The
Miami Tart Journal
Lauren (aka Rebecca Fluffy) Does Miami
The
Miami Tart Journal
Lauren (aka Rebecca Fluffy) Does Miami
Being The True and Hardly Even Expurgated Adventures of a Young Crime Writer on her First-Recorded Visit To the Sunshine State
(I've been to Nice and the Isles of Greece, where I drank champagne on a yacht... but you can have 'em. I wanna go back to the Delano RIGHT NOW.)
Friday 13 October
Frozen margarita, white wine, Kir, Kir, red wine, two Freixenet splits and some coffee (not before time). V bad but then I am on holiday. Sort of.
Arrive at Fort Lauderdale airport to be met by Vicki Hendricks, aka Jim Thompson in a G-string, aka the Filthiest Crime Chick in the World, all long blonde hair and tanned skin in a little stretch stripy frock. Decide not to hate her despite this provocation as Vicki is my hostess and will doubtless pick up on any negative jealous vibes I am sending out. Besides, she has biceps like oranges and could knock me out without breaking sweat. Resolve not to tell any blonde jokes doing my stay as do not want my nose broken. Vicki loads me into her pickup and we drive to her luxury condo -- GOD I love those last two words! Miami is exactly as I imagined it, all sun and palm trees and, ladies and gentlemen, a restaurant by the beach where we sit in this extraordinary chair thing. It's like a giant rocker. The table and chairs are built on top of a big slidy contraption, with an awning above, and the most minimal push with your feet will send you rocking blissfully back and forth.
Vicki admits she wants a margarita, which cheers me up no end, as am always nervous about revealing my alcoholic tendencies to new host/esses. But if she's having a cocktail at four in the afternoon, we are obviously on the same wavelength. Hooray! Eat a Caesar salad with blackened prawns (v virtuous but am sitting across tanned and muscled blonde so would be embarrassed to shovel down huge quantities of chips) and decide maturely not to have another margarita (trans: all the rocking on top of that tequila is making me feel a bit sick). Vicki takes me to her luxury condo (still LOVE that phrase) which is basically like staying in a posh hotel, only nicer because her apartment is so beautifully decorated. Before unlocking the door she apologises for the mess which worries me considerably as her place is basically House Beautiful. Mine looks like that squat from 'Trainspotting' by comparison. Will obviously have to have it redecorated and cleaned by hardened professionals who laugh at grime and sneer at baked-in dirt before Vicki comes to stay.
We go down to the pool. It is large and beautiful and in a little palm-tree-lined garden by the ocean. Spread out on a lounger and sigh in lightly-drunken ecstacy (yes, I know what you're thinking, why did I ever LEAVE?) Pass out until it's time for us to go for the reading which is the reason my nice publisher paid for my ticket here, talk about perks of the job.* Put on a frock and mules and sally out the door, bare-legged. After New York this is balmy. Actually, after practically anywhere it would be balmy. Am mystified as to why the entire population of the US has not migrated to Miami. Velvet night, air like warm water, valet parking, ocean lapping at the shore, etc. etc.
Vicki and I read at Books & Books, which is a lot of fun, filled with plenty of friends of Vicki's who are kind enough to laugh at my jokes and also (being friends of Vicki's) dirty-minded enough to get even the most sordid ones. Vicki reads for the first time from 'Voluntary Madness', her new book, and takes even herself aback by some of the graphic bits (she mutters a couple of times: "Why the hell did I read this bit out loud?") Afterwards Mitchell, the owner, has kindly provided a two-litre bottle of white wine and all Vicki's friends are naturally obligated to buy my book as well as hers so we sign loads.** Only now do I realise that it's Friday 13th -- amuse myself tremendously by putting the date in the books and then writing stuff like: "Walk round a church three times widdershins before reading this book!" Hah. They won't be able to return them now.
