Remember I chose Miami because of the beach? Have yet to set a foot in it. But I’ve been to the pool. Does that count? It is certainly a very entertaining/irritating place. Today we were blessed by the appearance of a woman in a one strapped silver swimsuit with a beret-like sequined silver swim cap. Normally I would recoil in horror at such a sight but the wearer was a tiny woman with very bad posture and two kids in tow which was a pleasant diversion from the fake boobs, deep tan, long yellow hair and pink toenail polish that seem to be the norm poolside. In another unusual development, she was yelling at the kids, not into a cell phone. A true original.
Managed another longish leisurely swim, finally did some reading and met Jonny and Jorge for a movie (“Machete” – a magnificent source of one liners) and dinner at the Big Pink. Exhausted.
Went to the pool, it started raining. Everybody ran away like it was raining acid, even the ones that were in the pool and, by definition, already wet. I waited it out and then had the pool to myself for a long, leisurely swim before it was time to come back to bed for a siesta followed by a full night sleep.
Tried to get out of bed by 7.30 before remembering my clearly stated goals for the week. Went back to sleep. Slept until 2.30 PM.
Gingerly walked to Whole Foods less than 10 blocks away. Bought good stuff. Felt completely idiotic at being one of those people who were reading labels and buying raw food dessert. We take ourselves way too seriously. It’s just food, for chrissake.
Lunch by 5 PM.
Attempt to check out the pool by 8 PM. Attempt coincides exactly with the start of a major storm.
Came back to the apartment through what appeared to be a convention of gang members and pimps in the hall.
Keeping the apartment at the deep freeze temperature my body loves.
It all started months ago when I checked the holydays for the year and realized there were two this week. I immediately put in a vacation request. My idea was to go to Spain for a couple of weeks, to see my family or, as I like to tease them, my ex-family, in Madrid, and then go to see M.A. at the beach. But then M.A. was not going to be at the beach, and I did not feel like spending two weeks in Madrid, desperate as I am for some beach and, preferably, warm waters. So I changed plans and decided to go to Miami, by myself. This does not make any sense. I hate Miami. I like the beach all right and I like that it is an easy commute from NYC but other than that, and not to be judgmental about it, I think it’s a wannabe place populated by just about the worst of South America and visited by the worst of Europe.
So I chose it because it’s so near, and cheap (remember these operative words, you will need them to make fun of me). Then a friend mentioned the train and got me thinking. I absolutely hate the flying experience nowadays. Fifteen years ago I did not fly because I feared it. But then I took a course and got over it. For a while I even enjoyed turbulences. Those days are long gone but the flight itself is not why I hate flying now. What I really hate is being treated like cattle, I hate the hours waiting in line, the whole security hoopla which, unfortunately, does nothing to make me feel safer, I hate being squished in tiny seats, being ignored, mistreated and dehumanized. I guess I hate everything about air travel now. On the other hand, I love trains. I love that you have space, I love that you have a view, I love that the staff is generally smiley and nice, I love that passengers are not as uptight and stressed as on planes, I love that train stations are right smack in the middle of cities. So then I proceeded to buy a one way ride on the train, thinking that I would decide what to do for my way back after. Then Pamen warned me that I might not be able to flight back if I did not use the leg from NY to Miami, so I called JetBlue and Orbitz and cancelled the whole non-refundable trip.
Bear in mind that I chose Miami because it was close and now I am riding a train for 27 hours. I chose Miami because it was cheap and now I am not using non refundable tickets and paying for the train ride which, by the way, is much more expensive.
Then again, I am in the mood for a vacation and the flight/airport part does not contribute to it. I don’t mind the 27 hours, I am in no hurry. I will arrive the same day, at the same time I would have if I had flown; only I will be leaving one day earlier.
So here I am now, on the Silver Meteor, on my way to Florida. We left NY Penn Station at 3.15 PM (actually it was more like 3.20) and we will be arriving to Miami at 7 PM, if there are no delays, which I am sort of expecting, after having researched the subject on line a bit. I will be doing some work (plenty of space), then I will have a proper dinner (I have a reservation for 7.30 PM, which was the latest available), then I'll come to my seat and watch a movie on my laptop.
So far it’s been interesting, most people seem to have done this before, I feel like the only rookie here. I am very excited about dinner at a proper table, as opposed to the ridiculous trays on plane. Oh, I have just been offered a pillow. Nice. And the bar car is just a few feet away. This is a very civilized way of travelling.
