The cloudless cerulean skies were crystal clear that late morning. It was October.
And the weather was simply gorgeous, still hot and sticky, but less so than August or September.
(Those who say Florida has no seasons, has no winter, they’ve never lived there, and the fall there, October, November, is glorious and warm, and not as oppressively humid as summer- May to September. The winter, December to March, is ideal- crisp, sunny, and absolutely magnificent. Towns in Florida have names like “Winter Haven” for a reason.)
Nasdaq had told me the spot to meet him, where the European girls were, and I arrived first. He had an errand to run or something and came later.
I parked near the beach, and, in flip flops, a tank top, and swim trunks, swished through the beige sands and found myself in heaven. There were pretty young ladies everywhere.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent It was like I was an Islamic terrorist who’d detonated a suicide vest, and I really was in Allah’s promised paradise. However, the likelihood of them being virgins, now that was low. But you never know (until you know).
Not that I cared of their chastity. Quite the contrary. I was looking for fun. This time, those first few months in South Beach, were among the greatest times of my life. Being young, full of energy and so fucking alive, running free, in a wild and warm place. It was a time I’ll never forget. It was truly magical…
And here I was, on this immaculate beach, under a shining, golden sun, with salty sea breezes tickling at my nose, and I was surrounded by beautiful women in bikinis, smoking hot Euro babes frolicking, splashing in the waters, lying atop the beige sands. The beautiful girls everywhere, far as the eye could see.
I scanned around, admired the scenery. It was further up the beach, a little past South Beach, around 30th and Collins, and it was way less crowded and was much cleaner there. No used condoms, empty bottles or bloody tampons anywhere.
Since it wasn’t so crowded, I didn’t need to cut through too many people to get to the water. I’d planned to set my towel down, kick off my flip flops and jump in the Atlantic, which, at that time of year, was a darker, more navy shade of blue.
Nearing the foamy, splashing tide, I passed by two sizzling hot, rail thin, young European goddesses. They were as pretty as runway models.
One was a blond, the other a brunette.
Passing them, they looked at me, and I looked back. I smiled at them. They smiled back.
I decided to seize the opportunity and asked them how the water was today.
They responded that they’d not been in, only had been sunbathing.
It was a rather effective opening line. I’d not even planned it, either. It just rolled off the tip of my tongue.
Not only were both stunningly beautiful, they were chill, friendly, easy to talk to.
We hit it off, immediately began chatting, the usual getting to know you stuff, where are you from, what are you doing here, the small talk thing.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent One of them was Italian. The other was Austrian. Sort of surprising because it looked the other way around, the Austrian the brunette and darker-skinned, with these big, mesmerizing brown eyes that captivated me. I’d never seen eyes like that before.
She was thin as a model, both were, actually, and both had their belly buttons pierced.
The Italian was a hot number herself, with bright blue eyes and a crooked smile that was sly and sexy.
I was hitting it off with the two of them, and then Nasdaq arrived.
He made his introductions, caught up on our banter. The girls had to go to class and had to leave shortly, so I made sure to get their digits and asked them to meet me and Nasdaq for dinner later that night at a trendy bar/restaurant on Lincoln Road that had splendid margheritas and magnificent food, particularly its nachos.
Once the girls left, Nasdaq and I discussed the obvious. Who would chase who?
The two girls liked me, I could tell, and weren’t too into Nasdaq. Poor Nasdaq. Not only was he shy, but he was slightly older than me, and slope-shouldered, not as physically fit. When we’d hit on girls, they’d usually like me more.
Nasdaq was indecisive. He couldn’t say which one he liked better. I knew I wanted the Austrian. From the first moment I saw her, she was all I could think about, as if she’d cast a spell on me, with those brown eyes of hers…
Nasdaq and I met the girls at the restaurant at around 7pm. We had a fun time, yummy Latin fusion food and several drinks.
After the meal, we took a leisurely walk around Lincoln Road. The place was packed, young people, pretty people, weirdos, hipsters, posers, artists, models, buskers, human statues, beggars, and stragglers and everything in between. We even passed by a guy who looked like Mickey Rourke, and I’m pretty sure it was him.
(I’d driven past Vanilla Ice earlier that day, seen him run a red light, not far from Lincoln Road. He’d been driving a white SUV. I would have expected him in some
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent fancier whip. Maybe Suge Knight stole his rides too… But still, I have thought he’d be cruising like Birdman, who I’d seen pimping a jet-black Rolls Royce. I spotted him driving down the street by my apartment, at 6 AM, when I was returning from a club. We’d made eye contact, as I’d stopped in my tracks, squinting at him, thinking, “Wait a sec, isn’t that…” And he’d sped off before I could put respek on his name…)
Back to Lincoln Road, strolling around, we decided to hit a club on the beach, one I’d not been to, but one where Nasdaq knew a part-owner and so we bypassed the line, got in for free, had VIP access.
