Tag: Florida International University

Key West is Driving 100 M.P.H. Over the Seven Mile Bridge

Key West Final

Today is Labor Day, and I have the day off. I went hiking at Griffith Park, and I’m working on some stories and other miscellaneous writing, but I’ve also been reading. What I found is that everyone and their mother, right now, is writing about two things: Labor Day and the leak of nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton. There has been such incredible writing on this subject (See this essay by Roxane Gay at The Guardian and another by Anne Helen Petersen at BuzzFeed), but I’m not going to write about these events. I was thinking about writing about privacy; I was thinking about writing about work; but I want to write about something completely off the radar: Key West.

I’m working on my application for the Key West Literary Seminar Young Emerging Writer Award. I’ve applied to enough writing programs to know not to get my hopes up, but I would love to have the opportunity to surround myself with writers in one of my favorite places in the country for a week or so. That’s when I started to think about writing about the Florida Keys.

I received my MFA from Florida International University in Miami, Florida, and I would often head down to the Keys on the weekends. One time my buddies and I camped down at Long Key, and I brought my snorkeling equipment. The tides were strange, so you could walk out into the ocean for almost 100 yards without the water rising over your waist. I wandered around in the water, trying to explore the ocean and the exotic fish that live in the Keys as the sun went down. When I emerged from the water and walked back to the beach, my buddies were laughing. It turned out that there was a warning in the bathroom that it was Man-of-War season, and I was lucky that I hadn’t been stung by those giant floating brains.

Photo Credit: Joseph Lapin
Photo Credit: Joseph Lapin

But when I think about Key West, I really think about one memory that has stayed with me for many years.

When I was in my second year of graduate school, I was driving home from class to meet my fiance and her friend for dinner. I was stopped at a red light, waiting to merge onto the I-95 ramp — the most dangerous highway in the country — and I was thinking about a story I was writing called “A Crash in Boston.” The light turned green, and I hit the gas in my 2002 Buick LeSabre. There were about two cars ahead of me, and when it was my turn to drive through the light I saw the car approaching from the opposite direction. I knew instantly that the car was not stopping, and I prepared myself for the crash. The driver, an old man who was lost and searching for the highway, had blown the red light. He slammed into me at about 30 or 40 m.p.h.

I wasn’t hurt, but my car was pretty banged up. They towed my car, which my grandparents bequeathed to me when they passed away, and the insurance company had said it was totaled. That was a bunch of bullshit. The axle was just bent and the body needed some work. Whenever you have a car that the insurance company tries to total, and you know that you can get more mileage out of that car, don’t take their shit. Demand that they fix the car. That’s, in fact, what you pay them for.

So I pitched a fit, and they eventually agreed to fix my car. In fact, I was so angry that they offered to pay for my rental in the meantime.

Key West Car

Enter the Dodge Challenger. At the Enterprise in Coconut Grove, the guy at the desk put me in a brand new Dodge Challenger. The car just basically debuted on the road, and this specific ride had only 300 miles. Now I was never a big fan of muscle cars — or even really cared about cars — but when I was put behind that Dodge Challenger after driving around in my Buick LeSabre, I couldn’t help but feel like a bad ass. I decided, right then, that I was taking this bad body down to Key West, and I was bringing my fiance and my dog, Hendrix.

You might not know this unless you’ve driven to the Keys, but driving from Miami to Key West is one of the most beautiful road trips in the country. Perhaps the drive down the Pacific Coast Highway from around San Francisco to L.A. rivals this drive (I actually wrote about this voyage at the LA Weekly), but there isn’t anything quite like driving over the countless keys and seeing the strangest sites like giant metal lobsters on store fronts or the stunning views of the oh-so blue ocean that suddenly engulfs you and provides the illusion that you’re passing through some large and cosmic painting. I couldn’t wait to hit the open road with the Dodge Challenger, and I couldn’t wait to take that car over the seven mile bridge.

Photo Credit: Tinsley Advertising
Photo Credit: Tinsley Advertising

The seven mile bridge is the king of the causeway, the grand daddy of all ponts, because you’re literally driving on a bridge for seven miles over the bluest ocean you’ll find in the United States.

