Short Story by Rafael Andres Jennings
"Almost Everything Strange Washes up in Miami"
As I breathed in, the tropical air tickled a lump that had always been growing inside of my throat. I coughed and then rubbed the lump in the left side of my throat as I leaned my neck back against the wall of a CVS. Looking into the Miami sky between heavy eyelids and through an array of wind-moved palm trees, I stared into the baby blue sky that hovered above Ocean Drive. The elastic flesh inside of the left side of my throat held firm as my fingers dug into my throat to feel the lump. I could feel nothing, the right side of my throat deceived my senses with its symmetry to the left. The Southern Florida sun had kissed my Java skin adding a roast in my color and a glistening sweat to my face and body. The elusive lump in my throat was nowhere to be found with my fingers, so I wiped the neck sweat off my fingers and onto my white tank top. Through tight ribs, I breathed in the air thick of ocean-salted cigarettes and blew it back through my nose. My phone had been buzzing intermittently in my pocket for the past 10 minutes, but I was too tense to check it while I was looking around the CVS. Interrupting my gaze into the heat-scintillated sky I pulled out my phone to bring attention to the interminable buzzing, ten hearts on my profile, and 5 new messages. Clicking the notifications brought my screen to a grid of tiny squares. Each grid looked back at me with blank profiles, people smiling, bulges, and jockstraps, every profile underscored by a title; some were real names, a few flags of exotic countries, the common suggestive emojis, and some sexual names. The grid displayed the carnality that I had heard was cooked into Miam’s rooftops and sidewalks. I hadn’t been on this app since my stay in Atlanta, but I redownloaded it when I got off the train in downtown Miami. In every city I stopped in, I looked to find someone to keep me there. I was deep into the practice of staring as I walked down sidewalks, talking slowly when I ordered, and lingering everywhere until I knew it had been too long. It had been 7 months since I left my parents’ house, guided by the ambiguous scent of love. Now, I had spent days alone traveling cities of the United States, waiting for the eyes I sought out in crowds to be an invitation to a permanent stay. Or maybe stay just until I get bored. Yet it didn’t seem like anyone in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, or Atlanta wanted me for longer than they needed. Which was never too long. Ending up under the heat of a July on Ocean Drive I had come to re-downloading this app, to which my compulsive need to constantly check followed. Looking at my phone, I caught myself revisiting my own 4 uploaded photos, sliding through them, biting my lips, and inspecting my presence. My brows pushed themselves together trying to comprehend the outside perception of myself. Interpretation numbed my brain. The photos were not old or inaccurate, but staring at these former versions of myself made me feel as if I were born this morning. Since I was a child, I had been told that I was good-looking, and I’ve always been excessive in hygiene and beauty. Sure, sexy was present in my photo, but any tincture of attractive or sexy felt resistant to my brain. “Who cares”, I thought, knowing that someone would like them anyway. I coughed and pressed edit profile, changing the name from my name, Santiago, to just the flag of where I was born, Cuba. I tapped my messages tab and looked through what had been unread. Lined up on the left side of my phone were faces, each accompanied by short messages. I had seen hundreds of what felt like thousands of profiles and had countless meaningless conversations. Though I knew better, I still searched through the app imagining that somewhere in the sexual messages and blank profiles, was someone who could soothe the restlessness I carried with me. It was 7:00 p.m., and I felt the pressure of the west-racing sun, forcing me to establish where, and who with my night was going. My indecision had wasted so much time, and it didn’t actually matter who I messaged back anyway. I shuffled through profiles looking for the most attractive and the least creepy. With managed expectations, I sent a reply. Then I slipped my phone into my pocket and watched the view in front of me. My vision caught between the palms that tenderly shook, and the cars that flew by, I thought of how it would all be here tomorrow. I knew nothing about Miami, except for its beauty. “Southern Florida,” I thought, and the reality hit me. I had almost reached Cuba chasing my American love story. Yet, even if I didn’t find love tonight, the same sun would light up Miami in the morning; igniting the compulsions that breathed under the moon.
