It was great to be back at Dinner Cay again in familiar surroundings, even in the heat and humidity of summer in Miami, and especially so with our first foray into smuggling pot into the States seemingly concluded without problems. Dinner Cay Marina is the largest in Coconut Grove. Eighty percent of it’s many dock slips are leased to Miami residents who own sail and powerboats of all types and sizes; from flats skiffs, to big motor yachts and trawlers, and to both large and small sailboats. Most sit idle at the docks except for weekends. Five percent of the docks are reserved for transients staying for a few days before moving on to the next port. The last fifteen percent of the slips are home to a diverse population of individuals like Birgit and myself, who are liveaboards who call their vessels home. The community of people who live on their boats year round is a small and tightly knit one. We all know one another by name, and watch out for one another. If one of us has to be away from time to time, we can rest easy knowing that there are a couple of dozen people keeping a close eye on our boats and property while we are absent.
We spent much of the day attending to housekeeping chores that had been neglected during our time spent while racing in the Bahamas. Paramount among these tasks was scrubbing Vamp from bow to stern with fresh water. Potable water is a scarce and valuable commodity in most remote islands. Only the most obsessive-compulsive yacht owners are willing to pay the prices charged by most island based marinas to wash down a big boat. In the Virgin Islands, and in fact, everywhere we went in the Caribbean, we’d wait for one of the afternoon tropical downpours before bringing out the scrub brushes and biodegradable soap to get Vamp clean. Here in Florida, being able to wash down your boat, and to take a daily shower was an almost unimaginable luxury after living in the islands. I still had to bite my lip whenever I was forced to watch sport fishermen wasting hundreds of gallons washing down their boats after a day on the water.
Around four in the afternoon, just as I finished reinstalling the air conditioner in the space in the companionway usually filled by three mahogany slotted boards while we were at sea, our next door neighbors emerged from the main entry on their funky old houseboat. “Slo Motion” was an old wooden barge converted into a houseboat years ago, and it was one strange looking vessel, replete with lots of hanging plants and painted in an assortment of pastels. Until a few months ago, it was permanently moored in one of the canals along Collins Avenue on the Beach. Their neighbors across the street had been several high rise hotels and upscale condo buildings. The residents there had finally forced Lorna and Suzy to relocate to our marina. They were both nurses who worked at the Miami Heart Hospital, and we’d become good friends with them both. They settled into lounge chairs on their upper sun deck. Lorna gestured with her bottle of Corona, calling over to us, “Hi guys. Come on over and join us. Suzy’s gonna grill us all some shrimp in a bit.”
I called back. “You bet. We’ll be over in a few.” I waited while Birgit slipped on a faded Miami Dolphins tee over her bikini and pulled on a pair of cutoff jeans with frayed bottoms before we joined the two young Latino girls. Lorna handed us each a well chilled and dripping longneck Corona from the plastic pail beside her filled with ice water.
“Hi y’all. Welcome home. How was the Abacos? I saw AJ yesterday washing down ¾ Time. She said they had a ball, and that they finished up in second place.
“That they did.” Birgit replied. “We all had fun, and it was nice to get away from the humidity here in Miami for a while, but it’s still great to be home again. What’s been happening around here?”
“Same old, same old. Work, work, work.” Lorna and Suzy chimed in unison, with Suzy adding, “We’re both off tomorrow for the first time in weeks. Stay for supper with us. We’re thinking about heading over to the Beach to hit Club Apex around midnight. They’ve got a house music DJ from New York tonight, and he’s supposed to be really good. His name is Maurice Fulton.”
“If B’s up for it, sounds great.” I said, looking over at Birgit who was nodding her agreement. “I’ve seen Maurice spin in Manhattan at a few clubs, and he’s excellent. He’s this little black guy with a manic kind of energy. He can really get a crowd up and dancing. Last I heard, he was splitting his time between New York and London.” Suzy’s marinated shrimp cooked on the barbeque were a big hit. After helping with the cleanup, Birgit and I headed back to Vamp to change our clothes and get ready for a night out. By eleven-fifteen the four of us piled into the old Bronco and headed off to Miami Beach.
