Friday's march and Saturday's parade were wonderful, and everyone had a great time.
But I'm taking some time off from posting because my heart hurts right now. Late on Saturday night, Steve, our temporary landlord and permanent friend, found his partner, Nick, dead in our old apartment's pool.
Nick was a beautiful, brilliant and wonderful man, and he and Steve had been together 23 years.
We were out crawling Duval with Ben and Ken and about 50,000 other people Friday when who should we run into but Fantasy Fest's king, Chris.
He was happy to stop for kisses, smiles and a picture.
Ben, by the way, got multiple bids on his Poison Ivy sunglasses, which Robert won at bingo several weeks ago.
I got several nice compliments on my bunny-ears Playboy sunglasses, which we bought at Miss Southernmost Gay's fundraiser for queen.
Today's list:
-- Eye doc. Check.
-- Accessorize for daytime. Check.
-- Note first bared breasts of season on our little street. Small check.
-- Lunch at Blue Heaven. Mojitos! Check and mate.
-- Investigate Lemonade Stand Gallery across street, where McBride of Maskerville is holing up for Fantasy Fest. Fall in love with mask. Buy mask. CHECK!
-- Gallery-hop. Check.
-- Pool and siesta. Check. Yawn. Check.
-- Call from mayoral candidate thanking for donation. Check.
-- Call from Pier House canceling costume competition because of rain. Reluctant check.
-- Walk to Pier House during lull in rain to eat discounted dinner because otherwise they'd have thrown away hundreds of pounds of food. Double check.
-- Fight way home through throngs attending Toga Party at Sloppy's. Chuck.
-- Pool before hitting street again. Check!
-- Bed instead of late-night return to unreal world. Checkzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I have to get out to an early eye appointment today, so this will be brief. And I didn't have my camera out, so there's no picture. But I just had to share.
We picked up Ben and Ken last night (their flight was only an hour late, and Delta hadn't lost their luggage, so we considered that a high-five), met them with drinks and beads and came home in a drizzle -- which turned into a downpour.
Up early this morning, with coffee on the porch, I saw Skip, from the hotel down the street, carrying a huge plywood cutout to work. Obviously it was a decoration for their balcony, overlooking Duval Street.
"Looks like a gnome," I said.
He grinned, stopped and turned it around so I could see.
"Gnomes, Toads and White Rabbit Tea Parties," he said, quoting this year's Fantasy Fest theme.
The gnome was portly, cute and naked except for his conical cap. His right hand held a teacup, in which a white rabbit sat. His left was holding a toad in a strategic spot.
And of course there was a twinkle in his eye.
Postscript: As we went down Duval later in the day, there he was -- and I did have my camera this time.
Diane Roberts, who does NPR com- mentary among other gigs, wrote a great piece on our rock for the Washington Post the other day. A few excerpts:
. . . Key West is famous for its exotic creatures: skinks, conchs, feral chickens, feral poets, parrotheads, drag queens, pirates manquees. . . .
Hurricane season -- which officially ends Nov. 30 -- may seem a strange time to visit this comma of an island parked in a notoriously stormy stretch of water, but airfares and hotel rooms are cheap. Headwaiters who wouldn't give you the time of day in January and February are delighted to seat you at their best tables. True, there's a late-October bacchanal of rum-drinking, feather-wearing and body painting known as Fantasy Fest, and the Disney cruise ship still docks near Mallory Square, blasting the island with "When You Wish Upon a Star," making me wish I had a bazooka. . . .
"It's not about what happens on Duval Street," says Lorian Hemingway, granddaughter of Pauline and Ernest. "Key West has a magic that goes beyond anything. It's tied in to all that's taken place here. Look in the alleys, the corners, the little streets. Go when no one else is there."
And if a hurricane comes calling, do what the natives do: Buy a six-pack and sit tight. The chunk of coral that is Key West has been there for 10 million years. . . .
I'm somewhere on Olivia Street, trying to find the gate to the Key West Cemetery. I made it here from Caroline Street, where Robert Frost used to spend his winters in a cottage parked in back of a foam-green Conch mansion built in 1834, but I'm not quite sure how. The Old Town is theoretically laid out on a grid, but Key West geometry tends toward the surreal: Streets found on no map appear; other streets disappear into the sea.
