There'll Never Be Any Doubt

I have an unscientific theory that people succinctly if not always neatly fall into one of two buckets. For example, they are either kind or unkind; thoughtful or thoughtless; generous or greedy; empathetic or apathetic. The availability of buckets runs the gamut of contrasting human traits; i.e., they are endless.

There is multiple ‘two buckets’ for the people who visit to Key West. There are those who come to party along Duval and those who come for the culture and food, never putting foot in a bar other than questing after the perfect Hemingway Daiquiri which apparently is found at Caroline’s Other Side. There are people who come to find their place in ‘one human family,’ and people who come to scratch an itch they cannot name. There is no judgment here.

There are people who come because a cruise ship made a day-stop, and those who have permanently dropped anchor in the marina. There are the ones who come and love it, never wanting to leave – that’s me. Then, there are those that will flee as fast as they can, sprinting across the tarmac at EYW as if Satan himself were on their tail.

That is fine, too. Key West is not for everyone. But when it is for someone, they let themselves drift into the great wash of timelessness, join the dance of the unencumbered, and strut their stuff with the same joie de vivre as the truly free, the wild chickens of Key West.

Key West is not so much a place as it is a state of mind. There is a tee-shirt for sale on Duval Street that says as much. I could thrash around with words, try to craft yet one more analogy for this nirvana, but Jimmy Buffett hit the nail on the head when he penned, “changes in latitudes; changes in attitude, nothing remains quite the same.” No way to say it better.

Similarly, there is a series of clever commercials for Hulu streaming services. The tag line is something like this: “never do blah-blah, it ruins everything forever.”

Even a short stay in Key West ruins every other place forever. Sure, you can visit another place, another island, but if Key West ever gets into your head, you will never not think about it. Key West is always there, comfortably tucked into the folds of your gray matter, camping out, keeping a light on.

Here, conversations are struck up as easily as wooden matches take to blaze. On any given day I meet new people and find ways that we are connected. And not once, not ever has anyone ever asked, “and what do you do?” It is refreshing not to be asked, and even better that no one wants to use me in their efforts to get ahead in their race to nowhere.

Maybe it is the weather that loosens folks up. Like the lids on jars that have become impossible to budge, as the warmth of the sun and the wind off the ocean brushes against their skin, people begin to open up to all that Key West has to offer, filling themselves to the brim. It becomes an addiction cured only by more Key West.

When I return home to Virginia, I put my Key West life into its own jar and place it dutifully back on the shelf. But the more time I spend in Key West, the more difficult that effort becomes, like trying to stuff an octopus into a mayonnaise jar. It will always find a way out, especially now that the lid is loose.

This trip, I am here for six weeks. I have returned to a tiny one-bedroom conch cottage in Old Town. This year, there is a new shower, a new white sofa in the living room and comfy outdoor furniture where, if needed, you could absolutely take a nap as long as the iguanas stay put in the trees.

The house is old, but very Key Westy. It is also newly-painted or more precisely, mostly so. The owners only painted three sides leaving the one in the tight alley way untouched. So strange, yet not.

The front door to my rental is a pale green color with an eye-catching, naked King Neptune knocker which no one uses. There is a full window wall across the back of the house. It looks out over a garden patio with a dip pool made from cerulean blue tile that are just a few shades darker than the sky. The patio is secluded and sunny; surrounded by tropical plants, some with leaves that match the front door.

I have arranged my writing tools and technology on a small table next to the windows so that I can gaze at the pool’s bubbling crystal waters, seeking inspiration. If that doesn’t work, I walk to Sandy’s, a deli located within a laundromat best known for its Cuban coffees and sandwiches. There, I grab a colada, hoping for a burst of caffeinated creativity.

All of this is a luxury, a gift I have given to myself.

Out of habit, I have brought too many clothes and shoes. I should start to ship them home. But next time – if there is one – I am packing just enough to get me down here, making K-Mart my first stop to buy just enough cheap shirts and shorts to get by. I will donate them to the Salvation Army when I leave. Life is just that simple here in Key West.

A very peculiar thing that I brought along this year is a very sharp wedge of guilt. Not only did I leave the gloaming of winter behind, I left my sweet husband. He is both patient and understanding, and graciously allows me the opportunity to take this time away from the cold.

Sometimes, I think he is glad to see me head south. Like Dr. Jekyll, I have a Mrs. Hyde that emerges when I don’t see the sun for days on end. During that darkness, I can be unpleasant and irrational, often making spontaneous purchases like a 75-inch HDTV just because I needed to get out of the house. Still, my husband says nothing except, “did we need a new TV?” As a reminder of my temperament, he keeps a little sign that I gave him as a joke, though it was not.

“I am sorry for the things I said when it was winter.”

As a couple, we have reached the point where everything went as planned. We are empty nesters. It is the greatest mixed blessing in the world. We have done our jobs. Our babes are launched, and none (so far) have returned to the nest. It is just us and our little dog, Jack.

