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"Kid Rock knows something that you and I don't. He's figured out the secret\u2014the dirty, nasty, well-kept secret of American life, which is that rednecks, in general, have more fun than uppity liberal folk like me. If you're a redneck, you're not dropping $2,300 a month to live in a Park Slope utility closet. The radio plays songs you actually like. You're not waiting in line for hours to eat at a trendy restaurant that doesn't take reservations, because Applebee's is A-OK with you. Also A-OK: cheap, mass-produced beer. Plus, you get to shoot guns all the time. It's a remarkably enjoyable lifestyle, and the annual Kid Rock theme cruise, officially called Kid Rock's Chillin' the Most Cruise, now in its fourth year, is meant to be a raucous celebration of it, with Rock\u2014a man who countrified the concept of \"keeping it real\"\u2014as its Pied Piper.\n\nThere are 2,435 of us sailing out with Rock from Miami on the Norwegian Pearl, and only 1,001 are here for the first time, including me, which explains the virgin tag that will be hanging around my neck for the next five days. The remaining 1,434 passengers are returning for their second, third, even fourth time. They get tags that say VETERAN. It's an astonishing retention rate, and it explains why more and more musicians are ignoring stereotypes about cruises being a floating graveyard for washed-up acts. Not all of them succeed\u2014Sugar Ray's '90s-nostalgia cruise was canceled in February. But when you find the right match of artist and audience, miracles (and nudity) can happen.\n\nFrom Miami, our cruise will sail to Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas, a tiny island owned by Norwegian Cruise Line that can be dressed up as a different island every week, depending upon which theme cruise is coming to port. Last fall, it served as headquarters for the KISS Navy. This week the cay will be rechristened Redneck Paradise (after the Kid Rock song). Then we head back out to sea for one more night before arriving back in Miami, where we will hopefully arrive free of Legionnaires' disease. Two years ago, Kid Rock's cruise was held aboard the Carnival Triumph, a vessel that became infamous this past February when its engine died at sea and it had to be towed to Alabama, with passengers shitting into paper bags and subsisting on onion sandwiches. (This year's Kid Rock cruise is on a different boat.  \"I can't believe my name didn't come up in that,\" he will tell me later. \"I was waiting for it to be like, 'Kid Rock pooped on that boat!' \") With any luck, the Pearl will spare us such indignities, because we have other indignities planned.\n\nThe ship is huge. HUGE. It's the kind of ship you gawk at from the highway. It's nearly 1,000 feet long and fifteen stories high. For our voyage, it has been stocked with 26,000 eggs, 357 gallons of ice cream, 8,000 pounds of beef, 1,484 pounds of cheese, and 643 pounds of coffee. There's also 12,568 pounds of fruit, none of which will be eaten.\n\nI walk to my room along one of the ship's many vast hallways. There's a door-decorating contest going on all week, and the passengers are putting everything they have into it. One cabin door is festooned with a dozen old Playboy centerfolds. Another has a sign blaring JAM OUT WITH YOUR CLAM OUT. In the hallway, I pass by one woman alerting a crew member named Carlos for help dragging her shitfaced friend back to their cabin. \"Carlos, we got a drunk one here!\"\n\nWe are still in the port.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n As this ship's honorary captain, Kid Rock has a number of contractual duties. He must play two shows\u2014one as we leave Miami and a second show two days later over at Redneck Paradise\u2014and participate in at least one nonmusical activity: beers and bingo, the belly-flop contest, etc. This will not be a problem for Kid Rock, as I quickly find out that few musicians enjoy communing with their fans, while just as shitfaced as they are, more than the man christened Bob Ritchie.\n\nBy the time I get up to the pool deck to watch Rock's opening show, the party has started without me. There are enormous sunburned men with motion-sickness patches behind their ears shouting out, \"I'm on a boat, motherfucker!\" Two women are carrying around an inflatable man with a giant dong sticking out. There are games of flip cup and cornhole in progress. There are joints being fired up all over the place. There are buckets upon buckets of cold ones dotting the deck. There are drunk wives being dragged out of the crowd by their loving husbands. And there are people frolicking in the three hot tubs near the stage. A few of the bathers got into the tubs fully clothed, then began removing their wardrobe piece by wet piece.