BW: Consider me gone.
 Going back home, that's what I'm gonna do Well, this is it. I jumped out of bed at 4:30 in the morning and showered and packed it up one last time in a flash and went out and caught the public bus at 5:10 to the airport for under a dollar, and I don’t know what time I got there or how long I stood in line or whether I was hungry or crabby, or what going through security or any of that was like. I was out on my feet, though not unpleasantly. I had my exit aisle seat assingment and I was happy until I figured out that it would not recline much, so I popped half a vicodin and was going to wash it down with coffee and orange juice and then I decided that coffee and vodka and orange juice would be better even though it was only 7 in the morning and they want 7 bucks for the vodka, and then I popped the other half and was high as kite for a two hour forty minute plane ride that seemed to last 30 seconds, my whole body humming, in a trance, eyes shut, sunglasses on, iPod playing my favorite airplane music, hands on the tray table in front of me appearing to hold things through closed eyelids that they were not: playing cards, roses, daggers, cash, being coaxed awake everytime the attendant passed by as her smell floated in her wake. What is that? Rapture. Mmmmm. She palmed me another, free, vodka as I signed the charge card receipt at the end, then the landing and the taxiing on the the runway and all of the babbling about seatbelts as we sat there waiting which I found so childish, and then something about keeping the seatbelt fastened for our comfort and safety and was just annoyed, and then I was in Miami and I remember a lot of walking to clear first immigration and then customs and I remember the customs guy, a Latino, asking Don’t you know how to say Hello? I said Hola. My question to you is what were you doing in all of these countries? Laying on the beach, looking at girls. I was a lot darker than he was. If you ever have an 11 hour layover, the Miami International Airport is a great place to have one, especially if you arrive some strange combination of tired and blissed out, and after some difficulty in reading the map, the whole concept of You Are Here really fucking with me, I found exactly what I wanted which was coffee made by Cubans and it was so perfect, and I recall jabbering at her in Spanish which made her giggle, and I got right back in the line and ordered another, already feeling the first one punching it’s hole through my haze, and after the second shot I felt like a God and found a nice clean toilet and then had a slice of pizza at Sbarro, tried to attend to some business over the phone but could not thanks to the continuous feed of announcements of the loudspeakers which were each repeated in Spanish, and I was checking out facebook on my phone and saw that my old co-worker Nikhil was in town at the W and I got on the bus for $2.35, exact change only, and 30 minutes later was sitting poolside with him and his co-worker OJ. It occurred to me on the bus as I watched a girl in high heeled brown furry knee high boots, the skimpiest of white shorts, a brown tank top that stopped about 5 inches above her waistband, and brown winter hat, scarf, and gloves that I know Miami pretty well and didn’t have to ask where to get off of the bus. Alonzo Morning was there as was Magic Johnson and the guys were going to the Heat game that night and we tried to figure out who the young, fit, buzzed headed white guy with the posse of 15 supermodel chicks standing around his lounge chair was, all assuming he had to be a rapper, and OJ asked if I had trouble getting past hotel security. I said I’m in Gucci loafers, OJ. And they went upstairs to get ready and it did not look like Melissa was going to able to make it out before I had to go back, and I could not find KP’s number so I wandered around the very familiar Collins, hot in the sun, perfect in the shade, amazed at the closed buildings and construction, noticing some new businesses that I did not remember, all of the old ones but unable to find my third favorite South Beach restaurant which was the only one I could afford, and I got tired of walking and cut over to Washington to head back north, and there it was was, Pizza Rustica and I had a slice of the meatball for $5.00, a bargain in paradise. I chatted with some Iranian guy named Sab who joined me at my breezy outdoor table. His family, friends of the King, fled to England after the revolution and then he moved to Moscow to run business development for a petroleum company until he kinda got deported and ended up in DC which he hated and now he has been here for 10 days looking for a job and a dude came by and said If you aren’t going to finish all of your slice of pizza, please bring the rest over to me at the bus stop, and Sab thought it was kind of rude until I pointed out that it was better then him just standing there waiting to see if he was going to eat it all or not. I popped into the hostel next door and they were full up as they always are and I thought about all of the empty, out of business hotels on Collins and thought, Hmmm, and stopped into Deuce to see if Melissa was there yet and lamented their shit bourbon selection and had a five dollar vodka sprite amazed at how dark it was in there so early, so strange to see people smoking in a bar, but then I remembered who told me to go there, and caught the bus back to the airport. The woman about threw a fit when I ordered my third Cubano, and I took a seat and drank one of my three airline bottles that I had filled with rum last night and put the free vodka bottle in the quart ziplock in it’s place, cleared security, and thought about how gross I felt after the long day. A bit of BO starting up, filth under my fingernails, nose full of dust and dirt, the Cubano, for good or ill, poking a hole through my gathering beatness, and the wheels went up and the Miami skyline came into view and I thought that it had been a perfect ending to my trip and returned to the airport in a pretty happy mood, John Gray waiting to give me a ride home, a bottle of red wine and a meatpie from LeAnn waiting on my front porch. After tracking every cent I spent while I was gone, every room, every drink, every border crossing and bus, every anything, I spent, if you average it all out, $48.89 per day. If you pay cash when you could be paying for things with a sky miles credit card, you are stupid. I pay the tab monthly and both of my flights were free. Out there, it is cheaper, funner, and more free. Central America is no South America, though the stray dogs are cleaner, but it was a hell of a 10 week trip that started they day after Joe Frazier died and ended on Muhammad Ali’s 70th birthday. He’s not my favorite President, but the world is a much nicer place to travel with Obama in office instead of Bush. (I cheated on this one a little bit and wrote it the day after I got back, so strange not to be jolted awake by dogs and roosters and car horns. I guess I’ll get used to it.)
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Diary Photos
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Me & Nikhil at his suite at the W in Miami |
 The view from the W |
 South Beach: Pizza Rustica $5.00 |
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