I reacted to this new normal by putting Key West into my permanent rotation of places to visit, and I bought an RV. My husband is at least a decade away from retiring so I do most of this on my own though he joins me as time permits, especially if he can tact on a business-related sidebar.

When we met and married, I was nearly six years older than he. At the time, we could not have known the disadvantage to this difference is that we will not “age out” at the same time. While we have some wispy notion of the future, we have yet to develop the consensus of two that must be reached before bricks and mortar can be applied to make it solid.

A sizeable dose of what I am putting into that mix is the fact that neither one of us has as much time in front of us as we do behind. But even that certainty is not a place where my husband and I can find agreement. Like Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore -- Robert Duvall’s character in Apocalypse Now, he has walked through life mostly unscathed, fully believing nothing bad will ever happen to him or his loved ones.

On the other hand, I am a practitioner of prophylactic worrying. I have dozens of disaster plans sitting in a mental filing cabinet labeled, “If You Plan, It Won’t Happen.” When most people are sleeping, I concern my brain with ideas on how to avoid various types of freak accidents, parasitic infections, incurable diseases, fiery deaths. When my children were young, I concocted elaborate ways to save them in case of break-ins. I knew exactly how I would tie them in sheets and lower them from the second floor of our house to safety. In the real world, I never travel without medication for both myself and Jack, duct tape to fix or repair anything, a knitting needle (to poke the eyes out of an assailant) and, of late, grizzly bear spray.

A few years ago, various stores started to offer me unsolicited senior citizen discounts which, much to my husband’s dismay, I refused.

“Why wouldn’t you want a discount?” he asked when I told him about an incidence at our favorite local grocery store that did not end well or quietly. Bristling, I said, “I don’t need a discount. I need a plastic surgeon.”

To me, accepting the discounts is akin to acknowledging I am on the edge of sailing into the unknown edge of life that should be marked like a medieval map, “here be dragons.” There is some seriously nasty stuff in those deep waters, and they cannot be simply worried away.

I am not opposed to aging. As my father said, it is better than the alternative. My personal vanguard against that alternative is to live as fully as I can right up until the moment when I can’t. For me, that time is now, not later, because as it turns out, later is now.

This philosophy has been amplified by the recent death of several friends, many I had considered to be indestructible and not nearly as close to ‘here be dragons’ as am I. These losses have ranged from the unexpected such as car accidents and massive strokes to a galloping cancer that stole my friend’s life before I could even process that she was sick.

More fuel was added to this fire when I looked in the stilled eyes of a friend who has been told he has ALS, a diagnosis he called a relief because he finally knows what is wrong with him. He is a perfect example of the expression, ‘when death sits on your shoulder, you make wise decisions.’ He is using the ‘good’ time that he has left to do the things he wants and to be with the people he loves.

His wife has suggested that despite this brave approach, he is struggling to accept that he will soon have to give up his career and his hobbies and become a burden to her. He will never walk his daughters down the aisle, and he will he never hold a grandchild. His wife is working extreme hours to sock away enough money so, when needed, they will be able to afford live-in care so she can continue to work to make more money to pay for more care. In a way, they are both prisoners of this unyielding disease.

In the late 1970s, Billy Clyde Tuggle was a rather unscrupulous character on the popular soap opera, All My Children. Over the course of his in-and-out appearances on the show, he wrecked all kinds of havoc on the citizens of Pine Valley. After several stints in prison for a variety of crimes, Billy Clyde won the lottery, and he was able to redeem himself through philanthropic endeavors.

But whether in the red or black, Billy Clyde never lost his one burning desire – to move to an island. In 1981, he was immortalized in Jimmy Buffett’s song, The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful, the story of a man who finally comes to his senses. In the closing refrain, Buffett sings,

“Still time to start a new life in the palm trees

Billy Clyde wasn’t insane

And it doesn’t work out there’ll never be any doubt

That the pleasure was worth all the pain.”

A few days ago, I was riding my bicycle out on the White Street pier near Higgs Beach. I had passed the AIDS memorial and was heading out to watch the boats come in when a man yelled at me, “Hey, I like your license plate!”

In true Key West fashion, I stopped to speak with a total stranger who, with just those few words, indicated that he spoke my language. As with every other person I have met in Key West, within minutes we knew each other’s names and I knew which of my Key West buckets he fell into. After years of living outside of DC, he pulled up stakes and dropped a permanent anchor at the end of the A1A.

I told him that I hope to be here someday, at least part-time, and asked him what made him decide to make the big move. His answer was straightforward. Two years ago, his life-long best friend dropped dead. Suddenly, he was faced with his own mortality. At his friend’s funeral, he turned to his wife, and said, “That’s it. Let’s move to Key West.”

I nodded and said, “Billy Clyde.”

He laughed and pointed to my personalized bike plate that reads, BILLY CLYDE. “Yep. Billy Clyde. I hope you find your island, too,” he said as I waved good-bye.

I am not stupid. I know a sign when I see one. It was if the universe had taken a bright red permanent marker and circled my exact thoughts, and there'll never be any doubt. Like Billy Clyde, I am not insane nor am I running away from life. Rather, I am running towards it before it runs out.