Town is soaked from waves of soused high schoolers come to celebrate their no doubt richly earned Spring Break.

Near nakedness is normal here at the end of the world, but unlike Fantasy Fest most of the flesh currently on view is as Nature intended, before the inevitable wreckage.

By night the kids fill the bars for bouts of competitive drinking. But by day, instead of requiring twelve hours of sleep in a darkened soundproofed room as a grownup might, they swarm the beaches and engage in more competitive drinking. I saw with my own eyes the Beer Pong game played. Just like on TV.

Like some unidentifiable predator I wallowed on the crest of the dunes and observed. The beach was confettied with lanky teenagers with full, shiny pelts. The girls sporting bandeaus of turquoise or peach, the boys mostly in knee length shorts. Except for a splash of Australians proudly wearing weenie bottoms with their flag across their flat rumps.

Speaking of crime, Key West is at the ready and from the dunes I had an unobstructed view of the boulevard where the police Command Center, a cushy looking RV, idled with a satellite pole and a front door and no doubt a chilled comfortable interior.

On the beach one policeman sat slumped atop a bony horse, its tail swishing at flies, while other gun toting foot soldiers strapped safely in bulletproof vests and knee high boots stood about chatting affably with the teenagers in tiny bikinis.

Girls lay out sunning as boys lobbed toys at each other to catch, like puppies. Just beyond the surf, flopped and floating on paddle boards were three tanned sculpted damsels. One on her back with her arms tight, hugging her flanks, a second also on her back but with her arms splayed out to the sides, her hands sunk under the clear water, and a third on her stomach with her face cradled in her hands. Quiet except for the swirl of gulls overhead.

And in a hillock of sand, whence lovers might canoodle and watch the full moon brightened sea, a hotel credit card door key innocently peeked.

I love drama, in the theater that is. I love that moment as the lights glide to dark signaling a change of reality. A pal tipped me off to something at The Red Barn Theater. A play with a crazy name by a friend of a friend. VANYA and SONIA and MASHA and SPIKE, by Christopher Durang. Anywhere but Key West that wouldn’t inspire me to leave the house. But off I went and bought my ticket and slid into a cushy seat in the dollhouse perfect venue. Typical of Key West everything was sheer perfection and the cast earned a resounding standing ovation.

A local theater group known as Key West Fringe Theater sets up all over town according to the needs of their production. For example, last week they put on Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance and the setting was, of all things, not only at the Custom House Museum but in the gallery with the Tennessee Williams exhibition. This wonderful Albee production in the gorgeous Custom House Museum, and under the gaze of Tennessee Williams provided a viable working fusion for intense joy. Another standing ovation.

Last night I paid a visit to the ladies in jail. Soon the classroom was bubbling with brilliant fun and we all had a very good laugh, a necessary laughter that changed the atmosphere, equalizing us. Until a guard came along and barked, “We’re having a ‘shake-down’. Hope you didn’t have dinner plans.” And she slammed the heavy glass and iron door, stuck in a key and twisted it locked. As she walked away the room echoed from the slammed door.

We tried to return to our entertainment but strange thumps and cries and then prolonged even stranger silences tugged our curiosity and some ladies began to pop out of their seats and went to press against the glass wall to peer down into the hell pit. A guard was busy ransacking the cells, tossing their meager property all across the cement floor, until she spotted the ladies. She bellowed threats and came charging up the metal stairs and called out those who had dared to observe. And then she marched them away.

This activity is called a ‘shake down’ and I found it profoundly disturbing. It’s all about rules, right or wrong, and the interpretation of these rules by the guards whose egos and personal issues come in all shapes. Many are perfectly professional, from the Director down to the intake dudes who are mere voices behind blacked out windows, always polite.

But not all, especially some of the guards you’ll find deep on the inside where no one might witness the disturbing frayed edges of their abuses.

I was reminded of Tennessee Williams’ play Not About Nightingales. The Monroe County Detention Center is not about nightingales.

A thousand years ago I had a job at Viacom at the heart of Manhattan.

