The View from my Peephole in the Miami Hotel


First Leg -

After months of preparation that had me having two yard sales, a massive purge of my clothes and belongings, moving into Mom’s house and then moving out, finding someone to adopt my cat temporarily and a cleaning binge to end all cleaning binges, I was on my way to Miami. Dad came by to pick me up - the flight was at 3:45 and I wanted to get to the airport in plenty of time to avoid trouble. He was supposed to show up at noon but arrived at 11:15.

I checked in - nervous as hell - a stewardess helped me negotiate the automatic check in. My bags were snatched up, weighed and tagged by a woman who noticed my incompetence and suddenly I was humping my much too heavy carry-on to the other side of the airport. When I got up to the check in counter, I noticed that the plane was delayed until 1:50. It was supposed to leave at 1:10. Further inspection of my ticket yielded the discovery that the plane was supposed to arrive in Miami at 3:45, not leave Louisville at 3:45.

What luck that Dad showed up early, and that I had planned to leave as early as noon. What luck that the plane was delayed! All the way around, I was first worried this meant I had transposed other things like dates and times - and I did in one case, but more about that later.

Waiting to board, a man with an enormous pile of luggage (I have to wonder now how they got it all on the plane) and the most adorable little boy, was muttering profanely under his breath and saying things like, “Where the hell did she go? Stupid!” and looking toward the bathrooms. At one point he let go of a rolling suitcase to get a better gander at the concourse after spotting his wife, and when he did, it promptly fell, hitting his little boy on the elbow and knocking him to the ground. The kid popped right up off the ground, gripping his elbow as his mother approached. You could feel each of them thinking the other was a total idiot. But the kid was still in great spirits. He had silver police badge stickers on his t shirt and kept asking me who I was. “Someone who’s on the same plane as you,” I would answer.

On the flight, at first I kept to myself. Though the tiny thing was half empty, for some reason the row I was in was completely occupied. There were 2 people - I thought they were business people - very involved with one another, talking. I had it sussed out in my mind that they were lawyers or something since they were filling out some worksheets with questions titled, “Interrogatory 1” and so on. There was something of the Moonie or the overtly corporate and brainwashed about them and I thought it best that I kept to myself. It seemed to me that the man (who was sitting next to me) had the hots for the woman (across the aisle) and he was turned in such a way to get the best conversational angle that his butt was jamming my thigh. My seat was already somewhat restricted as there was a giant lump protruding from the lower portion of the wall and of course I’d had to wear some frankensteinish platforms further limiting where I could put my foot. My right leg (the gimpy one) was at an angle from the knee down the entire time with this fellows ass jammed into my leg on the other side, and both of them talking pretty loudly. I turned the music up on my pod and mused over the random song selection that seemed to have more than a normal percentage of songs about leaving and flying popping up. I broke into a giant grin when I heard Chuck Berry singing, “Goobye New Jersey, I’ve become airborne.”

At some point there must have been an announcement as I took off my headphones. It was at this point that the woman began talking about me in a way that was audible to me. “ I bet she’s young” and then finally asked me, “How young are you?” What kind of a fucking question is that, I ask you? A calculated phoniness - don’t get me wrong - she seemed very nice, but was overly solicitous and she was winding up for the pitch. She explained to me that before she and her pal had left, her best friend had given her a barbie doll - and well, it was hard to explain, but that barbie doll had goth makeup and clothes and a big spider tattoo on her chest. After all, she hadn’t always looked this normal - and this was some sort of emblem of her mis-spent youth, I was led to understand. Because of this, seeing me was a good omen and she would just love to have a picture with me and the doll after we’d gotten off the plane.

The story with her and the guy was that they were on their way to Venezuela to give shots and baby wellness exams along a river on a canoe trip in less developed areas. They were going with missionaries, but they were paramedics - and wasn’t it just crazy - when he called and said “Hey, you want to go to Venezuela?” she said yes and then called him back later asking him what she’d just agreed to. Wasn’t that crazy?

And to every explanation I gave of my plans, I was treated to, “Well, that’s wonderful. I think that’s just great. Isn’t that great, Paul?” “Yes, it’s a wonderful thing. A great thing.” Though it’s not exactly a humanitarian effort - and with every compliment I felt a little more confused as I wasn’t going to do well baby checkups or inoculate people against fatal diseases as they were. If I were going to respond in a way commensurate with the wonderfulness of what they were doing, I would have had to jump out of my seat and whoop with joy at the sheer delightfulness of it all. But as it was, I was so low energy I was having trouble just maintaining conversation with strangers.

These are the sort of people that are so nice that they make it hard for you to respond in kind. These are Americans. And I don’t know that what they told me was bogus - but there was something so phony and overly friendly in a non-genuine way about them - especially the woman - that I feel like they were actually on their way somewhere else - to do something else. The phoniness made everything seem to be a lie. It was nothing about the way there were dressed, but something about the woman’s attitude that seemed to be a throwback to the 1950’s - Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best...

Even though I had promised her that I would take a picture with her barbie doll, when we touched down, I got freaked out about my bags going missing and had to get to the baggage claim as quickly as possible. It was a palpable need like needing to find a toilet - because if anything happened to them - I wouldn’t have any clothes - or anything. The barbie was dressed like whore anyway. What was it about my neutral colored clothes that had her seeing me as some parallel to her sluttily dressed trollop of a barbie doll with maroon hair and too much makeup? I wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. But my tattoos were exposed, and I had on the bozo platform mary janes. Still, it’s a bit insulting to be likened to a drawn on, club whore barbie in skin tight vinyl when all you’re trying to do is get from point a to point b and minding your own business in casual wear.