So my wife, Hendrix, and I are in the Dodge Challenger, and we’ve got the windows down, and Led Zeppelin’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” blaring through the speakers. We hit the beginning of the seven mile bridge at 2:30 p.m. on a Friday. The road is empty. Not another car in sight. The bridge opens up into the water, and on all sides of us, we find the Atlantic Ocean. We’re in the middle of the sea, and I just push that peddle down to the ground, crossing over 100 m.p.h.

For me, this is Key West; this is the Florida Keys: taking a car that I can’t afford and probably shouldn’t be driving to the limits. We’re half way over the bridge when my fiance starts to tell me to slow down.

“Relax,” I say, “I want to see how fast this thing can go.”

She says something else, but I can’t hear her over the music and the open window.

“What?” I say. I watch her mouth move. “I can’t hear anything you’re saying.”

She powers off the radio and says: “Slow down.”

“Come on, Heron. How often to I get to drive a Dodge Challenger?”

It’s funny, now, thinking about how big of a deal I thought it was to drive a hunk of steel at high speeds. I remember pushing down harder on the pedal as if to spite her.

“Slow down,” she says again. “You’re going to get arrested.”

About 100 feet ahead of us, I can see a rise in the bridge. It’s the closest thing to mountains in Florida, and I feel myself giving in, secretly pissed that she is killing my time. I take my foot off the pedal as I’m approaching the rise in the bridge.

“Are you happy?” I ask.

Heron doesn’t say anything. She just looks out the window at the ocean. She’s pissed that I have to make her the responsible one, the rational one.

When we come down the other side of the hill, I see something I will never forget: two police cars hiding just beyond the tree line at the end of the bridge, waiting to write me a ticket. I didn’t even have to look over at Heron to know she was smiling. I had slowed down in time, and the cops didn’t follow me, but I’m sure they would have loved to pick up some young asshole in a brand new muscle car with a Massachusetts license. Even if she wasn’t actually smiling, I knew she wanted to, because she just saved me. She saved our trip. If the police had seen me driving over 100 m.p.h., then I would have surely been handcuffed and thrown into the back of the police car for reckless driving.

That trip to Key West taught me a lot about relationships, about marriage (Heron is now my wife), about trust. When you’re married, you have to know when to listen to your partner. This goes true for any relationship. You might think you’re in the fast lane, but your partner might actually see you’re heading for a speed trap, an accident, an arrest, a failure, and even when you think you’re right, even when you think you know everything, you should probably think twice and just listen to what the other person has to say and trust, because there might be two cops waiting with a radar gun. We ended up having a blast in Key West, and I’ll never forget that bridge, that car, that journey, those cops.

 

 

 

Five Things I’m Looking Forward to About Barcelona: Blog and Social Media Silence

On Wednesday, I’m heading out on my honeymoon. My wife and I were married over a year ago, and we haven’t been able to find the time to take our honeymoon until now. We’re thrilled and we’re stopping in Paris, Olivet, and Barcelona. This is a much needed vacation. I’ve been working a ton lately, and I’m going to use this time to step away and focus a bit more on my writing and publishing goals. I’ve not been writing my book as much, and it occurred to me that people might not even know my real writing goals. When I went to graduate school, I graduated with a MFA in fiction from Florida International University, and I was shopping a book around to some fantastic literary agents. It was a booked called “The Adventures of James Tully.” I had some interest. I was 25-years old, and unfortunately it wasn’t the right timing, and the book wasn’t ready. I’m trying to find a way to get back into the groove with writing my book. I feel somewhat lost to be honest with you about the process, and I’m going to use Barcelona and Paris as a way to step away from everything, spend time with my wife, and try and find some clarity in the process. Meantime, I wanted to share with you the five things I’m looking forward to in Barcelona.

5. The Picasso Museum

Mike Pernod
Mike Pernod

4. Park Guell

guell

 

3. The Tapas

Tapas-tour-bcn.t4b

2. Las Ramblas

Barcelona_Las-Ramblas-iStock_000013773365Small

1. Palau de la Música Catalana

glass

 

How the Pacific Ocean Heals the Mind & Two New Published Pieces

This weekend, I had a buddy in town from South Florida.  He was an old neighbor in a great neighborhood called Coconut Grove.  Well, seeing him brought back a ton of memories from Miami. I went to graduate school at Florida International University.  That’s where I received my MFA.  What a great school.

