Otra Noche En Miami
“Protect la pinga, papi!” says a woman dressed in fishnets and bondage-tape to Santi as she walks by us, half of her forearm disappearing into a giant black trash bag and resurfacing with a condom. It takes him a moment to process the situation, but she waits patiently, hand and condom extended between us and her. She’s unbothered by his chuckle and the long second it takes for him to reach and grab it and mumble thank you.
We’re walking up Ocean Drive in Miami Beach. The neons and blues from the bars and hotels shade and highlight our faces with new angles. Santi’s long nose keeps fading and reappearing. His teeth look unnaturally white and the ends of his eyelashes and eyebrow hairs sparkle. This night, like every other night we’ve been here, is packed. Shirtless men zoom by us in roller skates, the tangy smell of alcohol-sweat trailing behind them. Salsa and Raggaeton and Bachata play from different spots, drowning out each other with every step we take. Groups dance and hover on the sidewalk. Weed and a salty breeze and cologne and fried plantains and sunblock hit us over and over.
Santi’s doing the thing where he looks at his feet as he walks, taking deep breaths every so often. He’s letting me know this moment has already passed, and we’re back home, in Tegucigalpa, talking about it — telling someone who wasn’t here what it was like. Telling each other remember the night when.
“Stop it,” I say. “We still got two days. You don’t need to look so sad.”
“And then it’s back to real life, to all of it,” he says.
We’ve been in Miami for one month and 26 days. When we leave, we’ll have been here for one month and 28 days — just under two days of what our student visas allow post-graduation. I want to resist but, like him, I suddenly see us at the Toncontín airport, our faces shiny with sweat because the AC is out, as always. My and Santi’s parents waiting and smiling as we wheel our suitcases towards them. A rain of questions descending.
“What I’m hearing is that we really need to help you put that to use,” I say, gesturing to the condom on his hand. The red aluminum wrapper holds and reflects the lights around us — all of Ocean Drive’s glow in Santi’s hand.
He rolls his eyes and pushes short and sharp air out of his nostrils. “Yeah, okay. Focus.” He blows into his hands and rubs them together dramatically before bending his fingers into two circles — binoculars he places over his eyes. He moves his face slowly from left to right, scanning the view.
“There,” he says. “That’s us for the second-to-last good night of the rest of our lives.”
We haven’t been standing in line at Mango’s for more than a few minutes when Santi’s already found a beautiful man with a full mustache in a white muscle shirt and faded denim shorts to kiss. He pushes his right hand under the shirt and against the man’s abdomen. I look at him every few seconds before glancing back down to my phone.
No texts from Ariel. I imagine them just as I left them — sitting on the white plastic chair fitted into the balcony overlooking South Beach, their elbows resting on their knees, legs spread, hands holding their head up. They were halfway through the third beer of the night when we left their place, uncountable cigarette butts dived face-down into the metal caps of each new bottle they opened, spread all over the balcony floor. “It’s good practice for me, anyways,” they said as I leaned down to kiss them. “This is what it’s gonna be like from now on. You and Santi gone.” I didn’t know what to say, so I rubbed my nose against theirs. They had been out with us every night this week, but tonight one of their hit-you-up-when-I’m-around flings was in town. Santi and I wanted to have one night out alone before leaving, anyways. It all worked out. I imagine Ariel right as I left them but they probably were out now, at dinner or wherever.
Santi and I came here — I mean Miami, not Mango’s — to be queer as fuck. Queer as possible before being shipped back to Honduras, closeted and impossible. We met, of all places, in a small liberal arts college in the Midwest halfway through our senior year. I was on the phone with my parents outside the library. They were telling me about my cousin, also on a student visa down in Alabama, getting engaged to a handsome white boy. He looks like Captain America, my mom said. Look him up on Instagram. As soon as I hung up, Santi came up to me. “Sos de Honduras, ¿verdad?” he said. The excitement in his voice and eyes unbearable and familiar.
It was the middle of winter and all he wore were biker shorts and a tie-dye crop top. Outside, the snow turned everything a shade of blue I had never seen before. The whole building smelled like microwaved ramen and I don’t think I’d ever felt farther from home. We became inseparable right then. Graduation came and neither of our families could afford to come, Honduras just slammed by two hurricanes, a third of the north coast under water. Neither Santi nor I got jobs or applied to a grad school we could afford or managed to trick a gringo into some green card marriage. We graduated and had 60 days to leave the country and just enough saved up from working jobs under the table to come here. And now 56 of the days were gone, and all we had to look forward to were simple but certain things — jobs at call centers putting our Ingles to use and degrees to rest, baleadas from street stands during lunch break, stolen glances full of wondering at strangers in bars, questions about the future we can’t quite answer at family events, traffic and rain and city-wide power cuts, infinite warmth.
