May 24 – 31, 2022: Wedding #1

Long time, no see. I am currently writing this in July, looking back fondly on the grotesqueries I forced upon my body over the last 60 days. I’ve wanted to come back to the blog for a while now, but how to do it? Daily catchups were impossible, and I’m not putting anymore of the novel up. After a quick chat with a friend whose name rhymes with Brick, he suggested doing an event-based return. After all, my long absence was due to a sequence of committed events, taking me across Western Europe and up-and-down America’s East Coast. Thus, I bring you the beginning of this sordid affair (the phrase doesn’t really apply but I’ve always wanted to say it), to the wedding of a little friend I like to call Phil. I bring you:

THE TRUMP NATIONAL DORAL MIAMI

Downtown Miami and its coastline was absolutely stunning, radiant with the mixing pot of Cuban and Latino cultures in its very architecture as well as infused into its aura of resplendent nightlife. The ocean was crystal clear blue and the citizens seemed happier than ever. On the first night we went to a club called-

What’s that? Oh yeah, I forgot. I didn’t get to see any of this. My destination was only in “Miami” by name, in its western borough named Doral. No beaches, no skyline, and no clubs. Just a quaint little monstrosity jutting up from the marshes called the Trump National. When my 50 dollar taxi from the airport turned away from the city and into the swamps, I knew I needed a new set of expectations. I may not see Miami, but I would still see a good friend get married, and who knows? Maybe the area had a nightlife of its own around the hotel. I was there for 3 days. Surely we would have many activities, with the nuptials as the ultimate highlight.

Actually, I was wrong again. But we’ll get to that. First, some real photos that prove I still had a great time:

These photos were taken in the days following my arrival, which was around 7 pm on Friday, May 27, 2022. The reason there are no pictures from that night in particular is that, well, I played way too hard way too quickly. I arrived at the front desk in awe of the pomp and circumstance of the Trump grounds, if not of its charm or humility. Did you expect different? Everything was polished and ornate, and all of it was gold. It seemed to scream from the rafters: “WELCOME TO THE EPITOME OF CLASS, BABY!!” without realizing that screaming it defeats the purpose.

The father of the bride, our beautiful and articulate Rachel, was holding a ceremonial drink-meet-and-greet in the downstairs bar and restaurant, where he was generous enough to announce that he would purchase the first 100 drinks ordered. I am aware that a great portion of this post so far has been oozing with a kind of sarcasm, but when I say generous here, I really do mean it. These drinks were 15 bucks a pop, minimum, and I know at least two people (whose names rhyme with Brick and Dice) that walked away from the bar with espresso martinis. So, people weren’t ordering longdrinks from the well.

I’m happy to say that when I entered the bar, suitcase and backpack in tow, the first person I saw was the groom himself: our beloved Phil. My wary journey and dashed expectations were washed from my mind when I saw him give a big cheesy smile as he saw me walk in. I hadn’t seen this man in literal years. And somehow, some way, he had become a sight for sore eyes. We hugged and I met the father in-law to-be, as well as the rest of Phil’s blood family. His dad said something about the liberals actually letting me land here, and I forget what his mom and sister said because I was tired, and all I could focus on was getting a drink in my hand and not subjecting them to my involuntary male gaze.

Then it began. I looked up to the stout, trimmed-beard-clad bartender and asked if they could make a margarita, and when he said “dude, yeah.” and handed me one that seemed to glow that subtle neon only tequila and lime can produce, the light in my head beamed on. I had drank two by the time my other friends arrived and the hugs and reconnections began. The rest, as they say, is a blur. Jet lagged and sleep deprived, I drank five or six of those margaritas and pittered around the bar like a phantom that forgot he wasn’t dead yet. I remember going up to the bartender and before I could ask where to get cigarettes, he only nodded at me and started shaking up another margarita. Well, if it’s there? I took it and asked my question and soon I was lumbering behind him as he led me to the MAGA store across from the bar and unlocked its mall-style metal gate. Past the clothing and big red hats he reached below a counter and pulled out a pack of pure-white Marlboros I’ve never seen before. I tossed some bill at him and soon was outside overlooking the golf course with my friend Scott, and Phil’s sister Christina. And two puffs was all it took before my body started vibrating like the seat-waiting disks they give you at Olive Garden. Next thing I knew I was inside the most ostentatious bathroom ever conceived, the ceiling of each stall containing its own chandelier 10 feet up on the gold-plated ceiling. How many shit particles stained those fake diamonds up there, I wondered as I released bile into the porcelain. Scott came in and started laughing immediately. At me, or the room itself, we can never know.