Back from my dinner with my former seat mate and a couple staying in one of the rooms. She is Asian, works for NASA and travels all over the world; he's older and basically smiles.
I am now in the café/bar car, people playing cards and drinking beer and me trying to connect to the web trough my cell. I have to work a bit after all and then I have to watch a movie. This is a must.
A minor complaint regarding the dinner car and the bar car: they have no restroom! Are you supposed to drink and not pee? Or maybe I you should leave/schlep all your stuff to get to the restroom at the end of your car.
Relocating
I am considering moving to an Amtrak train. Tons of positively huge people, both tall and wide. I am feeling like a cross between a tiny delicate flower and an elite athlete.
The characters
Before dinner, while we were in D.C. having the engine changed this woman was on the phone with her live-in boyfriend, who had spent two years in jails, who did not care about her child, who would not pay his part of the rent and the bills and she has to text him because he does not answer the phone, even though they live together. People in the car were snickering, rolling their eyes, telling her to shut up. I don't think she ever noticed though.
Then there’s the elderly black gentleman that looks like a minister, in a suit with a big hat. He’s a piece of work and on his way to the bar he has announced to everybody “I am going to relapse”. Great line, I can’t wait to use it.
Dinner companions: a couple travelling to Savannah. She’s Asian, works for NASA, has been all over the world and back. He was in the Navy back in the 60s in Naples, Italy. She talks, he smiles. They are staying in a roomette. She finds everything so cheap.
There’s a huge restaurant owner from Rochester, NY that knows everybody, talks to everybody and has recently had back surgery.
I am spending most of my alert time chatting with a Cuban lady, retired from a lifetime of union work. She’s a riot.
Then there are the announcements: after a particular long announcement we are asked to clap for the announcer, Jackie, the lady in charge of the bar. We do.
We are also told it’s a little boy’s birthday, seems he has distributed cupcakes and gotten money in return. A guy noted that if he did a second pass he would probably have enough money for college.
A crack-whore looking old woman, bright yellow hair, no teeth that I can discern, entertains an old men with a fascinating talk about nail polish. They guy just takes it, in silence and with a bewildered look on his face.
The huge, and I mean humongous, guy with suspenders and a gut so big he has to step off the train backwards, with help, so as to not topple over.
People are very friendly, lots of elderly people (it’s cheaper for them), lots of huge people (I don’t think they could fit in a plane seat), people with babies, kids, a woman on a wheelchair, in general people that would have a hard time on a plane, a few Southern belles and tons of African American.
Great concert but a bit of a geriatric suburban crowd.
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I have always liked bikes. As a teenager in Paris, when everybody else wanted a Vespa, I rode a bicycle. As an adult I rode my bike in Geneva and Montevideo, though probably not as often as I could have. So now, after 11 years in NY and several friend who assure me it's perfectly possible to bike in the city and not get killed, I decided to give it a try. I wanted something cheap, basically, something that I will not regret having stolen from me. I also wanted gears as I thought it would be difficult to only ride downhill. So I checked the bikes at Costco and I checked bikes on line and then yesterday I walked over to K-Mart, the epicenter of coolness, and got me an old-lady bike. And now, and only now, I am reading all about fixies. Gears are tragically out, brakes are for wussies. They sell them at Urban Outfitters, for chrissake! Shouldn't somebody have alerted me to this??? How will I ever summon the courage to walk into a bike shop to have my poor excuse for a bike repaired? It was daunting enough when I thought all I had to face was serious-riders-in-lycra attitude, and now this. Please, if you know of any repair shop that will not smirk at a middle-aged big-assed tragic figure with a K-Mart bike, let me know. Sooner or later I will need one.
