Brave Admission/Confession: “I Went on a Backstreet Boys Cruise”

Before the Carnival Imagination has even left the Port of Miami, the Boys have taken their places onstage on an open-air deck for the “HOT HOT HOT Sail Away Party” — “Hot Hot Hot” being a song off their 2013 album, In a World Like This. They aren’t singing their own song yet, but recent-ish radio hits and the likes of “I’m on a Boat.”It is more than a decade after their fame peaked, and yet here the Backstreet Boys are — indeed, on a boat — with a few thousand fans, fans who are screaming, shouting, singing along, laughing at every joke, shoving one another to get closer to the stage and to try to grab a hand or get a better photo. Fans who are chanting “What what in the butt?” and “Junk in the trunk” between songs. Fans who are positively shrieking when the boys dance low to “Low.”

In a world like this, it is perfectly acceptable for these men, who are just around the bend from middle age, to shamelessly, uncomplainingly wear matching sailor suits — natty white outfits, complete with epaulets and caps boasting scrambled eggs — and for women — at least one-fifth of whom must be 45 or older — to make Beliebers look well-mannered, $17.50 commemorative plastic cups of frozen rum drinks in hand.

Here, they are still boys, and we are still girls.