MONDAY:

After another morning pilgrimage to the beach, FRIEND #1 took off to go to a party on a boat hosted by the same magazine he had been railing against just the night before.

I have a secret fetish where I don't bath after I go to the beach. I like how my hair dreads up and the salt dries on my skin under fresh, clean clothes.

My other friend had brought a 3 song CD with him of tracks he had made in his bedroom. He hoped to pass the CD along to the right person who would, in turn, make him a star. Or something.

The actual WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE (as opposed to the shows surrounding the event) was being held at a convention center a few blocks from our hostle. We weren't registered for the conference, which supposedly cost $350 (I may be wrong about that) to attend a weeks worth of seminars and guest speakers. My 3-song friend wanted to go down to the convention center and snoop around in hopes of hocking his wares.

So we quickly drank a lot of Scotch and beer and left the hostile for the conference.

We walked down the side of Collins Avenue, waiting for a bus, drinking cups of beer.

You wouldn't last five minutes in Tampa doing that. I even once got arrested for drinking a beer in the privacy of my parked car in Ybor City (I was air-drumming at the time and the cops snuck up on me. It was humiliating).

My friend and I slammed the beers right as the bus pulled up.

There were no open seats on the bus and, to compound my normal lack of balance (think Mr. Bean) and our drunkenness, we were forced to stand up and hold onto a bar coming from the ceiling of the bus.

Every corner the bus took was a challenge. My feet felt as if they would go out from under me at any time. Everyone on the bus seemed to be looking at me and I wished that someone would have at least laughed.

We got off the bus early for the advantage of walking down the beach to where the convention center was located. We stopped at a convenient store and got a couple more beers.

When we got to the center, we stood outside the chest-high wooden gate that separated us from the huge stage next to the pool. There were hundreds of people on the other side of the gate who'd paid hundreds of dollars to get in the conference.

It was almost dawn. A breeze blew off the ocean 50 feet away. The weather was beautiful. I know that thusfar, I've characterized beauty as an oppressive force, but Mother Nature is always allowed to be beautiful and I'll never bitch about it at all.

Eventually, my friend, cup of beer in hand, walked through the door, right past the guard and into the pool area, leaving me outside the gate. Not only had he snuck in, but he'd snuck in with a beer. I was impressed. But I was also still standing outside the gate like a dumb-ass. I was just lacking guts at the moment.

Over a loud speaker, a voice (owned by Deep Sky) was critiquing a drum n' bass track that one of the conventioneers had submitted into some panel discussion:

It's not really my genre of music," said the voice, "I think the vocals sound really good, they really stand out in the track, some good harmonies. But the production could have been a little beefier. The drums are kind of limiting it in terms of a pop song. Keep working at it. I think you've got what it takes."

The creator of the music gave a frustrated, "fuck you" face to the panel and walked off.

I then noticed a fat little bald, wanker of a man standing near me on the other side of the gate holding court over two handsome boys who were laughing at his every sarcastic remark about the DJ scene. They were eating his bullshit up.

Sitting there listening to the fat guy, I no longer felt like the ugliest person in Miami.

He may have been one of those people my friend was hoping to run into: the kind of person who could make you a star. The fat guy was sure trying hard to seem that way, but coming off, to me anyway, like a know-it-all ass.

"If you have this as a hobby you must have a lot of fuckin money to be jerkin off every day," said ass to the boys, they laughed and agreed, "This is my livelihood!”

Christ.

He continued:

"Last night I went to this party and I see this young kid, he's got like five girls, they must've been go-go dancers, some nice big tits. He was buying champagne that was like $400, spending all this money. I looked on his tag: a name I've never even seen in my whole life. I'm thinking to myself, when he gets home and gets that bill he's gonna say, 'Holy Shit! I better start sucking some dick and selling my ass to pay this off!'"

Who uses the term "go-go dancers"?

He stood there shooting his mouth off with a complimentary DJ bag over his shoulder and wearing a promo T-shirt from some record label. I could just as easily picture him talking shit in the eighties at a dirt-rock convention, when RATT were at their peak, wearing black jeans and a headband that covered up the manifest destiny of his receding hairline.

Whenever there's a scene someone can make money off of, like dance music culture, and there's an industry event that celebrates it, like THE WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE, there's always a mouthy old ass near by who probably hasn't an artistic bone in his body. But they're fun to have around.

After I finished my beer, I noticed the guard flirting with a girl. Good for him. I walked right past him and into the conference.

A techno band was playing on the stage, fronted by a horribly off key, diva.

I asked a naturally beautiful (no make-up) little scantily clad white girl passing out fliers who the band were and she said, "I dunno. Who are you?"

"You don't know who they are?" I asked again.

"Well, unsigned bands can pay $350 and they get to perform one song. Who are you?"

I told her I was writing about the event for a magazine. She smiled, put her hands way above her head and stretched her body out to the sky. She knew it was amazing, and that I noticed how amazing it was, and she laughed when she was done.

We talked a little bit about what a scam that was: $350 for the chance to play one song for a bunch of people who truly were not paying attention.

I have a theory, which I could be wrong about: Every band that played on the stage that night were fucking horrible (except some R&B soul group from Miami called Cappachino Swang).

Seems like if you weren't horrible, and you had ambition: done the footwork, and made the requisite effort to play shows in you r area, you'd have a reputation and you'd be invited to play at the conference like the other 1000's of DJs who me and the fat guy know-it-all at the entrance had never heard of.

Lots of people at the convention seemed to be like my 3-song CD friend: they made some music in their bedroom, had never performed or built any kind of reputation, but were looking for a direct route to a record deal. The only difference is that my friend wasn't sucker enough to pay $350 for the chance to schmooze. Good for him .