\n\nMost of the people here are over 40, and jacked as they are to see their redneck hero take the stage, they seem even more excited to see one another. The close quarters and jam-packed days on a cruise make for intense friendships, ones that linger long after the cruise is over. \"We have friends for twenty years that we never see anymore,\" one lady tells me. \"We just hang out with the cruise people now.\" It's a very familiar vibe, and that extends to Rock himself. No one on the ship calls him \"Kid Rock.\" He's Bob or Bobby to everyone.\n\nAs we wait for Rock to take the stage on deck 12, a couple I meet share a valuable piece of cruise-drinking advice. \"Always ask for the wheelchair,\" says the wife. \"Because then they'll roll you back to the cabin if you're too shitfaced to stand.\" There are nine people aboard who are actually disabled, and I spend the rest of the cruise trying to figure out who's got ALS and who is merely drunk  beyond functionality.\n\nAt 5 p.m., Rock comes on wearing a bright pink shirt and plays his version of \"Sea Cruise,\" then runs through a bunch of his hits. This is by no means a token appearance: Rock plays for two solid hours. He plays for so long that hardly anyone, including me, notices that we've actually left port and are heading out to sea.\n\nAfter the concert ends, the crowd scatters and I find myself standing in a war zone of crushed lime wedges, bottle caps, and shattered plastic. Beside one of the hot tubs, there's a Heineken Light bucket filled with warm vomit. The sun falls behind the quickly diminishing skyline of Miami, and I walk up to a group of enormous men outfitted in denim overalls that have been meticulously airbrushed with Kid Rock in various poses. One of them, a giant ripped bald guy named Monte, works as a financial adviser back home in Du Quoin, Illinois.\n\n\"Did you go in the hot tub?\" he asks me.\n\n\"No, but I definitely saw some naked people in there,\" I say.\n\n\"I would not go in that hot tub if I were you.\"\n\nThe men tell me their overalls were designed by a friend back in Du Quoin. On the 2011 cruise, Kid Rock saw their threads and brought the boys up to the VIP area. Now they are back to hand-deliver a custom pair to Bobby.\n\n\"The pair this year has the Rebel Soul theme with the helicopter, and it says LET'S RIDE across it,\" Monte tells me. \"And on the back, it has the Wounded Warrior logo. And then below that, it says NEVER FORGET across the ass, and then below that on the left is the Arlington National Cemetery. It's like tombstones are going off in the distance. Badass.\"\n\nMonte hands me a beer, and I tell him I'll buy him one in return. He smiles and politely refuses the offer.\n\n\"No way, man. You're family now.\"\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n There is a jail on the Pearl\u2014a plain white room located in the bowels of the ship, with a dirty foam mattress and a dim fluorescent light. It's like being locked inside a vault: confinement within confinement. Last week's cruise, which was hosted by 311, had a number of scofflaws, including a \"Spider-Woman\" who got so high she tried to scale down the front of the ship. The ship's nurse will tell me that she ended up dangling from one of the wiper blades outside the captain's bridge. There was also a woman from New Jersey who died on that cruise. Possible heart attack. They stored her in the ship's morgue\u2014a small closet with room for two cadavers. Later, the nurse will show me the dead woman's toe tag.\n\nOn the first morning, there's a rumor that Kid Rock is plowed and doing shots in one of the hot tubs. But by the time word has spread from stem to stern, he's gone. He's like a redneck phantom. I overhear one woman as she laments missing her chance to get wet with Bobby. \"I should really be a better stalker,\" she says.\n\nI head for the breakfast buffet. Before entering, for this or any other meal, you are encouraged to get a squirt of Purell from a lady guarding the doors. Every time you get a squirt, she says, \"Washy washy! Happy happy!\" This will become a running joke among the passengers. By the end of the trip, everyone is saying hi  to one another by shouting, \"WASHY WASHY, MOTHERFUCKER!\"\n\nIt's relatively subdued in here, at least compared with last night, when a woman with huge fake tits and two glittery pasties that looked like tiny starbursts was posing for photographs right next to the soft-serve ice cream bar. She could even flex her boobs individually without touching them. A few feet away, a 13-year-old boy (one of only three minors I see the entire week) saw Sparkle Tits while getting a glass of milk. This, surely, would've been the greatest moment of his young life, were it not for the fact that his mother was standing right there, trying to distract him from Sparkle Tits while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge her existence.