It was around this time, too, that I quit the job, that my Austrian girlfriend returned to Miami.
I didn’t think she would come back. We’d been doing the long-distance thing, talking online, but I wasn’t sure I’d really see her again. To my shock, she told me she was coming over to spend Christmas with me, and only days later, she came!
I was stunned when she arrived at the airport. I just didn’t think she’d do it, come back, and here she was, like a living ghost…
But it was great. Really great. We spent a blissful Christmas together. It was such a wonderful time. We picked up right where we left off. She was the same girl, so pretty, so laidback and fun, so up for anything.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent And, again, we’d do anything and everything. We’d go out dancing. We’d swim in the ocean. We’d laugh, wrestle, and I’d bite her, chewing and sucking on her milky white, silky soft scrumptious skin, giving her hickeys everywhere. We’d give each other massages and cook massive meals, and she’d whip up these delectable Austrian cakes. I remember we ate this delightful gingerbread house, I’d bought, in bed, while we watched Christmas movies.
Then, at night, we’d take these fantastic, leisurely long strolls on the beach, under swaying palm trees that’d been wrapped in glittering Christmas lights. Sometimes we’d find freshly fallen coconuts lying around, scoop them up, and bring them back to our apartment, crack them open, and concoct mixed drinks from the coconut water and pulp and long pours of red rum.
It was such a perfect time, that holiday, like a dream.
I’d usually hated Christmas, gotten depressed around that time, because my family didn’t do much for it, while other families did, and the TV was filled with annoying ads, consumerism, and fake cheer. Usually it was a time I reviled. It’d remind me, too, of Jessica, since Christmas time was when we’d first been together. But this Christmas, however, was perfect. So much so, it obliterated the associations, lent me a new appreciation for the holiday, seeing what it could be…
But after the holiday was finished, I didn’t know what to do.
First of all, I had no job and dwindling savings. I was having trouble, too, finding any job in Miami because my Spanish was crap, and I wasn’t keen to move to another city, leave my friends and everything I knew.
Second of all, my girlfriend was only in America on a tourist visa. She couldn’t get work. She couldn’t do much of anything except stay with me, which was cool, but money was running short.
I kept applying to jobs, but still was finding nothing. So my first problem wasn’t disappearing, and things were only getting tighter financially.
My mother, relatives were becoming annoyed with me, too, yelling at me on the phone, berating me just to take any job, even as a janitor, just do something, they said.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent This was the first time I’d really considered committing a crime, like robbing a bank or returning to drug sales. Drug sales would have been easy to enter, as this was Miami, after all, though it wasn’t the business I’d envisioned. Basically, all the jobs I could find were commission only sales gigs, or crappy, high-pressure sales jobs, shady real estate sales, and one awful company I interviewed with who’d misrepresented themselves as a marketing company but were actually a door-to-door sales firm, schlepping around to businesses in South Florida, cajoling better rates for credit card processing.
(I remember before the interview, I was to “tag along” with a salesman as he
“visited clients.” It turned out to be this eccentric young German guy, going to these small businesses around West Palm Beach, many of which were run by elderly Jews. And this guy, with his crystal blue eyes and fascist style haircut, and his German accent, as could be expected, received the iciest reception imaginable. Not exactly the cleverest marketing, that, and I remember one lady specifically telling the German guy that she “wouldn’t want his job, all the people around her strip mall, annoyed at him, and stink-eying him.” Funny enough, I was thinking the same thing.)
It was time to rethink the South Beach dream. I was also becoming more interested in Europe, after being with this Austrian girl, seeing pictures of the jaw-dropping jagged spires of the Alps and bucolic countryside scenery of the Austrian hills, how lush and green they were, with those adorable slanted roof wooden houses, the whole place looking like “The Sound of Music” or a Christmas card.
I’d been looking into it, and the only way I could have a future with this girl, who I’d begun to fall deeply, deeply in love with and never wanted to part from, the only way to stay with her would be to marry.
And after a night of drinking and smoking weed, I made a hasty, crazy decision.
While in bed, us both naked, I popped the question, asked my girlfriend to marry me.
To my surprise, she said yes, with no hesitation. The next day, us both in t-shirts and shorts, we went to the courthouse, paid a nominal fee, stepped in front of a county clerk, an attractive middle-aged Colombian lady wearing a heavy gold crucifix, who smiled at us, deviously, the whole time, and me and the Austrian,
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent like the young fools we were, rushed in and eloped, diving head first into matrimony…