Everything is fine the way it is, I told myself as the child of a single mother working as a secretary. Good thing there’s no pool, but we do have good food and my big brother's worn-out sweatpants. Poverty builds character, I told myself, as my mother and I flipped through the weekly store flyers.
Coconut Grove is the name of Miami’s luxury district. It sounds like Hollywood, I think to myself on the way there, and that’s what it looks like too: dogs can’t walk without being carried, the women all look like they’re famous, the men look like they can only sleep with women who are at least half their age.
When we arrive at the hotel, Frank insists on wheeling our luggage up himself, on one of those golden carts Zack and Cody always ride around in for fun in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. At check-in, we’re handed a welcome drink, a pink, frothy mixture in a martini glass. A Bellini, the ever-smiling receptionist explains to me. The drink actually costs $22. We get it for free as a welcome thank-you for spending four days lounging by the pool. Hannah can't get the Bellini out of her head when I tell her about it on the phone. She asks several times: And it had real alcohol in it?
In my hotel room, the M&Ms come in glass bottles, alcohol of every percentage level is lined up, and even condoms, two of them, the so-called Couple’s Kit. As soon as Frank sets down my luggage and closes the door behind him, I start pacing, right to left, left to right, from the balcony to the bathroom and back again, excited about this strange place that is so different from any other place I have ever been. In my family, vacation means: one hostel room for three, supermarket sandwiches, and pretending to be a student at museum ticket counters, because, really, you never stop learning in life.
I take videos of the room and don’t send them, because suddenly I realize none of this stuff is free. The chips cost eight dollars, the Couple’s Kit twelve. I noticed this just after tearing open the sleep mask. That was the first thing I wanted to take: my boyfriend can only sleep when his room is pitch black, and his curtains in Leipzig are old and always get stuck when he tries to roll them down. Eighteen dollars. I put it back, under the condoms, ideally with a bag of chips on top, and hope no one comes looking for it.
Miami is sunshine and palm trees, Miami is Cuban food, Miami is Miami Beach. But the more we talk to people who live in this city, the clearer it becomes: Miami is, above all, unaffordable. While some order another Bellini at the hotel bar, others work themselves to exhaustion to cover rent, which is about to go up again. Eating out here is an investment, and very few people think about the beach. “There’s no quality of life here,” several Miamians whisper to me before readings and after coffees, sharing their plans to leave, and from the sound of it, without so much as a glance back.
On the way to the pool, I’m wearing my bikini and have a towel wrapped around me, because I’m not sure if there’s a charge for wearing the bathrobe (I’ve got my eye on it, along with the towels, bathmats, conditioner, and the jute bag). It’s only in the elevator that I realize I’m doing something wrong. Iven confirms it later, smiling kindly: “You’re actually supposed to wear something loose to the pool,” he says. “A shirt and shorts. And anyway, you’ll get a towel once you’re up there.”
In the elevator stands a mother in a white designer dress and a little girl in a cream-colored tutu. She glances down at my worn-out white sneakers and knows: I own only two pairs of shoes.
Iven and I are speeding through the Everglades in a motorboat, the tropical wetlands of the state, all swamp, grass, and hopefully alligators.
At least that’s what we paid thirty dollars for, plus an hour in a souvenir shop where I had to decide whether my godchild was more of a crocodile or a sea snake.
There’s never a guarantee we’ll see wildlife, says our boat captain, Captain Disco, who, based on his name alone, won’t disappoint me. Especially in this heat, he says. It's almost unbearable for them, too. Around midday, they dive underwater to cool off.
Here in the Florida Everglades, where alligators flee underwater at noon, between swamp and nothingness, lies Alligator Alcatraz, Trump’s prison for migrants. What a cruel place to disappear, I think, as Captain Disco lures the next alligator out for his audience.
At the pool, the staff are chatting in Spanish about a guest. “She wants iced coffee,” says one. “But definitely not iced.”
“So… just coffee?” asks the other. “No,” replies the first. “She definitely doesn't want that.”
I feel uncomfortable when someone is paid to carry my luggage. Or to drive me around. I always tell them I’m here on business, that I’m an author, to signal: I don’t have the kind of money that pays for this. I find it all just as strange as you do.
At the front desk, every day I ask for as many free water bottles as I can carry. At breakfast, I ask about the prices of the croissants, the one with salmon and egg, the one with cream cheese and cucumber, the blueberry muffin, the matcha cookies. The waiter goes through them all with me and says: “Nine thirty, ma’am.” And, with a sigh: “This one’s nine eighty, ma’am.”
I send my mother pictures of the hotel, of the tanned people in Miami Beach, of the luxury stores. And one of myself, tired and disheveled. I write: Where have I ended up? Everyone’s so fancy, and then there’s me.
I don’t write to her often enough, barely at all during this trip, but strangely, I do now. I do this to confess. To say: This isn’t me. To say: I belong to you. To say: I’m sorry.
After dinner, we take a detour back to our hotel. I’ve spent the whole day at the hotel pool and, with the guilty conscience of a child, realized: it’s not boring at all, it’s great fun. It had just poured, but now it’s back to 30 degrees. Here’s a café serving artisanal coffee, a shop selling handcrafted luxury vases. At 11 p.m., the shop windows shine brighter than the stars. I walk up to an ornate steel gate, guessing there’s a park behind it. Suddenly, a man steps out of a small guardhouse I only now notice.
“Can I help you, miss?” he asks.
I was just wondering what this was, a park or a garden?”
“No, miss,” he replies. “This is a private community.”
“A private community?”
“Yes, miss. A private community.”
“What’s a private community?” I ask sincerely, having never heard the term before. “A private facility, miss. Where a community lives. Privately.”
And so here I stand, me, the social climber: so far from home. Behind the fence of a whole world, in front of the gates of another.
The views expressed in this text are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Goethe-Institut.