It was raining cats and dogs so after a purifying lunch at Quintessence (which, by the way, despite its hippyish look and strange smell, is a great place to eat) we decided to go and relax with a massage. Juvenex was not our first choice. Lilly and Raoul was, but unfortunately it was fully booked. There is certainly a wow factor in walking into a rundown building in Manhattan, getting into an old elevator and stepping into a large, well-used spa, but lets get it straight: it looks nothing like its pictures. It’s more like an oversize bathroom with hot tubs and mysterious rooms everywhere. The one girl at the reception desk was probably Russian or Middle European, everybody else was Asian, probably Korean. One of them handed us two bathrobes. The first one was clearly not meant for me as I could have easily used it as a glove. The second one was larger but still not large enough. It barely covered the unmentionables (the ones on the front, while hugging the one on the back like a second skin). I started getting a little anxious. I had to wear the robe and parade around clutching a dangling towel to cover mes miseres. For a moment I thought they had done it on purpose. There were bigger ladies there and they all (well, both of them) seemed to have large enough robes. Not white robes, blue robes. Hello! I need a BLUE robe! First of all, there is absolutely nothing relaxing about being bossed around and directed from one station to the next. First, the shower (one of those open-plan nightmares where you might shampoo in a dandily manner but certainly not scrub your vajayjay), then the sauna (a gazillion degrees in a tomb-like structure, I could not stop thinking of those poor deluded seekers who died in a sweat box in Arizona). The ladies even insisted on the jacuzzi where we were to jump in butt naked and join another couple of happy soakers. I only had one word for that: I-don’t-think-so. Truth be told, I brought some of the humiliation upon myself. Stupidly, in clear act of self-hatred, I choose to go to the spa with my best-bodied girlfriend, so tiny and cute and tight you just feel vomiting (you know who you are, you bitch!) . On the elevator from the 6th to the 5th floor, while I was praying that nobody, absolutely nobody was on the other side of the door when it opened, my masseuse was stroking my face and admiring my baby skin and blue eyes. It has happened to me before, and not just once, so my non-pc assumption is that all Koreans have a fetish with piggy-colored skin. They stare at me and get very agitated, chanting “oh! pleety pleety” over and over. I have to be careful at nail salons, my beauty can be very distracting. The massage itself was, well, brutal. I love massages, my idea of perfect happiness is going about my life with a personal masseur following me everywhere and rubbing my back every time I happen to stop or sit down, and I love them hard. No light strokes for me. Those are for sissies. Still, I think there is a fine line between the pain/pleasure of a deep massage and the unbearable agony of iron thumbs methodically breaking down your body. At Juvenex the hole on the massage bed is there for you to hide your facial contortions. You quickly learn to slide down the bed to bury your face and muffle your screams. I am embarrassed to say I paid dearly for this torture, both in hard-earned dollars and persisting soreness. So let me put it in writing: Lilly and Raoul, Graceful Services, I’ll never ever betray you again.
I have aways been a fag hag, a trait I share with my sister, although I did not find out about this until recently. My very first boyfriend (at 13?) was gay but clearly not out of the closet yet, not even to himself. I always had gay best friends and slowly, through the years, I got to the point where, when walking into a NYC Gay Pride party at the Ritz with a group of gay friends, I was the one being given shout outs. I even introduced a kid on his first Gay Pride to my posse. Up until two or three years ago I was dancing around in every gay joint in NY, being warmly embraced by Chelsea boys and Christopher Street bears alike. I have been to tattoo contests at the LGBT Community Center and I am now a card carrying Human Rights Campaign member.
I am not sure where the attraction is, but I know for a fact that my life would not be half as enjoyable without my boys. I have fun with them in ways I almost never do with straight guys. Most of them are way more interesting than most straight guys I know (with a few notable exceptions, obviously). More fun. More tender. I was trying to figure this out recently as I am aware if makes no sense to categorize a whole group of people in such a sweeping manner. It is as idiotic to say that gay guys are sweet than to say women cannot drive. I have obviously known petty, shallow, vicious men of the gay persuasion, but they have always been a very small percentage. And when I come to think of it, it boils down to how I feel in their company. It is so easy for me to just click with them. I appreciated the way they treat women, or at least me. I have never been to a gay club without at least 3 or 4 guys welcoming me. Looking after me in the bathroom, introducing their boyfriends to me. Being really kind and courteous. How can I not love it?
So it's no surprise I am so thrilled with the land I bought in Chihuahua and my plans of building a (small) house. It is a nudist beach, and part of it is gay. My neighbors are all gay and wickedly entertaining. They are also good people, which is very important to me. My nearest neighbours, Michael, was my teacher in Switzerland 20 years ago. He is a former dancer in London and Texas, originally from England. I found out, via Facebook, that he is leaving there now with his partner. M.A. and I stayed with him for a few days this year and he has introduced me to my across the street neighbor, a musical director from Chile. I met another friend of his, born in Argentina, who lives most of the year in Florida. And I am sure I will meet so many more. I can't think of a better place to call home, except maybe the rest of the world.
