Sunday afternoon I began what became a pattern for me for the rest of the trip: caring more about watching and listening to the people around me than caring about the music I was suppose to be there to write about.
I was especially interested in the social scene at the youth hostile.
So intent, and drunk, was I, that I often fixated on people with an intensity that scared anyone who noticed me talking about them into my tape recorder. Being in a foreign city, especially Miami, which is almost a foreign country, it's easy to do uncouth things like stare at people for pregnant minutes at a time. So I did. A lot. The Ugly American (or even worse, The Ugly British Guy) staring at people.
My audiotapes from that weekend contain much drunken commentary on the mating rituals of the hostile kids.
Despite my goal that weekend, which was to get the scoop on the WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE, I wasn't in a rave mood. I wasn't even in a meet and greet mood, which is unfortunate since the hostile life seems like a great way to meet people you wouldn't otherwise. And fuck them and then never see them again.
But instead of actually participating, I just talked about it into the tape recorder I bought from a desperate crackhead in Ybor City.
I don't remember much of what I now hear on my tape recorder, but I do remember a sunbleached, blonde freckled English girl who had the attention of the majority of the male hostile population revolving around her. She was the belle-of-the-ball.
At one point, a swarthy guy with hair on his back that the belle hadd been flirting with walked up and stroked the back of her her leg while they talked to their friends. As his hand moved more provocatively, she acknowledged it. At some point he picked her up in his arms and walked her to his room by the pool. They came back out in 15 minutes. So, as far as I was concerned, she was still fair game.
We had a lot ahead of us at night as far as clubgoing, so the days were unanimously lazy. I aspired to a deep crimson, but was still a light pink. So I ditched my friends and went to the beach.
Like the bar at G-Spot, the beach was crowded but there wasn't a single person in the water. I wondered what the beautiful, and often topless, beachgoers knew about the ocean that I did not.
I had come to the beach in all my clothes. It was hot, but somehow, one was able to wear anything they wanted and not be too hot. I was puzzled the first time I saw some cat walking down South Beach with a blazer and long pants, yet not sweating. I wondered how fashion culture had evolved in this tropical climate so that the color of choice was black. I attributed it to some genetic phenom that made the residents of Miami innately cooler than anyone else.
I laid on the beach taking of my clothes, one piece every few minutes: my shoes, then my thin long-sleeve shirt, then the T-shirt underneath. Eventually I was laying there pink and exposed under what most redheads would consider an evil sun.
At the beach, I felt very much like myself, in a way I don't often feel when maneuvering through dance clubs or drinking beer with my friends while loud bands play.
Someone had told me a few weeks ago, during a period of blue feelings, that I needed to get sun. That that would chemically enhance my mood. On this day, I ended up getting drunk three separate times between naps so, whether or not my mood needed MORE chemical enhancement was debatable. But there I was, trying to get happy.
All around me were beautiful people. The largest congregation of beautiful people I'd ever seen in one place. I just laid on my stomach alone, sifting sand and thinking about the beauty around me and how outside of it I felt. Until it was time to find out what was wrong with the water.
I walked into the perfect ocean and swam to the bottom. When I came up, I was in a totally different place than I thought I would be. That, combined with being alone in the water, with a beach full of people behind me, was disorienting.
Just as I got my bearings, a wave moved me to a place I had no intentions on going. After five minutes of being manipulated and pushed around by the forceful current and the waves, a melodramatic, literary anxiety came over me. So I got out of the water. I'm uncomfortable with not having control of the symbolisms I'm subjected to. Sometimes I wish I hadn't gone to college.
On the way back to the hostile I noticed a dirty puddle on the side of the road. Lying in the middle of the puddle was a pair of black thong bikini bottoms. With the number of tricked out cars full of brown Miamians intermittently driving by blaring "The Thong Song," (the popular R&B sex romp of the past few months), the bikini in the puddle was a relevant image. Maybe going to college was a good idea after all.