Mercifully, I had lucked out in the accommodations department. I was living rent free in a friend’s empty penthouse. My rich friends always had more homes than they could inhabit and I made a habit of filling in off season. My life was always full of these apparent contradictions, of superb wealth dangling just out of permanent reach.

Every morning I would swish in a marble tub whilst sipping an espresso and then I’d trudge off across slushy dirty sidewalks, head bowed. I tried to vary the route when possible, to help fight routine fatigue. Except for storm days when I beelined for the closest subway entrance. A damp slippery corner where newspapers and rotund muffins winked from behind scratched plexiglass booths.

There were those mid-winter days when more than half the employees could not make it in from their far flung suburban reaches. In the unusual quiet I would stare out from the glass towers overlooking Times Square, watching snow tumbling in its dignified gaiety, the streets and sidewalks almost devoid of life. New York City at midday midweek and empty and quiet all blotted out from the snowstorm. Fishtailing taxicabs the only color in sight. I promised myself how one day I would be long gone and coddled in sunshine.

At the end of eight hours of nothing too exciting, unless you mean the day I brought Viacom to its knees, by accident. Somehow I jammed the company intranet but that is another story. Calamity or not, invariably, I would go home. Home being this palace in the sky, empty as the big city in a snowstorm. After six months, with a pocketful of money, I tucked and rolled. After that particular stint with corporate life I set off for points south, Ecuador I believe, one way ticket.

These days I live coddled in sunshine and I am grateful, daily. Sorry to rub it in Northerners. My thoughts are with you!

“Do you think women feel humiliated by the act of penetration?” ~

This was all long ago in NYC. My friend Jill called to say her Boss wanted to interview me for his ‘book’. “No way!” I said. I already knew about this book as Jill had been whining about it for months.

“Please!” Jill mewled and whined until I buckled. Unenthusiastically I dragged off to a glass tower overlooking the Hudson River, to a spare affair on a high floor in dark leather and chrome. In an armchair by the window reclined a lanky aging fop in business attire, with a foulard of canary silk to compliment his canary socks. I disliked him on sight.

The Boss pointed to the empty seat across from him as he leaned languidly forward and fingered a small device on the glass table dividing us. “I’m going to tape our interview,” he said, by way of introduction, and he thumbed a red button, pressing until it hummed. The interview began with banal questions, mere prelude. After a few minutes of inanities the Boss presented his frightful question, “Do you think women feel humiliated by the act of penetration?”

I pursed my mouth. I was instantly enraged. I felt certain this was ‘off topic’ on a sinister level. And it sunk in this ‘book’ was strictly a vanity project, the purpose of which was a means for him to meet whomever he liked. A distinct glitter sparkled in his night dark eyes, like perhaps he was excited to get at the information.

“Am I embarrassing you?” he said, inappropriately coy. I pictured smacking the contempt from his face, knocking him and his hubris to the Persian carpeted floor. To mask my fury I watched the little machine on the table, with its tiny tape rolling around, capturing nothing.

“Embarrassed?” I spat up an involuntary chuckle. I sat straight, at the lip of my chair, and stared into his face and felt a sense of serenity came over me. “Tell me,” I began, in a steady tone, a smirk already on my face. “If a girl strapped on a dildo and fucked you up the ass would you feel humiliated?”

We stared at each other for a microsecond and then the Boss stood up bellowing, “Are you insane! Are you crazy!” He grabbed at the recording device and smashed it in the palm of his meaty hands. Bits flew.

I gathered my coat and stood up. “Good luck with your book!” I giggled, and exited, leaving his office door wide open behind me.

Regarding Rachel, I have to consider my readers comments. You make good points. Why did I always feel so tolerant and understanding toward Rachel, no matter her appalling sometimes criminal behavior. Perhaps I thought of her as an obscenely naughty sister who one would always cherish, despite a certain exasperation.

When Rachel and her twin brother were infants their biological mother dropped the defenseless duo at an orphanage. Rachel would not learn the identity of this ‘mother’ for many years, and by the time she did she no longer cared what her reasons were. As a kid all she knew was that a Mrs Wood, a wealthy Westchester widow had taken her and her brother home to a mansion with lawns and a lake. “They are a pair! I love symmetry!” Mrs Wood was fond of repeating, after too many sherries.

