Key West--First Nights

After sunset, the huge lizards disappeared from the sidewalks. I'd walk the streets incessantly, up Simoneton past the post office and the bus station, past The Creamery crossing Roosevelt, to Logan's Lobster House standing on the edge of the Atlantic. There at the sea wall, standing and staring into the shipping lanes watching the lights of the boats passing by long enough for melancholy to begin to settle in. Then the walk down Whitehead, past Hemingway's house, swollen with unnamed emotions, past the Green Parrot, America's oldest (and cheapest) bar where the real loonies drank, past the giant banyan trees next to the first Trans World Airlines office, home of the first international flight from Key West to Havana, trying to memorize cross streets until I got to crooked maze around the aquarium and old navy station there on the Gulf, sitting again to listen to sound of the water rushing against the pilings, watching the masts of the sailboats bouncing on either side of the channel between Pine Island and Key West under the clear, dark sky, the stars and moonbeams, small dinghies slipping across the water portering people to and from the island, back and forth, back and forth on the changing tide.

Then it would be late enough to walk up Duval, to the clump of bars there in the sudden light--Sloppy Joe's, Captain Tony's, The Bull and Whistle. The first bands were playing at Tony's, and I'd order a drink at the bar, watching and thinking and watching, waiting to be watched. Later, at the Bull, where the music and people spilled onto the sidewalk from the giant windows. A girl I'd seen earlier in the day, a gypsy, I thought, dark, thick curls pulled into a bandana, big gold hoops piercing her dark brown earlobes. I learn she is not a gypsy but a young Jewish princess, a student at the University of Miami. She wants to stay with me for the night. A week later, when I go home, I will receive beautiful letters from her for a short time. Another woman at the bar says hello and buys me a drink. She is from Pittsburgh and lives in Key West. She owns a shop, a clothing store. A bit later, a tall, leading man walks in, a scar running the length of his crooked jaw. He wears pantaloons and a pirates kerchief, I think. He, too, is from Pittsburgh. He, too, owns a clothing store. They live together and will shape my life in Key West for years to come. Although they are only a few years older than I, they are decades more experienced. They have graduate degrees from Penn State and come from privileged lives. They will provide my first and most profound lessons in excess.

Later, the gypsy comes to the small darkness of my room. I am nervous and concerned and whisper queries about birth control. She is already wearing her diaphragm, she says. The sacred and the profane. Romance withers. We do not make love that night.

Perhaps that is why she writes.