The summer of 2025 was, by most meteorological accounts, a disaster.
It was, from what I could remember, a relentless parade of flash floods and canceled outdoor plans that reduced the entire city of New York to a damp, steaming grievance. And yet, against all statistical probability, I was approached by two different men in the wild. Not on the apps. Not at a bar where the whole premise is a meat market dressed up with Edison bulbs. I mean in actual real life. Outdoors. Like a nature documentary. This almost never happens to me. I want to be clear about that.
The first was Ray. We met at a bus stop last June. He was cute, attentive, and wholly presentable -- a legitimate meet-cute that my Substack-brain immediately began drafting into an essay that I shared back in March (you can read all about that here.) He predominantly took me to dive bars, never offered anything resembling dinner, and pressed for sex with the quiet persistence of a slowly leaking tire. When I ended things, he confessed he wasn’t looking for anything serious. In retrospect, I might have intuited this from the fact that he shared joint custody of an extremely ugly rat-dog named Katie with his ex-girlfriend, and that every time I suggested a restaurant or a bar above a certain price point he would say, mouth slightly open, “Wow. That’s pricey.” You make more money than I do, I wanted to tell him. The whole point of you is to impress me. I sent the breakup text from the Hamptons, which felt appropriate. After all, the Hamptons have been absorbing women’s complicated feelings about men since the 1970s.
But there I was again. A free agent. A Single Pringle, as I had taken to calling myself, with perhaps more humor than the situation strictly warranted.
That was until July.
I spent the last weekend of the month on Cape Cod with my Boston friends for the baptism of our friend Steph’s daughter, Valerie Karen Goode, who may in fact be the most well-behaved baby ever to emerge from the human body. She barely cried. We went to the beach, attended the baptism, and ate barbecue at the grandparents’ house of Steph’s husband, Nick. It was a super fun weekend.
To avoid the Sunday-evening catastrophe I had engineered two years prior -- when I’d made six friends haul me from Cape Cod to South Station so I could reach Penn Station in time for the House of the Dragon season finale (all while avoiding my phone for spoilers) I decided this time to stay Sunday night with my friend Kira in Boston and take the early train Monday morning. Mature. Responsible. The decision of a woman who has learned from her past mistakes.
“Do you have to leave that early tomorrow?” My friend Suyin asked me when she, Kira, Gen and our friend, Fiona and I had stopped in Quincy on the way back from the Cape for dinner. We had Pho. “I was thinking we could all grab breakfast together Monday morning before your train and before we each peel off to go in for work.”
One of Suyin’s favorite TV shows was Friends. She especially loved the scenes where the characters gathered for breakfast before heading to work. While these moments provided a cozy setting for plot-driving dialogue, real-world viewers have correctly identified this as television’s most audacious lie, a greater fabrication than any of the science fiction shows NBC aired alongside. And yet Suyin, magnificent Suyin, was committed to making it a reality. It was one of my favorite qualities about her.
“My train’s at six,” I said. “Next time,” I promised. “I’ll take the afternoon train. Breakfast, absolutely.”
My train left from Back Bay Station, which I still take out of habit from my years living in Kenmore Square, despite the fact that South Station is the first stop on the line and therefore, by the time the train reached me, was already packed. Every window seat had been claimed. I took the first available spot next to some guy and settled in.
I want to be transparent about how I looked. I was wearing basketball shorts, a Mount Holyoke Swimming & Diving t-shirt that I’ve owned since sophomore year of college, a Red Sox hat, and my signature cat-eye glasses. I had three bags (four if you count the Lululemon crossbody.) A large matcha from Starbucks was in my hand. I looked, as I would later describe to my friend Juliana, like Larry David if he decided to cross-dress.
The conductor came through. He asked my final destination.
“New York,” I said.
“New Yawk!” said the man next to me, in what I can only describe as an attempt at humor.
I ignored him. The matcha had not kicked in. It was too early for men.
