LATIN ROYALTY – FAB! NEWSPAPER JULY 2, 2004
Here’s a blast from the Fab! past. In light of my recent trip to Miami, I dug up a column I wrote about my first experience in South Beach.
Needless to say, this last visit was waaayyy different from my first two Florida trips. I had never done Miami sober. And I’d never done it with a partner. It was like going from the halfway house to the penthouse. I went from crashing on my friend’s dad’s tiny shack somewhere in Little Cuba, to staying at the Biltmore Hotel at Coral Gables. I went from crawling out of gutters at the crack of dawn, smelling like two-day-old ETERNITY for Men mixed with sex sweat, to smelling the roses while lounging by a giant-sized pool. I was horrible. This time was pretty great. What can I tell you, life has greatly improved.
I’m always fascinated when I revisit my previous life. I staked claim that I let it all hang out in the Luv Ya, Mean It page for FAB! Newspaper, so I was a bit surprised by how much I candy coated that particular trip. The drug use and all the trouble that came with it was conveniently played down in this column–not to mention all the drama that unfolded from the moment we landed. My friend “Mack” was all pumped up on steroids, so the bitch was ill-behaved from the word go. She gave me some major roid rage, but the root of our problem was the crystal meth that we smuggled cross-country. He jammed his stash in a jar of hand cream; I jammed a forty inside a stick of Chapstick during a time when the TSA didn’t cavity search you before entering a plane. We waltzed past security while cowering behind some high-end over-sized sunglasses that we couldn’t really afford.
We had party favors. We were supposed to save the tweak for the weekend, but we got high the moment we got there. The drugs kicked in and the hunt for relations in Miami began — prematurely in my opinion. That bitch ditched me on our first night out and I was left to find trouble of my own. Ugh! It was just an awful experience. I remember we were too cheap to split the charge of a ratty Motel 6, but we had no qualms about dropping the same chump change to enter a bathhouse.
The trip was full of incomprehensible demoralization, but I mainly focused my poisoned pen on the Cubans of South Beach on account of those bitches were so mean to me.
The second trip I made to Miami, my life was really spiraling out of control. I did what made sense and made me feel good. I bought a plane ticket to see Madonna’s Re-Invention Tour for the fourth time. It was her last show in the states, but that’s a different column for a different day.
Anyway, below is the column published in Fab! Newspaper, dated July 2, 2004.
Racism. Wrote a column about it. Wanna read it? Here it goes.
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LATIN PRIDE
My fuck-me-hooker-heels kicked off the first leg of Summer 04, with a trip to “caliente” South Beach Miami, and oh MAN, did it suck ass (straight up).
I traveled with my Salvadorian friend “Mack,” with a clear understanding that South Beach was mostly a Latin hot spot for Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and other Latin flava, flavas—my choice of
dick tends to gravitate more toward all-American white boys with the personalities of a dry piece of toast, so I was free from the pressure to pump my body at the gym to look fly. FINALLY, a true
vacation.
My friend Mack on the other hand, was having a panic attack getting his body up to par at the gym (he “juiced”). He even faked-n-baked at a tanning salon, which had me sneering (puh-thetic)—there was also the question of party drugs and how Mack would get his Tina past airport security from the West to the East Coast.
“I’ll hide it inside my butt if I have to.” Mack reasoned. “I’m sure they have sniffing dogs in Florida.”
“I’m NOT snorting ANYthing that’s coming out of your ass!” I informed him.
The first thing we did in Miami was hit the beach, of course. I took one look at the beach crowd, and quickly recognized that I made a terrible mistake: I should have worked out like a dog before my
trip. The Latin men were HOT! The bodies were big, buff and beautiful"”not to mention the big porno dicks that protruded from barely-there Speedos (“Ay, que rico"¦”). It’s too bad the majority of these big-dicked “papis” were big bikini bottoms (“Ay, que lastima…”), judging from how butts were always aimed at other butts.
I ran to the nearest public restroom and aimed for a miracle with a number of push-ups and pull-ups inside a toilet stall (puh-thetic). I stepped out to the ocean with a beauty pump that was more mental than physical. I wished I had fake-baked, for my legs were so pasty, that they camouflaged with the pale sand. I was NOT ready for my close-up!
