Key West

That First Spark

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 1 Comment

What attracts us to someone? Their beauty? Their eyes? Their lips? Their laugh? Their touch?. . .

I met a good friend out for a drink and a listen to live music. I didn’t really want to. Having been out late the night before I was looking forward to catching up on sleep after a quick stop at the grocery store. I’m running this plan through my brain, sighing a little at the thought of my soft bamboo sheets, as I lock up my bike outside the dispensary, when I hear “Juniper!”

Only Pat calls me that. Uses my middle name as my first. I sashay over in my rainbow for Pride lit up tutu and say it’s between bands at the amphitheater. They’re biking around in the spontaneous gear of see-what’s-happening that’s so easy to do in Key West, especially on Duval Street. We go our separate ways but say we’ll stay in touch.

Once back at the amphitheater, dancing and writing in my head for a couple songs, something inside me start to drift. My mind’s casting about for alternatives and though I’ve just returned, I leave out the gates again. Pat’s texted me “At the tuna (Smokin’ Tuna) watching Marshall Morlock.” It’s a bar I’m not fond of and a band that’s been on my To-See list for half a year. I bike on over.

His friend Rob gives up his stool, but the crazy good cover of Message In a Bottle demands booty shaking, head banging, and fist pumping. Marshall Morlock’s guitar prowess continues and my “Just for one drink” quickly becomes a “Do I really need to stop at the store?” And after he strums the first notes of Purple Rain, turns to a declaration, “Sleep! Who needs sleep!?!” My mind scoffs.

The attraction to Rob begins when the night is ending. Already ended — it’s after midnight. He goes to high-five me goodbye and I feel something when our palms touch that makes me thread my fingers through his and curl them over his knuckles. Our hands separate after an instant, then for some reason we do it again. As a test? That feeling increases. It’s an inner smile somewhere behind my solar plexus, a warmth on an already steamy hot night. He follows my lead, folding his fingers the same way, latching us in, but holding me loosely enough so I don’t feel bound by it. He’s holding me, but I’m free to go.

A delicious, delicate, balance.

His skin’s dry roughness makes my soft skin even softer. I’m aware I don’t want to let go this time. So I don’t. Slowly dancing away, I raise our outstretched arms and twirl underneath them until they can stretch no further; swinging my hips and dancing myself out the door. I climb onto the seat of my bike wondering, What was that? The only answer is, Whatever it was, I like it. And I’d like more.

Rerouting. . . . .

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I’ve come to think of the Holy Spirit as my life’s GPS. It’s got the map, it knows where we’re going. I, by contrast, am to wandering off and have a fondness for distractions and detours. The queen of wrong turns, I need never fear. Because just like Google Maps, if I get lost or turned around, the app will spin and say “Rerouting” until it displays a new blue marked path I can follow to get back on track.

I grew up learning about the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I’ve long since traded religious dogma for spiritual laws; gone is the God I used to worship as something superior–I’ve found him on the interior now, in a deeper connection to my true self. The meaning behind a lot of the things I heard taught has changed, but the names remain the same.

HS is kind of my favorite. An energy that communicates through hunches and serendipities, gut instincts and nudges. If I listen to them, I’m living my best life and I’m happy. I’m still reeling from the latest one…..

In April I was all set to do what I’ve been doing for the past two years: taking my camper and kitty to a state park and workamping (working in exchange for a free site). It was time for my next assignment. After giving my boss notice, it didn’t sit right. I’d gotten this job playing games in swimming pools at resorts around Key West. It was listed as a “gig” in the job posting, which was perfect because I was only going to be at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park for a few more moths (there’s limits on how long you can stay at one park). Super fun job, great money, I biked between pools in my bikini and was done in time for happy hour.

The way I found the job was kind of magical. I was recovering from COVID, unemployment was ending, and I was aware I couldn’t go back to bartending; I was too weak. I felt I’d outgrown my old way of being and working during the shutdown. I wanted something new. I went to Facebook and came across a page on my feed I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since. It was “Key West Gigs & Short-Term Jobs.” Perfect! My site at the park was short-term, too.