I got off that shuttle and I booked it through the airport. I felt I was hovering to the side because of my heavy bags. I was cruising around people and I was starting to sweat and practically running. I don’t know how far the baggage claim was from where we disembarked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a mile.

When I got there, my bags were just coming out and there was a man unloading the suitcases from a conveyor belt. I said, “Those are mine - the red and the green.” He handed them to me without comment. I was dripping with sweat and I buckled my bags together and pulled them out the sliding doors lighting a cigarette, not caring that there were no smoking signs everywhere. As soon as I stepped out of those doors and into the Miami humidity, it was as if I’d been hosed down. Every pore opened up full throttle, overheated as I was from my near run from the plane. I stood there smoking, sweat stinging my eyes and peering around trying to get my bearings. Where could that free shuttle to the hotel possibly be? After a few drags, I was sated enough to cup the smoke in my hand and approach some security guys that were chatting about 20 feet away.

Before I even got my question phrased, one of them started pointing straight up to the ceiling, and when I asked where they shuttles were, the other one told me, “Upstairs. Second Floor.” It was kind of them to ignore my smoking. I guess they had better things to worry about. But my nerves wouldn’t allow me to dilly dally just to smoke. Not after I’d chewed a dozen pieces of nicotine gum on the plane. I knocked the cherry off the tip, put the smoke back in the pack and went looking for the elevator. At this point, it became apparent that my fat bags weren’t going to stay together. The rearmost one kept falling sideways and dragging the ground. People were standing in the walkway, and every time I changed tack to go around them my bags would come apart requiring me to stop and right the one in back. Just when I would think I’d gotten the hang of avoiding this, there would be a change from smooth floor to tile and I’d be pulling a collapsed pile again.

When I made it outside, I just had to keep moving. I figured there would be some sort of sign that made it obvious where to wait for the shuttle. Over the bumpy, brown tile, around people staring vacantly into space, past desks with men in airline uniforms and hats - on the pavement cabs and busses and cars drove past in three lanes. I asked a man at a baggage desk where the shuttles came and he pointed vaguely into the street. I kept walking until it started to seem like I would run out of sidewalk and asked another uniformed man. He said, “You just wave them down.” I saw 2 women standing out in the middle of the road on a concrete island with a sign. Shortly after, they were picked up and I was still peering at every bus and van that passed looking for one with the name of my hotel.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t be certain I had been seen. The driver honked when I waved, but amidst all the cars, busses and vans passing, I couldn’t be sure he was the honker. I waved again and then he gestured for me to cross the street. After I was soundly inside under the merciful air conditioning that made me feel like I had a creamy center and a hard candy shell, it became painfully obvious that I was doing much too much. All I would have had to do was stand on the sidewalk and keep my eyes peeled and wave the van down. This was made obvious by each subsequent passenger who was picked up, likely right outside the door they walked out of. Instead I dragged a collapsing pile of luggage what seemed like the equivalent of 3 city blocks to sweat under the sun on a concrete island in the middle of the pavement. Well, live and learn. I was in one piece with all of my precious crap and on my way to the hotel.

One thought had been bothering me throughout the flight and I began to dwell on it inside the van on the way to the hotel. A week or so earlier, I had checked my e-mail and found a note from the Aerolineas Argentinas that changed the time of my flight. Having just woken up and not yet having had any coffee, I failed to see the month listed in the e-mail. Thinking it was my departing flight from the US, I called the hotel and extended my stay for an extra night. A day or so later, I noticed that the e-mail said November and called the hotel again to change it back. When I did this, I had the day of my arrival in Argentina (the 22nd) on the brain, so when the guy verified the date, I had a flash of horror thinking the wrong night had been booked. “No, not the 20th, the 21st!” I said. Wrong again. It was indeed the 20th, and I had changed my reservation to the wrong night. What if? What if? What if? What if there were no room for me? What if I was going to be turned away in this heat with all of this heavy stuff?

In the line, while the painfully long process of the two guys in front of me being checked in dragged on, my anxiety reached a fever pitch. When I handed over my ID and credit card as I’d seen the man in front of me do, the guy behind the counter said they had no reservation under that name. In the way of a sports fan watching their favorite team in the play-offs, each moment seemed to crest and swell with the possibility of disaster. “I think I might have changed the reservation to the wrong day. I was really nervous and think I might have messed up. My reservation number is 9000. I sent a package to myself here.”

“Oh, OK,” said the guy behind the counter, turning to grab the box laden with books for my new room mate in Argentina. “The reservation is for the 21st.”

“Yeah, I know. I messed up. I just need a room for tonight.” Long moments passed before he slid a paper over the counter for me to sign.
“You’re in 204. Go down the hall, take a left and a right and another left and it’s upstairs.” Grateful, I took the key card and chucked my stuff onto a cart. When I got to a flight of stairs, I hefted my suitcases up, and dragged it all to the room. Once there I took off my pants in the cooled room. They felt like they’d just been taken out of the wash, but that’s not the way they smelled. After a few minutes I made a series of what would be the last calls I would make with my scoundrel of a cell phone company, leaking perspiration onto the phone as I let my folks and a couple of friends know I was okay.

And the rest of the night passed without incident. I would have expected to have some sort of emotional reaction to leaving, but felt nothing in particular but a sort of emptiness. The weeks and months leading up to this point had been full of worries, but now there as nothing to be done. All the loose ends had been wrapped up and the circuit board had been disconnected - and though I would have expected to feel excitement or anticipation, possibly dread or fear, what I felt was smoothness, placidity, and exhaustion. The rest of the night was spent repacking, jamming the books in with everything else, but mostly lounging in the dimly lit room, smoking too many cigarettes and taking advantage of the intermittent wireless connection from the nearby Holiday Inn.

That was Wednesday.