Local Observation: HOT AND BOTHERED

 

By Christina Oxenberg

The Fantasy Fest migration stampeded in and disrobed and got body painted. Half way through the week the rains came. A flash flood of Noah proportions washing off their eye-popping paint jobs, swirling away into the overpriced and mold ridden gutters that are their rooms for the night. All before last call.

The hot season was a swelter of solid humidity. The air was UN-breathable and leaden. Luscious from flowers and fermenting sea grasses sweating on the beaches, and thus ultimately nauseating. Gradually I retreated and spent my days behind drawn blinds, A/C blasting full power, emerging only after sundown.

“Get me outta here!” I complained to my genie. Some have sugar-daddies, others have fairy-godmothers, I have Nalim, the genie.

Today I find the island refreshed with soft breezes, so much so I turn off the A/C and shove open all the windows. Nourishing tropical H2O shuffles through the rooms of my domain.

A malevolent, mischievous genie, that’s what I get. My genie lives far away in a bottle up a mountain. He is mostly happy but can get restless, and then malicious.

Twenty-five years ago these same Fantasy Festers came here to git naked and git painted and stroll around. But they looked different. It was hip because they were not the bodies they have today. While it is charming that diehards return and reinvent themselves for the duration of their stay, like temporary insanity, they might consider not removing all their clothes. Just a suggestion, but a quick glance in the mirror will confirm some tits are too awful for prime time. For example, if your nipples are tangled in your belt buckle, put the frittatas away.

I’ll admit, between the heat and the breasts I began plotting an escape. Perhaps I absorbed too much recirculating Freon, but after two months of hiding in the A/C and rampant toxic-levels of cabin fever I complained to my genie Nalim, who lives up north some wheres, and he instructed me, “Move to Mississippi! You can buy something for a song. Now’s the time.”

Nalim, a snake charmer, can cajole me out of my basket of peregrinations and set me robotic-ally upon fresh paths. Instantly, picturing a pale green field and a rainbow dappled farmhouse, I placed a call to a pal in Mississippi, to discuss purchasing one acre and a mule. Starting small.

Then the weather changed, overnight and my island home filled with fresh air and now town will drain of the energy of those fifty-thousand heat-creating stampeding beasts, in their tutus. The rains dropped from a molten sky. Hot rain. Bathing the coral rock with cool and the hot season was over. My fantasy of Mississippi crystallized and I pictured footage of me in the evenings, too far away from all that I love about Key West and the fantasy evaporated. Just like that. From Fantasy Fest back to reality.

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