Fragments - Key West

Note: This is just fragments of something I wrote in November 2022 after getting back from my friend Laura's wedding in Key West. It starts abruptly (I'm sort of trying to fix it!) and the two separate sections don't have an obvious connection. I'm sorry!

On my last day in Key West, I went over to Laura and Steve’s Airbnb for an open-house donut gathering (there’s probably a better way to describe it, but I’m tired). After making the rounds inside, I escaped into the extremely steamy air of the back porch, where Laura’s stepsisters were seated around a patio table, along with two older men in their late 60s, whose names I caught but whose connection to either the bride or groom was never established.

They were both lovely guys, curious and funny. Kazan came out to join us. The men talked about their youths, how they used to hitchhike all the time (and how you can’t do that anymore, even if you’re a man), how one guy worked on this pig farm but was eventually called home by his now wife of 40+ years. After more than an hour, I noticed that my social battery, as it were, was absolutely done. This really hasn’t happened to me in a long time, certainly not since I’ve been old enough to exert some measure of control over my surroundings. Usually, I have made a graceful exit long before I reach this point. In certain ways, I have arranged my whole life around never having to be stuck somewhere making conversation when I’d rather be alone. Now I felt very much like my adolescent self, past my limit but unable to get away from friends or family members who were suddenly intolerable.

In this case, there just wasn’t anywhere to go. I had had to check out of my hotel just before I arrived; my suitcase was out on the front porch with those of all the other guests, as there wasn’t space inside to fit them. My laptop bag – we had a big proposal due on Monday – slouched by the front door. I had arrived via Lyft, my primary means of transport the entire weekend.

The Airbnb was in the Truman Annex, a gated community at the far western end of Key West. Compared to the chaos of nearby Duval Street, it was peaceful and suburban with rows of cute but cookie-cutter condos. After being dropped off, I had wandered aimlessly for a few minutes trying to find the right door (and loitered creepily outside a gate that absolutely belonged to someone else) before Laura came out and found me.

Getting another Lyft would’ve been easy – every time I opened the app, there was a swarm of cars located only two to three minutes away. But where I would go was the more difficult question. After less than 48 hours, I still had only the vaguest understanding of the island’s geography and even less of its broad appeal.

I kept my head down to control my rising discomfort and to discourage direct address from any of my neighbors. To excuse my lack of engagement, I pretended to stare at a gecko scrambling across the brick. (I’ve been to Florida before, but it’s still always surprising how as soon as you land you feel you are in an Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiassen novel. I was always alert for the sight of some low-level mobster or down-on-his-luck lawyer carrying an exotic pet who was about to get offed. The lawyer, not the pet.) I looked up to make eye contact with Kazan. We both had flights around 5:30pm, and we’d made vague plans to get lunch and kill some time before heading to the airport. It was now well past noon, which was when this donut hang was supposed to end. Through the screen doors, I could see numbers inside dwindling. I gestured to Kazan. She nodded. We made our goodbyes.

After a nice lunch at a (surprisingly fancy) place by the water on the southern edge of the island (my geography got slightly better as our departure approached), we headed to the airport. It was barely 3pm.

I had my boarding passes on my phone, but Kazan needed to check in. I planned to wait for her before going through security, but the airport is so small there was nowhere to sit. I made it through TSA in five minutes and found two seats in a relatively empty lounge right outside the departure gates. I plugged in my phone, idly watched a women’s college soccer championship on the TV. (West Virginia beat TCU 1-0 in overtime.) Ten minutes passed. Then 20. Then 30. I kept glancing back at the escalator that connected security and the terminal. Sunburned travelers in shiny sunglasses and Margaritaville t-shirts leading roll-away suitcases arrived at a steady clip, but Kazan, with her vintage Diana Ross t-shirt and red highlights, did not.

My chest had noticeably tightened; my shoulders crept up near my ears. The lounge was now crowded but not crowded enough to create a comforting din; people’s banal conversations were perfectly intelligible. Announcements regarding carry-on luggage for an Allegiant flight to Pittsburgh grew increasing frantic and grating. I put in my earbuds, but the noise cancelling only eliminated the plane noises. Little beams of sunlight bounced off somebody’s watch or phone onto the far wall, occasionally shining right into my eyes. I put a sweater on the seat I was saving for Kazan to prevent anyone from asking about it. By this time, it had been nearly 45 minutes. (I checked the time stamps on the texts I had sent her when I first arrived in the lounge.)