Mrs Wood adored babies, but soon after Rachel and her brother began to talk she grew disinterested of these tiresomely needy children. If Rachel or her brother exhaled too loudly, Mrs Wood was sigh, “All this noise!” and dismiss them to their bedrooms. Before long Mrs Wood purchased a pair of Yorkshire Terriers and the twins were handed to nannies.

The twins were not abused, they were not maltreated, in fact, they were not paid much mind at all, and they felt it acutely. With each other they never verbalized their troubles, but some nights they slept in the same bed, falling asleep holding hands. The twins lived in cocoons of ice thick like winter lakes, emotionally frozen like bright orange fish in blue ice.

Mrs Wood lost not one wink of sleep over the emotional abandonment of her charges. She nimbly justified her every desire with a motto of, ‘If only one of us gets to be happy in this picture, it may as well be me’.

Rachel and her brother earned excellent grades, caused no trouble and each got married before they graduated from college. Rachel’s choice of mate was an earnest, timid hippy. It was doomed. In her mid-twenties, divorcing, alone and untethered Rachel relocated to NYC. Time for a fresh start.

And that’s when we met.

Just a quick note to explain why I dropped Rachel all those years ago.

I was recently moved into a new domicile, somewhere in Chelsea on Tenth Avenue, and my naughtiest friend was coming to visit me. “I have a housewarming gift for you,” she said, and I fell for it.

Because we were acquainted already for a decade I knew better than to leave anything tempting out in view. As she made her way over I rushed around tucking silver ashtrays under couch cushions and even went to the extraordinary lengths of placing all my jewels, a small pile of heirlooms, into a pale blue velvet pouch which I tucked into a boot and shoved to the back and dusty recesses of a closet.

Rachel arrived in a whirlwind of chatter and chaos and high spirits and sure enough she had brought me something, a gardenia scented candle. It crossed my mind this item had likely been lifted and spirited away from its previous owner, but I love the smell of gardenia, so I lit it and offered a private prayer.

When Rachel asked me if I would be so gracious as to make her a cup of tea it was my pleasure to oblige. Soon the kettle was whistling and boiling and I became engrossed in the process of steeping. When I turned around to hand her the brew she was nowhere to be seen. “Rachel!” I called but heard nothing back. I sped from room to room calling out her name.

And then I found her on the floor on her stomach, face deep into the closet. Somehow with her perfectly calibrated criminal olfactory system she had sniffed out the hiding place. “What the hell!” I exploded and ran and grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her, belly scraping on the bare floorboards, out from the closet. I yanked her out though still her arms were stiffly outstretched and her hands closely gripped around my bag of jewels.

We were both laughing and shrieking, but it was also the proverbial last straw. I loved her dearly but suddenly I felt I had to drop her and block her. I saw only downslide ahead, and I disengaged. I thought for certain she’d end up in jail, with me attached.

Instead, these days she is a bonafide self-made highly respectable millionaire.

It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong.

I ask you, is $100 the right price for a lap dance?

You see, I was minding my own business near the foot of Duval Street when I noticed a person hanging from a doorway, a man with dark hair and dressed all in black hung slack in the doorway, from his fingertips lodged in the jam, like he was a figurehead on the prow of a ship.

“Hey you!” he called.

He was olive skinned and youthful and whippet slim. “Come here!” one hand curled toward me. “Come over here!” Any other time, any other place I would have cast my eyes at the paved ground and marched forth. Instead I slowed before him and did not resist when he took my hand and steered me indoors.

The instant we entered the small all white space the man pushed me, his palm on my chest, down into a white leather armchair. The room looked like a hair salon, except besides stacked boxes, it was empty.

“I am Alessandro,” he announced, and he straddled me. “You have lovely skin, but really you should take better care of yourself.”

He had his legs astride mine and he forced my legs shut. “Look up!” he commanded, and he began applying something sticky under my eyes and amiably he chattered on about his Sicilian parents. “They were very generous,” he said, inexplicably, with his small hard rump hovering above my knees, not quite touching, but I could feel the heat of him.