Then a horde of us tramp off for dinner. Drink a lot and make a lot of jokes which I think are hilarious and everyone else probably finds slightly less so. So nothing new there. After dinner we charge off to Coco Walk, in Coconut Grove (god, Miami is so fabulous) with Vicki's friend Greg. Her friend Elisa and her husband and sister were supposed to come too but miss us in one of those perplexing "But I stood outside the bar for two hours and you couldn't have come in without my seeing you!" -- "But we kept coming outside to see if you were there and you weren't!" mishaps which one never seems to grow out of. It was all pretty wild out there -- the local Cuban youth seemed determined to prove that they could sex each other up much more effectively than any poxy group of hired dancers in a Christina Aguilera video. Lots of teenage chicks with their Latin booty falling out of their tight white hot-pants, wiggling round the bar and giggling a lot (all Tart City's male readers immediately book flights to Miami, I imagine. And quite a few of the ladies too.) On the streets guys are pulling rickshaws with drunken revellers whooping with laughter leaning out the back. We have these in London but they're bicycles. Doubtless all the lardy Londoners weigh much more than the lean, beach-tanned Miami-ites (despite the latter's Jennifer Lopez-size booty) and require pedal power to get them in motion.
Order sparkling white wine, which turns out to be splits -- so cute, these little black bottles of pseudo-champagne which the waiter opens at your table with a flourish. Have heard that it is all the rage for supermodels to drink mini-Piper Heidsiecks with straws, as this makes you drunk much quicker (the straw, not the size of the bottle. Duh.) Wait expectantly but waiter does not offer me a straw with either split. Either he has realised that I'm not a supermodel (how??? how did I give myself away???) or he thinks I am drunk enough already. Or both. Vaguely remember a load of cop cars pulling up below the bar balcony with sirens flashing, and being grateful that they weren't coming for me. Vicki finally takes me home to her luxury condo. Sleepy now. Pass out in her lovely bed (she's sleeping on the futon in the lounge, sorry to disappoint all you lot who were hoping for some one-on-one hot Sapphic action scenes).
Saturday 14 October
2 Buds, 2 frozen margaritas, 2 Cosmos. What restraint.
Wake up at 9, hear nothing, decide with relief that my hostess is still asleep, fall asleep again. This happens every hour on the hour until Vicki in desperation puts on some music to wake me at 11:30. Apparently she got up at 8:30 but crept around trying not to wake me instead of rattling the largest pans she could find in the kitchen outside the door and yelling: "Get up, you lazy English tart!" She points out that if I still want to go skydiving we should get going. Oh yes, forgot there was that little thing we planned to do today. Am still so disoriented by drink, travel, etc. that don't really take in that I am going to be throwing myself out of a small prop plane in a few hours. Just say, "Ooh, sorry," and throw on some clothes. Luckily I remembered to throw in my trainers at the last minute. Otherwise I would only have brought mules and strappy sandals. Tell Vicki this and laugh amusedly at the idea of breaking an ankle trying to land with backless mules on my feet. Vicki tries her best to not look at me as if I'm a moron and points out that the shoes would be ripped off my feet in flight and shredded to pieces by the wind. Ah. Good point. Nod in an I-knew-that-already kind of way and change the conversation quickly to stop her dwelling too much on my stupidity.
It's a glorious sunny day without too much wind. I am still quite unable to believe that I am about to throw myself out of a plane at 13,000 feet, and thus am reasonably calm. We drive to the drop zone, about an hour and a half from Vicki's l.c., and meet a bunch of guys who are going to come up in the plane with us and do a formation dive with Vicki. Apparently she isn't going to be allowed to jump out next to me and make faces at me, which is rather disappointing. Meet my instructor, aka Person Imminently Responsible for My Immediate Future, and he seems very capable. Ie, he is walking normally without showing signs of having fallen on his head out of planes on a regular basis, no-one is chasing after him screaming: "You bastard! You nearly killed me!" and he doesn't try to scare me by recounting lurid stories of how his parachutes have often failed to open (Vicki does that, but mercifully later).