Funny how we get into things and then they change. Interesting how my plans morph and change without me even knowing it, until I try to assert them and they fall apart.

The next day I took my notice back. I’d slept on it and woke up uneasy within it. Took it as a sign and followed it. And then she offered me a promotion. So now I’m Regional Manager and have found a lot that I pay for, have a lease for, an electric and water bill. Things I haven’t had for six years and thought I might never have, or want to have, again.

I trust this new direction because of all the other new directions I’ve taken that ended up being better than what I thought I wanted.

Gina

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I’m volunteering at the Mile Zero Fest in Key West. From my post at the entrance gate I can hear Cody Canada and the Departed are on stage. I wasn’t sure I’d like this kind of music — thought it might sound a little too much like country music — but they’re winning me over. Their strong guitars and the front man’s banter are winning me over: making me dance, even. We’re at the Sunset Green’s Lawn across from the Gulf of Mexico and in between two hotels: 24 North and The Gates. 24 North is named after the latitude and longitude of its location; I have no idea what The Gates is named after — although its bar, Rum Row, has lots of quotes about Hemingway and rum runners.

From the stage, Cody announces that a women in the front row has left with the parting words of: this isn’t red dirt music! His response slams her with, “Red dirt isn’t a genre it’s a place in your soul.”

Or something like that. His words and certainty grabbed me and made me like him even more. It seemed like a good way to address it and the crowd went wild. They moved on and into another great song. After which this banter began between Cody and the crowd. They started using the “K” word (Karen) which then became “Fuck you, Karen!”

Then I heard Cody talking with someone in the front row about what her real name was and the slam of the woman morphed into, “Fuck you, Gina!” I gave a nod to their creativity, even smiled a little. As a writer, I am familiar with rejection and am very sensitive to its encounters.

At the end of the show, people were filing out of the gate saying, “Fuck you, ‘gina!”

As in the abbreviation of vagina.

Ok, now they’re slamming girl parts. They’re using girl parts as an insult. Boy, am I tired of that.

How the fuck can the vagina, the gateway of newborn life, ever be associated with weakness? Reduced to a slur.

Meanwhile. . . “grow a pair” or “have some balls” is equated with toughness.

Have you ever seen a guy get hit in the balls? Watched him crumble to the ground like a bouncy house that just blew a seam? Come on. How has having balls been associated with strength while a vagina, capable of an expanding to encompass the size of a tiny human, gets the rap of weakness?

In the immortal words of Betty White: “Why do people say, ‘Grow some balls?’ Balls are weak and sensitive. If you really wanna get tough, grow a vagina. Those things really take a pounding!”

Just In Time

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My financial funds hadn’t been this low since I was in college. I wasn’t exactly eating ramen noodle, but I was checking my banking apps daily–sometimes several times a day–keeping a close eye on what was coming in (not much) and what was going out (much too much). Do I drop my car insurance? The camper insurance? Food?

Florida can sustain me with sunshine, the salty air in my hair and surround me with the calm and curiosity that the aqua blue of the ocean evokes. But a pandemic that ended my job made me dependent upon an unemployment benefit of $197 per week (one of the lowest in the country) that I had to coax from an archaic website meant to discourage access. There was literally a stick figure that moved across the screen telling me where I was in line.

I’d lived like this for the past year and a half. I was now newly employed, but the paychecks hadn’t hit my account yet. Just as I was scanning my mind for even more creative financing options–I’d already returned all the Amazon purchases that still had the refundable window open and spent all my gift cards and return merchandise credits–my birthday weekend rolled around.

And as I was working in my new gig of Pool Game Instructor, the topic would come up. This led to one of the guests/gamblers at my floating BlackJack table insisting, in his accent from Quebec, that he was buying me a birthday drink. And then another. Sure, he was winning, but it was only Monopoly money–er, chips.