But I almost love the city as much as the school.  I’ll never forget driving over the Julia Tuttle Causeway in my Buick LeSabre with my father, my brother, and a car packed with all my shit during a hurricane that was quickly degraded to a tropical storm.  My father wasn’t going to allow a tropical storm to stop our travel itinerary.  We had driven down from Massachusetts and stopped at few places.

Well, that was almost five years ago.  Crazy how that works.  Crazy how the world just keeps on spinning — no matter how much you want it to stop.  And for some reason, today was just a tough day.  I couldn’t get started with work, and nothing seemed to be exactly flowing.  I even had two new pieces come out today, but something was just keeping me from getting excited.  Even right now, as I write this, I feel like I’m slogging through, going through the motions, instead of raging against the dying night and the blue-eyed death of summer.

So to escape that cycle of self deprecation, my buddy and I went down to Huntington Beach with my dog.  It had been almost three months since I went to the dog beach in HB.  What I love most about the dog beach is the drive there from the LBC.  Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, watching the Pacific Ocean burst into sight, and cruising as the ways crash a 100 yards away is one of the most enthralling and invigorating experiences I know.

Once we got to the beach, my buddy and I were throwing a frisbee back and forth, and my dog, Hendrix, would jump and snag it out of the air.  Then we jumped into the freezing cold ocean — even though today was one of the warmer days for the Pacific — and we body-surfed while Hendrix kept an eye on me from the beach.

Sometimes, the ocean can have a feeling of rebirth, almost baptismal.  It can just clear aware all the worries, all the stress.  That’s what I had today.  And that’s what I needed.  Tomorrow, I will be finishing up a piece I’m writing on classic L.A. novels.  Plus, I’ll be pitching like crazy.

Here are the links to the two new pieces: Wilmore Guitars and How Tom Tombello Hopes To Invade Your Personal Space…I blogged about the Wilmore Guitars piece a couple days ago, and you can see the final product. Really happy with that one.

Published Three Years Later & Other Good News

This morning, I drove Heron to work, and on my way home, I heard John Lennon’s version of “Stand By Me.”  I knew it was going to be a good day, but I didn’t know how good.

When I got home, I walked Hendrix before I started working.  And on the walk, I received an email.  That email was informing me that my story, “A Crash in Boston,” was selected for publication in Literary Orphans.  Well, I was excited.  It comes out at the end of September, and they have published great writers like Tom Pitts and Joe Clifford.

Let me provide you with a little bit of back story.  In 2010, I won the fiction prize for graduate students at Florida International University.  The winning story was “A Crash in Boston.”  Well, I thought I was some hot shit.  I was just 24 years old, winning a graduate competition in a MFA program.

So I started sending the story out to literary magazines.  Not just any magazines — the top, la creme de la creme.   And do you know what I found: yeah, that’s right, rejection.  Boy I received so many rejections I stopped counting.  But if I had to guess, then I would say about 50.  My story received, at least, 50 rejections.  I revised, and I continued to believe.  Continue reading “Published Three Years Later & Other Good News”

The Beginning of a Journey

So, last week, I left my job.  I was working at a rehab center for drug and alcohol addicts and teaching creative writing.  Wow, how do I even begin to tell you about that amazing experience?  The kids changed my life.  So did the stories I heard from people in recovery.  (More on this as the blog develops.)

But there is something else out there for me.  I wanted, and have always wanted, to be a writer.  Below is a picture of my new writing desk.  A friend was clearing out her apartment, and she gave me the desk for $10.  The old desk was a tiny IKEA mess.

All along the walls of my room are post-it notes with ideas for stories.  Some of them will be unsuccessful; others, I believe, will be published stories, poems, and other projects.  And it’s only the beginning.  So let me tell you a bit about what I learned over the last year that has prepared for this journey.

When I was working at the rehab center, I was commuting from Long Beach to Woodland Hills.  Now, if you know nothing about  Southern California, let me put this into context.  Five days a week, I drove 44 miles in the worst traffic in the country, which sometimes would take me two hours one way.  That’s like driving from the East Coast of Florida to Tampa.  Basically, I found myself staring into brake-light machinery that devoured my spirit.  And while I was stuck in that traffic, I was checking my phone to see if I received an e-mail — oh that glorious electronic ticket — that my novel was finally accepted for representation by a literary agent. Continue reading “The Beginning of a Journey”