Vicki pulls on her jumpsuit, which is blue and black and makes her look exactly like a Charlie's Angel. Being a novice, I just get this weird harness which goes around the groin, between the legs, and fastens at the back so tightly it makes me walk like a duck with constipation. V unfair. Vicki had offered me a sweatshirt, as I have only brought t-shirts, but then says: "Actually, no, if you can bear it being a bit cold up there it's better if you don't wear a sweatshirt as it will all puff up in the wind and make you look like the Michelin Man for the video." Vicki is such a tart. This is really good advice. Naturally decide to freeze for the sake of self-image. Everything goes by in a bit of a rush - my instructor Rick is doing a tandem jump just before me so he runs off the landing zone and hurries me along into the plane before I have time to realise what's going on. Then we are in a tiny little plane whose interior is done up like a very low-rent bachelor's pad -- tattered white carpet on the floor and the back covered with mirrored card with a big sticker saying "Fartees" stuck in the middle. We are off the ground before I know it.
This is not the first time I've been up in a tiny plane, so I'm still reasonably OK, and everyone else is so relaxed about it - Vicki has done 300-odd jumps before - that I'm still not hugely nervous. One of the guys puts 4 Tic-Tacs under his top lip to look like huge teeth and grins at me. Determined not to be outdone I shove a Tic-Tac on my tongue, get Rick to do the same, and we stick out our tongues for the camera. Realise that my tongue is actually quivering with nerves by this time but fortunately that doesn't show up in the video. After a while they open the door. Jesus. Vicki waves at me, everyone edges towards the Open Doorway Of The Plane 13,000 Feet Up and then jumps out all together. Jesus Jesus. Rick and I, half-sitting, half-kneeling, as by now we are strapped together, wiggle to the edge of the plane. Actually I would quite like to jump straight away and get it over with but I have to wave at the camera a lot for the video -- the bloke doing it has the camera strapped to his head. I am massively excited (though still really wanting to get it over with). I am sitting with my legs dangling 13,000 feet into space with a big SWAT cop on my back (yup, that's Rick's full-time job) and waving at a camera on another bloke's forehead yelling "Wow!" a lot. It was that or "Fuck!" and I thought the latter would be less macho. They told me that people who freeze at the doorway have their instructor say: "OK, we're going to go on 3. 1, 2 - " and then they push them out on "2" before their hands can grab onto the doorway in panic. Was determined not to do this and practically end up throwing myself out instead.
Suddenly we are jumping into space. It's brilliant. I thought the free-fall would be terrifying but in fact it's not that bad as the sheer exhilaration makes you much less aware of the cold reality of the situation. I manage to remember to curl up and then open my legs and arms like Rick told me and we do loads of somersaults. I keep screaming: "Wow!" It's truly amazing. Rick told me to grab his leg if I felt sick and at one point I do but he doesn't seem to notice and the heaves recede. After a while we flatten out and discover Dano in front of us with his camera. Wave, blow kisses, make thumbs-up. Then Rick indicates that I have to pull the ripcord. It's really stiff and for a moment I worry but I get it open (later realise from the video that he was helping).
We shoot up into the air as if fired from a cannon. Everything goes dead quiet - we are going so slowly by comparison with the free-fall that it sounds like someone just turned the sound off. Rick and I actually have a conversation. Now actually one would think that the parachuting would be less scary, but I find it more so, because you are going slowly enough to see the ground beneath in detail. I look down my body and realise how much sheer space there is between me and the drop zone. My head spins. After a while I get used to it and I never want to come down. Rick shows me how to steer a bit and by the time we hit the ground I am already pouty because I want to stay up for much longer. Fizzing with excitement and aftershock. Vicki lands and says their formation was a bit of a disaster, someone crashed into someone else and it all got messed up.