I was going to a club to meet a man I had been texting for less than two hours. I sat in an Uber driving towards downtown Miami, speeding across the General Douglas MacArthur Causeway. Air soured by the ocean salt caressed my face as I peered out of the car window and into the water. A million tight tendrils of black curls danced in the wind as I stuck my head into the scene that raced across the moonlit bridge. My curls swirled into the sky as I craned my neck down to look at the neon purple lights that reflected off the bridge and into the water. It was 9:30 pm and a yellow luminescence coated the Miami streets. I turned my head back to look at the electric colors that blazed from South Beach and then looked forward into downtown Miami. I had hoped that Miami could water the Cuban inside of me that had grown wilted in the suburbs. To me, it was clear that I had run out of places to call home. But Miami and its infusion of the culture I claimed was mine didn’t feel borrowed. It reminded me of the Celia Cruz my grandmother played and getting lost in the speed of my Father’s Spanish. Those things I yearned for amongst white classmates, and at a dinner table where Spanish was no longer spoken. The more I looked for myself in Boston, Los Angeles, and New York, the more I was drawn to Miami. With a sidelong gaze into the lights of a now-distant South Beach, I made a promise to leave the person I was yesterday in the Ocean beyond. Feeling something valuable meant slipping away from who I was and who I’ve been. I was lost in the thought of a new reality until I felt a tinge of pain in the lump on my neck as its mass took a sharp breath in my throat. Pain jerked me back into the car, and I rubbed my throat as involuntary tears welled in my eyes. I took the back of my vacant hand and wiped the tears. Knuckles and skin rubbed against my eye and throat for the rest of the ride to Downtown Miami.
A heat rose off my body and into the club lights as I rotated my hips on him. His sturdy chest was against my back and his strong fingers pressed into my swiveling hip bones. Breath blew onto my neck as he whispered into my ear. There was a depth to his words that scared me. The words” You’re Perfect” baked into the depth of his voice and fell into my ears. Between the music and his touch, I almost believed him. In my experience, Java skin is never perfect, I’ve accepted that black can be too complicated. But I let him tell me that I was because I wanted to believe it too. For the new version of myself, not who I was yesterday. I could see myself loving him, Lorenzo. I pictured it as we danced, our kids: with his nose but my eyes, wrinkling my nose at the vision of kids with his face shape and my nose. Us in a high-rise apartment, us on a ranch, us in Europe, us with 7 grandkids, or just me touching his wrinkly hands as he dies in a hospital bed, a future, all with Lorenzo. I turned around to explore his eyes and rested my arms on his shoulders. A blue flame somewhere deep inside his black pupils stared into me. He had a languid look, his top eyelids a little heavy, and his full lips sat relaxed on top of his golden skin. A gold chain perched between his pecs and surfaced in between the popped buttons of his white shirt. I leaned in to kiss him. The warmth that lived between us was undoubtedly that feeling of teenage love; a passion I felt so petulantly it made me feel like I was in high school again, kneeling to a cross as my father watched over me. For years I prayed, for a moment like this as I cried tears of contrite. I could hear my dad's voice in my head, “Santiago, let me pray for you.” I wonder what God thought of our family, my dad praying for me to obtain health, a wife and kids, an education, and me praying for distance from him. I wondered if Lorenzo could smell that on me, my youth If I wore it like a sweat stain on my soul. Dancing amid hot bodies and the sound of Miami bass, I felt sated, like answered prayers, like reversed karma.
I wrapped my hand around Lorenzo’s tattooed bicep, feeling his strength in my fingers. My body lay on the edge of his bed as he leaned over me. The space between had begun to feel too wide so I tugged on his bicep bringing his face closer to mine. His knee rested on the white comforter under me, as his body came closer covering mine. He kissed me and he rested his body on mine with his chin on my shoulder. As I felt his body relax onto mine, I turned my head to the view of Miami from his apartment. Into the lush yellow streets and the buildings that gleamed purple. That consolation I had been looking for filled my eyes and pressed against my chest. I pressed my hand into his back to feel his breath, to reify that he was there. I didn’t want to be just tantalized by Lorenzo. I wanted to love him. From under him, I asked, “So what do you do?” He lifted himself off of me and looked at me a little confused. He laughed and responded, “Uh, like for work?”
“Well, yeah”.
“Well, I’m in the event planning business. I specialize in immersive art installations.”
“Oh nice…. Have you always been passionate about art.”
“Nah, it’s Miami I’m just doing what I enjoy enough to make my money.”
“Oh, how did you end up in event planning.”
“An old girlfriend was doing her art shit down here and it seemed like something we could both do that I’d be good at” he paused “She left me though, now she’s based in New York, I think she lives in Brooklyn” he paused again, “I miss her though, I even considered moving up to New York City just to you know, stage a run in” My face dropped, It was then when I realized that no, I wasn’t perfect, not tonight. “Oh, you’re another one of those types.” I watched the look in his eyes grow even more confused than before. “What?” he said sharply.
