maelstrom is active again, and will probably get an overhaul soon.
a rodent found its way into this poem--
sneaky little bastard.
how could this have happened?
i was so careful.
i put traps in the garage.
i swept the floor after every meal.
i bought a hungry looking cat.
actually now that i think about it
perhaps i left the front door open.)
Since the subject of New Yorkers saying the darndest things has recently come up, I thought it was also time for you to start seeing them. Doing the darndest things that is. So here you are, stupid / hipster / tricks brought to you weekly by Blue States Lose.
Notes from the outerground. The instant we set foot on the beach--pasty white me and my dusky Egyptian girl--we passed a trio of beach crazies: a leather-skinned woman tells me I'm too white for South Beach, an aboriginal man who up till now has been chanting "you gotta put it in a pouch, you gotta put it in a pouch" changes his tune to "god don't put the girl like that on earth no more," and the clear head of the bunch, a guy in his thirties, talks to me about Seattle. Seattle being my excuse for whiteness. I left Gollum City for Gotham City. Which in the end is only a minor improvement compared to Miami of course.
As we walk off the woman--who is really quite annoying by now because she is the only one among them who didn't change her tune--is yelling "white boy!" Every time she does so we turn and wave, until they are out of earshot. Here we are, South Beach. I am the lone white man; all other white men have turned to leather. Like the bums. There are a surpising number of them for such an upscale place--warm year round I guess. As one of my neighbors in Seattle once said of Arizona people, "they're just like a baseball glove." These are the bums. We see a woman bum made of baseball glove leather sleeping on a park bench with an empty bottle of rubbing alcohol beside her. Bums fascinate me.
Notwithstanding, I get the impression the majority of South Beach just stepped off the runway for a cool dip in the water before their next show. This place is of the body, in the same way that New York or Seattle is of the mind. What I see is pretty easy on the eyes.
We go to some incredible clubs. Saturday, to a smaller place called Blue with edgy house. It's small, oblong like a New York bar, not the vast expanse you'd expect of a Miami dance club. "Someone f**ked my washing machine, my washing machine doesn't work" a digitized voice complains repeatedly. We dance for 4 hours.
The next day on a tip we go to Niki Bar for recovery drinks. It's about noon and oppressively hot outside, we almost pass out on the way. Once we're in though it's low lying couches beneath bedouin tentery, and really laid back house spinning. We hit the beach but return after a few hours, driven in by sudden intense rain along with tons of other people. The club is packed and open to the outdoors. People are going crazy as sheets of rain surround the dance floor on two sides.
There was this beautiful couple on the beach; they too have been driven in by the rain. Earlier we were watching them down by the water, the girl in a lotus position in the guys lap and so obviously in love with him. My girl & I both agree she is the most beautiful woman we've seen: light brown-skin, a huge pile of auburn dreadlocks. She's just so natural in this guys arms. They're both fully dressed, as if some love impulse had compelled them to suddenly run down to the ocean and fall down on the sand together.
The rain gives us a chance to meet them. The girl is half Cuban, half Italian and the guy is Cuban. Our girls dance together. But the beautiful half Cuban girl has done a 180, she's so drunk now she can barely talk let alone stand up. It is sad to see such a beautiful thing in a state like that. We wonder how it happened...she was in a such a shuteye loveglow only 15 minutes before. We find out they have been up for 3 days straight but not much more about them; they disappear and we never see them again. We have to get up at 4am for a 6am flight back to New York.
Two a.m. There is a girl wasted in the gutter on my street, sprawled out next to a bottle of something in a brown paper bag. It worries me until I get close enough to hear her talking on her cellphone. It must be pinned between her head and the curb. "Yeah I'm wasted. I just decided to crawl under this SUV here..."
At a party the other night, I meet a fellow who collects Louis L'amour novels. He has over a hundred so far. Says he carries around a checklist in his back pocket & is always dipping into used book bins. I love this town.