I am trying to be really nonchalant about the fact that I have Just Jumped Out Of A Plane and in fact when another skydiver asks me how my first jump was I say: "Oh, actually it sucked a bit but I'm being enthusiastic out of politeness to Vicki". I think this rather annoys him, haha. Vicki and I drive off to the local bar while waiting for my video to be edited and sink a couple of beers. This is a bizarrely red-neck place (actually they're called 'crackers' in Florida) where you can only get Budweiser and there are evolutionarily-disadvantaged people sitting at the bar saying things like: "Ah told him that warn't no rabbit! Ah said, what you got on that barbecue's a pi-yug, boy, that ain't no rabbit!" and "Ah dunno, you give your waafe just one lil' tap and suddenly you got the poll-is on your doorstep hollering about what they call do-mes-tic vyr-lence, seems lake everything's going to hell nowadays" (I swear I am not making this up, Vicki can testify to my truthfulness). The weirdest is a woman with streaked red hair and a grey fringe. I know this sounds potentially like the next big look from Alexander McQueen's Paris catwalk, but believe me, in practice it was bloody weird. We eat huge amounts of fried food and waddle back to the drop zone to watch my video. It is all v cool -- I get the same rush of excitement seeing myself jump as I did when I actually went out of the plane. Vicki says she did too with her first video. And, miracle of miracles, my arse does not look like the size of a house. Thank God for my magic jeans. It's so sad that, watching a video of oneself skydiving for the first time, one's primary consideration is whether one looks like a brunette version of Miss Piggy, but it's true and there's no point denying it. Sigh in relief.
Meet Vicki's friend Greg for dinner in Miami Beach. Balmy night, velvet sky, slight occasional rainfall which dries off in seconds in the heat of the night. Gorgeous. Eat tuna tartare and smoked poblano risotto and then stroll along to what Greg describes as the best place to get sorbet in Miami. It must be. Eat mango and passion-fruit and have to be restrained from snarfing down the cup as well. We are still giggling from working out our porn names over dinner -- you take your second name and the name of your first pet/stuffed animal when you were little. Mine is Rebecca Fluffy, which sounds awfully baby-doll-ish. Vicki's is Anne Binky-Gumdrops. I decide that she should simply be known as Binky Gumdrops and speculate on Binky's porn speciality -- I think Binky got her surname by her ability to pick up gumdrops off bar tops without using her hands. We speculate for a while on how plausible this is. Gumdrops are much smaller and more slippery than ping-pong balls. Maybe Binky is a plucky sort who makes game but doomed efforts to snag those gumdrops and gets tipped by her clients out of pity. Greg tries to avoid telling us his name for a while but finally reveals it to be Lance Gremlin. We are awestruck (trans: piss ourselves laughing). Can't decide whether Lance Gremlin is a seriously sexy porn name or a complete disaster.
Lance takes us off to Tantra, which is billed as a bar meant to promote a complete sensual experience/simultaneous mind-body-stimulation. Ooh-er missus. Actually it turns out to have grass growing on the floor of the entrance hall and a waterfall in the bar, very loud house music and hookahs (yes, I spelt that right) on tables in the main bar area (only scented tobacco, allegedly). Large amount of funky young Miamiites are dancing on the tables. It's a great place for a date but slightly less so when you can't hear a sodding word your companions are saying. Still, Lance did blag us in free by flashing his press card with the name of the Very Famous Magazine he works for, so at least we didn't pay $10 to get in (Lance, being a bloke, would have had to pay $20, which is a rather Stringfellows attitude to a trendy club's door policy. Blondes and footballers free, ladies $10 and gentlemen $20. Hmm.) Then we wander down the stretch of Miami Beach that I really wanted to see -- it's true, all the stunning Art Deco hotels and pastel chrome-lined architecture and Gianni Versace's beyond-palatial residence really are at least as wonderful as the magazines say. I am gawking like the worst kind of package-tourist and I don't care, it's breathtaking. Cuban and house and hip-hop music spill out from every neon-lit bar, cars crawl down the road checking everyone out, it's magic. We cross the little beach and paddle in the sea while Binky tells a story about skinny-dipping in front of a Famous Editor Who Shall Be Nameless at midnight right in this exact spot. Rather get the impression that if she chose to recreate the anecdote Lance would hold her frock and cheer her on, but she restrains herself. It's so warm my feet dry in five seconds. Scrape the sand off and try not to cry, this place is so perfect. We are tired now (feel like I'm being a bit of a wimp, it's only 2:30 and I've hardly had anything to drink - but my excuse is that I'm exhausted from all the adrenalin production earlier) but Lance insists that we have to see the Delano before we go.