I was tense, but aware that my tension was probably unwarranted. What could be taking so long? But also what possibly could have happened to Kazan – one of the more competent and self-sufficient people I know – in this tiny island airport?

Adding to the tension was that I very much wanted to text her and be reassured but I was also dead set against texting her for fear of seeming needy and anxious. I managed to talk myself into texting her. “Lauren, you can absolutely text your friend of 15+ years to ask her why she has been delayed for nearly an hour.”

I texted her: “Everything okay?”

She responded quickly: Things were okay, but not great. Her original flight had been pushed back an hour, which would prevent her from making her connection in Tampa. She was being re-booked on a different airline and flying through a different city.

I relaxed. But this update had really only reset the clock. As another ten minutes, then another 20 passed, I grew anxious again. Finally, almost 90 minutes after we’d arrived, Kazan appeared at the top of the escalator.

We were exhausted. Both of us had had enough of Key West. The man at the counter had told her there was a direct flight to Boston the next day. I imagine he rarely encountered people who were opposed to spending another night in Key West. But Kazan was adamant.

“I need to get off of this island today,” she told him.

One of the few other customers at the counter while she was getting this all sorted was a man who was there to check his gun.

Key West – and maybe this is just Florida – has this weird combo of gonzo right-wing politics and flamboyant gay culture. There were shops that had both “Let’s Go Brandon” t-shirts and ones that said “I’m not gay but my boyfriend is.” Another member of our group had mentioned seeing a man out somewhere who had a t-shirt with an American flag on it, but in place of the usual stripes…it was just guns. Just an American flag made out of guns. It put me on edge.

Laura and Steve love Key West. And there is, indeed, a very convivial vibe in the restaurants and bars. People are there to mingle, to relax, to be free of responsibilities. They’ll chat you up, ask you where you’re from, how long you’ve been coming to the island. Obviously, I found it unsettling. In particular, people are constantly whizzing past you on various conveyances – scooters, bikes, these golf carts that seat eight people (and that you can drive on the roads) – that they have obviously never maneuvered prior to their arrival. People who I am certain are extremely hostile to cyclists in their normal life were doing wheelies going the wrong way up a narrow, crowded street with parking on both sides. It seemed only a matter of time before something bad happened. That something bad must happen here at regular intervals. That something bad was just the cost of all the good times. No worries, just the occasional fatality.

Much of my information about Key West came from my Lyft drivers – all of them, except for the last, immigrants from either Eastern Europe or the Middle East/North Africa. The guy on my first night hated everyone on the island.

“Everybody’s drunk,” he said, as he cut off a group of young men – an obvious bachelor party – wearing absurd little jumpers as they tried to cross the street against the light. They threw up their hands in protest that anyone would fail to yield to their good time.

Another informed me that the roosters on the island are legally protected, and if you kill one, you pay a $500 fine.

“A really expensive dinner,” he laughed.

A third told me that Jimmy Buffet would not be attending Margaritaville this year. “He’s sick,” he told me. “Not dying or anything, but he needs to take care of himself.” He had learned all this from some Parrotheads he’d driven around earlier. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention: this was the weekend of Margaritaville, the annual gathering of Jimmy Buffet fans in Jimmy Buffet’s favorite place. Hotels, as you can imagine, were exorbitant.

On Saturday, after an afternoon with Kazan, Steven, and Issac, I caught a Lyft back to my hotel to get ready for the ceremony. The driver explained it was going to be a while, as traffic was backed up due to an accident in The Triangle – a six-lane road the runs along the northern edge of Key West and eventually intersects with Route 1, the only way on or off the island by car. He seemed frustrated.

“It happened hours ago, but the road is still closed,” he said.

As we inched past in stop-and-go traffic, I could see the remains of a bicycle – mostly twisted metal at that point, but resembling the beach cruisers for rent all over the island – and a relatively compact car with a shattered windshield. It wasn’t hard to piece together what had happened.

I didn’t tell my driver, but it was obvious to me that the road was still closed because somebody was dead. When I got back to the hotel, I found a brief news report online about a fatal accident that had backed up traffic for miles.

I closed the browser and hopped into the shower. I’d have to take the same route to get back to the wedding. Selfishly, I hoped the accident would be cleared by then because I didn’t want to be late. The good times had to go on.