After another quick brown out I was being led outside by Scott to the front entrance and he was saying some nonsense like “villa,” “stairs,” “room key,” or whatever. But soon enough a man of Latino descent rolled up in a golf cart and simply asked: “I take him? I take him?”. “Take me,” I said as I climbed in the back seat and Scott disappeared into the darkness behind me. When we zipped up to the villa in question, the driver started trying to talk nonsense to me as well, about “the elevator,” “the hallway,” and the “fourth door”. I brushed all that off easily enough and meandered inside. I found his precious elevator and went down a floor, which felt weird since I was already on the ground floor when I entered. But alas, it took me to a hallway of rooms and- yeah, no room number was appearing in my mind’s eye, so I started scanning the room card everywhere I saw a doorknob. After 15 minutes, I opened the door to a random conference room. The carpet looked comfy enough, but I decided to keep looking for just a few minutes before committing to such an option. Thankfully, oh so thankfully, I found our room and Scott’s girlfriend (and my longtime friend) Meag snoring in the far bed. “Home,” I thought. “I’m home.”

Saturday

“This is not home,” I thought when I woke up next to Rik shirtless beside me. This was also the day I discovered some disconcerting news about our place of hospitality: the only thing nearby was a Wawa (actually pretty dope), the only activity was the pool, and food was so absurdly expensive that I could never be angry enough to stop from laughing. But again, new expectations are not such a bad thing. And the pool was actually pretty great:

Aside from the little mishap wherein my friends got yelled at for bringing Wawa subs into the pool area (because the cheapest item on the lunch menu–the quesadilla–was 15 bucks before you even added any protein in there, and because the restaurants inside were in fact far worse, and because Wawa was the closest and only place one could go to get food and snacks that didn’t make you check your account beforehand to see if you had the funds, and because typically when you’re in an outside pool area at a hotel you paid hundreds of dollars to stay at for three days you are often allowed to purchase food wherever the hell you please and eat it wherever the hell you please, and because this is America and the Trump National Doral Miami should know that of all places), the day was really nice. Actually, the subs thing could have happened on Sunday, but at the moment I forget, and I’m leaving Sunday for the creme de la creme, the wedding itself. Either way, this all happened.

Phil’s dad said “hey, DeNardi, there’s no sweaters allowed in the pool!” multiple times, Scott swam around saying “I’m bored” for a few hours, Craig showed up, Nickyma showed up, and Kevin showed up even though he didn’t reveal himself for hours and Phil almost ended their friendship. I zoomed down the waterslide they had and shot a jet of water straight up my rectum upon impact with the pool below, and I destroyed the bar-side bathroom with diarrhea while I was dripping wet with chlorine-water. Again, this is basically just a mixture of both days at the pool, since we hung out there before the ceremony on Sunday, and again, it really doesn’t matter. At one point me and Mark had the cabana to ourselves and watched some soccer before the thunder started rolling in. Soon enough, we were back in the main bar and restaurant for the happy hour.

I wore a shirt with big giant succulent juicy peaches, and one girl called me “Nick Peaches” after ogling and touching my tattoos in front of her boyfriend for 5 minutes, and continued to call me that for the rest of the weekend. There was also a guy there who looked so much like Kristian, the groom of the 2nd wedding I attended in the last 60 days, that he had a freakout when the 12th person told him so. “Who the fuck is Kristian?” I remember him yelling. Good times.

Sunday: The Wedding

What do you want me to say, that the wedding in the fancy ballroom at the Trump, where the dinner was filet mignon and the drinks were flowing, and the speeches were great except for the best man’s, which honestly so bad I kind of cant believe it, wasn’t fun? Grow up. It was awesome. I may have dropped and exploded a beer during the cocktail hour, and also had an entire gin and tonic dropped on my head by the bride when we crowdsurfed her, but come on, these things happen. Tice and Corinne disappeared after 2 drinks (I heard he was puking), Nickyma was recovering from breaking his all-time martini record the night before (which I heard was something like 10 or 12), and Rik turned into a fiend.

As the night drew to a close, we spotted a puddle of barf in the corner of the ballroom lobby, admittedly left by Phil’s friend Will, who was also around throughout the whole thing but basically only made his real contribution with the vomit. Scott was beyond hammered after stealing my final beer and chugging it on the dancefloor, and he was getting really mad that Rik, Meag and I were scheming on ordering some T-bell to our villa. “Nobody wants that shit” I heard him exclaim, the same man I’ve gone to Taco Bell with probably over 50 times throughout the years. But it was fine, we got him back to the room and put him in bed, and soon he was off in dreamland as we scarfed down the dregs of the late-night T-bell menu that some old lady in a tottering old Honda delivered to us at 3 am. The night, and the weekend, had ended.

Monday doesn’t really deserve its own heading, so I won’t give it one. Rik, Mark and Marie left at 6 am to catch their flight to Spain for the Primavera Sound music festival (which was my next event as well) and I got to spend the morning with Scott, who remembered nothing after chugging my beer, and Meag, who was feeling great since she chose not to drink so much. We said our goodbyes and see-you-laters (after all, I would be in the states again in a couple weeks) and I took an uber to a mail shop to have some docs delivered to NJ that I couldn’t send from Germany. Then I went to the airport, and got on my flight back to Frankfurt. Spain was waiting.