Flávia Monteiro

The reggaeton playing at the bar is the same that was playing in the uber. It’s Bad Bunny’s latest but not his best. The counter resembles a slot-car track, as an infinite succession of Titos-and-lime glasses slide from the bartender’s hands to the hands of the customers—a pattern only broken by the occasional bottle of Corona with a lime wedge. The girls in the bachelorette party are all wearing the same shirt, made on demand for this occasion so everyone knows they’re like one another and this night is like no other. Except these girls were here last week, as they’ll be next week, only with other faces, other names, and another bride in the center. In Miami, every Saturday is the same Saturday.

I’ve been living in Miami for over 250 Saturdays, or five years. I moved here from Brazil in search of change. Nothing wrong with my life there—it was actually great. But many years living in São Paulo, a beautiful megalopolis of twenty million people that never stops, had taught me to love movement. Movement meant change, and change always came for the best, is what I believed. So when the possibility to move country came up, I took it as a chance to make great, greater. My husband was invited to relocate to Miami by the advertising agency he works for. This means we came on a work visa, in which the employer sponsors your right to stay in the U.S. If you leave the job, you have to leave the country. So we stay, and hope for change. 

Loop One

For the first year after my plane touches down on the steamy ground of the Miami International Airport, I make it a project to immerse myself in the city. I read books about Miami, and books by Miamians. I take a ten-mile ride south to pick up a table from Craigslist; I take a ten-mile ride north to buy bacon. I drop pin after pin on google maps, charting out every opportunity to dive into Miaminess.  

Mostly, though, I go to bars. To me, bars are the epitome of change—a place you never leave exactly like you entered—and change is what I came for. 

I start with a hip cocktail place. I sit at the bar and ask for something bitter, but what I get is a sad version of a limey, never-meant-to-be-bitter mojito. I try another one. I sit at the bar and tell the bartender what I like to drink—expecting a suggestion or maybe even a creation—but all I get is the menu slid my way. I sit at a bar and ask directly for the cocktail I want, with instructions on how to make it, but all I get is a confused look. I sit at a bar, and I get a warm smile and enthusiastic questions about my taste; then, I get a watery cocktail served in a plastic cup, and a tab for $22. My smile melts even faster than the crappy ice mushying out my drink. I try again. I sit at a bar, I say bitter, they say limey. 

My impression is that they’re not even listening to me—as if there’s no room for my particular preferences or desires here. As if all the ways to have fun have already been predetermined for me.

When I sit at a bar, I’m after a bitter cocktail, but not just. I’m also after a chance to strike up conversation with the next person. Talking to strangers is a great way to know a place. Plus, it’s a way to make room for serendipity, if simply for the thrill of seeing what turns a fifteen-minute conversation can take. But conversation, like bitterness, is implicitly discouraged here, since the music is always too loud. Too loud as in: it’s Tuesday 5 p.m. in a dive bar, and I have to read the bartender’s lips. Around me, people mainly interact within their groups. Every now and then they make silent gestures to the bartender, who doesn’t need words. She already knows what drink to serve, after all; she’s served it a thousand times before.

In Miami, I’m looking for the unpredictable, and what I find is the same old rum cocktail.   

Loop Two

I’m now in my second year, and my best attempt at describing Miami is that, here, we’re all fiberglass horses in a carousel, displaying our shiny accessories and our wide smiles, steadily moving to the sound of a persistent and cheerful tune, never resenting that we only go in circles. The ones who visit us know exactly what’s on offer. They see the carousel: it’s as expected. They ride the carousel: it’s as expected. They enjoy the carousel: it’s as expected. The carousel never betrays their idea of fun.

I decide I’ll go out for reasons other than drinking or talking. I settle for drinking at home, where I have a say over the level of limeness. As for conversations, I can have them in elevators, sidewalks, and hallways. An acquaintance is telling me about restaurants. “Lots of good ones in Miami,” she says. Listening to her list, I realize they all have one thing in common—and it’s not in the kitchen. In all of them, the line for the valet is packed with cars of a certain price: Ferraris, Porsches, Corvettes. The same makes and the same codes to indicate what’s desirable that was once used by Miami Vice. A forty-year-old aesthetic. 

In my Spanish class, I meet a woman patient enough to listen to my Miami-whine, and kind enough to be moved by it. She invites me out after class. “Let’s go to this place, it’s ladies night.” I check the place’s instagram: an endless scroll of cleavages and almost-tits. No pictures of drinks, or a DJ, not even the tired picture of a neon over a fake-grass wall. The only thing on display is female bodies. Like it’s the unspoken terms and conditions for a free drink. A contract that, in São Paulo, has been considered bad taste for a while now. “I’m not sure I want to go this place,” I tell my friend. “You know the saying: if you’re not paying, you’re the product.” She looks at me genuinely confused. Why would I try to ruin her fun and some free limey shots?