And then he was giving me a lap dance. Perhaps not the full-on professional thing but close enough! Like a stunned doe I allowed him. Next he traced the outline of something like a baby violin swelling inside his black pants, “My parents were good to me,” he said, again, and now I understood. I couldn’t help but laugh. Had he not been so personable I might have remonstrated or shoved him away. But really, I thought, what the hell.

Later I realized that the purpose of the dance is to distract one and delay one long enough for the sticky stuff to dry so that when he next applied a foundation cream it would cling on. Resulting in one side of my face looking decidedly younger than the other. Of course I bought the creams. He charged me $100.

These ‘face cream lap dance’ stores are a new thing on Duval Street, some with wine as a magic ingredient, others with crushed diamonds. The hook, however, is not in the bottle, but rather with the model quality looks of the salespeople, and their friendly ways.

I consulted with a friend who works as a mate on one of the tour boats and he told me the exact same thing happened to him, except it was an exceptionally beautiful woman who lured him in. He too bought the creams, and the promise of romance.

I’ve always liked Kelly McGillis in the movies but my curiosity to meet her was piqued because Key West so adores her. She is certainly not the most famous to grace these shores, but she might easily be one of the most cherished. Her era, back in the day, involved much interaction with the townsfolk and everyone who ever met her fell in love. Intrigued, I said yes when invited to lunch.

Lunch was in the orchid peppered dining room at David Wolkowsky’s town home where we supped on pink shrimp salad  served on cerulean blue china.

When Kelly McGillis lived here she bought properties and opened restaurants. Of the multitude of celebrities who have washed over this coral outpost Kelly McGillis is the name you’ll hear bandied the most lovingly, after Hemingway of course. But no one here today met Ernest Hemingway. Most everyones seems to have met Ms. McGillis.

Over the soup, it was no surprise to find Kelly McGilllis is excellent entertainment. She animated vignettes and in no time I too slipped under the spell. For example, once in Amish country when she fell in step with a Kelly McGillis tour. “I thought attending the tour in disguise would be great fun but it was traumatizing and I’ll never do it again! Everything the guide said was wrong! He said I made all my own clothes for the movie [Witness]. Why on earth would I do that?”

By the time we spooned up cassis sorbet, regaling us with her stories, she had us all crying laughing. She is an actor to her marrow.

After lunch David took Kelly and I to the Custom House Museum to see the paintings made by his great friend Tennessee Williams. Kelly is herself a painter and described an intense sounding mobile she’s in the middle of making. Unfortunately she swears she has no plans to show her work, “Not even posthumously”. After touring the show David and Kelly concurred Tennessee’s unpolished talent is evident and his palette luminous, and the works have a poignant charm.

David Wolkowsky and Tennessee Williams were close friends. David will tell you, “Tennessee was wonderful. He was complex and brilliant.” On the backside of David’s portrait Tennessee penned a touching tribute to his friend. That alone makes the show worth seeing.

Lastly we made our way upstairs to the permanent exhibits, passing beneath a life-sized portrait of David gracing one wall. We settled ourselves in a room designed to look like a train carriage where one can sit and watch a black and white movie on the history of Henry Flagler’s railroad. A train ride David remembers taking as a very young child.

~ Catch the Tennessee Williams exhibition at the Custom House Museum ~  281 Front Street, Key West

Target Practice by Tennessee Williams

Cri de Coeur by Tennessee Williams

Portrait of David Wolkowsky by Tennessee Williams

Years ago Rachel was working as a sales associate at a fine art gallery on the upper east side. Rachel was formally trained at university to understand the intricacies of the art world and combined with her natural instincts she was a masterful deal-closer. In her short time at the gallery she had earned some good coin in commission sales.

Long before things went sour Rachel was suspicious of her boss, Mr Arthur Wrangler. She had observed his strange ways and noted some exceedingly non-linear transactions. From outside his office Rachel frequently overheard yelling. Blame it on the fractious atmosphere but Rachel began hoarding. For one thing she made a copy of the gallery’s contact list, because as she liked to say, “In New York City who you know is gold.”

