ISSUE VI

Key West Moon

            My first night in Key West is startling.

            “This isn’t Marquette, Juliana,” Audrey says, lining her lips with a rose-colored lip pencil. We’re standing in her bedroom, Audrey and me, getting ready to go see the island’s downtown scene. It’s dark, sticky, the humidity thick, like a blanket.

            I’ve got eye shadow in my hand, a soft turquoise blue; Audrey’s smearing a glittery gold on her brow bones. We’re in front of her beat-up antique dresser, vanity mirror with a bare bulb attached, a three-inch crepe paper banner on its frame from New Year’s, “Happy 1979!” stamped in block letters. It hangs limply, the month-old paper not nearly strong enough to weather the mugginess in the air. 

            “What do you mean?” I say, dabbing turquoise on my lids. 

            I’ve come to stay on Audrey’s and Mr. Hohms’ couch—they’re married, he was my old English teacher from Upper Michigan. The two of them are putting me up while I figure out what to do with my life.

            Days ago, I got in my ’74 red Beetle and drove—a three-day highway trek on snowy, iced-up roads, heading south from my blip of a Lake Superior town. Drove so far south there was nowhere else to go. Drove until I smelled the salt air stinging my nostrils, until I felt the humidity land thick and gummy, like a second skin, on my limbs; until I could feel the life I’m running from begin to unearth itself from my heart.

            My body is still buzzing—the Beetle, five years old and rusted, rattled the whole way—days of conveyor belt roadways behind me, the car’s movement shimmying through my legs as I chased the warmer air to this leafy landscape. The Southernmost Point. That’s Key West. A place where no one knows me besides Audrey and Mr. Hohms, a place where I can be something that I want to be. 

            Maybe.

            The two of them live with their little girls in a dilapidated cottage on Angela Street right along the Key West graveyard—an overgrown mess of dried grass and toppled stones, and every window frame in their tiny place looks out on it. The house has disintegrating wood siding, the paint long gone; big sash windows, rickety screens that run from the top of the flattened ceilings to knee-level. The asphalt on Angela Street has been crusted by the sun, constellations of cracks that spider out from central gouges in the road. 

            Like my heart, I think. 

            Audrey is two years older than me—twenty-five—but already she’s unapologetic about who she is. I like her. Mr. Hohms is ten years older, his hair grown long now, not the straight-looking cut he had when he was teaching high school in Marquette.

           “Key West is just…different,” Audrey says. 

            On one side of her tanned shoulder, Audrey twists her blond mane, tucks it to the side of her face. The movement of it reminds me of home, of my sister, Estie. Audrey’s hair is much brighter, yellow; Estie’s is dirty-blond—but Audrey’s fingers moving makes me ache for my sister. The way I would reach out and tuck Estie’s streaked strands behind her ear. She turned sixteen before I left, there’s an edgy guy she’s running around with who no one else knows she’s seeing, and I’m not there. 

            My eyes burn.

            I reach for my mascara—a distraction—opening my mouth wide as I stroke my outer lashes. 

             Audrey taps my wrist. “Don’t put on much. We’re going to dance like sweating animals. It’s humid.”

            “Okay. But what’s not like Marquette?”

            Mr. Hohms pops his head in. “Don’t tell her anything, Aud. Let her see for herself.” He told me not to call him “Mr. Hohms” anymore, I’m supposed to say “Carey,” and though it’s been five years since I graduated high school, his name feels weird in my mouth. The two of them are carving out a life on this island, him teaching half-time and writing, Audrey singing in bars, raising their girls. I have no idea what this kind of life is like, but I want to know. 

            “You’re right, Carey,” she says. "So right."

            He reaches in, squeezes Audrey’s arm. “Love it when she says ‘you’re right.’ Turns me on.”