Not that I mind being a little lost. Great swags of purple, peach and magenta bougainvillea hang on fences, and white houses with porches like fancy crocheting line the road. The poinciana trees are in hot-red bloom, and gem-colored lizards dart across the sidewalk.
Finally, I see the main gate at Margaret Street and Passover Lane and walk into a silent garden of stone crosses, obelisks, urns, lilies and lambs presiding over echoes of long lives, tragic accidents, dreadful diseases, crimes of passion, military adventures and eternal love. . . .
There are large plots ornately fenced or supervised by big-haired angels and aboveground tombs that look like miniature Gothic churches, Roman temples or art deco hotels. . . . Then there's local hypochondriac Pearl Roberts (no relation, thank you), whose 1979 marker reads: "I Told You I Was Sick."
The sea breeze has died down. The copper sailor statue at the U.S.S. Maine monument is so shiny it looks like he's sweating as he presides over the graves of Spanish-American War veterans. . . .
I decide to go walking in Old Town. It has rained. At this time of year, storms rush in from the sea, soaking the island, then skedaddle back out again, leaving the pavement steaming. The resulting flora are monumental. It's as if you find yourself on a planet where ordinary houseplants -- your ficus and your philodendron, your fern and your hibiscus -- have ingested some fierce horticultural steroids making them grow as tall as telephone poles. The banyan tree up the road at the old lighthouse could have its own Zip code.
I wander around Bahama Village, marveling at the political posters up on everybody's fences: Key West is voting for city commissioners, utilities board members, school board members and, of course, King of Fantasy Fest. Somebody named "J-Ho" is campaigning hard. . . .
About now I'm regretting having quit the air conditioning. It's not just hot, it's thick: air like wet velvet. To be in Key West in hurricane season is to become one with your sweat. . . .
Late at night at the Green Parrot, an island bar where people have been known to play pool naked, where right now Abdul Mateen, backed by the Key West Reggae Ambassadors, is singing Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up," it's hard to believe that Key West will ever become "normal." . . .
Five a.m. is a good hour. Early enough not to be disturbed by the clank, thud and grind of the garbage guys; late enough to miss the last-call crowd lurching down the street home alone or paired off; and just right for a few roosters crowing -- at least half a block or so away in every direction, thank heaven. (Robert thinks chickens at the house would be cute. He is misinformed.)
It's a good hour to look up and see Orion through fronds -- certainly not this well, but far more clearly than I can remember. Without glasses, I'm now better than 20/20, thanks to my implanted lenses.
The scars are healing nicely, though the eyeballs themselves are not reacting well to post-surgery drugs.
My left eye, which has always been Old Reliable (stronger, more vigorous, the last to go blind, decidedly not the one that had the tumor when I was 5), has proven particularly treacherous: For some reason, the steroid drops prescribed to "calm" the surgery's wounds have spiked my eye pressure -- so now I'm on the same glaucoma drops my Mom takes, while doing the steroids five times a day, up from two, which was down from four.
This makes daylight difficult. And photography. And reading.
A crisp Orion at 5 a.m. is fantastic compensation.
We decided to accessorize the porch for Fantasy Fest -- and no, these aren't neon chasers. It's a lizard's eye view of the beads we knotted around the railing.
As you saw the other day, we've got plenty of leftovers from previous years; but we were looking for particular colors. And tracking down beads in bulk proved harder than we'd expected. K-Mart used to sell them -- pre-Wilma, anyway. This year they just had a few strands in tacky Mardi Gras colors. The costume store next to Sears hadn't gotten theirs out of storage yet -- if they had any to start with.
The party store was the obvious solution -- the one across from Office Max, with the blond out in front dressed up as a French maid, boogeying next to two huge speakers blaring R&B. We took that as a sign.
Back on the porch: Loop two strands together. Drape the joined strands over the railing. Slip the long end through the short end, and 72 strands later it's looking festive.
Pardon my absence Saturday, but the skies opened just at the end of the coronation ball, killing Bahama Village's Goombay festival for the rest of Friday -- and then the rains went on into Saturday morning, then all day, and then into the night.