An hour passed. The train moved through Rhode Island and into Connecticut. The man next to me -- I’ll call him Lutz -- had been making small, ambient observations about the scenery in the manner of someone hoping to be engaged. “Oh, look at that boat.” “Oh, look at that water.” He was pointing at things through the window like a golden retriever alerting to geese.
Meanwhile, I was trying to listen to Kesha’s newest album when the man next to me tapped me on the shoulder. Or rather, poked me in the arm.
“Hey, do I have a bug bite here on my neck?” He pointed to the area of his skin and stretched it out.
“No.” I automatically answered.
“Are you sure? Because I definitely can feel something here.”
“There’s definitely nothing there,” I gruffed, wanting to go back and being sad about missing my friends. And also, I think I was also still half asleep at this point.
“Would you mind just checking for me?” The guy insisted.
I sighed, annoyed. This fucking guy.
I got out my phone. Turned on the flashlight. Lowered my glasses.
“You’re fine,” I said.
“’Kay.” He paused. “By the way, I’m Lutz.”
Suffice to say, I was now slightly more awake.
“So is New York your stop?” I asked.
“Hartford. Visiting friends.” He turned to me. “Hey, do you like music?”
He was the lead singer of a band, he explained, and wanted to know my thoughts on his latest song. We struggled briefly to get my wireless earbuds to pair with his phone, which failed. I braced for him to offer me his earbuds, caked in God knows what. But instead, he handed me his sunglasses -- Ray-Ban Meta glasses with surround sound -- and played me a song.
I had subterranean expectations. But his music was actually good. His voice was good! The song he played for me sounded like Blink-182 and Simple Plan had a very competent punk-rock child. I listen to both bands at the gym with some regularity, so this was not nothing new to me.
“Not bad,” I said, handing his Ray-Ban Meta glasses back to him.
He told me he specialized in punk, rock, and metal. And this is when I knew I was in trouble. Because I actually like that genre of music. And the more he talked, the more intrigued I became, a sensation I recognized as dangerous the moment I registered it.
Lutz had gone to WPI before transferring to Tufts. He was from Wellesley, Massachusetts, and was currently pursuing a PhD in dermatology at the University of Miami. He was getting his doctorate and playing in a rock band simultaneously, which, depending on your perspective, is either extremely attractive or a bright red warning flag with a pennant attached.
“You should come visit sometime,” he said. “You ever been to Miami?”
I had not. Miami, for New Yorkers, occupies a specific aspirational space. Somewhere between the Hamptons and a Carbone reservation you can actually get. Several of my friends had recently posted Instagram content that was aggressively pink and pastel, with boat-related captions and Wynwood street art.
My own Florida history was not encouraging.
My first time visiting Florida was a chaperoned Spring Break trip my sophomore year of college to Fort Lauderdale where my two friends and I did not drink, did not shop, and did not party. Instead, a friend’s father shepherding us gently between the hotel and the beach. So yeah, it wasn’t all that exciting.
My second time visiting Florida was when I spent Thanksgiving in Naples with my then-boyfriend J.P.. There, I was greeted with palm trees, blue water and a lot of bumper stickers that said, “Trump that Bitch” on a lot of cars. Both of J.P.’s parents thought that was hilarious. I did not.
My third time visiting Florida was during a long weekend at Universal Studios in Orlando. I was with Suyin, Kira and one other friend who complained about the long lines we had to wait in throughout the entire trip. This trip (thankfully) was redeemed only by a wand a former coworker of mine let me borrow that allowed you cast spells throughout Harry Potter World -- which is genuinely one of the more unexpectedly moving experiences I’ve had as an adult.
“Then you should definitely come out and visit,” Lutz said.
“Sure,” I said, in the tone of someone calling a bluff. “Buy me a plane ticket and I’ll come.”
He bought me a plane ticket.
Right then and right there.
On the train.
He pulled out his phone and, while I watched, purchased a first-class round-trip ticket to Miami for the last week of August.
