Back to Hialeah

Me & Sulie, my baby brother's girlfriend.

Vomit, sick kids, and a grumpy old man resulted in our decision to head back to Hialeah rather then endure a similar time to yesterdays. After, much arguing, my father won his way and we ended up taking highway US-27 rather then the Florida turnpike on our way home. He resorted to a proud process of continuously pointing out every cow, orchid field, shanty fruit stand, and cheaper-then-your-route gasoline prices along the entire way. Considering that Florida is the top cattle state, central to citrus agriculture and that SUVs sell like hot cakes in this country, we heard a lot of his shit. We stopped at a place called Woody’s for what we hoped was promising barbeque. When we walked in speaking Spanish, wearing wide smiles and brown skin it felt as if the entire cowboy hat wearing nation paused, took a good look at us and continued eating. We had a pitcher of beer, good food, and a great time. It wasn’t until four hours later that we arrived at my mother’s house.

Later that night, I headed out to club Oxygen, in Coconut Grove, for a breath of fresh air. I ended up feeling a little claustrophobic from all of the very forward attention that Miamians we giving me. They don’t really believe in that casual across the bar flirting, eyelash fluttering sort of thing. They come right up to you no matter what they scored on the pretty scale and say, “boo”. Escaping behind the velvet ropes of Rudy’s VIP section and comp drink tickets helped. Also helpful was Ramon, the other promoter’s, conversation. They were some of the only normal encounters I made that evening. Feeling a combination of lonely bored, and somewhat tired of fending off the fresh-meat natives, I left relatively early, driving home the long way.