Unless one of these bedroom musicians made the music of the next groundbreaking Aphex Twin, who in their right mind would fund someone who'd never made an effort to get their music out in an ambitious, hardworking manner?

It seems like the convention takes advantage of people who have dreams, and a little money, but no work ethic. Maybe not. Maybe I'm just shooting my mouth off like that fat guy.

So I'm in. So I'm drunk. So it's Florida, it's Miami, I'm by the pool, it's almost dark. I wished I could drink the pool. Drink the ocean. I'm nothing but an observer, no participation, but as far as the sky and the water, it's us, we're there: It's all so fucking beautiful.

There were moments like these, where I forgot I wasn’t all that impressed by the whole WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE thing.

Inside the conference building was pretty boring for an outsider. Everyone milling around, shaking hands like they were at a…convention.

My friend came up to me, still with his beer in his hand, sans his CDs. He'd managed to meet enough "important" people and had gotten rid of his music (which was actually pretty good I might add).

Now what?

Went back out to the pool, swerved around, tape recorder in hand, observing. It just looked like a huge mellow party.

I'm not sure how I stumbled upon her, but I ended up talking to a thrilling blonde woman. Not a girl. A woman woman woman.

I barely remember.

All I have is a picture of her putting headphones on my head as I'm writing down some notes. In the picture, I'm looking down; she's looking at me, smiling broadly.

Her name was Jeannette Romeu, an artist who had played at the inaugural party of THE WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE, UltraBeach, an outdoor concert featuring Tampa's Rabbit In the Moon.

On a digital camera, she showed me scenes filmed from behind the stage as she played in front of thousands of people.

"I'm called Galaxy Girl," she said in an accent, which she said was "Portuguese-Cuban." She pointed at the screen where thousands pogoed as she played one of those guitar style synth keyboards. She pointed to her image on the screen and said, in a sexy voice, "There she is, there's Galaxy Girl." I love it when women talk about themselves in third person.

"Was it fun," I say, with nothing to say.

"It was more than fun," said Galaxy Girl, "It was a blessing."

That was the last interesting thing that happened that day.

TUESDAY:

We checked out of the hostel at 11 a.m. Walked past the pool for one last inventory of all the beautiful foreigners I hadn't talked to. I was glad we were leaving.

My personal theme for the weekend came to be being dragged around on my friends' schedules despite any specific inclinations or desires I might have had to the contrary.

It didn't bother me much until Tuesday. I was under the impression we were heading back to Tampa on that morning.

Instead, my friends decided they wanted to go shopping for shoes. Everyone who I've told that to has likened them to a couple girls. I like girls though.

If a man has ever bought into a male version of the beauty myth, i.e. feeling inferior for not living up to some aesthetic standard, I bought into it in Miami. Beachfront property. Big mortgage that might take years to pay off.

Any other American city I've ever been to, I can always count on some attention from the local females. Not much. Not much at all. But every few days I'll notice something: make eye contact with some pretty girl, some communication, she'll smile or something. On the streets of Miami, like I said earlier, I felt invisible.

Nearly everyone around me was tan and healthy. Everyone glided down the strand. His and hers brown skin.

Even chain stores like The Gap have architectural personality in Miami.

The sidewalks are perfect.

Once, when getting high in a dark alley by a dumpster, we noticed that, instead of the alley smelling like urine and trash, it smelled like suntan oil. Swear to god.

And for the first time since I was a teenager, I actually wished I fit in. I wished I gave the appearance of a graceful and proud brown hawk instead of a pink, vulnerable newborn baby mouse.

I've never felt that way in Tampa, where only one out of ten people is striking at all. But in Miami, the average is the minority.

The old fat men were even beautiful.

I'd look at a shriveled up toddler drowning in their own tendrils and be intimidated by the impending beauty. At one point I caught a baby staring at me. I swear the look on its face said, "what the fuck is that?"

The beauty in Miami is oppressive.

As my friends shopped, I decided, uncharacteristically, to shut up. To not complain. An hour of shopping wouldn't breed too much hate and resentment in my heart for my friends.

What turned out to be AT LEAST FOUR HOURS, did.

I had run out of clothes. I had to wear jeans because my shorts were smelly, wet and full of sand from the beach. So I'm walking down South Beach, the Mecca of style, wearing jeans and a black promo WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE shirt, with a pinkish white, British looking head sticking out of it. Poor as hell, without even the promise of a new pair of shoes to distract me from my seething as we walked and walked.

Not to mention the burning skin. I'd already indulged in more sun than any dermatologist sensitive to the plight of the redhead people would deem fit. Add to that four hours of walking South Beach and I might as well start my chemo now.

"Guys, I am a redhead, this is really bad for me." I said during the third hour of shopping in the sun.

They laughed.

Just like my parents, they don't understand. My parents used to let my naïve pink ass run around the pool all day every day when we moved to Florida. One time I stayed by the pool for only two hours and got so burned my eyes swole shut and I had to stay home from school for days. Freddie Kreuger type shit.

Sunburns take a while to kick in. You really don't see or notice them until after the sun goes down.

But as we walked, passed the flocks of buff gay men (the only blondes, it seemed, for miles) and Amazonian rollerbladers, I could feel my skin hating my friends, hating me for keeping my mouth shut.

And I did keep it shut, completely.

I committed myself to one-word answers. Which did not allow me to borrow any money from my friend to buy sunblock. I just walked and walked, tagging along behind them. Wondering if anyone had ever died from a Vitamin-B overdose.

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