Really, I was there because I was still closeted, and therefore still trying to live out the fantasy of being The Totally-Normal-Straight-Girl. My best friend was in a sorority, so by proxy, all of my friends were in a sorority, and because she was my best friend, and because I was looking for conversion therapy, when she invited me, I couldn’t say no.
Cornell’s Spring Break is later than pretty much any other university, so by the time we arrived in Miami, the frat boys had molted into something much worse: Men. Not men in the mature, pays-for-dinner, opens-the-door for you kind of way, but men in the overly confident, Startup Pitch + Rented Ferrari + “You’re-So-Different” kind of way. These were overgrown frat bros who had long since traded Natty Light for tequila they couldn’t afford, and used the rest of their cash gambling on college basketball games.
Regardless, we needed to fulfill our rite of passage for fear of getting kicked out of the city, so we went clubbing. Every night. [2] Unfortunately, because of the lack of other college students, it was far less Girls Gone Wild and a little more Superbad, just with hot girls. Unfamiliar with the game, we paid a good $200 each [3] for some slimy, baby-faced thirty-two-year-old with a gold chain and a fake Rolex to get us into clubs with our clearly fake McLovin IDs. I’ve since learned that, as it turns out, being hot should’ve sufficed.
Inside the clubs, it was worse. They were all packed, with an impermeable stench of sweat, tequila, and desperation. I was wearing heels for the first [4] time in my life, and I’ve never respected the power of women’s ankles more than that first night. I genuinely could not walk, so I wasn’t so much dancing as I was trying to balance as I got jostled around, unintentionally grinding on the men around me. I tried taking the torture devices off, but every time I did I got yelled at by security, almost getting myself and my friends kicked out three times. My friend, though, had it worse—her foot literally started bleeding. Her heel had given up somewhere between the third club and the second 7-Eleven, but she danced through the night anyway, trailing blood like a mythic martyr of nightlife. She looked radiant.
Back at the hotel, the beautiful sterility of the place made me nauseous [5]. Floor to ceiling windows, fluffy robes, and a mini bar we probably shouldn’t have had access to. We also had two king-sized beds for the four of us. But somewhere along the way, we had taken in a stray. She wasn’t so much invited as… absorbed, the way drunk girls sometimes forget proper judgment and befriend unsavory people because they provide free cocaine in the bathroom. She had a habit of making offhanded comments about people’s bodies in that covert, weaponized way we might develop as a survival skill under the patriarchy and then forget to unlearn. She’d look me up and down, blink slowly, and say things like, “I wish I had the confidence to wear that.” On Day Two, she was on a juice cleanse. She told me I was an inspiration.
That’s not to say anyone else was eating, anyway. We almost exclusively consumed cocktails, all named after emotions—Regret, Bliss, Confusion—with the occasional mint leaf or maraschino cherry as a source of nutrition [6]. Our sustenance was alcohol, essentially turning our bloodstreams into a kind of diluted sangria.
MELODY QIAN / COLLEGETOWN
On Day Four—or maybe Five, nonstop liquor and existential dread made the days blend together—we went to a pool party. It was on the roof of some casino, where the lights were blinding and the depression was palpable. When we got to the top, the pool was so full of people you could barely see the water, but the place was clearly supposed to be paradise, with thatched VIP rooms for men to make unsolicited passes at drunk women, lounge chairs that were inexplicably [7] sticky, and the appropriate wafting smell of chlorine, alcohol, and vomit. There, I mostly stood in the corner with my oversized t-shirt on, watching everyone dance confidently in their bikinis [8], as my friends made out with thirty-year-olds in a variety of Hawaiian patterned-swim trunks and two-sizes-too-small Speedos. I was approached by a total of three men, all of which pointed out how different and cool and artsy I was on account of my nose ring. But I think they were all just mispronouncing the word “gay.” Meanwhile, my friends got wasted and made TikToks they’ll never watch again. It was the kind of fun that looked effortless.
Then came the tears. They were unintentional, but kind of inevitable, like the tears that fall when you watch an advertisement for dog food, and realize that that dog has a more attentive family than your own. So I reluctantly took off my protective shield from Juice Girl’s comments, and waded through the pool to my friend for comfort. She saw a tear roll down my cheek. Concerned, she wiped it off. She grabbed my hands, waded me further into the pool, then proceeded to turn around and resume dancing to the electronic remix of “Mr. Brightside.”