In the mid seventies, South Beach was just beginning its transformation into a hedonistic playground for the jet set. Most of the Art Deco hotels along Ocean Drive were still slightly seedy and run down, with elderly Jewish retirees still occupying the rocking chairs on their front verandahs. Over the next few years they would all be displaced. Most of the residents would be relocated to similar hotels further north on the beach as the once grand hotels were sold off, and abruptly closed for extensive renovations. Club Apex was one of the signs of the changes that were coming. Speculators had purchased an old warehouse way down at the end of Alton Road past the Miami Beach Marina. The façade looked much the same, with only a small flat silver nameplate over the door announcing the name. Inside however, the cavernous space now offered an impressively large dance floor with a DJ booth overlooking it at one end, plus several bars. Upstairs, there was a chill-out room, a VIP room whose door was guarded by two burly bouncers, a suite of offices, and stairs leading up to the roof.
Driving by the club on the dark street, the building itself looked as if it had been abandoned for years. Only a line of cars dropping off people to join an orderly line by the door gave any clue that there was something going on. We parked the Bronco a short way down the street, trusting as always that it’s age and salt rusted panels would make it an unlikely target for thieves. Suzy and Lorna walked hand in hand as the four of us headed back up the street to Apex. I’d wondered about the two of them until one afternoon a few months ago when I happened to spot them together at an open air tea dance in Biscayne Park. When I mentioned it to Birgit she’d just looked at me and muttered, “God, you men can be so dense!”
We all passed muster with the door police at the entrance. Inside, with drum and bass music from the sound system assaulting our bodies, I drew Birgit close to shout in her ear and said. “Why don’t you get us some drinks. I’m going to find Desmond and buy party favors for the four of us.”
The lead off DJ was warming up the crowd as I threaded my way through the gyrating bodies on the dance floor looking for Desmond, the Jamaican with the tangle of long black dreadlocks who seemed to have a lock on the trade in illegal drugs that changed hands in this club.
I enjoyed the occasional use of pot, heroin was too scary to contemplate, LSD too weird, and I thought that coke was way overrated. All cocaine did for me was leave me wired up and jittery. Over the years I’d experimented with most all of what was available, but the only drug I really might have had a problem with was Ecstasy. A chemist working for Merck in Germany in 1914, who was searching for substances that might control abnormal bleeding, first discovered it. The compound MDMA was largely forgotten for years until it became popular in the early seventies at dance clubs and raves. Sold as pills and ingested, for the first hour or so, you feel almost as if you might vomit. The intense psychedelic effects of the drug soon replace this. Music and any inhibitions about getting up to dance to it vanish. Strong feelings of intimacy with friends are common. One drawback, other than its illegality, is that the effects of the drug grow less and less with habitual use, so I’d quit taking it when I left behind the New York club scene. I knew that Birgit had tried it back in Germany, but never with me, so I was anxious for us to experience it together.
I found Desmond sitting in a chair tilted back against the wall at the rear of the DJ booth with headphones covering his ears. I tapped him on the shoulder, and held up four fingers down by my right thigh. He stared at me blankly for a few seconds and gestured for me to lean over closer. “Fifty dollah, Mon. Tell dem gals to try one half and wait a while. Dis some strong shit.” I glanced around to make sure no one was watching us. I passed him two twenties and a ten in exchange for four small brown tablets with a cloverleaf stamped on each of them.