I was drying off next to a chaise lounge after saying I really had to go to another resort and play more games in another pool when he came up to me and handed me a hundred dollar tip. I tried not to take it even as my wallet’s mouth watered, knowing how much I needed it. He pushed it back towards me. I shook my head, took a step backwards, trying to give my resistance deeper meaning.

“Just take it.” He said it so softly it was almost like he knew how much I needed it.

So I took it. Because I did. Badly. And then I thanked God once again for filling a gap that I was powerless to fill. I was grateful, this week before Thanksgiving, and somewhat amused that this Power greater than myself had Its own creative financing at play. Moments like this humble me. Remind me. Of that Bible verse “Consider the lilies of the field….”

Fantasy Fest

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At my first Fantasy Fest–my inaugural ball of. . . well, balls (they were painted, but still)–it was eight days of watching the Halloween festival progress and me right along with it. It’s advertised that there’s a Nudity Zone on a few blocks of Duval Street at the heart of the party, but I dipped into a parking spot on the edge of the island where across the street a woman was walking her dog, topless. At first blush, I did blush. But only briefly.

Her freedom ushers in my own. Not right away, but slowly, in a soft rain that builds into a deluge, I ease my way through my uneasiness. At first I just take my top off as I ride my bike back to that parking spot–hidden in the dark, dark that comes with the after midnight hour and sheltered by the brevity of time in which I pedal by any one set of eyes. It felt naughty. It felt fun. I felt bold, like I belonged to the totally-okay-with-my-body sect that I’d only up until now admired from afar.

The next day I bare my belly and the rose tattoo that blooms across it. I wear a sexy wig and a cleavage enhancing top a la Beyonce`. All the while I’m upping my game I’m watching others who were still ahead of me, egging me on benignly. Enticing me with their confidence level and their free-to-be-me laissez-faire attitude.

This is the good side of competition.

A body painter camping at the same park that I’m workamping at by day before slinking off into the night, offers to paint me for free. My head nods enthusiastically, accepting the offer. But the small quiet voice coming from the inside of my belly button whispers Ohh, no. We could never do that.

I don’t like that voice. She tries to keep me down. Low. Where no one can see me. She likes to play it safe so no more hurt occurs. But that’s not how life works. It moves, changes and challenges you. And as my costumes got skimpier and skimpier over the weeklong celebration, there was eventually nowhere left to go, but. . . nude. That’s when my head chimes in with the It’s now or never bit. And when I don’t quite bite, offers up the Quick, while no one really knows you here closer.

I step into her booth, gingerly, like I was barefoot avoiding chards of broken glass. Maybe it was my crumbled ego. Or at least crumbling. I disrobe in the corner, scanning the photos of all the brave who had gone before me hoping to borrow a cup of courage. The paint tickles my nipples and as she transforms me into living art, her touch feels sensual in a new kind of way. I feel bold. I feel badass. But when it comes time to cross the threshold again, I feel vulnerable and unsure. That belly button voice was back.

I take a deep breath, tenderly push through and merge my Poison Ivy into the sea of bodies flowing by. About three steps in, someone asks to take my picture. Then another one a few more steps in. Then another. I begin to see myself from the perspective of the people looking at me and saying, ‘Beautiful,’ ‘Amazing,’ ‘Wow.’ I feel the drop in barometric pressure that is my trepidation. I feel my self-image rise with every flash.

I am this girl, too.

I’m the belly button voice, I’m the headstrong voice barreling into what lies just out of my reach, and I’m this girl—quivering a little less with every block she covers. I am naked, but I am not afraid. I’m vulnerable, but I’m not in danger. I’m exposed, but I am safe. No one got hurt and I got to grow.

Solar powered

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I’ve always been solar powered–in need of high levels of sunshine to function and recharge–seems like my camper should roll the same way. I got into this full-time RV lifestyle to be as free as I can be, the option to be self-sustaining is the next step.