“Come on, let’s go inside,” Santi says, using the back of his hand to wipe his mouth.
“What happened to mustache?” I say, looking around.
“He wanted me to follow him to the back alley,” he says. “But he doesn’t have any lube and I’m not getting a hemorrhoid two days before having to sit on a plane. I gave him my number though. Maybe something can be arranged before Monday, we’ll see.” He winks at me. I can tell he’s gotten a drink or something from someone. His sober shyness from before vanished.
Inside it is hotter than outside, which is how it is in Miami Beach at night. A song sampled from an old popular Cumbia that I can’t place plays loud and fast, making the tables and walls shake. I have to unstick the sole of my shoe from the floor with every short step we take. The servers at Mango’s wear headbands with big yellow and orange feathers glued on sloppily. You can spot some of the dried silicone from across the room. The explosion of colors is always a little overwhelming at first. It’s so crowded and heated that Santi’s glasses begin to fog. He hand-gestures something about getting drinks and being right back. I nod and lean on our tall table, already pulling out my phone again and going to Ariel’s chat.
How’s it going baby? I type and send. While I’m waiting to see the typing bubbles come up, I scroll up in our conversation. There’s a bunch of earlier TikToks that they sent while taking their morning poop. I haven’t opened them and wouldn’t be able to hear anyway. I go into the American Airlines app and refresh my reservation, one day and 21 hours until boarding.
We met Ariel on our third night here, just a few blocks up in El Pelican. It was a Wednesday and they smelled like something expensive and clean. They came up to us to ask if the car parked right outside was ours, to let us know it was about to be towed. Santi and I got a good laugh out of that one. We had seen the car — a group of boys was taking pictures with it when we walked in. Everything about Ariel seemed familiar but exciting — the way they walked and emoted. It was like we were meeting an old friend after a long time. Santi asked them if they were Honduran. They smiled like versions of this question were something they were used to. Their parents are from El Salvador but they have never been anywhere but Miami. I couldn’t stop noticing their hands — they could hold their phone, a beer, a lit cigarette, a cigarette pack, a lighter, a mask, and their wallet at the same time. I wondered if they didn’t have any pockets. It was like they had fingers wrapped around every object, tight and safe. They didn’t look uncomfortable with all the holding and I thought their hands were inexhaustible. Santi and I pretty much moved in with them after that. They were staying in this apartment that isn’t really theirs at all, but some rich older man’s who is away all the time and “takes care” of them. Santi got a room all for himself. There were rooms for all of us, but Ariel and I stayed together.
“You know you’ll have all the time in the world to sit around waiting for a text back from them soon,” Santi whispers into my ear. He’s carrying two glasses with different liquid mixtures of colors inside. A blue-to-pink gradient in one and an orange-to-red in another. He offers both and for no reason at all I take the orange-to-red.
“What is it?” I say, yelling over the music.
He shrugs. “A caballo regalado no se le busca colmillo, especially when the horse is hot.”
I think he’s talking about the drinks, but then I see the man come up behind him and wrap his arm around Santi’s waist. The horse. The hot horse.
“This is Ramón,” Santi says. “He got us drinks and invited us to a party downtown and you’re not gonna believe whose party it is.”
“Who?” I yell. Sometimes Santi makes things sound more mysterious or intriguing than they are, so my excitement doesn’t bloom instantly. Ramón looks older than we are. Chest hair pops out of his unbuttoned white polo. His hair is slicked back. He can’t stop staring at Santi.
“I almost don’t want to tell you. You’ll see. But I’ll give you a hint — he was definitely playing in the uber on the way over. Big Reggaeton star.”
“Daddy Yankee? Nicky Jam? Just tell me, this isn’t fun, Santiago. Come on.”
Ramón laughs and kisses Santi on the cheek. He’s amused and enchanted with this game Santi is playing. As he’d be with anything Santi did right now.
“Maybe if you don’t pull out your phone on the way over, I’ll tell you,” Santi says. “Come on, finish your drink, we’re riding with Ramón.”
“This better be worth it, Santi,” I say, raising the cup to my lips. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.
