Miami Slice, part 1 (draft)

It was 1994 or ‘95. Or, wait, maybe it was ’96? Yeah, I think it was ’96. I was just about to go through my first bout with madness which had far less to do with the 5 hits of acid I took than you would think. It was the first time I was able to see the raw truth in people where I became so highly aware of the precariousness and volatility of all human interactions and relationships that I felt I possessed at all times the ability to say in the most casual conversation, something that could easily trigger in just about anyone, even my own family, a reaction or series of reactions so outrageous that they might very well bring about the conditions for my own death or, perhaps, imprisonment. Anyway, that’s a whole nother story, as they say. 

I was down in Miami. It was either January or February. I guess it had to be February. It was the season I ended up living with Micky and Ian at that shithole, the Bentley, on Ocean Drive. Micky, I had known back in New York. Well, sort of. We had done a runway show together a while back and then I saw him again at a casting just before Christmas where we talked about renting a place together down there for the season. I’ll tell you a little more about Micky later. Crazy fucker. But Ian, well, I’m not exactly sure how I met Ian. I had seen him around. Then one day I was talking to him on the boardwalk. He knew my name so I guess we’d met. He wasn’t a model. He was this strange looking kid from Bosnia. Or wait, maybe it was Croatia? That’s right, Croatia. He kept asking me all these questions about modeling, how I got started, what it was like, where I’d been, what jobs I’d shot. He was such a dork. I told him what I could and then I asked about him. It was as if no one had ever bothered to ask him before. His face lit up and he told me all about it. At first he talked about where he’d grown up and how beautiful it was and how everyone basically lived off the land and how his father and his uncles would always bring him along when they went fishing and hunting and how magical the forests were and how clear the water was and how no one really paid any attention to time or the outside world and everything was just so calm and easy and the old people seemed to live on forever and they were the happiest ones of all and how it would be unthinkable to simply cast them away and devalue them like they do here in America, and he just went on and on about it and how much he missed it and he had me completely convinced that it had to be the most beautiful place in the whole world. But then there was the war and he told me how his father and all three of his uncles and even his grandfather had all been killed in the war. He really started going off about it. He had tears in his eyes. “You don’t understand. No one here understands. It’s still happening. People are dying. They’re in concentration camps. They’re starving. No one cares. I watched them kill my uncle, my uncle Fyodor. He was deaf. He didn’t know what was going on. They shot him in the head right outside our home. They made everyone watch, even my little sister. She was only eight. I had to clean his brains off the wall. There were pieces of his skull. You don’t understand. No one here understands. Look at all these people just having fun. Look at ‘em. It’s crazy, no one understands.” He was staring right into my eyes. A tear broke free and rolled down his cheek. I didn’t know what to say. He just stood there. “Man, that’s just fuckin’ awful, dude,” I think I said. Then a hot Brazilian looking girl in a tiny bikini skated by on rollerblades, her great big round ass sticking out, those muscly cheeks pumping from side to side in perfect rhythm. She had this long thick mane of curly, black hair and she shook her head and whipped it all around and looked back at us and smiled. Ian went nuts. “Oh my God, did you see that? Oh my God!” He couldn’t take it. He slapped a hand against his forehead in disbelief. Then right there in the middle of the boardwalk, he raised both his hands up to the heavens and yelled: “I LOVE THIS CRAZY PLACE! I LOVE THESE WOMEN! I LOVE ALL WOMEN! THANK YOU, GOD! THANK YOU!” I looked around to see if anyone I knew was watching. I told you he was a dork. 

 

I have always been drawn to people who are a bit off, people who just can’t seem to be able to blend in with the rest of the world. “Normal” people are always the ones to avoid. They scare the hell out of me, actually. The entire world was slipping into the abyss and yet they just carried on like everything was fine. Their mere existence was an insult to everything I believed in, everything I felt and saw. You can’t fault most people for doing what they do to get by in this world. None of us choose the rules. But you better damn well have a sense of humor about it, a sense of perspective. Any of us could’ve just as easily been born someone else. Basically, what I’m saying is, just don’t be an asshole. “Okay, so define asshole, big guy.” Well, for starters, if you drive a sports car, that’s you. But, no, seriously, here’s the thing; my mother had been mentally ill while I was growing up. On top of the depression and whatnot, she would get these massive staff infections all over her body. She was in and out of the hospital all the time. There were years when I hardly ever saw her. She was always on the verge of death. It took them years to figure out that she had been giving herself the infections, that she had been injecting herself with tap water. Here’s what I’m getting at; after all the craziness and worry and disruption that went along with her going into the hospital, it was always so strange to come home from school and find her waiting for us on that orange couch by the window in her gown, always with a tea or a coke, smiling. Stranger still was when we would have to all sit down at the table together for dinner that night and everyone would act like nothing was wrong, that nothing had happened. It was excruciating to have to sit there and listen to my parents talk about nonsense and ask us questions about school when my mother weighed maybe ninety pounds and her hair was falling out and her arms were all bandaged up where they had to cut away the infection. It created in me an intolerance for not at least acknowledging the obvious, let alone confessing all those wonderful tragedies we all keep buried inside of us. Maybe that’s why I became a writer, or am trying to become one? And so that’s just it with “normal” people, it’s just so sickening to hear them talk. Actually, I don’t even know what the hell they’re saying anymore. It’s as if the sound gets turned off and you’re left staring at those mouths that just keep moving around on their faces. Anyway, sorry about all of that. I’m not exactly sure what happened there. Let’s get back to Ian, shall we?    