I witnessed topless women leisurely catching rays with nipples aimed at the sun, and found it hard to believe that the cities of Miami and Los Angeles are both in the same country. LA is supposed to
be THE hip-to-the-trip strip, but throw sex in mix and you have LAPD wasting crime-fighting time on cruise control/penis patrol. California as a whole is so damn frigid and conservative. Miami is a
24-hour city with hot Havana Nights, where anything goes from the word “GO!”
I spent hours bouncing to the lazy Miami waves. I talked to all the locals"”most of them Cuban"”but quickly became keen to the fact that my multi-personality, which usually makes me popular in most settings, seemed to be a total bust in Miami. I found the Cubans tough nuts to crack. Was it my crappy Spanish?
Everyone around me was delicate and polite. The big thing in Miami is a person’s background. Everyone asked about his or her nationality, but when my roots came into question, there was always a pregnant pause before the subject was changed with haste—something was REALLY wrong when I heard my friend Mack speak in a fake, rapid Spanish tongue and then deny his
Salvadorian heritage to claim that he was from Honduras (puh-thetic).
Night fell over Miami, and I found myself unable to move, due to a third-degree sunburn! We hit the bars by the beach and once again I felt disconnected from my Latin peeps. Was I losing my touch?
On the second day at Pleasure Beach, I decided to ditch the Spanish, while I nursed a hateful hangover. Only then did Cuba, Spain and the deep, DEEP south show interest in my heritage. I got Italian, Middle Eastern, or flat out white guy because my suntan was more red than brown and I didn’t use words like, “supposebly.”
One Cubano was straight-up to the head-up: “Oye, so what are you anyway?” He asked. “Please tell me you’re not Mexican …” WOOP, there it was! Most Mexicans call themselves mutts and lie about being half Spanish, half Irish, or have Martian even, as if claiming half makes them better than a full blown Mexican.
I wasn’t about to deny my roots—not to a Latino whom I felt had no right to feel better than me (My racist shield and armor had been left in West Hollywood). I told him that I was full Mexican, even though I sometimes have some Brazilian in me (until that Brazilian pulls out).
Cuba ate shit and then backpedaled about Mexicans being “nice people,” he explained"”not to offend me"”but aside from Mexican singing sensation Thalia, Cubans did not like Mexicans much. We were considered dirty and lazy and not very attractive. I waited for him to tell me that we also carried lice and that we should be stuffed in some “cleansing” chamber. So much for politeness…
Instead of getting pissy, I HAD to laugh. It’s funny when you think about how"”in California"”Cubans, and all the other Latino backgrounds who feel they’re the Mighty Latin are counted as Mexican, regardless of how they accentuate every vowel, how they lisp, or speak with a rat-a-ta-tat Spanish that resembles a machine gun—I knew about the Queen’s English, but the Queen’s Spanish? Weird.
I never understood the lame nonsense behind Latin hierarchy—especially amongst homosexual Latinos who seem to lack any unity. Face it bitches: When an ass push comes to a dick shove, all gay Latinos are more or less stuffed in the same boat as far as hardheaded and aggressively macho Latin cultures go.
Little Gay Cuba gave me a frosty reception because my Spanish gave me away for a Mexican, but exactly what makes Cuba better? Is it because Mexicans crawl across the border past “la migra,” while Cubans swim gracefully past “El Coastguard?” Does it boil down to the age-old cliché about fair skin making you the fairest of them all? Is it the same bullshit that makes Japanese better than Chinese and what makes Americans better than…well, better than the rest of the world, and so forth (We’ll never know)?
It sucked ass being a discriminated minority among minorities, but I have to recognize that I’m not free from prejudices of my own: I was Miss Mexico representin’, all my “paisanos,” until I ran into four other Mexicans who were not blessed with my height (5'11 to 6ft, depending on how high my hair is), and lighter skin tone. They sported Mexi-mullets, they were loud, and kicked sand all over the place. I was filled with shame and suddenly felt like “The Last of the Mohicans.”
Needless to say, my Miami trip aimed to humble me and I’m sure there were lots of lessons that probably went waaay over my head. Maybe I was supposed to learn to be proud of my Latin Mexican ethnicity, but not too proud to the point where I trampled other Latin cultures (beats the shit out of me). I’m all for putting myself out of my element, but right now my fuck-me-hooker-heels need a vacation from my vacation.
No diggity, no doubt.
