The Miami hotel was surrounded by meticulous golf courses dotted with dramatic fountains. Everywhere were well tended shiny green shrubs with swells of florid flowers. Crows cawed evilly, otherwise the noises were of the cars swishing around the circular driveway where valet-parkers formula-oned at perilous speeds.
Walking from one hotel structure to the next I met with wafts of cigarette smoke, like streaks of dirt stuck in the humid air. Sunday, when it was time to leave, I could have dawdled and taken advantage of the spa facilities, had a massage, been pampered.
Instead I set the navigation thingy and pointed the car southbound. Obeying the instructions I thanked the bitch for each suggestion, and reclined my seat like a gangster, and settled in for the long ride home.
Any other time, any other place, I generally get seized by the need to travel as fast as possible, even though I know full well this means I will arrive at my destination feeling horrible. I’ve never questioned this urge, only ever given in to it, like some demented homing pigeon.
Soon the madness of Miami and a thousand lanes of racing machines dwindled to one lane where the speed limit is 45mph, which is almost impossible unless you have a clear visible view of the police.
And then I saw the sign, ‘Exit left for Card Sound Road’. I’d heard of this road and I was tempted. So instead of my usual tunnel vision, I flipped up the turn signal and was promptly delivered into a scruffy forest.
The forest remained dense and there wasn’t much to see and I wondered if I’d made the right decision. Suddenly on either side of the road were a cluster of shops, all fish themed. This short busy stretch was a town comprised of maybe five shops and a lot of pickup trucks with fishing poles like rooster tails.
Then a toll booth, one dollar and I was heading up a bridge so steep it could have been at an amusement park. Thin humped bridges from which families fish, and all around is an endless spread of blues and greens of glittering ocean, under sultry multicolored skies and huge slow moving birds and far away puffy pink clouds. All so beautiful, making it impossible to want to hurry.
The road is a ribbon of white satin bumpily connecting uninhabited islands of tangles of mangroves, so that one is bounding over shimmering aqua in what feels like zero gravity giant strides on a world of water. It was an incredible treat. Eventually the road ended and rejoined the main highway connecting the Keys.
Home in Key West I am all the more appreciative of the glamorous natural beauty, of the sounds of the cheerful calypso of birds, of the robust smells of flowers and sweet soft air, and the jubilant crowing of the roosters. I’m back in Paradise, which reminds me, now I must attend to that snake.

I just got home from the Doral Resort, in Miami. The hotel complex was bigger than Key West.

I was visiting for the weekend with friends competing in the Judo Open. My friends, who flew from New York, are former champion and legendary columnist Taki, coach and practitioner Teimoc, writer and Judo black belt Mark Brennan, and Brian Pereira, the only one of the troupe competing. Brian is the youngest and the newest to the group, and the best looking.

Friday I accompanied my pod to the auditorium where the Judo US Olympic trials were carrying on, on a couple of enormous yellow mats, surrounded by five chairs deep in spectators. The room was generally near capacity with a lot of traipsing to and fro of competitors, coaches, news-camera operators, parents of competitors, and audience. Chances are good I was the only one in there who had never before seen Judo and knew nothing about it.

Watching that first match, Friday, what struck me was how I knew absolutely zero about Judo. To me, Taekwondo, Karate, Jujitsu, Aikido, Judo well they were all that Asian dude slicing through the air and taking down enemies with some chop-chopping with the hands, and back-flipping kick routines.

I continue to know nothing of the nuances of the other disciplines but what I will say for Judo is it is sensational to watch. What looks like a person falling turns into an exact position like a praying mantis, stiff and yet twitteringly poised for movement, defensive or offensive. The athletes are awesome to observe.

I watched a match between a lanky Swede and a gorgeous Argentine, who eventually dominated the tall perfectly formed Swede. The Swede was mighty pissed but under control. I had seen the Swede earlier, in the hotel lobby, with his girlfriend and an old guy, Taki said the old guy was the coach. The match was two men grabbing at each other’s lapels, and sometimes sliding out a foot to topple the opponent. Sometimes this worked and they both crashed to the mat, but instead of hitting the floor feet flicker or legs fly and the two continue to move. It’s a very awesome dance and I was gripped. Taki narrated, telling me the names of the moves, which sounded like Chinese menu items.