\n\nThis morning, so far: no tits with my oatmeal. From my window, I can see Great Stirrup Cay. The beaches on the tiny, Cast Away-sized island were damaged this past fall during Hurricane Sandy, but Norwegian restored them. Now the island is ready to become Redneck Paradise.\n\nOnce we arrive on the sand, the first activity of the day is the Lucky Bitch contest, in which various ladies get up on a picnic table and, like, do stuff to get the crowd excited. Tits, of course, play a vital role. One contestant asks, \"If I get naked, can I meet Kid Rock?\" The winner ends up being a buxom brunette named Tina who managed to keep her top off the longest. Her prize is a merch certificate (redeemable in the onboard gift shop), a plastic tiara, and a sash that says MISS LUCKY BITCH 2013. I ask Tina if she was happy to beat out some of the skinnier, blonder women up on the stage. \"Oh yeah,\" she says. \"And you know why I won?\"  She clutches her boobs. \"Because these are real. And bruised!\"\n\nThe Speedo Contest, a just form of revenge for the Lucky Bitch contest, is next. I was offered a spot in the competition and didn't hesitate for a second before accepting. GQ didn't send me here to sit on my ass. Kid Rock and his fans want your participation. They crave it. They reward it. This is not a passive experience. You are meant to get very drunk and very naked and encourage others to do likewise. These people are busting their asses trying to have the time of their lives. It would be an insult not to make the same effort myself.\n\nThe cruise organizers lend me a pair of Kid Rock women's underwear (close enough to a Speedo)\u2014a set of drum-tight black panties with Kid Rock's face silk-screened just to the left of my balls and his anthem-slash-motto CUCCI GALORE spread across my ass cheeks\u2014and now I've got them on underneath my normal blue swim trunks. My strategy is a classic reveal: dance around for a bit in the trunks, then turn around, bend over, drop trou, and give everyone the goods. I pound two margaritas to give me some nerve before I get in line with my fellow contestants. A woman with a squirt gun walks down the line shooting whiskey into everyone's mouth, while hundreds of drunken ladies in the crowd scream for us to take the stage, all of them hungry for more beer and more male self-debasement. I'm ready to go.\n\nBut I've got serious competition. Many of these men are Speedo-contest veterans, and they know it takes more than just showing off the banana hammock, especially given our less-than-stellar physiques. We're an oddly shaped, sporadically hairy group of men. A few guys ahead of me in line is Randy, a short, furry guy who pulls off his suit to reveal that he's wearing his wife's panties. The crowd roars in approval. Randy tells me his wife demanded that he wear them: \"She said it would be hot. I just wanna make her happy.\" There's also a guy with a stuffed chicken glued to his package (a cock, get it?) and another dude with a stuffed monkey down there. Right in front of me is Aaron, a skinny fellow who has a utility belt of Coors Light bottles around his waist and a blonde woman firing him up by shouting at him, over and over, \"You're gonna fucking win!\" All I have is CUCCI GALORE. I may be outgunned.\n\nI do my best anyway, hopping up onto the table and pulling down my suit in rhythm to \"Eye of the Tiger.\" Then I nudge down my briefs just a touch and give the crowd the Coppertone-girl look. My crack gets an enthusiastic reception. A cruise photographer snaps photos of my ass that will be broadcast later on the ship's in-house TV channel for all to see. I make it to the next round of the contest (O AN HE SEXY), only to be brought down by Aaron, the eventual champion, who ingeniously douses himself in ice-cold Coors Light every time he gets up on the table. His blonde companion is ecstatic.\n\n\"Are you Aaron's wife?\" I ask her.\n\n\"No, I'm his niece. I did all the choreography.\"\n\nI end up drowning my sorrows with Dave, last year's contest winner and this year's monkey stuffer. The sun and alcohol are doing a number on my system, and I'm struggling to find the perfect drink to keep me lit but upright. I move from beer to margaritas, back to beer, then to rum and Cokes and finally, regrettably, to Red Bull and vodkas. \"That first day back home you're like, 'I'm never gonna do it again,'\" says Dave, who's been on this cruise all four years. \"But you do. You always come back.