The inside of Ramón’s car smells like new leather and Listerine. I know we’re in an expensive car but I don’t know anything else. I think it’s a Porsche. Santi takes his shoes off immediately and pushes his feet against the glove compartment. Ramón grabs his thigh. Santi turns the music up and yells to me, “Here’s a hint,” but it’s one of those remixes with so many people on it there’s no way to tell. And also, I think Santi is full of shit and just wanted to get me to come to this party with him. Ramón drives fast and makes the engine rev, glancing at Santi every time. In less than 15 minutes we’re crossing the long bridge back to downtown Miami, bright and boundless. I think about how this is probably one of the last times we’ll cross this bridge, over this ocean, at this time, with whatever’s inside and ahead of us. I wonder if Santi is thinking the same. He’s staring out into the ocean. A black infinite blanket fingered with the city’s lights.
Ramón turns into the parking garage of a tall building. H scans a white key card fished out of his wallet and the barrier lifts swiftly. A few minutes later we’re in the elevator and can hear the big party happening even from a few floors below. The doors open and the scene couldn’t be more different from Mango’s. I’ve been in other penthouses in Brickell and downtown before, but this is like nothing I’ve ever seen. The back wall is completely crystal — overlooking the lights of Miami, smaller buildings and the ocean. Behind the glass doors, a small pool lighted from the bottom is full of people. Thick, white columns that curve at the end hold up the ceiling. White long couches are shaped into a rectangle, a crystal table in the middle full of bottles and glasses and ash trays that look more expensive than anything I’ve ever owned. The music is loud here, too, but instead of random colors and sweat, this place is cold — the AC on full blast — and everything is either glass or white. I start to believe we might be at a famous person’s place.
Ramón leads us to the long white couches and I realized they’re in a pit of sorts, two steps into the floor. He holds Santi’s hand, ensuring he sits next to him. He introduces us to a group of three women. They’re beautiful and drunk. They tell us their names but between the music and their slurred speech, all I manage to make out is the name of one of them — in the tie-dye bucket hat — Valeria. She seems to be the most sober and I think she’s the most attractive girl I’ve ever seen.
“We’re playing a game,” she says. “Remember that show Next? The one with the bus? On MTV?”
I’m always nervous about American-culture references, but I do actually know this one.
“Oh my god, yes. I loved that shit, I must’ve been like — 8 or something,” Santi says.
“Okay so, what would your three Next facts be? Ceci’s are that she won the state’s spelling bee when she was nine, she fucked her second-cousin, and has pooped herself in a restaurant. Dani’s are that she’s gone sky-diving, she is kind of a witch, and her boyfriend once passed out during shower sex because of the steam or something. I won’t tell you mine just yet.”
We laugh. I start to feel whatever it is Santi gave me to drink earlier, my stomach warm. The women are pleased with our response. Ramón keeps whispering into Santi’s ear and Santi laughs even more.
“Come on, tell us your Next facts,” Valeria says to me, offering a small pink glass bottle. I want to tell her anything she wants.
“God, I don’t know. Those are pretty great. I need to think,” I say.
“Okay, I’ll go,” Ramón says. It strikes me this is the first time I’m really hearing him talk.
“Fun,” Valeria says.
“Okay. I was nicknamed Chicharron as a child — won’t tell you why, I’ve been in three major car accidents, and … I’m taking this one,” he points to Santi, “away right now.”
Valeria claps. “I feel kind of tricked but I’m not mad about it,” she says.
Santi and Ramón laugh and stand up, hands intertwined. Santi kisses me on the cheek and I pat him on the back. I’m happy for him and us. For the second-to-last night of our lives in Miami before everything else.
“Okay, you got them now?” Valeria says.
“No, no. Not yet,” I say. “Give me a second. Where are you from?”
“Colombia, Medallo. I haven’t been in years though.” she says. “You?”
“Honduras.”
“How long have you been here?”
“In Miami? Two months. In the states, four years.”
Cecilia and Dani, the two other girls, stand up and say something about going to the bathroom. Valeria nods.
“I’ve been here forever now,” she says. “I could never go back. I’m just not cut for that life anymore, you know. I miss some of it, but here is just a whole other world.”
“Yeah. I hear you.”
“We’re so lucky we get to just live here,” she says. “Down there things are just getting worse and worse. For all of us, I mean. Honduras and Colombia and everywhere, really. Same old.”