I suspect I’m locked in a stalemate. Neither Miami nor I are willing to flex. I demand swerves, when all the city has to offer are loops. The more I try to understand Miami, the less I can explain my feelings to anyone.  

Loop Three

In my third year, my most eloquent take on Miami boils down to “Whatever.”

“What about Miami Beach?” says my husband as our lease downtown is about to end and we are considering new places. “No way,” I reply before he’s even finished. If downtown restaurants are stuck in the 1980s, the Beach never left the 1930s. Nostalgia is the area’s selling point, its bars sprinkled with random cabaret elements. Pre-Castro salsas, feather-clad dancers, or tail-fin cars matching the colors of an Art Deco façade. Blinding LED strings may have replaced the classic neons, and resin-wicker may have replaced the real-wicker tables, but standing on each of them is still a glass of good ol’ mojito.

“No fucking way,” I repeat, and my husband laughs. He laughs because he knows I like change, but that I like it better when things around me transform themselves so I don’t have to. 

When we move to Miami Beach a couple months later, I’m betting on outside change. My husband’s suggestion, I think, was born out of exhaustion. When he says the Beach, he’s actually saying, Let’s do the Miamiest thing, then. He’s saying, Let’s stop looking for something we like, and let’s just chug on this overpriced mojito instead. “Let’s stop looking,” I agree out loud. But privately I think that when we stop looking is when we’ll finally find it. Like an epiphany: we’ll find a way for Miami to transform. Which is clearly delusional. Only someone who’s spent the past three years squeezing her life into a predictable script would count on such a trite plot twist.

As we’re still unpacking our new apartment at the Beach, we’re welcomed by a couple having sex on the balcony of the hotel next door, for very long and to very loud music. This is disturbing, but it’s also something I haven’t seen before. I take it as a sign of change. My hopes are, yet again, renewed.

Yet again, I’m wrong. Balcony-sex will turn out to be just another recurring fact of life here. The hotel next door, by the way, turns out to be an attraction even in the height of the pandemic. Every time a new guest checks in, a ritual of yoloing is mechanically repeated. The curtain from the room to the balcony opens, and out come two or three or five tourists. Scene: tourists take selfies, make instagram stories. Scene: tourists twerk to loud music. Scene: tourists pass around a joint, drink vodka straight from the bottle. Lights out. A long while goes by. Lights back on. Scene: it’s morning. The balcony is deserted, save for a few red solo cups and a half-empty box of pizza being picked at by a crow. 

Some weeks in, I start to see the next-door tourists simply as animatronics on a dark ride. They’re performing the simplest storytelling, with the simplest motions, but if I give myself over to it I’m fully absorbed. I wonder how these people find fun in something so repetitive. Yet, I lean on my window each day, and each day I watch their ritual, each day trusting it will replay, each day glad it does. 

By now, I accept the repetition. I expect the repetition. I enjoy the repetition.

Loop Four

By my fourth year, I know Miami’s every move, but I don’t know myself anymore. I hoped for the city to change; I didn’t count on it changing me.

Unlike my naive expectations, this story has no plot twist. No great epiphany. There’s barely any change. I don’t begin to like the city more. If anything, I begin to like myself less.

I’m ashamed that I’ve become a repetition-lover, sure. But even more ashamed to realize that I’m trying to pass this off as an involuntary process. I blame Miami for imposing this change on me, as if I didn’t have any other option. When in fact nobody could do this to me but myself. Truth is, for five years—and counting—I’ve decided to stay in this place. A place is never a one-time decision, but rather a decision we renew each day we spend in it. This is especially true for someone with my privileges: I have safety, friends, and job opportunities waiting for me in Brazil. I could go back anytime.

But in going back, I’d have to face an idea of myself as someone who resists change. So I preferred to stay, and to attach that label on Miami. A label that is accurate for both of us, but that would be way more hurtful to me than it is to the city. To the city, not changing is actually a virtue. There’s a reason why bachelorettes and tourists alike flock here: they know precisely what fun tastes like in Miami.

This is an amusement park, after all, and in an amusement park the elevator isn’t really broken. Everyone knows it’s going to free-fall, and everyone knows it’s going to land safely. It’s fun not despite the unfailing predictability, but because of it.    

Loop Five

The reggaeton playing at the bar is the same that was playing in the uber.

The reggaeton playing at the bar is the same.

Bar is the same.

Same.