I liked Ian immediately, and I liked him more and more each day. He had a warmth about him. He cared for people and he seldom judged. Like I said, he was really a dork, and people could be downright mean to him. But all he would say was, “You never know with people. You never know what’s really going on with them.” He said stuff like that all the time. He was an optimist. He wanted to believe in the good of the world. He had seen enough of the other. His mother and his little sister were still back in Bosnia, I mean, Croatia, but other than them, he really had no one else in the world. He missed them terribly. He had no idea when he would ever see them again. He felt bad, leaving them there. They had no money but somehow he and his mother had gotten enough together to get him out of there. I think he told me that one of their neighbors had even chipped in. It was too dangerous for a young man over there. It was just a matter of time before they were going to kill him. He came over on a boat. “You came over on a boat?” I asked him. 

“Yeah, on a cargo ship. If they have room, you can buy a ticket. They have cabins.” 

“For real?”

“Phil, lots of people travel this way.”

“I never heard of that. What do you eat?”

He laughed. “There’s a kitchen. It’s like a cafeteria.”  
 “Oh... Now who were the Serbs again? Who was killing who?” 

Ian wanted so much to be a model. He told me how he used to collect fashion magazines back in Bos... I mean, Croatia. He knew everything. He knew every agency in every city around the world. He knew the names of all the big models, both men and women. He knew what agencies they were with, what campaigns they had done, where they had gotten their starts. He knew all the photographers and designers. He even knew the names of some of the bookers and the seasons for work, when and where to be for all the different kinds of work. He knew it all. It baffled him how little I knew. “But you’re a MODEL, Phil! This is what you do! You should know all this stuff.”

“Why?”

Ian was short and stocky with long stringy blond hair. He had an enormous nose with a hook on the end. His nose was also crooked. It was even more crooked than it was enormous. He also had a reseeding hairline and his posture was all fucked up. He had a sunken chest and his ears stuck out and he had this strange sort of clustering of these ganglionic moles that hung from the side of his neck. There was simply not a chance in hell any agency was ever going to take him. But he was determined to get into the business. He fell for every scam in the book. He wasn’t legal to work so he was always hustling little jobs here and there, helping somebody move, painting houses. I once saw him handing out flyers on Washington Ave.. Whatever money he made, he would immediately spend test shooting with some bullshit photographer that had staked him out. He would always come back with the shots, smiling, all excited to show them to me. I never had the heart to tell him the truth. 

I’m trying to get to how Micky and I ended up living with Ian. Micky and I signed with the same agency down there called Fission. It was a new agency but my booker used to be my booker at the agency I started with back in New York. Micky and I flew in on the same day and because we had both been put on hold for jobs, we decided to just stay at the model’s apartment for a while until we got things going. After traveling to Oklahoma and Texas and Colorado for Christmas, and then having to buy presents and shit, not to mention paying for my Miami flight, I was nearly broke. I don’t think Micky had much money either. There was also my New York rent I had to pay. I was pretty nervous. I considered bailing on the whole thing and just going back to New York where I knew I would work. But then I lucked out right away! I booked a big shampoo commercial with some famous supermodel chick which paid $10,000 with a buyout to come. Then I shot a couple of German catalogs and then another commercial for some new SUV which they flew me out to Alpine Texas to shoot. I got to fly tandem in the back of one of those ultralights in that one. It was ridiculous. In a little over a week I had turned in around $26,000 worth of vouchers. I had never booked that much work in an entire season before. Micky booked some good work too. Catalog mostly. He was a also a personal trainer and somehow he had landed this great gig training both Steven Wyler and Jim Perry from the band, Aeroback, while they recorded their new album Hump at the famous Marlin Hotel on Collins. Wyler and Perry had both kicked drugs and alcohol and we’re all into fitness now. They were full on vegans now. Micky called me from the gym to tell me he had found a place. I recognized the voice in the background. “Hey, is that Steven Wyler?” I asked. 