When the middle-aged visibly agitated man stopped by and insisted on meeting with Mr. Wrangler Rachel settled him in the foyer and went to find her boss.
“Get him out of here!” Arthur Wrangler flipped out. “I don’t’ care what you have to say! Lie! Tell him I’ve gone to Cuba! One way trip!”
Rachel did as she was told but as she escorted the distraught and tearful man to the front door she absorbed unsettling insight on the terroristic methods employed by Mr. Wrangler.

One morning the gallery was closed, literally. The heavy glass and brass front doors were chained and padlocked and Rachel was out of a job. Rachel confidently deployed that contact list but what she found out was contacts are only useful if they want you. That the gallery was run by a thuggish maniac was not her fault but the scandal of the demise of the gallery stained everyone connected, and impeded securing another job.

But Rachel, despite her charming and brilliant bombast, grew up humble and it was easy enough to scale back her dreams, if only temporarily, and accept a cashier’s position at her neighborhood bookstore.

Just so happened, pure coincidence, an Artemis Wrangler had an account at this bookstore, and it was unfortunate that she should be in such a pissy mood when she dropped in. Artemis recklessly displayed her impatience, drummed her fingers on the counter and exhaled audibly, as Rachel finished positioning the pile of books into a shopping bag. Artemis, like an insect cruising the jaws of a Venus fly trap, had no idea the danger she was in. Especially when Rachel learned this was the wife of her ex-boss, Mr. Arthur Wrangler. Rachel merely smiled and sweetly told the crabby crustacean to, “Have a lovely day!”
The night of my birthday Rachel hosted me and some friends at a sushi place recently opened on Spring Street.
I never questioned how she could afford this indulgence. Towards the end of the evening, over bowls of flaming ice cream, Rachel whispered to me behind her long slim hand, “When I pay the bill be sure and call me Artemis!”

This past week has been all about the Literary Seminar, an annual event rather typical of Key West in that it fully lives up to the hype. The setting is the beautiful and historic San Carlos Institute on Duval Street and the guests are fabled types on the level of Joyce Carol Oats. The theme this year was mysteries and thrillers, and the atmosphere as always was all effervescent charm and wit and rollicking entertainment. Friday night I was lucky enough to scrounge a ticket to hear Carl Hiaasen. Just so happens I read all of Hiaasen’s many books when, years ago, trying to escape the harsh Hamptons winters and I revered him for tickling my cockles. The lecture was great fun as Hiaasen is an oiled entertainer and he held us all in his sway like a ballroom dancer and it was fabulous to be lead along from one hilarious anecdote to another.

As with every year the party of the year, marking the end of the Literary Seminar, is hosted by my friend David Wolkowsky, and I was doubly thrilled to learn Hiaasen was to be the guest of honor. The event was held at David’s downtown rooftop loft, used exclusively for parties, everyone milling half indoors and surrounded by glorious artifacts and half outdoors and in perfectly clement weather and under the glow of a full moon.

The Party of the Year

As is my way, l I was the last guest to depart the soiree, and while I’m assured Hiaasen attended, I never so much as caught sight of the back of him. Instead, and unexpectedly, David made a special effort to introduce me to another of his legendary friends, the demigod Mr Jimmy Buffett. Buffett is evidently smooth and cool and politely remote, in his perfectly sleek minimalist flip-lops, possibly designed and hand stitched for him by IM Pei. Except I was tongue-tied, after all what do you say to someone whose oeuvres has literally forced you to run out of rooms with your fingers stuffed in your ears? Here was an opportunity to keep quiet.

Like witnessing the flare of a comet cross the night sky I observed David and Jimmy chattering excitedly. Eons ago David gave Jimmy his first gig, and the depths of their friendship was palpable. They grinned like schoolboys, a genuine and mutual adoration. And I realized I’ve seen many such compositions in framed photographs all around David’s many delicious domains. I’ve seen His Eminence in the company of the esteemed and notable. His friends truly love him.

Later, headed for my car and walking past Margaritaville and peering in on the worshipful fans, and knowing that if they only knew their hero was in breathing distance, well they’d probably hurl their gallons of suds.

Another great night in this heavenly tiny city paved with talent and energy, this place is the real thing.