I’m in the Sears parking lot in Key West with a panel, some cables, a controller, two golf cart batteries wired in series and my phone giving me access to a group of people who have done this more than me–me, who hasn’t ever done this at all. But I love the idea of living off the sun, getting my power free and clean, without adding pollution or demand for fossil fuel. I’m reading comments on my many posted questions and looking at the pics of people’s systems, but it’s not really clicking together in my brain. It’s the math and the fear based on the fact that electricity can be shocking that intimidates me. I’m a writer, a wanderer, a word girl. I’m good with creative expression, but bad with formulas.

And I suppose I should’ve been working on this long before I really needed it, but that’s not really my style, either. I’m the poster child for the quote: Necessity is the mother of invention. I’m desperately trying to figure it out and failing in the process. I’m doing a lot of searching and swearing, watching videos and feeling out of my league. Thankfully, a person quick to comment on the Solar for Dummies Facebook page offers to talk me through it. He’s from my hometown—Madison, Wisconsin—on a too cold to work winter day, giving him some free time on a Monday afternoon.

It wasn’t just the contrast of my naïveté rubbing up against his knowledge or the fact that I was now sweating in January instead of shivering (I could almost feel the winter wind reaching through the phone to reclaim me), it seemed the biggest difference between us what his unwavering confidence in me and my ability to do what he was teaching me to do. I had serious doubts about both. I suppose being reminded of how my packed to the rim VW Bug and I drove off into the early morning light, crunching through ice encrusted snow with no particular plan other than finding a place where owning a snow shovel was not a necessity and socks were never needed. But somehow my successes get filed under flukes and my failures get catalogued as flaws. I wish I could embrace my learning curve with more compassion. I try to have the faith that he has, but it feels like a pair of shoes that don’t fit right: they’re my size, but someone else has broken them in to fit their feet.

Luckily he also had a lot of patience. I was in territory that I’d only marveled at from afar, stripping cable to expose wires that could then be screwed into the controller inside my outside storage compartment. I’d love to say that I came out of the process embracing Ohm’s Law and excited about electricity, but I didn’t. I did however get it the system installed before dark and kept my cussing relegated to an under my breath volume. Mostly.

The real joy came later, around midnight, when I came back home and pushed the circle on my camper’s control panel that said ‘batt’ and all four lights lit up which meant it was full. At midnight. I know because I pushed it like five times, giggling gleefully at the free energy I had harnessed and the process that I understood just enough to make it happen.

I’d done it after all. I can go anywhere now. I feel like a rock star.

Pain Will Leave Once It Has Finished Teaching U

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Yesterday afternoon was one of those times when you’re shaken, literally, by how awful things are playing out. But by early evening it was clear–this curse had turned into a blessing.

I was working the late gate at the park under the scorching beam of the sun that likes to stream into the ranger station at what is already the hottest part of the day. After an aggressive visitor the day before yelling “Fuck you!” not just once to my face but again as he drove away, I was determined to be extra sweet today so as not to be in the least bit offending, thus avoiding any chance of any such repeat interaction.

That was my takeaway. Can you believe it? ‘Maybe if I asked more nicely how many people are in your car? then you wouldn’t get verbally abused’ was my deep introspective dive as I looked out over the beach last night, waves lapping at my feet, sinking my toes further into the sand. What crap. No wonder it didn’t take away the gnawing in my gut. No wonder it invited another lesson. “Pain will leave once it has finished teaching you,” Bruce Lee said.

Cue the physically threatening cycler. For the second day I am shaking at the gate. This can’t be right. So I ask for help. And when the ranger doesn’t help, and I’m still shaken fifteen minutes later, I call for more help. And I learn that not only is my concern valid and my command for this person to leave the park the correct action but it was retroactively so, going back to the day before. I learned there were consequences to someone treating me that way and the calvary was coming.