On some parts of the island, cars were over their hubcaps. We took in a movie at the Tropic and then took refuge in the Sippin Java Cafe and spent a while over cappuccinos with Penny, the owner, talking water levels, tax rates and home improvement.
"Ohmigod," she said at one point, "you're the windows guy! We were talking about you last night at Square One."
But Goombay was rained out. We went home in drizzle, dried off and made a chef's salad that we ate on the porch in the downpour. I feel so sorry for the purveyors who had so much food ready for the street fair, only to see it go to waste.
Sunday, which you see here, complete with our new flag and some recovering hibiscus, was perfectly post-storm clear. Of course, there were no major events scheduled to match such fine weather. But the new king and queen made the bar rounds, basking in the clear light and bowing to rounds of applause.
Caribbean Queen and her Junkanoos took their cowbells, drums and whistles down Duval to the Coronation Ball Friday night -- and oh, what a good time.
The city closed off the street, and La Te Da set up tables (we paid to sit down with six new friends, and get a buffet platter with them), and Jeremy brought us drinks and we clapped and sang along and cried and danced while former Fantasy Fest kings and queens entertained, and the current contenders wowed us again with their dedication.
The result was more than $200,000 for AIDS Help, and this on an island of 24,000.
Chris won for king, Mary Lou for queen -- and every one of the contenders won our hearts. We got our first beads of the season, and a rose, and were the first couple up for the street dance. We boogied good.
Harry Sawyer, the county supervisor of elections, presided over the ballot tally, and two things struck us: one, that buying the election (with a nonprofit contribution) was actually encouraged without
hypocrisy; and two, that an old-conch official elected countywide was such an enthusi- astic participant -- not bad for a straight guy, and a far cry from anything you'd see up on the mainland.
And when Mary Lou and Chris won, the skies opened up (it had only been sprinkling before, not enough to offset the sweat), and everyone cheered and wet home slick with joy and tropical rain.
So there we were having drinks at the Bourbon Pub to celebrate their umpteenth year in business a block or so away from our house, with guys who were not exactly shy getting into and out of the pool.
I made sure the camera wouldn't capture details, and only fired it off when faces weren't in the picture.
I think part of our island's mystique is the ability to be anonymous,even if fictionally, in a small town.
It's a delusion, of course; a few weeks ago Nancy Klingener, who edits our alternative newspaper so brilliantly, said she'd heard a friend say that in Key West no one cares what you do; they just want to know about it.
Still. nobody should enquire about the obverse of this picture.
You don't want to know about it.
Fantasy Fest preparations so far have involved a trip to Home Depot for some tubing (where our clerk didn't even bat an eye to learn it was being used in a costume), to the fabric store (where the seamstress asked with only one raised eyebrow whether we were planning to wear underwear, and of course urged us to go commando) and to the chemical supply house -- its counter sales guy is running for queen (as Miss Southernmost Gay), and we were making a donation.
The royalty campaign proceeds go to AIDS Help, after all, and it's really inspirational to know that the whole town gets behind the effort, and that so many talented people put so much of their time and effort into the cause.
Not that we needed Miss Southernmost's Playboy sunglasses, topped off with a pair of bunny ears. I mean, given the beads we've accumulated from previous Fests -- which I color-sorted on Wednesday from the grocery bags they live in the rest of the year -- we don't really need much of anything new for a costume; but every little bit helps.
And who could argue with a new pair of sunglasses?
We've been meaning to have the guys down the street over for dinner for a while now, so when Robert ran into them at Sunday bingo he asked them for Monday night.
Monday was busy: cleaning, groceries, cooking, getting the CDs ready, vacuuming the pool, filling the ice bucket, getting the lights right and making an arrangement for the outdoor table.
The clock hit the appointed time and kept on ticking. A half-hour later, I asked Robert to hike over and tell them that if they hadn't eaten, I had dinner ready.
He came back to let me know they'd forgotten all about it and had company of their own, so I wrapped up half the food, froze it, poured the wine and served dinner a deux on the deck.
I'm happy to report it was a marvelous party.
It's become my morning ritual: Scanning the papers, listening to NPR until there's enough light, then primping our little patch along the street.
The only drama in it is our battle with the dreaded pink hibiscus mealybug lately, and we seem to be winning through some chemical warfare.