Birgit was sitting at a barstool waiting for me with two bottles of water in front of her. I slipped one of the pills in my mouth and washed it down with a sip from one of the bottles. I put another in my mouth, and leaned over to kiss her. When she parted her lips, I pushed the other tablet into her mouth with my tongue. Her eyes opened momentarily in surprise, and then she swallowed. I folded the remaining two into her palm, whispering “Here’s for the girls. Desmond said maybe take one half, but let them decide for themselves.” She slid off the bar stool to wander over to where Lorna and Suzy were dancing in a crowd. I sat and ordered a Red Bull while I watched. I didn’t see anything change hands, but Birgit soon rejoined me at the bar. My second sip of Red Bull tasted so much sweeter than the first. My stomach was feeling full all of a sudden. When the drum and bass segued into a house music record at one hundred and twenty beats per minute, I knew that Maurice had taken over the turntables. Without any warning, all of a sudden my body felt measurably cooler and my teeth began to chatter silently. It was as if my jaw muscles had become possessed. I wasn’t alarmed. On the contrary, it was what I’d been expecting. I looked into Birgit’s eyes and smiled as I took her warm hand in mine to lead her out onto the dance floor.
If anything, Maurice Fulton had gotten even more talented since I’ d first heard him spin in New York. A really good DJ is able to match beats seamlessly, bringing a crowd up and down at will with his choice of music. Birgit and I were “rolling”, feeling wave after wave of the psychedelic effects of the Ecstasy, leaving the dance floor only to keep us hydrated with trips to the bar for another bottle of water. Sometime around four in the morning, she and I collected Lorna and Suzy to head upstairs to the chill-out room. Heading up the stairs, we passed by an open office door. Two men were sitting in red leather chairs by the desk with balloon glasses of brandy in front of them The closest of the two waved an upraised finger at us as we passed by. Startled, I saw that it was Felipe and Diego.
The chill-out room had a DJ playing trance softly and there was a big screen TV with a VCR attached to it showing a copy of Jaws. The three girls and I piled onto one of the soft black leather couches and relaxed in a tangle of warm bodies. I could sense every inhalation and exhalation from each one of us. It was a very sensory and companionable feeling. When the movie ended with the explosion of the giant shark, it was almost too intense.
The four of us went up the final set of stairs afterwards to watch the sunrise over Miami. As we were leaving, I said to the ladies, I’ll meet you in a few minutes at the car” I discovered Desmond nodding off on his chair in the DJ booth and asked, “Hey Des, Who are the two guys who were in the office at the top of the stairs?”
“Mon, dass the two dudes who own dis club.” he answered.
It was great to be back at Dinner Cay again in familiar surroundings, even in the heat and humidity of summer in Miami, and especially so with our first foray into smuggling pot into the States seemingly concluded without problems. Dinner Cay Marina is the largest in Coconut Grove. Eighty percent of it’s many dock slips are leased to Miami residents who own sail and powerboats of all types and sizes; from flats skiffs, to big motor yachts and trawlers, and to both large and small sailboats. Most sit idle at the docks except for weekends. Five percent of the docks are reserved for transients staying for a few days before moving on to the next port. The last fifteen percent of the slips are home to a diverse population of individuals like Birgit and myself, who are liveaboards who call their vessels home. The community of people who live on their boats year round is a small and tightly knit one. We all know one another by name, and watch out for one another. If one of us has to be away from time to time, we can rest easy knowing that there are a couple of dozen people keeping a close eye on our boats and property while we are absent.
We spent much of the day attending to housekeeping chores that had been neglected during our time spent while racing in the Bahamas. Paramount among these tasks was scrubbing Vamp from bow to stern with fresh water. Potable water is a scarce and valuable commodity in most remote islands. Only the most obsessive-compulsive yacht owners are willing to pay the prices charged by most island based marinas to wash down a big boat. In the Virgin Islands, and in fact, everywhere we went in the Caribbean, we’d wait for one of the afternoon tropical downpours before bringing out the scrub brushes and biodegradable soap to get Vamp clean. Here in Florida, being able to wash down your boat, and to take a daily shower was an almost unimaginable luxury after living in the islands. I still had to bite my lip whenever I was forced to watch sport fishermen wasting hundreds of gallons washing down their boats after a day on the water.