Another ranger was making rounds to try to locate the offender. Management called the police. A ranger stayed with me until they arrived. And even though the person was never found (maybe he’d realized his possible fate and had left already) I was touched by the “I have your back” response. As people filtered out of the park at closing time and I pulled down the flags, I caught site of a pair of headlights that were not moving like the others. It was that officer; ready for action, positioned for support. The whole thing was starting to melt me like candle wax.

It had me open, humbled, willing enough to see what the real morale of the story was while I pedaled my bike hard out of the park, music on full blast to crowd out of my mind the replay of the awful scenes I’d endured.

My default is the lone ranger. I’ll handle it. I can do it. I got this. And I’m quite proud of my independence, it has served me well. It’s taken me around the world and through some tough times. But it has also, I can see now from this new place in my curriculum, kept others from lending a hand. Standing with me. Somewhere, I got the idea that the highest level of achievement was doing it all by myself.

“Somewhere!?!” my inner wise voice snorts in a tone so sarcastic I had to laugh out loud. We both know exactly where I got it. I got it from the mother who relished watching me move out at seventeen and a father who left me at four.

Now that I think about it, I have advanced far beyond the age where one finds worth in announcing, “Look! I did it all by myself!” No longer a child tying her shoes for the first time or mastering riding a bike without training wheels. I was an adult. I’d made it already. And besides, my worth was established long ago–by God. I come from Perfect Love, created in His Likeness. There is nothing I need prove.

I wondered as I watched the wagons circle around me, felt their focus on the hurt that had been done to me and their own efforts to try to make it alright again. Had they always, in some version or another, been with me all along waiting for my cue? Was help always just a call away?

Clarity in Key West

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So, I’ve been biking by this new housing development that the city is doing, making it affordable by basing the rent on the person’s income. As I’ve blogged before, I bike by their spreading of gravel, propping up of transplanted trees and pouring of sidewalk cement. I’ve been loosely entertaining the possibility, but landed on a ‘pass’ for the sole reason of it being permanent.

But then something happened. I had an epiphany. My previous preclusions parted and through their veil I saw something. My first camper I had for four years. It was an “I think I’ll travel the country for a year in a camper and blog about it” experiment that led to more years and less states and less blogging than I had anticipated. It seems the ‘there’s the trip you plan and there’s the trip you take’ streak continues.

So, now I’ve bought a bigger and better camper with the same kind of idea. I’m reenlisting for another four years–like a presidential term (and that’s a happy coincidence) and I’m almost one year into it. If I look down the road a little, say three years, what do I want that to look like? I ask myself.

Well, I’m not taking this thirty-footer out west or into the hills of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’d already decided that my next set up would have me driving my home–a nice Class C with opposing slides to really widen it out–and towing a small, economical car. Firstly, it’s way easier to hook up a car than a camper and secondly, whenever I want to go exploring, I’m driving a big truck with a big engine that gets only slightly less awful gas mileage when I’m not towing. Give me a little Fiat!

This train of thought collided with another train of thought: that I’m going to be 53 soon and I’m starting to skirt around the edges of retirement–from the land of semi-retirement where I currently reside–and at 55 getting disability gets easier, which brings in the idea of getting coverage because of my Crohn’s disease. Then I hear another whistle blow: the substitute teacher train comes chugging along, out of the garage where I’ve been storing the thought for years.

These tracks start to weave a pattern as I simply watch and listen to the whistles blow. I could put my name on the list, it would probably be a few years before I came up anyway, and what if about the time it did, I was ready to sell this camper. And what if I became a substitute teacher–getting my working with kids fix and summers and holiday vacations off to jump in a camper van and go travel then. And then, when I do fully retire and pull my Social Security benefit and tap into my 401K and investments my rent is protected.

What if standing still still gave me the moving about the country option? What if permanent meant I’d have plenty of time that was flexible and temporary? Could this be both things for me?

I started to get pretty excited. Not just on the option of it all coming together to give me everything I desire, but in the way it is crystalizing. I trust that. I trust it because it’s the same way this entire lifestyle of mine first crystalized and every move I’ve made since. I trust what I let happen versus what I try to make happen.