So, ultimately, I decided my best bet was to hide out in the bathroom and wait for my friends to find me once the whole thing ended, if it ended at all [9]. They never did come after me, but my crying in the stall was loud or annoying or pitiful enough for a middle-aged woman to eventually knock on my stall door and ask me, “Que pasa, mija?” It was the lady whose job it was to stand in front of the door and hand out paper towels to dry our hands—because apparently, the rich have evolved past the unbelievable burden of basic motor skills, and must therefore delegate the nuisance to the working classes. She only spoke Spanish, but I was happy to switch into a language that would feel like a covert safe haven, because even though Miami is basically Cuba, any variation in skin tone at that party was courtesy of a spray-tan bottle.
And so we talked. For hours. I told her everything: about the girl who made me feel fat, the friends who didn’t notice I was sad, the trip I wanted so badly to enjoy but couldn’t. She listened, occasionally nodding, occasionally saying “Ay, mi amor” in that way that makes you feel both seen and six years old. She told me I reminded her of her daughter. I hoped, for her daughter’s sake, it wasn’t true. And as I mourned something I couldn’t quite name, my friends celebrated something I didn’t—or couldn’t—quite understand.
Eventually, my friends came to the bathroom to pee and throw up, and were surprised to find me there, talking to a random forty-year-old woman in Spanish while cradling a pile of mascara-stained paper towels. They hadn’t noticed I had been gone. The party was over, but before I left, I decided to tip my savior everything I had in cash, which was $3 and a receipt from the 7-Eleven I had snuck off to, earlier, to buy a Clif Bar and a croissant. She deserved more. But she accepted the gesture, and said to me: “Gracias, mija.”
Back at the hotel, I went to bed to the sound of Juice Girl throwing up in the sink because of her “tummy sensitivity.” [10] And as I drifted off, Pitbull still echoing in my ears, I thought about how “fun” is sometimes just a word used to justify pain in advance.
Because that’s what Miami was supposed to be: fun.
And yet there I was, laying in bed simultaneously drunk and hungover, starving, and feeling like I had somehow found myself in a parallel universe where I didn’t understand the inhabitants’ rules, logic, or biological needs. Less “no one understands me” and more “I don’t understand anyone else.”
I had desperately wished Miami would be the sort of utopia it was for my friends, joy derived from mini toothpick umbrellas, an open bar, and maybe a little ecstasy. I wanted to be them: happy, attractive, capable of fun. I was jealous, and maybe I still am. But what I wanted more than anything was to leave, or escape, or whatever you call it when you’re running away from something you’re not even sure you wanted, but still feel guilty for not wanting enough. Miami wasn’t Mecca, or Eden, or even a successful gay conversion camp [11]. It was a sticky land of pounding headaches, coconut water that tasted vaguely pharmaceutical, and a feeling of disorientation to a degree I didn't think possible. Which is, I think, exactly what Spring Break is meant to be. ⬥
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[1] Seriously. I recently put on a pair of cargo shorts that I bought on that trip, and upon opening one of the too-many pockets, I found grains of sand still nestled in the seams. If I ever get surgery, I fear the doctors will find sand in my abdominal cavity.
[2] This makes it sound like it was consensual. It was not. We were bound to the creed of their sorority. Which meant we were bound to the creed of Miami.
[3] I’m struggling to accept that this is true—I can’t imagine myself being that dumb, even drunk. But if it’s a lapse in memory, we can blame it on Florida-induced brain damage. Besides, even if it was $20, it still wouldn’t have been worth it.
[4] And last.
[5] It was either that, or the fifth Jello-Shot finally catching up to me. But who’s to say?
[6] I did, at one point, eat an olive. It was part of a garnish on someone else’s drink, and when she looked away I panicked and ate it like a raccoon.
[7] You may be complaining that the explanation is obvious. I just had no desire to think about it long enough to figure it out.
[8] I mean this in the most anthropological sense possible. Trust me, I was suffering too much existential dread to be leering in any fashion.
[9] Time in Miami, I learned, is non-existent. If this was their Eden, this was my Purgatory.
[10] Also, if your tummy is so sensitive, maybe don’t take six shots of Fireball and do a backflip into a plastic flamingo floatie.
[11] In fact, it was quite the opposite.