Around four in the afternoon, just as I finished reinstalling the air conditioner in the space in the companionway usually filled by three mahogany slotted boards while we were at sea, our next door neighbors emerged from the main entry on their funky old houseboat. “Slo Motion” was an old wooden barge converted into a houseboat years ago, and it was one strange looking vessel, replete with lots of hanging plants and painted in an assortment of pastels. Until a few months ago, it was permanently moored in one of the canals along Collins Avenue on the Beach. Their neighbors across the street had been several high rise hotels and upscale condo buildings. The residents there had finally forced Lorna and Suzy to relocate to our marina. They were both nurses who worked at the Miami Heart Hospital, and we’d become good friends with them both. They settled into lounge chairs on their upper sun deck. Lorna gestured with her bottle of Corona, calling over to us, “Hi guys. Come on over and join us. Suzy’s gonna grill us all some shrimp in a bit.”
I called back. “You bet. We’ll be over in a few.” I waited while Birgit slipped on a faded Miami Dolphins tee over her bikini and pulled on a pair of cutoff jeans with frayed bottoms before we joined the two young Latino girls. Lorna handed us each a well chilled and dripping longneck Corona from the plastic pail beside her filled with ice water.
“Hi y’all. Welcome home. How was the Abacos? I saw AJ yesterday washing down ¾ Time. She said they had a ball, and that they finished up in second place.
“That they did.” Birgit replied. “We all had fun, and it was nice to get away from the humidity here in Miami for a while, but it’s still great to be home again. What’s been happening around here?”
“Same old, same old. Work, work, work.” Lorna and Suzy chimed in unison, with Suzy adding, “We’re both off tomorrow for the first time in weeks. Stay for supper with us. We’re thinking about heading over to the Beach to hit Club Apex around midnight. They’ve got a house music DJ from New York tonight, and he’s supposed to be really good. His name is Maurice Fulton.”
“If B’s up for it, sounds great.” I said, looking over at Birgit who was nodding her agreement. “I’ve seen Maurice spin in Manhattan at a few clubs, and he’s excellent. He’s this little black guy with a manic kind of energy. He can really get a crowd up and dancing. Last I heard, he was splitting his time between New York and London.” Suzy’s marinated shrimp cooked on the barbeque were a big hit. After helping with the cleanup, Birgit and I headed back to Vamp to change our clothes and get ready for a night out. By eleven-fifteen the four of us piled into the old Bronco and headed off to Miami Beach.
In the mid seventies, South Beach was just beginning its transformation into a hedonistic playground for the jet set. Most of the Art Deco hotels along Ocean Drive were still slightly seedy and run down, with elderly Jewish retirees still occupying the rocking chairs on their front verandahs. Over the next few years they would all be displaced. Most of the residents would be relocated to similar hotels further north on the beach as the once grand hotels were sold off, and abruptly closed for extensive renovations. Club Apex was one of the signs of the changes that were coming. Speculators had purchased an old warehouse way down at the end of Alton Road past the Miami Beach Marina. The façade looked much the same, with only a small flat silver nameplate over the door announcing the name. Inside however, the cavernous space now offered an impressively large dance floor with a DJ booth overlooking it at one end, plus several bars. Upstairs, there was a chill-out room, a VIP room whose door was guarded by two burly bouncers, a suite of offices, and stairs leading up to the roof.
Driving by the club on the dark street, the building itself looked as if it had been abandoned for years. Only a line of cars dropping off people to join an orderly line by the door gave any clue that there was something going on. We parked the Bronco a short way down the street, trusting as always that it’s age and salt rusted panels would make it an unlikely target for thieves. Suzy and Lorna walked hand in hand as the four of us headed back up the street to Apex. I’d wondered about the two of them until one afternoon a few months ago when I happened to spot them together at an open air tea dance in Biscayne Park. When I mentioned it to Birgit she’d just looked at me and muttered, “God, you men can be so dense!”
We all passed muster with the door police at the entrance. Inside, with drum and bass music from the sound system assaulting our bodies, I drew Birgit close to shout in her ear and said. “Why don’t you get us some drinks. I’m going to find Desmond and buy party favors for the four of us.”
The lead off DJ was warming up the crowd as I threaded my way through the gyrating bodies on the dance floor looking for Desmond, the Jamaican with the tangle of long black dreadlocks who seemed to have a lock on the trade in illegal drugs that changed hands in this club.