Of course, I can't do my usual pruning, picking and weeding for a few days after an application of the stuff they sold us at MARC House (a nonprofit paradise for plantspeople), but I take the break as a blessing to catch up on books.
Since the last application was Saturday, there I was this morning, keeping the rosemary from invading the dwarf plumeria, pulling down a dead palm frond, cutting dead lantana shoots -- not a job for those with even borderline OCD -- finding a new bloom shoot on one of the little birds on the far side of the parking space. . . .
As morning exercises go, they don't get much better.
And no one to play across it: too early in the season for the usual cadre of bronzed bodies generating a good coat of sweat at Higgs Beach.
But everyone else is getting damp ramping up for Fantasy Fest.
I knew the king and queen competition was heating up when I looked up from my Margaret Atwood novel and saw a queen contender bicycling down our street (on the migratory flyway between the Monkey Bar and One Saloon) decked out in a black-feather bra with matching headdress.
He was singing loudly, I think getting ready for his act at the Coronation Ball on Friday.
The little light well in the stairway, with its dormer window to the street, shouldn't be there in the first place.
Our architect drew one of our air handlers there, behind shutters; but the handler had to move long ago, to join properly with some ductwork, and with it gone there was no reason not to open the space for some sunlight.
And with sunlight, and "useless" floored space, there was no reason not to add something interesting.
So we got this butterfly mobile from Kim, at Glass Reunions, home of the (now fatally rusting) ornamented car. It's the work of an 84-year-old artist from up Ft. Myers way, and he's been ill lately so it may be one of his last.
Twisting over the landing in the stairwell thermals, they flutter a bit sedately for Robert's taste, but I like their serene procession through the afternoon sun just fine.
There's a parking spot at the end of our block -- our street is only two blocks long -- that I've always thought was particularly lovely.
Practical, it ain't, aside from providing shade. Bracts from the bougainvillea can be a real mess, and when they fall they stick.
But it gets an A for aesthetics.
The big frond fell off an even bigger palm (at the very top left) in front of one of the guest houses across the street almost a year ago, and it's been our weather vane ever since:
If it moved down to the junction at the splitter box, we'd had a good north wind; if it was next to the concrete pole (supposedly good for a Cat 5 storm), the breeze was from the south. It did a good bit of traveling over our stormy weekend.
On Tuesday, a crew from City Electric finally got around to removing it, starting with this guy with a pole, who gave it about a dozen valiant efforts in half an hour, and ending with a bucket truck, which took about 5 minutes.
Also in the valiant department: We hiked up to the Pier House Tuesday night to listen to our friend Jody, who waits tables at the Flamingo, as she belted out some standards and blues at Larry Smith's piano bar. Late in the evening, Jody called her daughter on her cell phone, put the phone on the piano and sang her a few tunes to send her off on her way to a second tour in Iraq.
I've always resented the "no atheists in foxholes" canard, but I can tell you everyone in the bar was singing a little prayer for Jody's girl.
On Sunday, Robert went off to play bridge after spending hours writing down all the bidding conventions he uses.
The director of the local tournaments, who had found someone named Emilio as his partner for the afternoon, had warned him that they weren't quite on the same level; but Robert took it the wrong way.
Robert has, after all, played against Bill Gates and his hired-gun partner in national tournaments and come out quite well, thanks very much.
They came in fourth out of seven, and I know Robert too well to think very highly of Emilio.
But while he was off bidding and such, I was going around the house. It was a year to the day that Ref had died, and I was finding him in every corner.
Possibly most here, in the guest room upstairs, where Ref fretted as much about ceiling angles as Robert frets about no-trump openers. He told me endless stories of builders who had invested in factory-made roof trusses, only to lose thousands of dollars when the built goods met the architect's specs, but didn't fit the house.
So Ref made our roofs by hand, and it was on this one that I last saw him swing a hammer with vigor as he laid in the last of the plywood. Within weeks, he was bedridden. Weeks later, he died.
His sister, Dollie; his brother Shawn; and his Uncle Arnold were here to comfort the heart and complete the house. But Reffard . . . This is his house and will always be.
I saw the gold glinting in his smile as I looked at his handiwork and gave thanks.