I nod. I don’t want to contradict her about any of it. I suddenly miss Ariel and that makes me check my phone but I still haven’t received a text from them. I can’t help but wonder what they’re up to.
“And for people like us, you know,” Valeria says, pulling me back and gesturing with her head in the direction Santi and Ramón disappeared.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
“I’ll tell you my Next facts,” she says. “You ready?”
“Yes, please.”
“Okay. I can do a backflip. I am weirdly attracted to puppets. And I’ve had sex with the owner of this penthouse.”
“Oh my god, who is it? Santi said he’s famous.”
“Oh my god, you don’t know?”
I shake my head.
“You’re gonna freak out,” she says. “Come on, I’ll show you his room. You have to guess.”
I don’t know why everyone wants me to keep guessing but I’m happy to follow her. We move through the crowds, people around the kitchen island and leaning against columns. Valeria knows her way around. She cuts straight through to a small hall and into the last room on the left. She closes the door behind us and everything becomes muffled, away and underwater.
“This is his room,” she says.
It’s beautiful and not what I expected at all. No excess. No hanging animal heads or naked women. White plain bed sheets, linen for sure, bone-color walls, some simple but striking wall art, plain and beautiful side tables with few objects on them, including intricate lamps. Everything looks expensive but contained.
“You have to try this bed,” Valeria says, jumping back like someone in an ad for mattresses.
I lean back, softer than she did. I want to fall asleep almost immediately. I’ve never lain on anything like it.
“It’s not what I expected,” I say. “The room — I thought there’d be an oil-portrait of him over the bed or something. I don’t know, more vanity. This is just a normal rich person’s room. Nothing insane.”
“Hold on,” she says, reaching over to a bedside table. “This is insane.”
She hands me a small, round, black and thin package. I place it between my thumb and pointer, move it around.
“This is a condom,” I say.
“No, dude, listen. It’s not any condom,” she says, taking it back from me. “These are made from the intestine-lining of a special breed of sheep from Europe or something. There’s only a few in the world. He got them at an auction for something insane. He only has like, three, I think. Never uses them. Collection only.”
“God, that’s crazy,” I say. “I guess I get it, though. We all got something.”
She puts them back in the drawer and turns on her side to face me. We kiss for a few minutes like I knew we would. She stops to tell me she needs to pee, to not leave, she’ll use his bathroom, be right back. She wants to hear my Next facts when she’s back and tell me whose penthouse we’re in. I hear the bathroom door close behind her, wait for the trickle of her pee, and leave the room.
Outside it seems like at least 50 new people have joined the party. There’s less glamor to it all for some reason. Too much shit has accumulated on surfaces and too many messy spills have happened all around. I scan the crowd for Santi, assume he must have returned by now from whatever room he was in with Ramón, but can’t find him. I realize I too need to pee. This place must have more than a couple bathrooms, so I begin to open random doors, stumble into empty rooms or rooms with people kissing. On my way up the side stairs, I see Santi’s back — recognize his shirt. He’s kissing a person who is not Ramón. I tap him on the shoulder.
“Come on,” I say. “Help me find a bathroom.”
“Heeeey baby!” he yells. “Okay, yeah. Let’s go.”
“How did it go with Ramón?” I yell back, as we climb up, trying random doorknobs.
“It was good,” he says. He opens a door and flips on a light switch. We’re in a massive white bathroom with a bathtub shaped like an eight-figure. I lock the door behind us.
“Just good?” I say in a normal volume now that we can hear each other.
“Really good.”
“Good second-to-last night, then?”
“I’m gonna miss this so much,” he says, kneeling next to me on the toilet, laying his head against my leg.
“Me too, Santi.”
“I’m gonna miss being gay,” he says.
I laugh. “Yeah, I’m gonna miss penthouses.”
“I’m gonna miss buildings with AC. Sometimes I have it on just because. Just because I’ll never be able to afford having AC back home. Do you even know anyone with AC?”
“I know some people,” I say. “I’m gonna miss walking up the street full of gay people with almost, almost no fear.”
“I’m gonna miss flushing toilet paper down the toilet,” he says, as I flush.
“Fuck,” I say. “Yeah. That’s a big one. You know we’ll fuck up the first few days. My mom will fucking kill me if I clog the toilet.”
He snaps a big wad of toilet paper and flushes the toilet again. It shakes violently and disappears fast. I’m almost startled by the loud noise, even if it’s the second time hearing it in a few seconds. Almost immediately after the water stops swirling, I can hear the tank filling up with water again. So fast.
