Back in the day in South Beach,

I bailed on a three-way, and was driven out of town by sand fleas.

Finishing graduate school at CU, I finally decided it was time to leave Boulder, and my friend/housemate Jana, and I, flipped a coin between Miami and New York - and it came up tails for Miami.

So, one icy January morning, we drove out of Denver with my two cats, (Bella and Dimitri) and ALL OF OUR belongings, packed into a 32-foot long Ryder truck.

We literally took it all with us:

• couches, tables & chairs,

• boxes of books,

• pots, pans, & dishes

• two futons, & bedding

• two bicycles,

• two tvs,

• two stereos,

• crates of hair tools and toiletries,

• and trash bags full of clothes
  

*(The only reason any of that matters, is because six months later, when we drove away in a cargo van, we had our cats, bikes, and hair tools - leaving the rest for the fleas.)

We made it to Dallas the first day, and New Orleans by dinnertime the second, but after being asked to leave for violating the hotel's pet policy, we decided to just continue driving, getting to Mobile, Alabama around 1am and pulling over at a shitty roadside motel too disgusting and creepy to actually sleep.

*Side Note: A few months later, Jana and I saw that same roadside motel featured on The Jerry Springer Show, as one of the most dangerous places in America, due to its number of unsolved murders. We got goosebumps recognizing the crookedly-lit sign and grungy room, feeling lucky to be alive.

Out of there at the crack, we made it to Ft. Lauderdale by mid-morning, and stopped at Denny's for a:

• 'Moon over My-Hamy' breakfast, (minus the ham)

• a Miami Herald newspaper,

• and a short stack of quarters.
  

Posted up in the back booth - the one with an actual payphone attached to the wall, we sat there drinking free coffee refills, circling ads in the  classifieds section, and calling about apartments for rent - quickly setting an appointment to see a place on 8th & Lennox.

Making the last leg of the journey down the A-1A to South Miami Beach, I was stressing out turning onto busy Collins Avenue, trying to avoid side mirrors of parked cars, but couldn't stop grinning at Jana - bouncing along to loud Latin beats blaring from storefronts, gazing up at palm trees, and pointing out all the interesting people in our neighborhood.

The Armenian landlord guy was super-cool, renting to us on the spot, even helping unload the truck, drop it off at the rental place, stop at a grocery store on the way back, and call the utility and phone companies to get everything hooked up.

By just the third afternoon of leaving Denver, we were completely moved into our new Miami Beach apartment - with sheets on the futons, food in the cupboards, and our new cordless phone plugged in and getting tone.

Both sets of parents were stunned and amazed when we called to give them our mailing address and phone number so soon - the big move across country pulled off without a hitch.

***

Quickly signing with a modeling agency, Jana booked a few Coors Light commercials that were shot in Puerto Rico, and her male model co-star looked exactly like Rob Lowe.

To make things extra confusing, his name was Ron, and it was impossible to keep from first doubting, and then correcting yourself - knowing that his name was Ron- but seeing the face of Rob - constantly saying,

"Ron, Rob, Ron, I mean Rob, no Ron."

Eventually we didn't care, rechristening him: Ron-Rob-Ron.

But Ron-Rob-Ron was a total tool, and despite working as an extremely handsome male model, he was super-annoying, and would rollerblade to our apartment from four blocks away, wearing:

• a helmet,

• full elbow pads,

• wrist guards,

• knee pads,

• super tight spandex shorts,

• neon terminator glasses

• and a wife-beater tank top

As soon as he'd roll through the door he’d ask if he could take a shower.

"No! Go home and take a shower! Why do you always want to take a shower here? You live four blocks away."

But without hesitation he'd be in and out of our shower, parading around the apartment pinching a tiny hand towel around his waist- because for some reason, he could never seem to find the regular-sized bath towels stacked in the same place.

He'd strike a pose, ass out, bent over the arm of our couch, complaining of sciatica, trying to get Jana or I to"rub it out". But we’d vehemently decline, mocking him and his oversized ego, daring each other to touch Ron-Rob-Ron's ass.

For some reason, weed was EXTREMELY hard to find in Miami, (especially considering we were so close to Jamaica 'mon) and the main reason we hung out with Ron-Rob-Ron was because he could score quarters of kind bud from his doctor friend, and save us from getting scammed by a dealer named "Poopie," who lived on the handball courts near Flamingo Park, and sold a mixture of tobacco and dirt weed.