I was, in order, shocked, astonished, and then — I’ll be honest — somewhat turned on. No one had bought me a plane ticket on a whim since J.P. and I dated. But this was different. This was someone looking at me in my Larry David ensemble, four bags, and deciding I was worth a first-class ticket to Miami, Florida.
Big Dick Energy, I thought. In the wild!
“By the way,” Lutz said, “I can send you more music samples, if you’re interested.”
I recognized the move. Ray had used a variation of it at the bus stop.
“Is this your way of asking for my number?”
“Is it working?”
“You did just buy me a plane ticket to Miami.” I handed him my phone.
Our next stop was Hartford. As he stood to leave, I got my first look at his full profile. He was really cute -- dark-skinned, Asian, with jet-black hair and a distinctive birthmark above his left eye. He looked, I realized with a sinking feeling, a little bit like Bruno Mars.
I really need to stop dating men who look like Bruno Mars. Nothing good can come from it.
“See you in Miami,” he winked, and got off the train.
I checked the Delta app. The tickets were real! Confirmation codes and everything. I stared at them for a long time.
What the hell just happened?
Candace Bushnell wrote about this actually. In her early columns -- the ones that would become Sex and the City -- she documented a New York in which it was apparently standard for men at parties to jet you to the Swiss Alps for the weekend. This was the early 80s. Pre-smartphone, pre-location sharing, operating entirely on blind trust and the assumption that your host was not, in fact, a murderer. My friend Juliana -- before she met her current boyfriend, Hugo -- had been offered a trip to Switzerland by someone she’d been on one date with from Hinge. I remember thinking to myself, What kind of insane person offers to fly a total stranger across the world after one date? Turns out, many people. Especially if you’ve ever had someone make a grand gesture and felt the specific warmth of being chosen.
“You’re not seriously thinking of staying at his place though,” Juliana said, correctly, on a walk through Washington Square Park.
“No. I’ll get a hotel for myself.”
“And share your location with us. I don’t want to see you on Dateline.”
She also advised me to FaceTime Lutz a few times before the trip, to confirm he was not, in her words, an American Psycho type who would “peel your face off and wear it for fun.”
This was, I admitted, reasonable. I had been reading Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City when I met Lutz, which means I had spent several weeks immersed in the story of H.H. Holmes, the nineteenth-century serial killer who seduced women with charm and good looks before luring them into his hotel. The parallels were not lost on me.
Lutz was charming. BUT SO WAS H.H. HOLMES!
Lutz was handsome. BUT SO WAS H.H. HOLMES!
Lutz had gone out of his way to buy me a plane ticket to see him. H.H. HOLMES HAD BEEN A MASTER MANIPULATOR WHO...
Yeah. Something told me Lutz was nothing like not H.H. Holmes.
Call it women’s intuition, or the fact that I have a black belt in taekwondo and could cause him meaningful physical harm if it came to that.
I booked a room at the Hotel Clinton in South Beach. I scheduled weekly FaceTime dates with Lutz, during which I learned the following about him: He was thirty years old (two years my junior, so I could absolutely kick his ass.) He was entering his second year of the PhD program at the Univeristy of Miami. He had an older sister who was also a dermatologist and had married an Italian man from Salerno. He was not scary or unsettling. He was, if anything, kind of a goofball. A nerdy, goofy person getting his doctorate in skin. I found myself thinking, after our last call before the trip, that I might actually like him. But the jury was very much still out.
He did, during one call, show me a box of medical tranquilizers he kept in his closet, which he assured me were not for his serial killing sprees. Beige flag, I noted.
Lutz made it clear that he would be working the week I flew into Miami, though his evenings would be completely free for us. I didn’t mind at all. I was self-sufficient enough to do my own research and keep myself entertained while he worked on his PhD in the mornings. That meant I could hit up all the cool spots I’d seen on my friends’ Instagram feeds -- vibrant, candy-pop glitter venues awash in pink and pastel. I love being independent in a brand-new city; it feels incredibly freeing. And with Lutz busy during the day, I eagerly charted out my own daily itinerary.