“Come on,” he says. “Flush some. Our toilet paper flushes are counted anyways.”
I pull paper from the roll, wrapping it around my hand a couple times. Then I make it into a ball and flush it.
Santi does the same after me. Every single time, it flushes. It never needs a second to think, to refill. It’s fast and functional and perfect. We flush five or six times before we decide to flush more than paper. We grab more toilet paper from under the sink, but add a soap bar that’s probably worth more than any meal we’ve ever had and some pills and a very small hand towel. It flushes.
“American toilets, man,” he says. “Fuck.”
“What does it take?” I say. We’re drunk.
He grabs a candle, another hand towel, more paper. I grab a box of matches and more pills and a plastic cup someone left behind. I go to flush it but Santi stops me.
“No,” he says. “We need to really fuck it up.”
He takes off his shoes and throws his socks inside the toilet. I do the same. And then we flush, and it doesn’t flush, but it tries so hard. We pull again and again, until we see the water rise, and neither of us moves. Some socks fall over on the floor and water splashes on our ankles and legs.
“Alright, let’s go home,” he says. “Nice work. Santi and Bessie 1, America 0.”
I pull my phone from my back pocket to get an Uber and I have no texts from Ariel, but I think that’s okay. I’ll be excited to see them even if they’re not back until tomorrow morning. The Uber is three minutes away, because everything here is, so we take the elevator down and are in the car less than ten minutes later. Santi lays his head on my shoulder. He asks our driver to stop by any place with food that’s open — and we end up in the drive through of a Taco Bell yelling-slurring our order. I check the American Airlines app and tell him we still have 1 day and 18 hours till boarding.
“And then no more flushing toilet paper,” he says.
“No more,” I say. “Did you use the condom that woman gave you?”
“Yup.”
“I got you something,” I say. “Well, I stole it for you.”
“Hours left on that visa and you get bold huh.”
I pull the black-circle package from my front pocket. For the first time, I noticed the golden letters and try to make out the words. It’s all in a language I don’t know.
“Another condom?”
“It’s not any condom, Santi.”
His eyes open as I tell him. We laugh a little, mostly because we’re drunk and tired and gone. Already a memory. A remember when.
“I love it here,” he says.
“Yeah. Me too. These people are crazy.”
“I’m gonna save this for something really special,” he says. “Or not. Something dumb. Something spontaneous. I don’t know.”
We get inside Ariel’s rich acquaintances’ apartment and hug for a minute and drink two glasses of water each and say goodnight and talk about Ramón and tell each other what we think would be our Next facts and he finally tells me whose penthouse we were at and I actually think that makes sense and that I may have seen him.
“Otra noche en Miami,” I say. “I love you so much.”
“I love you,” Santi says.
I hug him and head to the room. Streetlights and passing cars illuminate the outline of Ariel’s body under the covers like moonlight on the crest of sea waves. I take off all my clothes — wet with toilet water and sweat — and squeeze my way next to them, under the covers, feel the bed shift with the pressure of our weight. They turn around to face me, eyes closed. They’re naked, too. Their skin is warm and soft and not wet.
“How was it?” they mumble. Their breath smells like toothpaste over cigarettes mixed with sleep-caved saliva.
“Good,” I say. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. I missed you.”
“Me too,” they say, eyes still closed. “I missed you too baby.”
I feel them fall back asleep. Look at whatever I can of their face with the light that comes into the room, which after a while gets brighter and whiter and still. I’m tired but can’t let myself go, so I just wait. The movement and sounds of the night running through my body. Soon, Ariel’s eyes begin to shift from side to side behind their eyelids. I know they’re deep in REM but it looks almost like they’re awake — all the minute facial movements. It’s quiet outside, no cars or birds or drunks. I think I can hear the ocean but I’m not sure if it’s just the AC running in Santi’s room, turned ridiculously low just because. Just because. I have two more mornings left here, in this city, in this country. And then I’ll wake up somewhere else, forever. Sleep feels impossible. Me, somewhere else, impossible. And this place also impossible. Ariel’s face, impossible. Their soundless sleeping facial movement like a morning in Tegucigalpa. Nose wrinkle sudden like the petals de un arbol de tulipán un-creasing themselves with morning mist. Rapid eyelash flutter like un rapidito-bus mounting a corner sidewalk, birthing people from its guts in seconds. Eyebrow squint pulling muscles like shocks of dawn dragging limbs out of bed and into the city.