The whole time, on our double date, it wasn’t totally clear who’d wind up with who. Poor Nasdaq, neither girl really was too keen on him.
Countless shots were slammed by our quartet. Nasdaq’s owner pal hooked us up with an open bar. Then it was down to the dance floor.
The four of us began to boogie.
I first was shuffling, duckwalking with the Italian, and then duckwalked over to the Austrian.
There was something about her. An aura. It drew me in, like an energy with invisible tentacles, and I pulled her towards me, grabbing her by her slim hips and I planted my lips on hers.
I think we set a Guinness Record for how long we made out, on that dance floor.
When we broke apart, and went to bumping and grinding, I glanced over at Nasdaq and the Italian, and they were staring at us, eyes bulging and mouths agape.
I’d have expected Nasdaq to take the cue, put the moves on the Italian. But he didn’t. Poor guy was too beta, didn’t have the guts.
We danced a bit more, had a few more drinks, and I invited the Austrian back to my place, for a horizontal dance or two.
But she refused, politely, told me she would see me tomorrow. To which I was okay with. Of course, I wanted her to come back to my apartment with me, but I
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent liked her enough and was a gentleman and wasn’t such an animal I couldn’t wait for one night.
I saw her the next night. We met again on Lincoln Road, had a lovely dinner, a romantic walk on the beach, a few drinks at a small café near my apartment, and ended up at my apartment, where we spent the night.
We immediately became inseparable, seeing each other daily. But we had trouble communicating at times. Her English was great, but she was more accustomed to the British English, British accent, as most in Europe are.
So there be a lot of things I’d say to her, especially slang words and such, that she’d have trouble getting. And she’d narrow her eyes, shoot me the cutest scrunched up face, shake or tilt her pretty head, her shoulder length brownish black hair swiveling and bobbing as she would ask “what?” With the most shocked and quizzical expression, like my slang word was an algebraic equation.
But she was clever. Picked up quickly on the language. And we got along great.
She was easygoing, fun, open-minded. She didn’t complain or start fights. The only red flag I noticed were a set of scars on her right thigh. Would I ever discover what a red flag that was… Would I ever wish I’d asked about that sooner!
She’d be so timid in bed and was unwilling to experiment- at first. I discovered why later. That it had to do with her being sexually attacked at age 12 and being unable to bring herself to engage fully with a man, let down her guard. She’d never confided that in anyone before. It’d been a secret she’d kept for years….
Once she told me about it, and as we got to know each other, she became more willing, open, and we did all sorts of things. Things I’d never done, either. It was bliss. Once, in bed, curled up warmly together in the dark, she whispered to me that I was the first person she’d ever really enjoyed being with, which made me feel like a lion…
We had this unbelievable month together. We’d eat great food, drink, hit the beach, swim, sunbathe, lie in the sun.
We’d dance. With a plethora of nightlife places, it was no problem to find a dancefloor in Miami or South Beach. And when we danced, we held each other
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent tightly. Deep eye contact. I’d get lost in the currents of her puppy dog brown eyes.
There was a night when we danced to The Cure song “Just Like Heaven,” which came on again, at an opportune time. I’d never been a Cure fan, except that song, and had always been more into heavy metal, hardcore rap, but fuck if that wasn’t one of the greatest, most moving pieces of music I’d ever heard. A song that seemed to follow me throughout this time in my life, prophetically.
It was like heaven, her soft body, slender frame in my arms, shaking and swaying to the music, the club’s rainbow of lights, strobes illuminating us. Every time I hear that song, I’m transported back to that moment, that night. Amazing how music has that power, to function as a time machine.
But it ended, as all things do, when her visa expired, and her school term ended.
That last night, before she left, she told me how she never wanted the night to end, and neither did I. We had a gluttonous meal of seafood, drinks at a café, and a walk on the beach under the silver light of a full moon.
I remember us glancing up at the big white pill in the sky and her joking about how I shouldn’t worry, that she “wouldn’t turn into werewolf,” and it so cute how she said that, with her big brown eyes and the sexy sound of her European accent.
She’d told me, too, that whenever there was a full moon that she’d have difficulty sleeping. We barely slept that night, anyway, spending the majority of the time in each other’s arms.
The next morning when she left, though, the mood shifted, and we were both so sad. We held each other, crying, neither of us wanting to let go. I’d not cried like that since my father died.
Seeing her off to the airport shuttle van was excruciating. I ran back up to my apartment, wailed like a baby. Then I calmed myself by slugging a series of shots of whiskey... Later on that day, I met a Jamaican buddy of mine from the building, and we smoked a couple joints, which helped bring me back to life…
I kept up the long-distance thing, with the Austrian, for a couple months. Looking back at it, I had friends telling me to cut it off, what future did I have with her, et
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent cetera. I should have listened, probably. But, again, who knows where I’d be now, if this book would have been written.