Before I left Tampa for THE WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE, I had scrambled to find some sponsorship. Someone to help pay for my hotel and $6 beers. A magazine agreed to get me into some events in exchange for a bit of coverage. Tonight's event of choice was to be a party thrown by said magazine at yet another club with a bad name: Groove Jet. The party was to feature Roni Size, David Holmes, Blackalicious, DJs Craze and A-Track and a dozen others.
Between the morning's beach revelations and that evening's music adventure we drank much beer and Scotch.
There were also three naps: We began drinking in the a.m. Then came the first nap. When I awoke in an hour, we drank some more, went to the pool (I was turning a deep majestic pink), ate, and then took a nap. I awoke a bit later, we had dinner, more drinks. Then more drinks. Then more drinks. Then a nap. My companions woke me at 12:30 a.m., two and a half hours after I was told to be at the magazine party.
The three of us arrived at Groove Jet to what looked like a scene out of a movie about guestlist culture. I could have made a fortune selling ironic T-shirts that read "I'm On the Guestlist." But there was so much meat between us and the door that it was obvious we weren't getting in.
After an hour of waiting in line, the owner of Groove Jet came out, winked at the door guy and ushered a dozen of his beautiful friends past the line of disgruntled guestlistees.
The owner's friends were "beautiful people". In line with a conversation I'd been having with my tape recorder about the oppressive power of beauty in Miami (I will expound on that later), I'm sure the Miami-style beauty of the owner's friends added to the venom being spewed by the people left standing in line. A venom that even the large amounts of drugs they had all taken couldn't quell.
After the owner led his friends into the crowded club, a DJ who was scheduled to play, that people in line seemed to recognize, went up to the door, waved his pass and was denied entry. Even though he was on the bill, the doorman said the club was full.
Getting the shaft didn't really bother me. I realized we'd fucked up by showing up late. And if it were my club, my friends would get first priority too. I entertained myself by expressing this sentiment to the people in line who were angry over having to peak while standing in line outside a raging party.
Though he was merely drunk, MY FRIEND thought he had some psychic powers that allowed him to see who in line was there to schmooze and who was there because they loved music. When we left the club I entertained myself further by baiting MY FRIEND with the same line of thinking. It put me in a good mood, as evil as that sounds. The following is a transcript of a conversation we had once we'd walked back to the hotel. Defeated. Keep in mind that MY FRIEND never swears this much, so it was very funny at the time:
FRIEND: Here's what you should tell the magazine about their event…I mean it's not their fault but…Fuck Miami Beach and all this bullshit about THE WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE. It's all bullshit about who's sucking who's dick and who's paying the money and who's got friends who own the fucking club to get in. They should have it at piece of shit fucking warehouse and the shit'd go off better.
ME: We showed up late, man.
ME: Actually, I feel like it's our fault since we showed up so late. At a certain point: mob rule. I should've known better.
ME: We fucked up, that's the bottom line. If you had a club and (OUR FRIEND) and ten other people showed up and there were 10 other thousand motherfuckers in line…them bitches would get in first.
ME: It's still our fault.
ME: Like you…
ME: THAT's what I want to hear!
ME: Which is being a bunch of fuckin late chumps who don't deserve to get in because we obviously don't respect music…
ME: We fucked up and the way the situation was structured was just not accommodating to people who fuck up. Am I oversimplifying?
Looking back on that conversation, despite the drunken convolution, MY FRIEND had a point: packed clubs generally have a one-out, one-in, system. And people were coming out of the club, but no one was going in, unless they had an owner on their arm. It's an interesting sociological issue to ponder.
But so was the hostile. And since I was in such a socio(il)logical state, I just wanted to go to the pool by myself and watch the English kids spawn.
The last thing I remember about the evening was sitting at the pool watching some dark-skinned boys fawn over the sunbleached English gal. When she got up to go to the bathroom, they exchanged excited words in a foreign language.
I was so drunk (though remarkably clearheaded judging from the tape) that I often forgot that the people I was watching could see me watching them. leering. But fuck it. It was interesting.
Eventually the girl noticed me watching and talking into my tape recorder. She looked over a couple times and then motioned me over. On the tape, I'm narrating this event. But I was so into the movie that it never registered that she actually wanted me to come to her. I just kept talking about it into my recorder.
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