“Yeah,” said Micky.

“That is so crazy.”

The real estate dude met us out in front of the building later on that day. It was a doorman building all tucked away in behind a bunch of palm trees and this enormous modern art sculpture that looked like a car that had been dropped from a plane. The dude saw me looking at the piece. “That’s a Sigmund Riley piece.” 

“Hmmm,” I said. 

The building was brand new. It had a gym and a pool. He took us inside and up the elevator which opened right into the apartment. It must’ve been like 2000 square feet. It had a brand new kitchen with a Wolf range and a giant Subzero fridge. The tags were still on all the appliances. It had a hot tub and a grill out on the patio. It had a giant flat screen tv, a washer and dryer, a bar, a pool table. It even had a shuffleboard table.  And like I said, it was right on the beach. But, of course, there was the price. $2000 a week! I laughed when I heard it. “Fuck it, Phil,” said Micky, “Let’s do it! 

“It’s a great price,” said the guy. “It’s really just a fantastic apartment. The owner lives in France. He’s only here about a week or two a year.”       

“Dude, come on, let’s live it up!” said Micky. 

I stood there, rubbing my face, thinking. 

“This is crazy,” I said. 

“Season’s over in like two months,” Micky said. “It’s two months, man. Come on, we’re KILLING IT!”

I thought about Christmas and how much older everyone in my family had seemed. When you're traveling, you tend to forget everyone else keeps moving along with their lives. You expect to come home and everything will be the same. My father’s dog had just died. He buried her in the backyard. You had to walk past the mound of dirt when you went out the gate to take out the garbage. I remembered going into Walmart and running into an old friend I had gone to high school with. I was in the food section, in the produce section. I was making my famous fish tacos for everyone that night and I had forgotten to get cilantro. I looked up and saw his face, only it was twice the size as I remembered. He was there with his wife and his two kids. They were all fat, even the kids. We shook hands. His hand was cold and wet. I looked down at it. Even his fingers were fat. I looked down at their cart. It was filled to the brim. Everything was in a box or a bag or a package or a can or a jar. Then I realized there was a second cart behind that one. It was filled too. He told me he was doing well. He sold life insurance. He said they just put an addition on their cabin at the lake. He said I should come by if I’m ever home in the summer. I said I would. His wife asked if I was still modeling. I said I was but that I was trying to be a writer. They both just sort of nodded. I could tell they wanted to laugh. We said our goodbyes and just as I was about to leave, sure enough, he asked if I had any life insurance.  

“What do you think?” asked Micky. 

“Fuck it,” I said, “let’s do it!” 

“Fantastic,” said the guy. 

“That a boy!” screamed Micky. He ran over and lifted me up, trapping my arms in a big bear hug. 

“Alright, alright,” I said, “put me down.” 

He put me down and grabbed my head and kissed me on my lips. Then he pointed up at my face, smiling, “Trust me, Phil,” he said. “One day we’re gonna be old men and we’re gonna look back at all this.”

We walked right over to the office to sign the papers and put the deposit down. We also had to pay for a week in advance. Micky stood there, rubbing his eye, wincing. I handed the guy my American Express card. “Just pay me back,” I told Micky. 

I was on my way to the agency to see about my money the day Ian came up and started talking to me on the boardwalk. After the Brazilian girl skated by and he went all nuts like that, I told him I had to go and that I’d be seeing him around. We shook hands and I continued on along the boardwalk in the warm sun, thinking how strange it was to hear Ian’s story in such a ridiculous place like Miami Beach. It made me feel more guilty about the apartment. A middle aged man wearing sunglasses drove by in a convertible Lamborghini. Jesus Christ, I thought. A little over a week ago I was thinking about just going back to New York. Who the hell needs to live in a place like that? What is wrong with me? That fuckin’ Micky, man. I had to put over $4000 on my Amex card. I told myself I would only use it for emergencies. I barely had $500 in the bank. I knew I had a ton of money coming in, but fuck. I sensed trouble. 

I crossed over Ocean on 11th towards Collins. That same stupid Russian host walked up to me from the restaurant on the corner. "No thanks," I said, waving her off. But she held out the menu anyway and went right into the specials. It was just unbelievable! I mean, she saw me nearly every day. As I neared the agency, I saw a group of models standing outside the building. One of the girls ran by, carrying her portfolio book, crying. Micky was there. He was leaned over on a knee, talking to some girl. Then he looked up and saw me. He took off his sunglasses and came over. “What’s going on?” I asked.

He put a cigarette in his mouth.  

“They folded.” he said. 

“WHAT?”

He struck a match. 

“The agency fuckin’ folded!” 


(to be continued)