Next a couple of ladies, an American who was fierce and tense and a Cubana with a beautiful face and a sneer for a personality. The Cubana demolished the American, but as slowly and impassively as metal corroding to a pile of dust. All the women I saw spent a lot of time fixing their ponytails. La Cubana’s coach is a man so corpulent he leans back so the front of him is leveraged like a prow. Even his oily stringy black hair is sliding off the back of his head, tumbling into a snake pit of wet curls at his collar, around which hangs his credentials and a silver whistle on a rope.

Next some boys, a Russian and a Cuban. The Cuban dominated, but it was grueling. They were even, too even, the Russian was sleek like a bullet, like something designed to withstand endless beatings, and he did. The two were panting at the end. The ref told them both off for wasting time, performing a tumbling move with his arms to exhibit his displeasure, but it seemed to me the boys were not prevaricating so much as they were whipped, they were catching their breaths. Big cats with stomach muscles like I’ve only seen in pictures. They beat they pounded they dragged each other around by the lapels; they stared at each other in utter concentration. Then they might suddenly flip or very quickly move, I could not always make out what was happening, it was mostly too quick.

And sometimes they slam-land their opponent flat on his/her back, making an almighty noise, a thunderous crack, sounding painful. At the end, after the Cuban won, he could not speak, and to answer questions he would smile or shrug or point at things and all the while panting furiously as he made his way out of the exhibition room.

Dinner was steak and grog and fun on open air South Beach, and over early to accommodate Brian. He might be assigned the first match of the day at nine am. He and Teimoc would be getting up early to warm him up.

Saturday morning I got a good seat before start time. I watched eight hours of Judo. I loved it. Sometimes matches are over in a trice and you ache for the defeated and their occasional illegal displays of anguish. The movements, the foot work is all so impressive, so fast and so precise. “It might look like they are falling, but they are not,” said Taki.

Brian had four matches, one was a default in his favor, one he won and two he lost. One of those losses was to the Swede, who did not win a slot on the Olympic team, but went on to win the Open.

Saturday night we ate more steaks and drank more grog. Brian finds it less terrifying to go up against a Judo black belt than to approach a female. After fortifying himself sufficiently he asked a pretty girl to dance.

On sunny days geckos bask on the back steps, positioned at the corners of the stairs with their prehistoric snouts raised in salutation to the sun. Geckos are very small and pose no threat, but their skittery movements unnerve me. Initially I hated them, I tried to spook them to scare them off, I would rush at them, arms out and waggling and making frightening noises, but they merely stared at me as if perhaps I needed help. Over time we developed a truce.
All was well in my animal kingdom until one day, as I peaceably day-dreamed at my computer; absentmindedly sipping from ice water with key lime juice when a flash caught my attention. Snapping me from my woolgathering I saw a baby gecko peering out from behind a stack on my desk. He was tiny and translucently pale, and it appeared he was smiling the smile of a supplicant, like he was imploring me to help. Of course I wanted to help, plus I wanted him out of the house, the thought of him springing over me as I slept gave me the creeps. Remembering how my friend Nalim had tackled the innocent owlet of some weeks past, I dashed for a towel. The miniature reptile stayed crouched beside the stack, those trusting eyes staring at me. Tossing the towel I pictured great mariners loosening seines and hauling in catch. Picking up an edge I peaked beneath to find nothing. No baby gecko. I shook out the towel but he was gone, never to be seen again.
Perhaps I befriended some of these geckos, but it was hard to be sure, plus it seemed I never saw the same beast twice. One afternoon the birds began chirping hotly so I skipped to a window to see and was affronted with the dreadful sight of an oily length of blackness slithering through the grass. I didn’t trust my eyes until the grotesque spectacle recurred. Now a walk in the garden is fraught, every rustling steeped with possibilities of the monster looping up a limb and garroting a major artery, or fanging me with venom.
Today I was surprised to see a tidy pile of dog poo, black and shiny and pretzeled beneath a green and wicker garden chair stationed beside the back steps. Then, shockingly, from the top of the slimy heap I saw an inky flickering tongue shoot out. The crafty snake was hiding from view of the sun-tanning lizards, my friends. Were I a naturalist I would have coolly observed, instead I freaked out. All of me quivering I slammed closed the rattling screen door. Geckos bound away in all directions and Snakey oozed into the grass, diminishing to a tip that remained upright, like a middle finger.
I wonder if I should drag the hammock indoors, line it up alongside the bed in the living room? As my friend Nalim said, “Even Eden has its snake so you must be in Paradise!”

