i heart miami part I

my friend M asked me for my favorite miami memories and i realized i don’t have a single good memory of anything: my brain discards good memories, annihilates them like laser annihilates hair follicles. my only memories are bad memories: my mind hoards them fiercely and tenaciously. this is a fact. if you find it grim, just think how much i like it.

so here is the beginning of a series on good miami things (things are not as meticulously screened by the mind as memories are, and sometimes fly under the radar screen of the positivity-annihilating laser beam, a horribly mixed metaphor if i ever saw one).

1. the beach. man, the beach. miami beach, with its colorful lifeguard cabins, the sun, the white sand, the perfect and imperfect bodies, the boardwalk, the cruising, the leaving alone, the being who you want to be, the cold beer, the packed-dirt track, the in-line skaters, the bicycles, the jewish retirees, the non jewish retirees, the burnt-to-a-crisp tourists, the dog walkers. (honorable mention: key biscayne, to which i only went once and which i loved).
2. the sun. man, the sun. the miami sun. you haven’t seen sun if you haven’t seen the miami sun. miami’s sun gives california a run for its money, and that is saying something. thing is, you won’t ever actually see the miami sun. you’ll spend all of your time squinting your way through it, blinded and dazed and hot and on the verge of sunstroke. miami’s sun is sun that kills.
3. the gays. man, the gays. the gays of miami beach, a place where being gay is not only okay but de rigueur. the gays of miami beach give you a glimpse of a world in which heterosexuality is “the other way.” they make you want to grab the hand of your boy/girlfriend and give it a long squeeze, then walk back to the car and go home, because even in miami beach some things cannot be done publicly, thank jehosaphat.
4. scotty’s landing, where you can count on black & tan every day and cheesy live music just about every weekend, and where the staff is exceedingly forgiving. i smoked my last cigarette at scott’s landing, or at least that’s what i like to think.
5. u of m. okay, i’m not joking. it’s a beautiful campus, and, more often than not, you’ll run into someone you’ll be surprised to be really happy to see. and they’ll be happy to see you. they’ll be in a hurry to get to class or to a meeting and so will you, but you’ll smile really broadly and sincerely to each other and wonder, if briefly, why you are not making more of an effort to hang out. also the books, available for free at the library, late fees always waived if charged at all.
6. coral gables and coconut grove. man, the green. and the crazy architecture. and the sweet illusion of luxury and money. jaguars parked nonchalantly in driveways. hedges hiding lexusues and lamborghinis. not a soul on the sidewalks because there is no sidewalk. the chirping of birds. the barking of dogs. the otherwise silence.
7. the biltmore, where you and friends once got drunk on $7 ¼ bottle pellegrino water and it was worth every penny.
8. the downtown public library. i should have put it first because i love it so much. all the three times i went there i spent my entire stay wondering why i didn’t go more often. then had to run to the toilet, because gorgeous libraries act like powerful laxatives on me. oh, the books, the mixture of people, the solicitude of public librarians, their go@&amn helpfulness. absolutely wonderful. (honorable mention: the whole government center, where the library is located).
9. the airport. one of the most dysfunctional airports in my meager international experience, but who can forget the slices of sbarro pizza gobbled down in a hurry between runs to the bathroom (airports = libraries in this respect) and bouts of hysterical tears? or the pastellitos devoured serially at the über-crowded international terminal, teeming with people and boredom and anxiety and, occasionally, the heartbreaking joy of a long-deferred reunion?
10. versailles. don’t get me started on versailles. i fucking love the place. man, do i love the place. on the day that castro almost died – the first of his multiple almost-deaths – i went over and chatted up the people. i knew it was risky but who am i to draw back from risks? i sat at the café and partook of the enthusiasm. i won’t celebrate castro’s death (he’s done nothing to me, plus i wouldn’t celebrate anyone’s death), but the cubans sure know how to have fun.
11. the lesbians i met while canvassing for kerry. okay, this is less of a thing and more of a memory, but those lesbians, man, i really thought i had finally cracked the miami lesbian scene. the day kerry was defeated i never heard from them again. i thought we were friends but apparently they didn’t feel the same way. i really dug their houses, though, and the cool lesbian party we crashed.
12. M, T, jules… okay, i’m getting sentimental. i’ll skip this point.
13. denny’s. i have always loved denny’s, and i cannot say that i don’t have absolutely lovely memories of denny’s dinners taken during long car trips (i can think of one on the way to the grand canyon and another with my sister between l.a. and san fran, just after i got my fucking doctorate). but denny’s in miami has acquired a whole new dimension, a semi-hagiographical status. once, very early in my miami life, i drove alone on a night on which i was too bummed to sleep and stopped at a denny’s near homestead for a cup of joe because that seemed the right thing to do. when i got my first (and current) digital camera, i stopped at denny’s and took a million fabulous pictures. later, when M and T joined me in denny’s fellowship, denny’s pictures became a staple of the miami visual canon, but that was the first time. two words: grand fucking slam.
14. milkshakes. i cannot deny that milkshakes had a place of significance in my los angeles life, but miami has made them larger than life in j.v.’s imaginary. milkshakes are food for the individual soul and food for the soul of relationships. milkshakes are to be fought over lovingly and sometimes snarkily. milkshakes allow friends to come to grips with differences. milkshakes provide endless food for conversation. milkshakes nourish, bitches.