Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent I returned to Miami during the winter break before graduation. I’d gone back to catch a Caribbean cruise that I’d bought myself as a graduation present.
(These sorts of cruises left Miami all the time. Embarrassingly, I’d never been on one, and had never visited my Caribbean neighbors. During a wickedly cold winter in Nashville, I decided then would be the perfect time…) Since the cruise departed from nearby South Beach, I figured I’d spend a couple days there. I’d not gone to South Beach much, since, when I was growing up, it was known as “God’s Waiting Room,” only having old people in retirement homes. Then for a while it’d fallen into disrepair and decay.
I’d been hearing from my old pals in Miami how happening South Beach had become. But I’d struggled to shake off the vision I’d had of it as populated predominantly by elderly Jews talking like Woody Allen and hobbling around on walkers, eating bagels and complaining of arthritis while waiting for their turn to meet God. So I had to check the “new” South Beach out, see it with my own eyes…
This was the mid-2000s, and South Beach was booming, literally, financially, construction-wise, and party-wise.
Upon arrival at the airport, by the baggage carousel, I’d struck up a friendly conversation with an airport employee, an aging Latin fellow, who’d retained a head full of beautiful, jet-black swept back hair, as many Latin men do, later in life. He’d told me that South Beach now was like “Paris,” filled with young people, cafes, and partying. He told me that if he were still young and handsome, like me, that’s where he’d be living. And he then asserted, prophetically, that I’d have a
“blast” there...
As soon as I’d crossed the causeway, in my rental car, and drove up A1A, I instantly saw what the talk and hype was about, and I myself instantly fell in love with South Beach. Arriving to my hotel too, I had a strange feeling that I’d been there before in a past life, like I’d been there as a ghost. The whole place, environment had an eerie, familiar feeling to it.
(My great-grandmother had a house on Collins Ave, in South Beach, many years ago, which could explain the déjà vu…)
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Looking around, it was as if South Beach was this great lost city that I’d discovered like an archeologist. It was like Atlantis rising from the sea. Or possibly it was a tropical playground, newly rebuilt, for the sole glory of pleasure.
Whatever it was, I fucking dug it… Was enthralled…
The whole South Beach area, that little southern tip of the Miami Beach barrier island, had been resuscitated and injected with adrenaline. It was glitzy and lively and teeming with business, cash, and beautiful young bodies…
Massive, glittering glass-plated towers, luxury condominiums and upscale hotels had been erected everywhere, shining in the sun like tropical trophies, as if the adjacent swaying palm trees were their garlands. And the beach’s Art Deco buildings had been renovated and were simply radiant. The Art Deco structures gloriously returned to their past splendor. The structures awash in brilliant pastels- toothpaste blues, spring greens, and hot pink hues.
And the nightlife was especially fabulous.
Numerous nightclubs, big neon boxes with imposing entrances and droplet chandeliers were opening and many a Hummer, Rolls Royce, and Lamborghini were prowling the streets. There were tricked-out Cadillacs chopping blades and booming bass. The once somnolent beach was alive, screaming and kicking, had burst out of its swampy crypt like a coked-up, dancing Frankenstein.
There were millionaires and billionaires. And all the celebs of the day like Paris Hilton and Jamie Foxx and their hangers-on and groupies and aspiring star and debutantes were frequenting the nightlife scene.
Just strolling along Ocean Drive after sundown, it was like a shower of sparks. The neon lights making every night look like a tropical Christmas.
And the days, the days were a panacea for my recent malaise. The 70-80-degree sun-splashed days were a salubrious, soul-cleansing tonic after arriving from the purgatory of ice and gray skies and sub-zero temps of wintery Tennessee.
It was December in South Beach. And on the beach, there were pretty girls lying like golden angels in the golden sands, basking in the waxy yellow light of the equatorial sun. Some of the beauties even sunbathing topless, causing my heart to skip a beat…
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Glancing around the paradise, panning my gaze at the atmosphere, and drinking in the salty sea breezes, I’d think I was in Heaven as I took my meditative walks along the beach. I awed in admiration as I eyed the frolicking beauties in the sands. I marveled as I watched the frothy ocean waves pulling and slapping at the shoreline. Seeing such a perfect scene, I started to wonder if God really did exist…
Maybe the Christians in Tennessee were right after all…
During my stay, I caught up with a couple old school pals and neighbors over beers. We ate scrumptious Cuban cuisine and laughed, talked old times.
Sipping on a cold brew, I thought back to the friendly fellow from the airport. Was he ever right that I’d love it in South Beach... Perhaps he was a psychic or a fortune teller…
I certainly did have a blast. I was thrilled to be in a place where I felt like I belonged, could be myself. Could be with people like me. I realized, after leaving Miami, how much I loved it. How much I missed it. How many people there were so fucking cool. How many friendly Latin folks, cool Cubans, Colombians there were. Not to mention people like me and my family. Transplants from the
“North.” Us “yankees” everywhere. All the snowbirds and sun-worshippers from NY and New England, who looked like me and talked like me.
I totally dug, too, finding party people in South Beach, from all over the country.
Out having drinks, my old pals and I met party people from all over the world, too.
Loads of Eurotrash, Israelis, Australians, South Americans. The place was like the UN for partying and debauchery. It fucking rocked.
