Key West’s physical beauty draws tourists like a magnet, but the locals, or Conchs, give the island heart. The Conchs are people who have always been there or who have broken free from the centripetal pull of the Lower 48. In one sense, they live in a different country of their own creation, one that epitomizes the best of American culture. They stubbornly defend and propagate a lifestyle dedicated to freedom of thought, expression, and action.
Down there, you’re welcome to be a guy who lives on a boat with his parrot, or a gay Cuban existential nudist, or a dispossessed redneck, or a Hemingway look-alike, or a gorgeous silver-plated living statue, or a talented writer or painter who actually makes a decent living at your craft, or an oceanographer doing your best to save the coral reefs–whatever makes you happy. Do what you want, so long as you abide by some basic social guidelines and don’t make too much of a nuisance of yourself along the way. It’s a small island, and no matter where you live, reputations stick.
And speaking of Hemingway, he was an iconic figure in Key West from 1931 onward. He and his second wife Pauline bought a house on Whitehead Street and shared a rich but turbulent relationship that ended in 1939. Hemingway originally set up a boxing ring where the pool is now located, and he would spar with the local amateur boxers. Hemingway moved on, but Pauline’s and Hemingway’s legacy remained because she decided to stay and create a history that she might or might not have ever expected. She wanted to be understood and respected on her own terms, and she earned that right in a most impressive manner.
The original Sloppy Joe’s bar, now Captain Tony’s, was one of Hemingway’s haunts, and both the bar and his house are major tourist destinations, as is the current Sloppy Joe’s, also a vibrant place to visit and still Hemingwayesaque. No one debarking the cruise ships has any problem finding these places. Several dozen cats descending from Ernest’s and Pauline’s original tribe fairly well own the Hemingways’ Key West house. It’s also worth mentioning that Jimmy Buffet began finding his way at Captain Tony’s. Buffet even wrote a song about a night he spent with Captain Tony called “Last Mango in Paris,” which speaks to the visceral reality of living in paradise and grabbing that golden ring and swinging on it if one is lucky enough to find it.
The hurricanes that barrel through the Caribbean and swoop into the Keys can knock down palm trees, but they’ll never damage Key West’s indomitable spirit. Ghosts live everywhere on the island. Some remain as hidden as possible while others beg for your attention. One day, it took me an hour and a half to find the bungalow where Tennessee Williams had once lived, even after I had been given the address. The concierge at La Concha, where Williams wrote his final draft of A Streetcar Named Desire, pointed out the spot on the map where I would find the house, but the map showed only the more prominent streets. He spoke gracefully, but Williams lived on a tiny side street not on the map. When I did reach the general area, not one of the locals knew of Williams or where he had lived, except for one distracted bike rider, who was at least familiar with the street itself.
With this advice, I finally found Williams’ home, which is now privately owned and anything but a tourist destination, albeit a demure place where one might certainly be able to write in quiet.\The same secrets and uncertainties apply to the properties built by people who understood the sea. Courtyards hide behind the facades of mostly two-story houses that line every street, serving as private indulgences waiting for new ghosts to emerge, the ones who join us at the table or peer discreetly at us from behind a second-floor shutter.
The sea around Key West, which is at the very edge of the Bermuda Triangle, is a telescope through which the right imagination can revisit but never fully understand our origins. The surface is a prism beneath the moody sky, whether smooth, choppy, pale green, azure, or muddy brown. Below is prehistoric, a place to be a cautious guest since the fish and coral are fragile and curious. Brightly tailored creatures shadow your every move, examining you as the outsider you will always be.
The coral reefs are bleaching into pale underwater skeletons, due partly to increased water temperatures resulting from climate change. Higher carbon levels in the atmosphere are mostly to blame. Intrusive human activities on the water have done their fair share of harm as well. All of this means far fewer fish. Local fishermen know this. Many tourists don’t, or they prefer not to think of it. Should we kill the fish en masse, we kill our relatives, and then maybe ourselves. Then we’ll be dealing with a different community of ghosts.
I’ve been thinking of Key West more often these days. Somewhere between the morning shower and my evening meditations, I try to understand the place on my own terms. Key West is a dream actualized. The community’s polynomial nature means that even Bubbas (outsiders) adapt soon enough to a different code where anyone of age can carry alcohol in plastic cups along the streets because somehow it doesn’t make sense to impose various state laws in the only Caribbean location in the U.S., just 90 miles from Cuba but 154 miles from Miami. In Key West, it’s easy to forget the day of the week, and it might take you three days to get stamps at the post office. I’ve been trying to forget the days of the week more often.
“Do what you want, so long as you abide by some basic social guidelines and don’t make too much of a nuisance of yourself along the way.” I once wrote something similar about the Colorado Springs I moved to in 1971, and it was true. Then.
lol. The Springs of ’71 was a different universe.