Awakening me too early was knocking at the front door, accompanied by squeaky voices calling, “Hello, hello?”
Pulling my somnambulant self together I discovered a brace of boys on my stoop. The children were dressed like accountants.
“Yes?” I inquired through the latched screen door. Pinned to breast pockets were nameplates printed with Elder Ebenezer and Elder Jeremiah. At most they were twelve years old.
All glossy-eyed Elder Jeremiah piped up with, “We want to pray to Jesus with you!”
“Go to hell!” I said, which I thought was pretty funny. Unfortunately the boys did not and, perplexed, they backed away whispering anxiously. When I boiled water for tea I chuckled, I should have netted them and slipped them into a cauldron.
Regret slowly crystalized as I envisaged inflamed relatives of one or both of these runts paying me a visit, upbraiding me. I should have been nice to the little blighters, I rued. Reservation for one in Hell, please.
Meanwhile a pal asked me to check out a band, friends of hers. “They’re a trio from Boston and they’re awesome!” my pal said. “I’ll tell them to expect you.”
Strolling to the venue I was overtaken by some exceptional drumming and I stopped to absorb the syncopations pulsing from an open-fronted bar. In the back a smoky room, on a platform stage was a band of a dozen men on percussion instruments. The sound was bracing and I wanted to dive into its lusciousness, except I had an obligation. And onward I went to the tourist-centric plastic venue with twenty foot blow-up mugs of beer dangling from the rafters. I settled at the bar, and prepared to love the lissome trio performing. My ebullience dissipated as I determined the trio were not awesome. And I couldn’t walk out of the club because there was just me and one double-wide denim clad family, with bulging sunburned skin. To be polite I stayed to the end, to say hello, as per my pal’s instructions. Eventually the caterwauling stopped and I went and gushed how genius they were, because truly I was so grateful they were done. I strained to make conversation but my efforts fell flat and we remained awkward. I offered my hilarious encounter with the Godly children at my doorstep. Blank stares, not so much as a titter. Later, when I Googled the trio I learned they call themselves a Christian band. Good Lord, I’m going to hell.
I bid adieu and spirited back whence I had heard the exceptional drumming. Miraculously they were still going strong, the vibrations of their song palpable and irresistible, I merged into the dancing crowd. A girl bumped my hip with hers. She wore an emerald green fringe-edged dress and bare feet. Leaning in close so that I had to inhale her musk, she said, “If I lead, can you follow?”
“I can try!” I said, and I accepted her hand.

It was a Saturday night and Duval Street was busy. Half way along and something was causing a bottleneck; a throng was stopped and blocking the sidewalk. Even the street was choked with slowed pedicabs, with drivers craning, and they have seen it all. I had to see. I elbowed my way through to find at the center of the circle of the commotion was a single small girl dancing inside a hula hoop. But by dancing I mean mesmerically. The little hula dancer had some moves, seemingly creating a tunnel around herself, supple as ribbon as she trained the hoop from the end of one finger, and pulsating the fast moving hoop all the way down to near her ankles and with a bend to her knees she had it traveling north again. Hips moving in a continuous O.

Seated close by, and wholly ignored, was a skinny shirtless man on a type of horn that he held with both hands but its stem carried on longer than his whole body and resting on the dirty cement sidewalk it pitched up at the end in a cornucopia of haunting sounds.

Her hair was multicolored and twisted into wide dreadlocks, pulled back into a stiff ponytail. Her clothes were tropical gypsy replete with a sheer scarf sewn with a hundred golden coins, so that they shook and sparkled like electric plumage. She was so sexy she emptied the mind and filled the heart. As she danced her face remained serene like a confident child.