It was a most welcome change from being in Tennessee. I seriously felt at home there, in South Beach. People didn’t glare or stare at me or give me nasty vibes.
People had dark, olive complexions like me. It was the most magnificent feeling.
Indescribable. I was feeling like an inmate furloughed from jail…
I remember, in a bar, hearing that Cure song “Just Like Heaven,” and that was how I felt. Like I was in Heaven.
The cruise, too, was a blast. I met up with a crazy crew of autoworkers from Detroit and a wild pair of chicks from L.A. We drank, ate like kings and queens.
The cruise ship was incredible, too. It might as well have been a big 5-star floating hotel. It had an assortment of entertainment, movies, swimming pools, Jacuzzis,
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent gyms, nightclubs, bars, and restaurants. And the food, oh my, the ship’s food was delectable, gourmet quality.
I’d heard of cruises being for old people only. Not this one. There were people of all ages.
(Even, embarrassingly, some teens. There was one I ran into, at a bar, and I started hitting on her, thinking she was 21 or so. I mean, she was there drinking, and was wearing a ton of makeup, whore paint. But she was actually only 15!
Thank goodness I asked, and she was honest! Needless to say, I got away from her, ASAP!)
I had one of the best times of my life in South Beach, and on that cruise. I spent the last couple nights shacked up with a fun and goofy Greek chick, who was a couple years older than me, and had a super tight body. She’d also been single for a spell. And, needless to say, we both let out a lot of repressed sexual rage. We went at each other like alley cats, used one another’s bodies as amusement parks…
When the cruise, vacation finished, though, and I had to return to Tennessee, it was brutal. Soul-crushing.
I cried when I got back there. It was freezing cold, too, everything iced over, looked like the fucking Artic.
But I made a decision, then, that I regret in some ways, relish in others. I decided that I liked South Beach so much, and that since there were music business companies there, entertainment venues, that I’d do my college internship at a company in South Beach instead of NYC or L.A.
That whole spring semester, my final term in Tennessee, I threw myself into work and my studies. I rocked my grades and crushed online part-time IT gigs, raking in tidy little sums of cash. And I stayed focused on returning to Miami. I researched South Beach, best places to live, hang. And I set out to get into the best beach shape possible.
I began working out harder than ever. I’d work out, six days a week, two or three hours per day. Lifting weights, running, doing thousands of crunches. I got a cut six-pack. I was ready for the beach. I listened to Paul Van Dyk’s “Politics of
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Dancing” compulsively. It was the CD I’d listened to while in South Beach and on the cruise. Hearing the tunes, the synths and beats, the thumping trance, took me, mentally, out of Tennessee, brought me back to the heat, to the sun, to the sands and seas, brought me back to the beach.
My body was in Tennessee, but my mind was in South Beach.
I watched every movie I could set in Miami. “Miami Blues” being my favorite.
I played GTA: Vice City. I watched the Latin channel on TV, which occasionally broadcast from South Beach, and I brushed up on my Spanish.
Finally, after a couple small get-togethers over weed and beers, with the few friends I’d made there, the day I’d been waiting for mercifully arrived- the day to leave Tennessee. I’d decided to spend the last night at an airport hotel because I had an early flight.
I’d been so psyched to leave Tennessee, had been counting down the days. But when the cab came to take me from my tiny house I’d rented, for three years, and when we were pulling out of the driveway, an unexpected tsunami of sadness crashed in and enveloped me in gloom.
The cab driver was a friendly local (while my experience there was largely negative, I did meet many wonderful people. Southern hospitality is a true tradition, and, despite having a rocky time, some of that cultural, some of it my own damn fault, I do, by and large, greatly admire and respect the South and its people!)
And this cab driver was one of the fucking coolest people I met there.
He glanced at me, in his rearview mirror, and sensed right away that something was awry.
“You’re looking at that place like you don’t want to leave it,” he said, peering at me in the rearview mirror, with his eyes narrowed and a concerned expression coloring his bearded face.
I told him he was right. I was moving out after three years and many memories.
I don’t remember what we talked about on the ride to the hotel. I was feeling shell-shocked. Feeling like I’d stayed too long, should have done something else. I
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent was pushing a psychic wheelbarrow of regret. I regretted not going out more, seeing more around the area, travelling more, meeting more people, dating more girls. Perhaps smoking less weed. Perhaps changing majors. Perhaps doing a lot different with my life.
That house had been my safe place. I’d ridden out 9/11 there. I’d ridden out 3
years in that little shotgun shack of a house, the little slice of Americana; ridden out three years, sitting on my couch, taking bong hits, studying and working from home in safety, playing golf in my backyard, cooking lots of quick pasta dinners, cooking lots of eggs and strips of bacon.
Now here I was venturing out into the unknown. Swimming out past the breakers, wading into the ominous “real world.”
I don’t remember what we talked about on the ride to the hotel, but I do remember the cabbie saying to me, when he dropped me off, that he “hoped I have a good life, and I mean that.” And I could tell by the look in his eye, the way he spoke, that he meant it. It was one of the more touching things anyone had ever said to me. He didn’t have to take an interest in me. He didn’t have to care.
He could have listened to the radio, dropped me off, been on his way.
But he took the time to chat with me, cheer me up, wish me well. A truly decent and kind human being, that guy. Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, I wish him the best and thank him for his caring. It was a touching send-off.
My eyes get glassy just thinking about it….