“I mean there’s a lot of guys-”
“Ah you thought I was gonna like fall in love with you or something.” He laughed a little, I sat silent, feeling guilty, cause that’s exactly what I thought. My eyes drew away from his face as he continued,” I mean I just met you like I didn’t really expect to actually know too much about you. Like where do you work? Where do you live? Where are you from? I guess I just thought skipping all that was intentional” I felt the low light of the room fill my eyes, but My chest jumped as my response got caught in my throat, and my body flailed as a violent cough shook my body. I grabbed my throat. The smell of the Saffron in his cologne stuck in my sinus as I leaned over myself on his bed choking. My vision was a haze as Lorenzo grabbed the hand on my throat and tugged me upright. My eyes watered from the coughing, but I could see Lorenzo lunge towards me looking into my coughing face. “Are you choking on something?” he asked as his furrowed brows came closer to my vision. Between coughs, I leaned my head back and opened my mouth. Sticking my tongue out and pointing to where I had always felt the lump. He looked past my esophagus while poking the outside of my neck. He paused and stared down my throat in silence. Until he said, “Oh I see it”. “See what?" I thought between coughs but within seconds I felt his hand stuffed in my throat, my teeth and tongue resentfully wrapped around the solid force. I screamed, as his fist reached past my esophagus. The ridges on his gold ring scraped up and down the inside of my throat. I grew lightheaded as fingers moved in my throat, my eyes rolled to the back of their sockets and my breathing stopped. After what felt like forever, my throat released and gave out a croak as he pulled his fist out of my throat. The air left my body, and I lurched up fighting for air. I sat teary-eyed and my bloody folded over itself wheezing blood into my thigh. My body slowly rolled up vertebrae by vertebrae as my nails dug into the comfort behind me for the support of my arms. A passive vigilance projected from my eyes as they met Lorenzo’s. He had stepped back onto two straight knees, with his right arm stuck out holding something in his hands. Covered in the stringy pink insides of my throat in a bloody ball Lorenzo held the tumor from my throat. Through all the pain, I felt no lump. I felt vacancy and looseness and tasted the blood that dripped down my throat. The bloody ball stood tough in his hand, unapologetic to the weakness that it had been causing me, and confident in its size. Lorenzo’s fists were drenched in my blood, holding the ball with his red fingers. The tumor swelled, filling the room with a rotten smell. Underneath the red of my blood, the tumor was black and jagged. Even though the thick structure had left my throat, I felt choked just looking at it, disgusted by its presence. It was stuck in my throat, stabbing at me as I traveled, throbbing since I turned 18, now sitting covered in blood filling the room with the smell of burning flesh. For months I’d thought of my life before leaving home as expired, entombed by my will to outpace it. Yet this reminded me of home, of laying on my childhood bed rubbing my neck searching for the source of the discomfort. It reminded me of sitting on buses coughing violently, but not caring because at least I wasn't home. Lorenzo reminded me of my dad, causing me pain and then standing still in it. Even though I was embarrassed for how disgusting I must’ve appeared ; I felt no obligation to the tumor. In his hands, he held a growth of 18 years, that I had no defense over. I felt exhaustion deep into my face, skin, and eyes. I was too tired to be angry, and in too much pain to be tired. I parted my lips and lifted myself to look at Lorenzo. His bitter chocolate eyes sat heavy yet frantic as his lips opened to justify what just happened. I interrupted him with a croak “Keep it” and I turned my head looking down at our bare feet to avoid his eyes. “It was all I had left, I continued” He looked so far away standing in front of me, as the tumor in his palm created excess space between us. I passed him, through the door to the hallway of his apartment. As I stood under the cool light of the silver elevator, I saw my eyes reflected on its metal. Tired eyes caught in a watery red glaze, realizing the sting of being left behind, even while leaving.
I watched as purple, orange, and yellow emerged from over the horizon and above the water. My feet sunk into the white sand that lined Ocean Drive. I stood and turned around to look at the famous street where I stood yesterday. I stared through palm trees at the buildings of Ocean Drive, their lights had died with the night. Miami was the best part of me, the sounds of salsa on Calle Ocho mixed with the language of my home country. The sex that breathed within the tropical air, air that I assumed of Cuba. Lorenzo, and the people I could meet here. The now stultifying thought of a world so big was once the only thing that stimulated me. I remembered the lost lump in my throat, and I tilted my head back to feel where it once sat. I squinted lazy eyes at the burning Miami sky feeling the exhaustion I’d been outrunning. With my mouth open and my jaw tight, I pressed my fingers against my throat searching for the lump that once held my past, maybe even missing it. “I want to go home”, I thought, but not to the house I grew up in, a place before that home, a place I've never been but I find myself always searching for.