I won't try to describe the Delano (a hotel just behind the beach) apart from saying that Lance told me it would be like Alice in Wonderland, and he was right. The furniture doesn't match, it's all bizarre, violently individual pieces, like a gold chair whose seat looks like the base of a crown and is a lot more comfortable than that sounds. The high walls are panelled wood, but the panels are enormous, so you feel like you have been shrunk down by drinking the wrong sort of bottle (perfectly possible in Miami, I expect). Adding to the surreal effect is the fact that the bar just closed and so we wander through these near-empty, echoing rooms, finding glasses strewn beside oddly-shaped sofas, as if Alice, the Mad Hatter and the White Queen just finished throwing a party here and took the guests off to play flamingo croquet by night. The pool really does have Gothic-wrought iron furniture placed in the shallow end so you can drink a cocktail while feeling like you're at a Lewis Carroll tea party and the white muslin curtains of the poolside rooms billow in the breeze, lit by hundreds of white candles carefully-placed in recesses around the pool. The most magic place I've ever been, like a scene from a very sophisticated fairy-tale. The sky above is balmy, velvet, scattered with stars, etc, and there is a white-clad bloke sitting by the pool at 3am politely handing us towels after we've tripped into the pool to sit on the Gothic chairs. Exquisite.
Sunday 15 October
One Virgin Bloody Mary. Shameful.*** Oh yes, and some wine on the plane.
Today, mercifully, Vicki and I BOTH get up at 11:30. Have already corrupted her, hoorah! Either that or the prospect of having to entertain me for 48 hours straight has wiped the poor girl out completely. Sun ourselves by the pool then go for a v luxurious brunch on the Intercoastal, which sounds like a snarled-up motorway but is in fact a kind of river (??) with fab waterside views. Stuff down huge quantities of sausages, red-skinned potato hash, feta salad, grilled vegetables, etc, plus tiramisu and white chocolate cake. Pig city. A giant yacht moors just beside us and the occupants jump off for brunch. Am deeply impressed. We decide that when I come back we're going to rent jetskis (it seems the only action-woman activity Vicki hasn't yet indulged in) and she regales me with a tale of having sex on a jetski which causes the waiter to back away from our table like a nervous pony being taken into the part of the stables with a "Gelding Done Here" sign over the entrance).
Do a reading at Murder on Miami Beach**** which is great fun, Joanne and John are lovely, and afterwards I get to make a bloody handprint (acrylic paint, yawn) on the wall. Manage to get mine in the upper left-hand corner and write GIRLS ON TOP over it with my signature. I am such a shy and retiring flower. Vicki finally hauls me out of there and practically chucks me out of the pickup ("OK, you've got to get out on 3. 1, 2 - " BIG shove). Hug goodbye, me whining: "I don't WANNA go home!" and clawing at the pickup door until she finally guns the engine and shoots off in panic at having me a permanent house guest.
I love Miami. I may be moving in with Vicki fairly shortly.
Oh, Vicki, if you're reading this, could you send me your new address? Because the one I've got for you must be wrong - my letters keep coming back marked "Not Known Here". And is there something wrong with your phone?
* * * ** I would like to thank everyone from the Crown accounts department who may be reading this from the bottom of my heart.
** Look, Crown accounts people! Look how many books I sell in Miami! Surely I should be sent there on a regular basis - possibly bi-monthly?
*** Americans reading these diaries are usually shocked by my alcohol intake... and yet I was grabbed by Hillary Bonner, a British crime writer, at Dead on Deansgate this year, who slurred at me: "Lauren, call yourself a tart? Your consumption of booze in those diaries was frankly pitiful! You're going to have to try a LOT harder than that, my girl!" But Hillary is a British journalist too. They all have their livers surgically removed at 30 to make more room for all the booze swilling around in their stomachs.
**** yes, Crown accounts people, I am still working hard to justify my freebie - um, sorry, meant to write 'important reading tour' - despite it being a Sunday! Good author who should be sent back to Miami on a regular (bimonthly?) basis, n'est-ce pas?
ps: "Voluntary Madness" is another brilliant book from Vicki which I would strongly recommend even if I weren't kissing her arse in the hopes of being invited back to Miami.