\" Shooter Jennings, son of Waylon, friend of Rock, will tell me later that night that the cruise is \"an athletic event in many ways.\" He is not exaggerating. There is no traditional circadian rhythm on this boat, no day and night. There is only Drunk and Passed Out. Time itself is irrelevant.\n\nKid Rock takes the stage at Redneck Paradise the next day, and the crowd goes predictably batshit. They dance and drink and strip to their undies during the set as rebel flags fly and inflatable men and women again fill the air. One of the cruise operators sends a photo drone up into the air\u2014a small white plastic robot with four whirring rotors\u2014and more than a handful of women flash their boobs at it. FACELESS SURVEILLANCE PHOTOBOT YAY! No one is fighting. No one is angry. There's an oversize topless woman with Kid Rock pasties covering her nipples, dancing as her husband spoons her from behind. It's all lovin'. That jail I mentioned earlier? That morgue? Nobody on this boat will see the inside of either all week.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n I meet Kid Rock in his top-deck suite after the show, and he spends most of the next four hours lying flat on a large circular sofa, with a hat that reads 'MERICA pulled low over his head. Beside him on the sofa is his girlfriend, Audrey, whose leg is in a cast after a recent rabbit-hunting accident late at night in Alabama. Never accuse Kid Rock or his people of faking the lifestyle.\n\nThe concert on the beach has taken a lot out of Rock, and now he's trying to recover for the next round of merriment. \"I was having little blackouts during the day,\" he says. \"I'd literally go black for, like, thirty minutes, and then I'd be back. I'm so used to doing the fucking drugs, and now I'm not doing the drugs and it's a whole different ball game, drinking without fucking blow. Because I get so shitfaced, you know? Blow would always just level you out, and you're like, 'Hey, cool. I can fucking maintain.' And now I'm, like, trying to leave that shit alone.  I'm relearning to drink.\"\n\nTonight, his reeducation begins with a glass of low-end Pinot.\n\n\"I have good wine in the bedroom, babe,\" Audrey says.\n\n\"This cheap stuff's fine for me.\"\n\nThe wine revives him, and soon Rock is lubricated enough to hold court. Like his fans, he's not letting fatigue or the ravages of binge-drinking affect his ability to  serve as raconteur. He talks about going to the Middle East:\n\nI've been over there for the military so many times, and oh, I can't tell you, I hate that region. At least in Vietnam they had the fucking beers and dope. Robin Williams went to Iraq with us. It was him and Lewis Black and Lance Armstrong. And we got stuck at this base. Like, there was literally four bunk beds lined up, and we each had a handler. It was like camp. You know, it's dark, and Robin and Lewis just started making jokes, like, about our ordeal. And then Lance Armstrong won't stop farting. So every time there'd be just a moment of silence and it'd be like...[fart noise]...\n\nHe talks about why he'll never go on The View: \n\nFuckin' Barbara Walters called. She's like, \"When are you going to come on our program?\" I was like, \"Ms. Walters, with all respect: five women at seven in the morning of all different ethnic backgrounds asking you questions? It just sounds like a nightmare to me. I can't think of anything worse.\" \n\nHe talks about Justin Bieber:\n\nIt's just a matter of time before someone puts a huge line of cocaine in front of Bieber and he's going to be like, \"Yes! This is fucking awesome!\" \n\nAnd Britney:\n\nPoor girl. Turned into a space cadet. That dead stare, just fucking like someone stole her soul... \n\nAnd Kenny Chesney's awful taste in fine dining:\n\nIt must've been twelve years ago, one of my first times ever really hanging out in Nashville, before I bought a place there. Kenny Chesney's gonna take me to dinner. I'm like, \"Cool, I want to go eat some shit-kickin' stuff, back-porch home cooking\"\u2014you know, barbecue, something like that. He goes, \"Meet me at P.F. Chang's.\" And I'd never heard of P.F. Chang's. And I'm thinking, \"This is the spot!\" I didn't know it was a chain or anything. I walk in there\u2014I'm like, \"Are you fucking kidding me?\" And  of course Kenny's, like, getting\u2014\"Mr. Chesney, would you like the usual?\" and he's got, like, a little umbrella drink. I'm like, \"Come on. Come on, Kenny.\" I couldn't believe it. I'm like, \"What is this fucking place?\" He's like, \"Oh, it's my favorite restaurant.