assholes have desecrated the high symbols of my literary secularism!
It takes the pool’s scheduled closure for cleaning to drag my son away, and my husband and I congratulate one another for the forethoughtful brevity of our trip.
8.
Except there is a snowstorm in DC. The first in two years.
—Well, did you have fun? I ask my son as we sit in the airport on a delay.
—Yes!
—Me too. What was your favorite thing?
—MarioKart! he says.
Links & logistics:
Charles Portis’s 1983 novel Masters of Atlantis is a comic masterpiece, and the only thing I recommend here to anyone without small children.
We stayed at The Cove. Everything else can be found on the same site, or—yes—the Atlantis mobile app.
What's "Gnomonic" mean in this sense? I know the word "gnomon" from Nick Harkaway's book, which is one of my most strongly recommended modern novels, but even looking up the word and getting the gist of gnomonic projectiond I'm not quite clear what it means here.
Also, this sounds like a place my wife and I would love. I have a remorseless fondness for architectural kitsch and synthetic environments. I try not too be too ironic, "Actually in their inauthenticy they are more authentic" but since all human-made spaces are virtual reality, it helps when there's a clear narrative and unmasked intent. I mean you're literally from DC, which is the same bullshit Greek revivalism to project power rather than magic. Classier because it's literally more upper class, tasteful because it houses the taste-makers.
I love this. It's so funny. A supposedly fun thing the author will probably somehow end up doing again. A wedding… A family reunion... A weird desire to return as a hardened veteran…
My favorite tiny detail is the diver cleaning the tank. I’m always bewildered in these places, so I focus on those workers. I respect them so much. They use the place as the place uses us: to make a clean wet buck. I always imagine they leave their shift but still live in paradise, so they go to their special cove and dive again. They are complete divers. They do nothing else, except once every five years when they go on vacation and end up sitting at a Dunkin Donuts in Penn Station, marveling at the subway conductors. “This train headed to Nassau Avenue.”