It seems that my drink of choice in Miami is the Gimlet. I have had five of them since I arrived. Last nite I had two incredibly strong ones at a bar called The Bar & surprised myself by how buzzed I felt walking back to the hotel. I had spent the earlier part of the evening infuriating the saleswomen on Miracle Mile by trying on dayglo minidress after dayglo minidress before deciding, finally, that none of them held a candle to my dream dress. Then I stumbled upon (& subsequently out of) The Bar, a dark little place that was the perfect setting for my gimlet drinking & random scribblings. In New York I would normally never bring a notebook to a bar but here I didn't feel like a total jackass about it. Besides, I didn't have anything else to do. They were playing nice music at The Bar. They played Just Like Heaven twice. It was the reason I took out my notebook in the first place; it just made me want to. I always say my favorite Cure Song is The Love Cats but it isn't. Really it's Just Like Heaven. Of course it's Just Like Heaven.
So I sat there for awhile listening to the Cure & mulling over the question of whether boys are a grand waste of time (they aren't) & taking siplets from my gimlets, getting a little drunker & wondering why gimlets hadn't been my drink of choice all along, considering my fondness for words that end in -let.
So I kept drinking these gimlets & they played Just Like Heaven again & I wondered why it is that drowning is such a romantic death.
Drowned her deep inside of me ... in her tomb by the sounding sea.
I always thought tuberculosis was an incredibly romantic way to go. The unearthly pallor, accentuated by a bright red spot on either cheek, the weak cough producing droplets of blood in a handkerchief. But drowning seems to inspire more poems. Maybe because nothing rhymes with tuberculosis.
Today, gimlet-less, I was thinking about it again & I realized Annabel Lee didn't drown at all; she was murdered by jealous angels who sent a cold wind down to kill her. So actually, in terms of romantic deaths, I guess that pretty much takes the cake.
