photographed by Shiromi Pinto
Periwinkle blue. Powder pink. A hint of lemon. Art Deco hotels line Ocean Drive, Collins and parts of Washington Avenue like low-rise, pastel marshmallows. I arrive in South Beach out of necessity, rather than desire. Walking through the crowds pullulating along Ocean Drive, I am nearing the end of the trajectory that has brought me here. London Montreal Fort Lauderdale Miami. I have followed this line, like a tram car clutching its life-giving wire. From home to home, I have flown, and now, to this over-travelled corner of America, I have descended, like many of my friends in the days to come, to attend a wedding that will unite not just a man and a woman, but two families, two cultures, two religions and a bevy of people from across the globe. But this is not for a few more days, and it is not to happen here, but in the manicured prosperity of Boca Raton and Palm Beach, several hours away.
So here I remain for the next few days, breathing in a heat that is unnatural, and forceful enough that it suffuses my brain, leaving my thoughts to drip, like sweat, onto the page. No link, no logic, just erratic dashes, hyphenated emotion. But I am driven into the open, compelled to cast my burning eyes across this strange topography: the sun beating against stuccoed walls that cradle their onslaught in dramatic, voluptuous curves. Steam lurking in the trees, wilting leaves. And a tramp, passed out, chaotic in his lack of composure. Sprawled upon the steps of the post office on Washington Avenue, he is neither pinned nor wriggling, but simply strewn like trash, trousers half undone, brown-caked girdle on display, mouth as open as his fly, hair like ragweed. Three blocks down, another man, smeared in what looks like chalk dust, lies bloated on the beach, ready to be released onto the Ganga and set alight. Not dead, merely drunk, but no one cares. No one even looks. They are pumping abs, gluts, pecs at Crunchs Gym. Rippling muscle, glistening skin. To parade like so much wildlife on the beach. For this is like the Serengeti plain, though not nearly as awe-inspiring, where humanity reveals itself at its most primitive, united in a common purpose: sex.
Open the pages of Miamis New Times, and the ads declaim a litany of solutions to those physical imperfections that might get in the way of bagging a good shag. Cast Girdle: Reduce up to two dress sizes in less than two weeks!! (only $95). The Botox Specialist $275 per area 10 years to get it ... 10 minutes to get rid of it. Hair Restoration Super Summer Special. Breast Augmentation Special $2800 Anesthesia included! The Most Advanced Labia Minora Reduction & Beautification. Have the best seat in the house Gluteoplasty Buttock Augmentation. Phantasy Photography Fetish Boudoir Transformation. Sex for life! Erection problems? Premature Ejaculation? Immediate results! Got a rash? You could have syphilis.
South Beach is sex. Oiled torsos, thongs, newly-sculpted muscles. There are, of course, a few normals amongst them: a jiggle here, a flap there. There are even children, with plastic pails and shovels. But you cant escape the sheer exuberance with which flesh solid, taut, waxed is displayed. On first glance it is slightly shocking a meatfest a grotesque revelation of oiled, burnt skins. But look again and something curious happens. A dance, a ritual, revealed as signals flashed across the sand, or over tables at the outdoor cafés that line Ocean Drive. Nothing is unselfconsious. On the contrary, the self is the means and the end. Which is why the annual Masturbate-A-Thon, a festival of self-love (all in the name of HIV/Aids, mind) has been a roaring success for the past five years.
Things fall apart
South Beachs Art Deco reputation was blown in on the back of a hurricane. In 1926, a storm reduced much of the area to sticks and rubble, so when the rebuilding started, it drew heavily from the most influential design style of the time. Depression era stuff, the results were squat, stoic affairs catering to tight budgets. Today, all those eyebrows the concrete or plaster awnings that jut narrowly over windows and marine motifs exude style and glamour, despite the occasional crumbling facade. The colours are codified now: a palette of marine blues, pinks and cool yellows. The effect is like walking through a packet of powdered mints.
And it is as unreal. As I set out once again into searing heat, it feels like I have been walking for days, stumbling through an ice-candy landscape. My feet trace the same path, over and over: out onto Washington Avenue (stand at the corner of Espaniola Way and recoil from the sweet stench of rubbish snaking, like a stream of piss, from across the street), head down 14th, right on Collins, left on 13th, right on Ocean Drive, keep going, a salty breeze blowing over Lummus Park from the east, the sun blinding, hotels and cafés to my right winking, still, cloaked in a chilled veneer like bottles of cold, cold beer. Once, I even see Mike Tyson. He descends the steps of the Tides Hotel, flanked by two beautiful women, bicep tattooed and awesome. We make eye contact, me, thinking, he looks like Mike Tyson, he, undoubtedly realising, she recognises me, but doesnt believe its me. We exchange glances twice, before I move on, supposing hes a look-alike, until I hear a boy say, Tysons bodyguards are all over the place.
My days are measured out in languid footsteps, treading and retreading an unseen route. And then, there is a pinch in time, and I am delivered from this endless interior monologue into a circle of friends. And we are sitting at the Philippe Starck designed Delano Hotel on Collins Avenue, sipping $12 cocktails while lounging on very white, very long chaise longues, and a breeze blows up the cool darkness of the corridor, gently tousling muslin curtains, and unfurls over the pool outside in rolling filigrees.
In a wink, I am in Boca Raton, having my palm hennaed, speaking to a man I dont know about Vedic horse sacrifice. And later, perhaps the next day, in another house, watching a pre-nuptial ceremony consecrating my friend to the gods, watching her husband-to-be enact a ritual flight from the profane world. But all of this is really an excuse to eat dosa while sipping Margaritas in the sunshine. And finally, I am at the Four Seasons in Palm Beach, watching my friend get married twice, once as a Hindu and again as a Jew, but both times on the same dais decked in banana and mango leaves and orchids. And I realise as they trace circles around one another, predicting a path for their future together that my own imagined future has fallen apart. Not dramatically, but gently, like the petals of a day lily left too long in a vase.
Swaying in the heat
Key West. Left-right-left-right swings the hammock, into and out of the sun. Breeze blows. Stare at the gabled awning: slatted wood (light blue), walls, (clapboard and pink). Purple wooden chairs, a red, wooden swing, a glass and iron lamp hanging from the eave. Up since four this morning. A Greyhound bus filled with all of twelve people brings me here, in a leisurely five hours, to Old Town, Key West, to the balcony of this sprawling, three-storeyed bed&breakfast. Key West: the southernmost point of the United States, erstwhile home to Hemingway, populated by feral chickens and roosters, occasionally tacky, but offering up legendary views of the setting sun.
photographed by Shiromi Pinto
A wander through the Bahamian quarter around Petronia and St Thomas roads will reveal huddled, decaying shacks, Bahamian residents, some terrific conch salad and crab rice. Sitting on the edge of Mallory Square will reward me, in the evening, with a sun that drops lazily into both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, leaving fiery welts across the sky, but prompting one woman to ask in a nasal chirp: When do we clyap? Stumbling through the shadeless city cemetery will uncover headstones, some broken, others polished and glimmering, and will end with the marker of a local hypychondriac which reads: I told you I was sick.
But I am here, now, locked in the ropey embrace of a hammock strung across the second-floor balcony of my b&b. Blue sky, orange flowers, the white stone of a church just opposite. The heat is almost unbearable like a too-tight polo neck jumper. Like stale breath in your face. Like steam from a lovers back, against your chest. The clouds are vague now, faint blemishes in a cobalt sky. And I rock, back and forth, back and forth, loosing memories, like petals, onto a grey, wood floor.