PS in this week’s Throwback Thursday blog I write about how the idea of this lifestyle came to me and crystalized.

Sexy Key West–Steamy Summer #3

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It didn’t take long for him to end up back in my bed. Well, I did have to tow about 7,000 pounds (camper weight plus way too much clothes and way too many pairs of shoes) about seven hours, but now that his mouth is enveloping and exploring my pussy, these numbers all fade away. The only thing to count–and that counts–is how many orgasms I’m going to end up having. And if history has a way of repeating itself, and I assure you this being our fourth or fifth rodeo shows that it does, then there will be too many to count and I’ll be rendered incapable of performing math calculations after my third.

These parts of ours are like perfect puzzle pieces held together by velcro. Based on how they fit, they seem to have been made from molds designed for the ultimate carnal pleasure. And all we have to do is brush by each other and we’re connected, locked in once again to acting out our fantasies in my boudoir.

Ahhhh Key West, the place where the moped shuttle driver invited on my first visit here: “Let your freak flag fly!!” That was four years ago and I still remember it. I had a silent response to him: I’ve been looking for a place like that. I’m still doing my best to honor it, too.

We need a place to let loose our inner selves without judgement and this island offers it. For me, this time around, that’s alternating between a two-item wardrobe: my volunteer park uniform that as I fulfill the twenty hours a week at the admission gate in exchange for my free site and utilities and my bikini. It also includes writing the most and the best, in my opinion, that my creative mind has to spill.

It also means fucking my ex/now friends-with-a-generous-benefit-package as often and and as kinkily (that’s probably not a real word) as I want. Wherever I want. It means getting naked at the Garden of Eden, the clothing optional rooftop bar that towers over the heavily bar laden Duval street. It means groping while shopping. Kissing around corners. Exposing my ass in alleyways where you can catch a quick dick in the dark without anyone noticing or not caring if they do.

This boy is my playmate in every sense of the word and I’m oh so glad to be back for more fun and games. I’m here for a few months–including October for Fantasy Fest–let’s see what kind of trouble I can get into before going back to reality–I mean, the mainland.

Like a Cherry Tootsie Pop

Could I Stop Moving and Stay?

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I consider it as I bike by the building site where the city is erecting an affordable housing complex just outside the park. It’s prime real estate. A quick walk or bike ride to my favorite place in Key West: Fort Zachary Taylor State Park and across from the amphitheater where they do live shows–the stage entertains your front while the sun sets and paints the sky at your back.

Fort Zach is where I live now in an RV, as a workamper, a thirty second stroll to the Gulf of Mexico. I can be here even after it closes–in the park after dark is a rare treat made magical by the glow of a full moon. Waves crashing on the shore is my bedtime story. While others wait in line and pay admission, I walk out my front door and can lay claim to my favorite table before the gates even open. It’s paradise within paradise. The catch is I can only stay for three or four months.

Every day I watch the crew spread gravel, plant trees, and install sewer lines. It’s in the early stages which has me thinking. . . not only affordable (it costs about $2,000 to live on this island in a modest apartment where you don’t have to share a kitchen or wait your turn on the toilet) but, speaking of toilets, a seat that no ones butt has been on but mine. No holes in the walls filled in with toothpaste from a previous tenant. No moldy smell leeching from a building battered by rain, storms, and hurricanes. No odor emanating from the carpet of a male cat marking his territory that you just can’t get out no matter how hard you try.

Then my memory slaps my mind, waking it up out of its reverie. Adventure is my drug. Staying put kills it for me. The thing that is the catch is also the cat’s meow about my lifestyle. I get to go. I get to explore. I get to discover new places and in the process, discover new things about myself. And others. Something happens when you live on the road–many things actually–but one of the best is that connection becomes your currency. You become dependent on finding the mercy that this world affords.

“Fortune favors the bold” the Roman poet Virgil said and his words spur me on.

But for a place to make me seriously consider hanging up my hitch, that says how much I love Key West.