            A burst of laughter comes from Audrey’s mouth. She’s wearing a white cotton wrap-around dress, capped-sleeved with a flounce skirt, a side-tie. With her husband watching, she looks in the mirror, grimaces. “Too much fabric in front.” Pulling at the shoulders, she eases her lean arms from the capped sleeves, her breasts bare, turns the dress around backwards. It cuts across her skin, wrapping her tanned center chest in a V that dips to her ribs. “That’s it.” 

            Carey’s voice goes gravelly. “Honey, you set my sails…”

            Audrey eyes my outfit. “Okay, here. Let’s fix that.” She eases my sleeveless blouse out of my denim skirt, unbuttons two buttons at my chest, ties the tails of the shirt under my ribs, baring my midriff. 

            I feel a rush of something, my ribs bare—a tingling: something’s going to happen to me here.

            Mr. Hohms, Carey, is rigging a cruiser bike for me in their dirt driveway where I’ve stashed my car. They don’t have one. The bike Carey rigs for me is rusted all to hell, big milk crate for a basket, but it rides fine—I try it out on Angela Street, avoiding the potholes. 

            A few minutes later, we’re all three cycling the lanes of plant-encroached bungalows to Duval Street, a thin main drag with bars packed into a handful of blocks on the northwest side of the island. Four blocks away, reggae, disco, and Buffett songs compete for street sounds, pulsing from open-air bars as if it’s spilling onto the asphalt in rip tides coming at each other from barraging angles, bass booming like backyard cherry bombs. 

            It’s ten at night—so late by Marquette standards—the light is still in the sky, subdued but there, gray-gold at the horizon. 

            And the heat. It’s heavy, like you can cut it. It’s doing something to my body. My hair has gone wavy overnight—“a gorgeous mess,” Audrey says—my inner thighs are slick with sweat, the bra I’m wearing pasted to my skin. But I feel warm inside in a way I never have. Languid. It suddenly thrills me, cruising down a barely-lit, crowded, Key West street in a short skirt and cotton blouse, my midsection bare in the beginning of February, in the hot stickiness, my limbs loose. 

            I have a funny feeling, riding behind Carey, watching him pedal his cruiser in baggy shorts and flip flops, his shirt open over his naked chest—something no one would do in Marquette. I realize, weirdly, that I’m an adult. No one will adjust their behavior as if I need to be protected from witnessing their adult choices. 

            Duval Street is full of people walking fast toward open-air bars, and more like us, on bikes, crowds in the middle of the road, milling with cocktail glasses in their hands. Open container? Doesn’t anybody care? Everyone is smoking hand-rolleds. Is it pot? On the street? I can smell it, the skunky richness wafting as we glide by. Nobody is wearing much of anything. Men in muscle shirts with ragged cut-offs, women in wispy tops and cotton skirts, everybody in flip flops. As we pedal, I see dozens of men with men, holding hands, arms draped, walking as couples. Tight polyester gym shorts in pastel colors, some guys with no shirt at all, other men in Levi’s, red or blue bandanas peeking out of back pockets. Some sort of leather riding pants over jeans. 

            My eyes land on two men deep-throat kissing. On the street. I whip my head around, then see it everywhere: men kissing men, arms reaching around bodies, gripping.

            My mouth drops open. 

            Audrey cruises up on her bike. “Wild, isn’t it?”

            “Uh...” It sends a shot of fear into my stomach, me staring as if the cops are about to come running to handcuff or beat the shit out of these guys kissing, these men making out on the street. That’s what would happen in Upper Michigan if anyone ever got close to this kind of thing. 

            Two beautiful-looking black-haired women walk across our bike path, right in front of us, tongues entwined as they walk. I’m gaping, I can’t help it.

            I’ve never seen it before, not up close. I believe—how could I not, after all those years of feeling like I didn’t fit in Marquette?—that people should love how they want to love. But I’ve never watched two men kiss, either. Or two women. ’79 is supposed to be post-sexual revolution, birth control pills and all of that—a progressive time, so says Life Magazine—but I’ve seen none of it. And now, there’s all these ‘silent majority’ people preaching ‘family values’ on TV, saying women shouldn’t get jobs and shouldn’t get birth control, saying gay people shouldn’t have rights. It’s crap, but it’s happening all over anyway. 