I enjoyed the occasional use of pot, heroin was too scary to contemplate, LSD too weird, and I thought that coke was way overrated. All cocaine did for me was leave me wired up and jittery. Over the years I’d experimented with most all of what was available, but the only drug I really might have had a problem with was Ecstasy. A chemist working for Merck in Germany in 1914, who was searching for substances that might control abnormal bleeding, first discovered it. The compound MDMA was largely forgotten for years until it became popular in the early seventies at dance clubs and raves. Sold as pills and ingested, for the first hour or so, you feel almost as if you might vomit. The intense psychedelic effects of the drug soon replace this. Music and any inhibitions about getting up to dance to it vanish. Strong feelings of intimacy with friends are common. One drawback, other than its illegality, is that the effects of the drug grow less and less with habitual use, so I’d quit taking it when I left behind the New York club scene. I knew that Birgit had tried it back in Germany, but never with me, so I was anxious for us to experience it together.
I found Desmond sitting in a chair tilted back against the wall at the rear of the DJ booth with headphones covering his ears. I tapped him on the shoulder, and held up four fingers down by my right thigh. He stared at me blankly for a few seconds and gestured for me to lean over closer. “Fifty dollah, Mon. Tell dem gals to try one half and wait a while. Dis some strong shit.” I glanced around to make sure no one was watching us. I passed him two twenties and a ten in exchange for four small brown tablets with a cloverleaf stamped on each of them.
Birgit was sitting at a barstool waiting for me with two bottles of water in front of her. I slipped one of the pills in my mouth and washed it down with a sip from one of the bottles. I put another in my mouth, and leaned over to kiss her. When she parted her lips, I pushed the other tablet into her mouth with my tongue. Her eyes opened momentarily in surprise, and then she swallowed. I folded the remaining two into her palm, whispering “Here’s for the girls. Desmond said maybe take one half, but let them decide for themselves.” She slid off the bar stool to wander over to where Lorna and Suzy were dancing in a crowd. I sat and ordered a Red Bull while I watched. I didn’t see anything change hands, but Birgit soon rejoined me at the bar. My second sip of Red Bull tasted so much sweeter than the first. My stomach was feeling full all of a sudden. When the drum and bass segued into a house music record at one hundred and twenty beats per minute, I knew that Maurice had taken over the turntables. Without any warning, all of a sudden my body felt measurably cooler and my teeth began to chatter silently. It was as if my jaw muscles had become possessed. I wasn’t alarmed. On the contrary, it was what I’d been expecting. I looked into Birgit’s eyes and smiled as I took her warm hand in mine to lead her out onto the dance floor.
If anything, Maurice Fulton had gotten even more talented since I’ d first heard him spin in New York. A really good DJ is able to match beats seamlessly, bringing a crowd up and down at will with his choice of music. Birgit and I were “rolling”, feeling wave after wave of the psychedelic effects of the Ecstasy, leaving the dance floor only to keep us hydrated with trips to the bar for another bottle of water. Sometime around four in the morning, she and I collected Lorna and Suzy to head upstairs to the chill-out room. Heading up the stairs, we passed by an open office door. Two men were sitting in red leather chairs by the desk with balloon glasses of brandy in front of them The closest of the two waved an upraised finger at us as we passed by. Startled, I saw that it was Felipe and Diego.
The chill-out room had a DJ playing trance softly and there was a big screen TV with a VCR attached to it showing a copy of Jaws. The three girls and I piled onto one of the soft black leather couches and relaxed in a tangle of warm bodies. I could sense every inhalation and exhalation from each one of us. It was a very sensory and companionable feeling. When the movie ended with the explosion of the giant shark, it was almost too intense.
The four of us went up the final set of stairs afterwards to watch the sunrise over Miami. As we were leaving, I said to the ladies, I’ll meet you in a few minutes at the car” I discovered Desmond nodding off on his chair in the DJ booth and asked, “Hey Des, Who are the two guys who were in the office at the top of the stairs?”
“Mon, dass the two dudes who own dis club.” he answered.