Once more, looking upward tonight, with a breeze.
This is one of the things I see when I look up at our palms along the street.
Of course, I took the picture a little farther east -- at Vajdahunyad Castle, which now houses the Agriculture Museum in Budapest's City Park, in a former chapel at the rear of the grand building, which is only about a century old. We were there almost exactly three years ago, and the park, the Szchéchenyi Bath (with its floating chessboards), and the fairytale lake where all the newlyweds come to be photo- graphed were just a healthy hike from our room along the Danube.
When I looked up at those those arching, coffered capitals, with their Ottoman echoes, I couldn't help thinking of palms twinkling and glowing in the night, fronds arching to meet their neighbors.
And when I look up at our palms, I can't help thinking of that ceiling, either. The mind is such a small world.
I haven't shown you much of the gardens since we got back, but I couldn't help sharing these bird-of- paradise blooms aborning just inside the front fence.
They're about a foot long, and they should be in full flower by the time Ben and Ken get here later in the month for Fantasy Fest.
This year's fest will be a first for me: no glasses, so I'll be able to wear a proper mask. I'm taking covetous looks at a great black coq-feather creation we brought down with about a billion beads in the costume trunk, but I may celebrate with a splurge from Maskerville's John McBride.
One thing for sure: This won't be the only bird in outrageous plumage later this month.
Harry Bethel, at far left, finally got bumped from the public trough. Or drawn away from it.
As I mentioned, he and Charles Lee (at far right) were in a dead heat to face Ty Symroski, the highly regarded former city planner, in a runoff for a seat on the Utility Board. Each received 1,879 votes. (Ty got 2,390.)
Harry Sawyer, the supervisor of elections, broke the deadlock, in this picture from the Citizen: He held the hat while Cheryl Smith, the city clerk, drew a name -- Lee's -- from a campaign hat.
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Tuesday was election day, and this was the crowd across the street from our precinct -- at the Convent now; we used to vote at Old City Hall but that was our rental and this is our residence.
Teri Johnston, one of the founders of the wind-insurance activism group, won handily in the City Commission district just to our west (Clayton, our commissioner, runs next time), whupping two opponents: the dolt incumbent and a smarmy fellow who patronized us on windows when he was on the Historic Architecture Commission.
Needless to say, we were delighted.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Weekley, whose family runs Fausto's and whom we supported, beat the incumbent Morgan McPherson -- but by taking only 49.21 percent, fell a dozen or so votes short of a majority, forcing a runoff on Nov. 6. (As more than one observer pointed out, with Fantasy Fest coming just before, the campaigns may lack a certain focus).
Other margins were even tighter. In the district just south of us, the top two contenders received 626 votes to 625; there was even a dead heat for second place in a contest for the Utility Board. Runoffs there, too.
All in all, an exciting election day -- with better than 50 percent turnout -- but as usual a brief one: Our supervisor of elections has been doing the job so well for so long that the results were final about a half-hour after the polls closed. Which meant more time for victory parties -- or campaign launches for the runoffs.
We got him in Memphis a dozen years ago, and it had to be fore- shadowing.
He sat guarding the garage at Holly Hill, but after we started on the house here I knew he had to move -- but I didn't want him to move too far, so I had Ray weld a base on him that we could attach to the wall at the steps.
Ray installed him when he was down here in August, and now he's guarding licuala palms, birds of paradise and hibiscus.
Don't ask me why these keys are called the Saddle Bunches. I like the name, and the fact that whenever I see them off to the right on the Overseas Highway we're coming home.
Speaking of which, I've set up a sort of zen office upstairs in the loft -- Robert's computer is ensconced in the office closet in the den, and he has no tolerance for the kind of peripherals it takes for me to transfer photos from memory card to computer to net -- so I have my new laptop on an old wine crate up here, and a great view of the street as I sit lotus-style on the carpet.
Just to my right is the loft railing, with one of Arnold's pineapple cutouts giving me a peek into the dining room below and reminding me of every bit of love that went into the house. Above are the house's original collar ties, hand-hewn in the 1880s or earlier, and adapted from heaven knows where, because they have odd notches and bevels. To the left there's storage -- our ladder, a big feather mask for Fantasy Fest, empty luggage: essential Key West.