            So why is it different here?

            Now, on this Key West street, I realize I know nothing of a life like this. A place where all of that prejudice has vaporized and anyone can press someone of the same sex up against their own skin in public. It makes my body feel stirred up and wide awake at the same time, a strange tingling. 

            Carey is ahead of us, and he high-fives another man on a bright yellow bike as he passes, both standing on their pedals, holding their U-shaped handle bars. The man circles the three of us, yelling. He’s tall, thirty-ish, with wavy black hair that pulls back over his forehead and lands evenly above his shoulders. “Carey, Carey, quite contrary! How’s it hanging?”

            “Hey, hey, Crazy Jake! You on the Barbancourt yet?” Carey yells, angling his bike. 

            “What’s Barbancourt?” I whisper to Audrey.

            “Haitian rum. We all drink it, a dozen limes in it.”

            To my right is Sloppy Joe’s Bar—the place is legendary, even I know this, Hemingway’s watering hole: stucco, three sets of open French doors with weathered awnings in front, five more down its side street, people spilling out with drinks in both hands. 

            A bike-length away, across the street from Sloppy Joe’s there’s a place called Rick’s American Café—white clapboard, Buffet music booming from an open-air landing. Two men lean on Rick’s wall, one with his hand down the other’s pants, grabbing his ass.

            “What?” Audrey tracks my sightline.

            “Nothing…” 

            “It’s a lot, right? When you’re used to that whole conservative thing up North?”

            Carey hollers to his friend. “This is Juliana, from Upper Michigan.”

            The guy pedals by me. “First night? Baptism by fire, eh?”

            I nod, perched over my rusted handlebars, watching him circle. He drags his foot on the asphalt, slowing. Then his flip flop bends back against itself and he stops dead right next to me. “Yeow!” He tips his head, recovering. “I’m Jake, but they call me Crazy.”

            Crazy Jake bends over grandly, kisses my fingers, his shoulder-length hair falling on my forearm. He’s blustery, loose in his body, fluid. There are patches of discolored skin on his hands like continents on a map. 

            “Where’re you taking her?” He’s still holding my hand.

            “The Monster,” Audrey says.

            Jake stares a split-second. “Yeah, not yet. Take her to Delmonico’s. It’s a better first night.” Then he’s gone, standing on his cruiser bike and hollering to someone on the sidewalk, steering down the street. 

            It takes five minutes pedaling down Duval Street for Audrey and Carey and me to get to Delmonico’s. We park our bikes—“the cars,” Carey calls them—lock them up with an industrial chain he carries in the milk crate that’s his front basket.

            “Dirty, you gonna let us in tonight?” Carey says to the bouncer. He turns to me. “This is a guy you wanna know. Dirty will have your back.” 

            “That’s not his real name—” I whisper to Audrey.

            She nods. “For Key West it is.”

            The bouncer sits on a Naugahyde bar stool outside Delmonico’s, front door a set of swinging Western shutters angled to the street. Dirty is built like a crane—tall and lanky with a small bulge at his middle, easily over six-foot-four, angling legs draping off the stool like a skinny bird’s, gray hair pulled into a thin ponytail at the nape of his neck. He’s wearing a Black Sabbath Never Say Die concert T-shirt from last year, sleeves rolled to his shoulders.

            A handful of guys in pastel-colored gym shorts and bare chests push out of the bar’s swinging doors and catcall at something behind us. I turn—it’s two open Jeeps slowing to a crawl for the walking traffic, Marines with guns slung over their shoulders in the seats, more of them hanging off the back. The whistling guys are hollering at the men in green. 

            “C’mon baby! You’ve never had it like I can give it!” one guy says, shimmying his shoulders.

            “You need a lift, baby? I can give you one and make it hard, too!”

            The marines take it well, smirking, a couple of them waving back as if to say, alright, we know who you are. 