She played up to the passing motorbikes and they nearly toppled. She out-performed herself for the big trucks and the windows rolled down and admirers hung out. Grown men yearned to take her home, make her whole. She nearly caused traffic accidents. When she did these moves her guy on the horn followed her with his eyes meanwhile his mouth stayed stuck on his instrument. His music was sublime and the little hula girl had evidently danced to it a trillion times, they shared a tangible communication and even with her attention diverted he could reel her back, so that they were moving together, like a snake charmer and his happy pet.

Repeatedly I dropped money in their tip jar, an upturned top hat. I could not walk away; rather I did not want to.

Occasionally obscuring my view were posses of brides and their maids, and then groups of grooms with their stags, usually someone carrying a naked blow-up doll, and most everyone smoking the local hand-rolled Cuban seed cigars. Men and women and some well trained pets puffed the cigars. The sweet heavy smoke mixed in with the hot still air and car fumes. The unctuous smell took me back as scents have the power to do, to a time long ago, sparking memories of when children were encouraged to believe in dreams and fairy tales, like the adventures of the dancing gypsy girl.

Last November I signed a lease on a plain bungalow with an appealing garden. I pictured genteel gatherings of my new cultured acquaintances, sipping chilled drinks and snacking on delectables I would concoct; I could learn how. Gradually I had to admit I will not be hosting any natty parties with homemade anything. For one thing, my place is usually a mess. Naturally I tidy up once a month before the maid comes, because I’m embarrassed for her to see how I live. Giving up on the garden party hallucination I have allowed piles of things to grow unchecked.
When I first inspected this domicile it looked lovely. For all sorts of reasons (mostly revolving around my utter lack of patience) I was dashing around in a big hurry and I failed to notice the bedroom lacked a window, like a cave. I discovered this long after signing the lease, so I decided to learn to love the cave.
Nightly, reluctantly, I lay down in the cave, and steamed away like a sticky pudding.
I’m an insomniac/hypochondriac/claustrophobic with a vivid imagination, and my dread of being buried alive was now revisited on a nightly basis. I tried to learn to love the cave, but I could not.
Last night I cracked. Gasping at tiny breaths of hot fan-stirred air lying sweating in the cave, I could take no more. I sat up and flicked on the lights. I leapt out from bed and kicked the mattress until it sloughed from the box spring. Slowly I heaved it into the living room and leaned it against a wall. Next I hauled in the box spring and shoved it into a corner. Of course the mattress smacked me in the face as I positioned it in front of the box spring. A tap and it wobbled over and into place.
I reclined on my unmade bed, now in the living room, and became entranced with the lofty beamed ceiling and the walls of windows and the soft life-giving breezes that wafted across my skin. It was spiritual and I loved it. I slept with angels. I awoke to find my head under the desk and my feet in the kitchen. My little home was in shambles. I wished I had done this months ago.
The kettle was whistling when the phone started ringing.
“Hello?” I said groggily and poured the boiling water over a teabag and into my cup.
It was a gentleman, “I’m making a documentary of Key West authors,” he said. “I’d like to include you.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and carefully blew on the hot tea. “Go on.” I said.
“So far I’ve met with…” and the man listed the local luminaries. The man continued, “I’d like to film you at home.”
“Right,” I said, and I sipped my tea and looked around, assessing the chaos. “May I call you back?”