The long-distance thing was tough, but I was still having fun, being young, living in South Beach. I was still hanging with Nasdaq, out drinking, hanging with a few of the Venezuelans, too, who I’d met through the thick chick, but I wasn’t chasing tail.
Perhaps I should have. One of the Venezuelans, a thin, pretty young thing, around the same age as me, the Austrian, was interested in me, and I developed similar feelings for her.
She, unlike the Austrian, was no party girl. She was in fact a virgin. She’d never even had a boyfriend.
That surprised me, because with her soft and sexy South American accent, caramel skin, bulbous black eyes, and her thin figure, I’m sure she had plenty of suitors. Perhaps it was to do with her demeanor. She was leery of men. Her father had cheated on her mother, parents divorced, and this instilled her with a deep distrust of the male gender.
The other Venezuelans, one of the gay dudes tried to set me up with the virgin and attempted to assuage me of my longing for the Austrian.
He assured me there’d be “other ships” to board. I’d began having those thoughts, too, thinking how it would be impossible to make it work, with her in another continent, her a citizen of another country, her with no work experience past simple hotel work and waitressing.
I decided to go on a platonic date with the virgin, and I called her up, asked her out. She nervously, reluctantly accepted.
However, before we met, another hurricane, an inexplicable late season storm, approached Florida, quickly curtailing our plans!
Nasdaq and I evacuated, drove out to the west coast of Florida, which was in the lowest part of the dreaded “cone of probability.” We loaded up our rides, and did a hurricane shuffle out there, staying in a cheap motel, on the beach in Fort Myers.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent On the way there, we drove across the Florida peninsula, and, once outside the Miami, Ft. Lauderdale area, I got to see what a wasteland much of the interior of Florida really was.
Especially the barren, desolate lacuna between the coastlines. It was empty, ugly, brown, devoid of life and vegetation, fucking scorching hot. It was more reminiscent of the badlands of Wyoming or Death Valley than Florida- or at least what I knew of Florida.
We made a pitstop, somewhere in this dead space, at a Native American reservation.
I’d never been to a reservation. I’d seen them on TV, in movies. They never seemed too bad. Open lands, mountains, Wild Wild West western rustic American scenery.
But this place was depressing, plain depressing. It was run down, and the people looked run down too. When I pushed open my car door and exited my air-conditioned bubble, stepping into the blistering heat, I nearly fell down.
It had to be the hottest hot I’d experienced. Like a wave of lava hitting me as I opened that car door.
(The humidity, heat, already unbearable at times, worsens the further inland you venture into the Florida peninsula and is superlative when a hurricane approaches, as the barometric pressure drops.) Wiping sweat from our brows, we gassed up our rides and ducked into the heavenly icy AC blast of the gas station restaurant and grabbed a fast food lunch.
Glancing around, I felt such empathy for the Natives. Here they were, their people massacred, land taken, their ancestors murdered, displaced by Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory strangling them with his bare hands, and now they were left with this patch of land in the worst, dreariest part of the state. On top of everything they’d suffered, having to live in a place like this was a serious kick to the dick, a gross indignity…
Eating a grilled cheese sandwich, seeing the signs on the wall proclaiming:
“alcohol forbidden,” and thinking of how, after the settlers of Florida massacred the Natives, alcohol, the poisonous potion, had launched its own onslaught and
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent ravaged these communities, so much so that it had to be banned outright.
Shaking my head in dismay, I must say that all I wanted to do was get out of there as soon as possible.
At least I could.
Stepping back into my car, my black car, the steering wheel was like a burning flame, nearly melting off the flesh of my palms as I gripped it.
Gunning it out of that wasteland, those American Indian Cemeteries, and driving off, eventually arriving at the horizon of the west coast, witnessing its splendid tropical beauty emerging into my windshield, it was as if the land in front of me were an oasis.
I found that the west coast of Florida, and Ft. Myers, where we’d gone, was less peopled and less developed than Miami. The water had a darker shade to it. But the sands on the beaches were whiter. The people were Whiter, too, and it was less Latin, but, like Florida’s east coast, it had plenty of New Yorkers, Carpetbaggers like me, and we were accepted, people were friendly there.
Another pleasant aspect was that the drivers were less rude than in Miami, more adherent to traffic laws, not much tailgating and even cars allowing you to pass, allowing surprisingly wide berths, and there was far less worry of a passing motorist shooting you…
On the drive there, though, we witnessed the fury of Mother Nature, seeing a town, Punta Gorda, that’d been recently struck by a hurricane; the storm had spawned ferocious tornadoes that’d fucking leveled houses; the structures turned to scattered debris, and chunks of plywood, shredded furniture, obliterated drywall flanked tracts of palm trees that’d been flattened as if driven over by a bulldozer.
It was certainly an omen, a clear message who was in charge in the battle of man versus nature; nature, ultimately, always wins. The scenes we witnessed along that road, the town torn to bits, that storm’s carnage, were irrefutable proof of nature’s, Earth’s supremacy over us...