            Inside, there’s a long bar, a dance floor on a platform ten steps away, dark corners with high-top tables. You Make Me Feel by Sylvester is banging out in a rippling bass.

            Audrey grabs my hand, pulls me to the dance floor. Disco ball above, flashing blue and red lights swirling from the ceiling, heavy bass rattling, huge speakers booming at our feet. In two minutes, Carey is back from the bar, cradling three shots in his left hand. 

           “Barbancourt,” he hollers, handing me a shot. 

            I take a sip: thick, syrupy, alcoholic molasses and vanilla with a citrus kick, fermenting on my tongue.

            We down them. The pulsing bass runs up my feet to my spine, a stunning wall of sound coming from the gigantic speakers. It feels like a dream-state, bodies close, stuffed in like corn cobs clunked together in a combine, men everywhere. Men without shirts—five-to-one, men to women—dancing in next to nothing. Men kissing each other. Grinding each other’s legs as they shake and groove. The sweat from bodies is visceral and close; a wafting scent of something strong, like sweet vinegar. There’s barely enough room to turn, but the sensation is hot—arms raised in a sweaty, jackhammering beat. 

            Watching them press their shaking limbs against each other—and more than a few women’s bodies, too—I’m staring. It’s ridiculously different, as if I’ve dropped off the regular earth into some uninhibited arena of skin-on-skin. I’m inches from all these other humans, Audrey and Carey next to me as they shake their hips and raise their arms here in this club, this contained space, undulating with ease.  

            I want to feel like that. 

            I move, tip my head back and let the shimmering from the disco ball mesmerize me, let my hands hang. It feels warm, alive. I’m not nearly used to this looseness, but no one is getting carted off for doing what we’re doing, either. 

            I watch a woman three steps away take off her sweat-drenched shirt, dance in her see-through bra. A strong pull from my shot is in my throat, and I move my feet, smiling. Shake Your Groove Thing is belting, my body begins to feel pliable, brain stashed on a shelf somewhere, hips loosening. I try shimmying like the woman with the see-through bra, but I feel stupid. She reaches and grabs my wrists, my arms up, swaying me left and right with my breasts out, the tightness in my shoulders from months of worry about what to do with myself melting, like hardened candle wax warming, now malleable to the touch. 

            At home, I’d been to dance spots around Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—tiny places with two-foot speakers, fluorescent lightbulbs—rough-wood taverns. Here, bass beats turn on their ears from six-foot speakers, a mechanical backing track that shakes the dance floor, melting into the next song like a bass symphony blasting with musical intelligence. There’s a DJ who spins LP’s from two turntables, who everyone seems to worship, passing shots to the guy. 

            Before I know it, it’s an hour later and I’ve been dancing the whole time, drenched from the Floridian humidity and Delmonico’s beat, like Audrey said I would be. Two men in damp-looking cut-off shorts turn to me and shake their shoulders, shimmying; I mimic them, laughing, shaking my chest. Perspiration is running between my breasts—overkill, since my shirt has already long stuck to my skin. 

            We dance until four—all night. I’ve drunk two big shots of rum, two beers and I’m not buzzed at all, the dripping from hours of dancing pushing the alcohol right out of me. I feel clean, wrung out, released. My guilt, my regret from Marquette—from disappearing on my sister, my family, and a man I probably shouldn’t have left—all squeezed out of me for a few hours, left on this dance floor in shimmering sweat. 

            Outside Delmonico’s, it’s dark and balmy, the street still but for the band of us partiers wandering to our cruiser bikes, then pedaling down the road under a dusky humid sky. 

            Heading home, the three of us are quiet, Audrey, Carey and me. The circular motion of my feet on my bike soothes me into contentment, warm air drying the sweat off my skin with the gentle winds of my own propelling movement, lulling me.

            It’s the sky that gets me then, the Key West moon like a buttery orb just hanging there, lushly angling over our sweaty shoulders. I don’t know where this will lead me—this dream-life on this tiny island—can’t say what I’ll be shown. But I’m willing to see.