Dear Novak,
I have started a breeding colony of super talented hot Serbians and I need your DNA- just kidding!
Seriously, you are the number one tennis player in the world; and you are number one in my eyes.
In Miami you played a tough game against Marcos Bahgdatis. You both played magnificently and it was not an easy win. So personally I don’t think cheering your own victory is at all arrogant, as some critics purport. When you had Bahgdatis down and rolling around he reminded me of a barely alive iguana, when the tail is still swinging around but the spinal cord is undoubtedly crushed. For Bahgdatis, just like roadkill, death was collateral damage, not murder.
With the eyes of the world on you, after defeating the Cypriot, you signed the lens of a camera thrust in your face. Just like your hero Pete Sampras, you are mentally strong.
You are a winner and you are marvelous to watch. You are a natural ambassador for Serbs, a people who could use some light shone their way. After the war sponsors weren’t interested in a young Serb. Attitudes and times change, as inexorably as the globe rotates, and in large part due to Serbs like you.
I am born in New York City, and thus American but I too am a Serb, at least half. What does it mean to be a Serb? I question nature versus nurture in my quest to better understand. Perhaps these days to be a Serb is to be misunderstood, to be prejudged. Like most Americans I’m constantly on the hunt trying to figure myself out. New studies suggest nature has the greater influence over nurture, which means it’s in the genes, and you need to know where you come from to discover who you are.
According to William Wright’s superb book Born That Way (Knopf), sense of humor and competitiveness are inherent, and beyond mere family there exist shared cultural traits. Djokovic loves to do funny impressions, I too am a goofball. He loves to throw rackets, so do I, as did my sister Catherine all throughout our childhood. Privileged to be introduced to the beguiling game of tennis when we were teenagers, we rebelled; stubbornness is also, allegedly, a Serbian characteristic. Many a graphite racket was reshaped, like tree tops in the wind, by hurling it at the fence surrounding the court, where sometimes it stuck. After countless hours logged in front of a ball machine I discovered I was not much enthralled with working up a sweat and retreated indoors to watch televised matches and sip iced lemonade and write stories.
Well done Novak, I wish you all the best. After conquering tennis if you want to be a footballer, or a singer or an actor I will follow your journey with keen interest.
Your number one fan,
Kristina Oksenberg aka Christina Oxenberg
Ps: shout out to Princess Jelisaveta Karageorgevic, and Ana Ivanovic, and all good Serbs.

I bicycled against the wind, pedaling slowly to the end of a pier of flagstone.
I passed a small boy on roller blades, maybe ten years old, he was wispy as a stalk with a thatch of yellow hair shading a serious face. With a hand against a rock wall he shoved off, skating straight and steady. All was fine until one wheel snagged and he lurched and came apart. His legs whirled, boots jackknifing, desperately he had his arms spinning. I held my breath. It was going to hurt to land on that unforgiving flagstone. All of the little boy juddered and it looked like for sure he was going down when a whisker away from impact he softened into a noodle, righting himself back and up, balancing himself. I never saw him blink.
Sun dappled behind fast moving clouds while all along the beach people had stopped in knots to watch a determined beginner on a kite-board. Frequently there are kite-boarders flipping on the waves and bounding in the air, spraying water like diamond beads against azure skies, but I have never seen a novice, never witnessed the humbling struggle. He appeared young but his body was soft, with meringue-white skin and narrow arms suggesting a life spent thus far mostly indoors, today he was standing in the ocean up to his pasty waist. He was focused on a flap of fabric in the sky, and wrangling with the cords connecting him to the kite jerking in and out of currents. He stood wrestling with his rigging with his instructor nearby, dressed in half a wetsuit, relaxed against the heaving waves and calling out encouraging plays.
Seagulls and pelicans swooned around the kite-boarder and his bobbing instructor, occasionally hurtling fast like arrows, spearing the surface, plucking at the silver fish that move around in balloons of metallic shimmer, sometimes leaping as one out of the water, through the air, creating ridiculously pretty tiny blizzards.
Someone was grilling and the tantalizing smell of roasting meat traveled like a salesman in the breeze.
Suddenly the sky darkened with whipped up clouds and noisy winds scattering dry leaves, and I was surrounded by skateboarders and bicyclists and mopeds. Wind spun sand squalls. Groggy-eyed sunbathers made for their cars, laden and shuffling on slippery flip-flops. A man was running in a strange scuttling way, with his back hunched. Then I saw in his arms lay a sleeping child and he carried her with one hand holding her head.
And the rain came down, gigantic drops crash landed noisily. The raindrops were warm like bath water and they felt wonderful.