\" This is the exact opposite of what I had in mind. \n\nEveryone laughs at Kenny Chesney, and now Bob is ready to rejoin his fans. But first, Monte and his brother-in-law are escorted into the suite bearing a gift: the special Wounded Warrior overalls airbrushed just for Rock. Rock rushes back to  his bedroom and throws them on immediately, sans shirt.\n\n\"The man who invented overalls was a fucking genius,\" he says, \"because it's the most comfortable clothing ever.\"\n\nHe turns around and, sure enough, there are the gravestones from Arlington National Cemetery running down the back of his left thigh. And maybe it's just the Coors Light talking\u2014Monte won't stop handing me beers\u2014but it does look kinda badass.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n \"I'm surprised I haven't died,\" Shooter Jennings tells me. \"There was a lady last night going around with cocaine and water mid in a Visine bottle, and she was squirting it into people's drinks.\"\n\nWe're in a cordoned-off area with Rock and some of the other musicians, watching Lukas Nelson, Willie's son, play a set with his band. This is Shooter's first cruise. I ask him if he'll ever do another one.\n\n\"Right now I'd say no, but ask me again in a few days. That first day, you're like, 'It's awesome! I'm on a cruise! I'm going to get wasted!' And the second day you're like, 'Yeah, I'm on a cruise! Let's go do that again!' And then the third day you're like, 'Oh, my God. Time out.' \"\n\nIt's getting near midnight, and here on this same deck the Redneck Prom is about to begin. Most nights on the boat have their own costume theme: Wednesday night was Pimps Hos night. Thursday night was camouflage night. Virtually every cruiser has packed elaborate costumes for each of these events, and I marvel at their ability to travel by air and by sea lugging around cheetah platform shoes and 3-D camo-leaf hunting gear. You are expected to make a spectacle of yourself for the sake of your  shipmates, and the passengers don't let one another down.\n\nKid Rock takes a seat near the stage as the prom contestants are paraded out for the crowd's approval. There's a giant bearded man wearing suspenders and drinking from a foam dome. There's a husband-and-wife team carrying a baby doll covered in blood with a fake umbilical cord running under the wife's dress. (She gave birth in the high school bathroom, you see.) There are numerous sets of fake hillbilly teeth. A sunburned woman dressed in nothing more than a bunch of taped-together Budweiser cartons hops onstage only to have the whole costume fall apart, leaving her naked. She runs and leaps into Kid Rock's lap before security has a chance to  escort her away.\n\nAt the stroke of midnight, the crowd anoints a king and queen, with Foam Dome Guy and one half of the bleeding-fetus couple claiming the top honors. Rock sticks around to blast tracks\u2014including some unreleased material\u2014from his iPod. He'll be here all night, until well after sunrise, shitfaced beyond all recognition. I have no idea how he does it.\n\nThen again, it's his job. After three nights of trying to keep up with both Kid Rock and his crew, it becomes clear to me that partying is a patriotic duty for many of these folks. There is a clear sense of mission on this boat. Partying your ass off for five straight days is an act of rebellion, a way of telling the world that a shitty economy and terrorism and all the dirty liberals ain't gonna stop you from getting your rocks off. To party this hard takes genuine effort, and community. And it's hard not to admire the zeal of these folks, not to mention their seemingly indestructible livers. I get why people come back every year, and I get why they stay friends for life. I'm gonna miss Bob and Monte and Shooter and Sparkle Tits. I really am.\n\nSoon we'll be back in Miami, but there's still time left for one final lovefest between Kid Rock and his adoring fans. On Saturday afternoon, he takes the stage for a third time, Bloody Mary in hand, to do a QA session with the crowd. Every word he utters is greeted with delirious cheers.\n\n\"It's a big fucked-up family!\" he declares. \"It's awesome! Whether you like the music or not, it's fucking great people-watching, right? And we all make that happen for each other. We're being cordially different for each other.\"\n\nThen Rock stares down at the stage, gathering his thoughts.\n\n\"I'm fuckin' drunk. Every year I do this, I'm fuckin' shitfaced.\"\n\n Drew Magary is a GQ correspondent and a staff writer for Deadspin. His second book, Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood, is out now."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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