Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Written at 1:30 pm eastern

Written at 1:30 pm eastern time at the bar in Terminal E at the Ft Lauderdale Airport

I tried to write this up as one of those cools numerical lists people seem so able to generate but my experience just isn’t translating into mere quantification. 

I landed at 7 pm friday and went immediately to a party at my aunt and uncle’s.  We left, stuffed and tipsy, at 10 and went to our motel in a sketchy part of a sketchy town between Ft L and Miami.  On our way we visited a Walgreens (still in the classy part of town) and saw numerous young women on their way to a “Who’s the Slut” competition, all dressed for success.  The motel was emphatically ordinary, flanked to the east by Scarlett’s - “An Adult Cabaret” - and to the west by Cheetah’s, so obviously a strip club that descriptive signage was superfluous.

We got up the next a.m. and went directly to a conservative synagogue where four hours of services were already in progress; the yarmulkes were color-coded for the two b.mitzvah celebrants sharing the stage that morning.  My cousin Sarah did a great job and after services were over we gorged in the reception hall at the oneg - sort of an apres-services smorgasbord.  I ate to satiation before my mom told me we (my immediate family) were going out for lunch, where I forced myself to eat a very tasty plate of cuban food. 

Afterwards, distended and waddling, I went back to the motel for a nap.  Heat and humidity (both high) were sapping my strength.  Then, forty winks and two hours later, we drove to Mom’s motel for a few hours of poolside shmoozing by the tiki bar, where the beer selection was weak and the mojitos, non-existent, and then to the big hotel across the street for the “big” family al fresco dinner, where the food was excellent and, though the mojitos still didn’t exist, the hurricanes were powerful and plentiful. 

That night we got back to our motel late, just in time to rest up for the reception the next morning, to be held at that same big hotel’s classiest ballroom.  Family pictures took an hour, followed by hors d’oeuvres, general and novelty photography, and enforced merriment via a DJ, MC, and four bespangled professional dancers charged with the responsibility of working us up into a terpschorian frenzy.  There were no fewer than 80 family members and 50+ screaming youth, plus assorted acquaintences and colleagues - we must have been pushing 200 on the guest list.  We ate competitively and compulsively at four groaning buffet tables, well-lubricated by a wide-open and very active (but mojito-less) bar…

Kel and I escaped around 4 to fall asleep, bloated and buzzed, in preparation for the family pizza party that night at my cousin’s house (the bat mitzvah girl’s dad).  We got there around 7, still stuffed, and resumed our prodigious eating.  Then, in view of Kel’s early flight home the next day, we returned to our motel at 10 to find police tape blocking half the small parking lot as the good officers of the Hallandale PD investigated a gunshot homicide on the premises. 

We slept unquietly until 5 am, when we awoke and I got Kel to the airport; I then returned to the room and took another nap and a shower before returning the rental car and getting back to the airport myself.  I’ve now been at the airport since 11 am for a 3:30 flight, and I’ve had a scrumptious $8 sloppy joe, eased by two beers (mojitos still unavailable).  Don the bartender tells me there are 175,000 exotic dancers in South Florida - the equivalent of a good-sized city of strippers.  There are undoubtedly a lot of slutty-looking women around.  Maybe I’ll kill this last cup of Sam Adams and return to my gate.  I take off in a mere 105 minutes (barring delays).  Then again, maybe there’s an Adult Cabaret at this airport.