Ron-Rob-Ron also had a DVD player, and Jana and I would sometimes pick up a few red box movies, and let him make us dinner. But the last time, when he tried to score a three-way, we ran out of there laughing and never went back.

Surprisingly, his concoction of: orzo pasta, spinach, green apples, and marinara sauce was actually tasty, and when he claimed that the DVD player in the living room wasn't working anymore, we sat on-the edge of the bed watching the one in his bedroom.

Soon enough we'd gotten more comfortable, fully engrossed in whatever was on, and before Jana and I realized, Ron-Rob-Ron had wormed his way between us, and had one hand on me and the other on her.

He kept trying to grope us both, while also trying to place our hands on him, and after about one minute of that, Jana and I made eye contact and telepathically said to each other,

"Yeah, no."

Then we cracked up, jumped off the bed, and couldn't stop laughing the whole way back to our apartment, lliterally bursting into hysterics if we even glanced each other's way. The weird encounter forever became something we’d haze each other for: the one-minute three-way with Ron-Rob-Ron.

***

Our apartment building was perfectly located just four blocks off the beach, set up around a pool like Melrose Place, and most mornings we'd ride bikes to The Bagel Stop, and grab half a dozen everything bagels to share with Helen (the old Jewish neighbor) who lived across from us. We liked to leave our door open for the cats to go in and out, (and also to be able to hear the stereo) making sure we were back inside by the time Springer came on.

Usual places for partying were:

• Mickeys (A cool-ass biker bar on Collins Avenue owned by Micky Rourke. Every once in a while he'd show up on his Harley and ride it around inside, spinning circles and burning rubber on the dance floor, making it smell really bad.)

• Club Amnesia (A huge nightclub with an anonymous cavernous dance floor, frequented by lots of celebrities like: Axl Rose, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger partying VIP style.)

• The bar without a name (My most favorite: a little white box of a building with no signage, no velvet ropes, no VIP section - just newspaper over the windows, minimal lighting, and the funnest, coolest, most raucous scene inside, packed with beautiful people doing shots, standing on tables, singing sitcom tracks at the top of their lungs George Jefferson style:

  
  

...ah well we're movin' on up <movin' on up> to theeee top, to a deeeeee-lux apartment, in the sky-hi-hi...

***

Letting the cats go outside turned out to be a horrible idea, which we realized the day the sand flea eggs hatched.

Grizzabella the Glamour Cat

I couldn't figure out why Bella's face looked like it was moving when she was not, and upon closer examination, spotted thousands of little brown bugs crawling all over her, under her chocolate brown fur. I didn't know what to do since fleas are not a problem in Colorado, and ran to the nearest market for a bottle of flea shampoo for cats.

Count Dimitri

Bella was having none of it though, and by the time I’d finished trying to hold her in the sink and douse her with flea treatment, she'd scratched and clawed my neck and arms so badly it looked like I’d been attacked by a slasher.

Two days later both cats and our entire apartment had become infested with fleas, and we covered every surface with newspaper and plastic, wearing long socks pulled up to our knees and high-heeled clogs to distance ourselves off the carpet, but the incessant jumping parasites would still bite our ankles.

They were EVERYWHERE, and we tried EVERYTHING to get rid of them.

• flea spray

• flea shampoo

• flea powder

• flea collars

• and even set off a giant can of flea defogger designed for a 3-bedroom house

  
  

Nothing worked, and we had red welts all over us when Tra-Ling, (our good friend from Boulder) called and offered two tickets to Big Head Todd at Red Rocks the following weekend.

"Yeah, we'll be there Ling. We're out of this FLEA FUCKING HELL! "

We took the cats to the vet for a 'flea dip' (a process I don’t even want to imagine) and rented a cargo van to load up some bare-min belongings. No fabric, clothes, bedding, or even mirrors, since we were told the microscopic flea eggs could survive and stow away on anything - even a glass surface.

At that point we didn't care, we just wanted to be away from the fleas, and so we abandon our belongings, broke the lease, picked the cats up on the way out of town, and said PEACE OUT South Beach.

Later that day, approaching a crossroads in Atlanta, one highway headed west towards Denver, and the other north to New York. Pulling off to flip a coin, it came up heads, and we got back on the road west to Denver.

(Sincere apologies to our nice Armenian landlord.)