At 2am I was walking down one end of Duval Street, heading for my car, headed home. I walked accompanied by the usual night-symphony of revelers raving and ambulance sirens and rooster calls, when I heard a ruckus.
A group of three crocked spring-breakers were stopped and gesticulating and cursing loudly at a doorway. I posted up by a wall, and observed. The trio caterwauled until finally out of steam they staggered off. From the entranceway emanated peeling guffaws. Gingerly I approached to investigate, and in the doorway I found two men on the front stoop of a small hotel. One guy, salt & pepper beard and beetroot skin, was seated protectively in front of a box of beer, he was chortling, and pointing at his friend. His friend was reclining flat on his back with his legs out stiffly in front like he was levitating. He had his hands folded over his orange teeshirt and he was spluttering, maybe even choking a bit, wheezing and rocking with laughter. When he sat up I saw his red face was streaming with tears. It was a face stuck all over with joy. Pure and infectious, and I asked if I might sit with them.
Al and Nick are a couple of Maryland lads in town for Nick’s 40th birthday. They traveled with their spouses and their motorbikes. Their last night in paradise, with the wives tucked in bed upstairs at the hotel, the men rigged a game with a toy fishing pole, a yellow plastic thing they bought for three dollars at the corner drug store.
Nick sported a crew cut and flame tattoos on his forearms, “They match my bike,” he explained, “I was having a midlife crisis.” Nick let out his line and sent his buddy Al to place the lure on the sidewalk, a dollar stuck with quarters, as sinkers.
The passing drunks were pitiably hilarious as they lunged at the money. Nick skillfully wound the reel, hauling in the bill as the sot snatched, with face contorting from confusion as the dollar flittered from a grasp. After each catch Nick slumped exploding with giggles. Al too, eyes closed, cracking up. Their elation transformed them and I saw them as carefree kids, before the pile up of life. Both Nick and Al were slung with shiny green party-beads. Nick’s game was luminously innocent, yet temporarily triumphing in this prurient town.
Eyes bugged as the dollar flew away. The bewilderment they expressed was priceless. Impaired minds followed the skittering bill before registering us, and our hysterical faces, momentarily sobering them, like a slap. “Fuckers!” decried an intoxicated girl, her high heels dangling from one hand. Later she returned and said, “I called you ‘fuckers’. I’m sorry.”
We watched a montage of stumblebum fishing all set to the melodic cacophonic track of our cruel laughter. At daybreak they packed up their equipment and we split the memories.

In the name of journalism I went to the strip clubs.
I went accompanied by my pal Turtle, a local. At one end of Duval Street we swept aside a curtain and entered a low-ceilinged room with a bar running one length and several bodies deep with men dressed in plaid shorts and tank tops and flip-flops, and women wearing nothing at all except for magnificent high heels.
I followed Turtle to the groin of the building, to a cave of a room with dark walls and the center dominated by a platform jutting like a tongue. On this tongue, like so many piercings, were silvery poles and around these poles swung some lithe females. They were naked, except for regulation eight inch Lucite shoes. Turtle blew kisses to the dancers. They smiled and approached.
“They love me here,” Turtle declared. My guide knew a notable amount for his tender twenty-something years.
The dancers were young, their bodies gorgeous. Pubic hair was meticulous as bonsai gardens. Breasts were everywhere. The sport with breasts is for a patron to place his face between a pair. The girl will then press her breasts, pinning the face into a mammary sandwich. Turtle repeated this process many times. Once with tits so wide the dancer could scarcely make them meet. Another pair of knockers, attached to a damsel with a velvet choker and gold glitter sprinkled on her pale skin, Turtle claimed, “They have to be fake! It was like I was being punched!”
I declined a turn.
The next establishment was up a rickety flight and inside a clammy low-lit cavern. Here nude girls danced on a stage that snaked all throughout the room. In no club did I witness any stripping, unless you count the stepping out of a thong. Mostly male patrons were seated at eye-level to the stage, their heads tilted, focused on the dazzling flesh. One dancer squatted in front of a customer, firm breasts within milking distance. Despite the gunmetal glint in her eyes she was fearsomely feminine. Her customer was porcine and grinning fiendishly. His three buddies sat tight, in an excited huddle. She plucked off the guy’s glasses and brazenly polished them on her clamshell. Next, she wafted the glasses under the guy’s nose. The guy spat up his drink and whooped, his buddies roared. They all tucked paper money into her garter.
My chair was sticky.
A blonde vision swished into view, and Turtle groaned. He nodded at the divinity and she smiled and shimmied over. She crouched down so her pearl farm was in my grille, and said, “Where are you from?”
I blushed when, handing her money, our fingers touched.
She spun away and into Turtle’s sights. Gracefully she fell into a backbend, suggesting the entrance to a tunnel of love.
Turtle stared, entranced.
“My greatest fear,” he said, “is she is going to fart in my face.”
Gold glitter shimmered on his cheeks.