Lutz flew me in on a Tuesday, a total of four days in Miami. I wore Lululemon leggings on the plane, which seemed reasonable at LaGuardia. But then felt criminal the moment I stepped outside in the Miami sun. The humidity hit like a warm, wet hand pressed flat against my face. People on the street were in cotton Lilly Pulitzer dresses and flip-flops. I was dressed (and looked like) I had just finished a fully intensive Pilates class.
I had spent the morning at LaGuardia waiting for the text that would cancel everything. You know the one. The one that always arrives at the eleventh hour, the one where the man realizes this was a mistake, makes up an excuse and then retreats into the ether.
Sorry, I can’t do this. I’m not emotionally ready for this. Blah, blah, blah...
I had mentally braced myself when I arrived at my gate. My Group was called. I scanned my ticket. No alarm. No cancellation. No void ticket. I boarded the plane and sat in first class and flew to Miami, Florida.
The whole time I kept thinking, This is either the beginning of something special, or it’s gonna make for extremely good source material.
DAY 1
Lutz picked me up at my hotel once I’d showered, changed and unpacked. He was, in person, as cute as I remembered -- and he was wearing a Rolex, which I noted and mentally filed away. We drove to LoanDepot Park for a Marlins game against the Atlanta Braves. On our way over, we drove straight through downtown Miami, a city that appeared to be assembled by someone who had gotten hopelessly distracted. It was a landscape of half-built highways and idling construction equipment, carrying the distinct aesthetic of a Lego set a child had abandoned mid-build.
At LoanDepot Park, Lutz bought me one hot dog. This was my dinner. I had not eaten since eight in the morning.
The stadium was, I want to say charitably… intimate. Even though we were sitting behind home plate, I couldn’t help but notice that the stadium was very nearly empty. There were more Atlanta Braves fans in attendance than Marlins fans, which at a Marlins home game is either very funny or very sad. I’ve been to Dodger Stadium. I’ve been to Fenway. I’ve been to Yankee Stadium, where the collective ill will of forty-five thousand people toward the opposing team functions almost as a kind of civic infrastructure. The Marlins game felt like a small dinner party where only one person shows up. I had second-hand embarrassment… for the whole team. The Marlins lost 11 to 2.
After the game, Lutz took me back to his apartment, which was a penthouse with facial recognition entry and a rooftop jacuzzi that overlooked Brickell Heights. I floated in that jacuzzi under the dark Miami sky.
“You still hungry?" I asked him. Because I sure as hell was. That hot dog was not enough after the day that I just had. “I can order us a pizza from somewhere.”
“Nah,” he said waving my suggestion off. “I have some leftovers we can chow down on.”
“Leftovers?” I asked. “Your leftovers?”
Because I love leftovers. Especially Thai leftovers. Thai food in my opinion is the best food to reheat afterwards. But that was only when it was my food. My leftovers.
“Yeah, I think I have half a pizza from yesterday I can warm up for you.”
“Oh, um, okay.” I said.
Here was a man who had purchased me a first-class airline ticket on a train on the basis of a thirty-second dare, and who was now, in his penthouse, beside his rooftop jacuzzi, offering to reheat day-old pizza for the woman he had flown hundreds of miles to see.
This is a specific kind of man. I have met him before in different configurations. In fact, I met this kind of man just a couple of months ago: Ray.
He leads with a grand gesture but then cannot maintain the altitude.
Day 2
The next day I explored Miami on my own. I did four rotations on the Skyviews Ferris wheel and meandered around the Bayside Marketplace. Afterwards, I zoomed downtown on the Miami Metrorail. Gliding along, it felt like a nostalgic nod to the Disneyland monorail I used to ride on as a kid at Tomorrowland. Sleek, fast, and distinctly futuristic. The highlight was a giant viewing window at the front of the car, which laid out a full, mesmerizing view of the tracks winding above the Miami streets.
But I kept being defeated by the humidity, which in August in Miami functions less like weather and more like a physical condition you have been diagnosed with.
Coming from Southern California, I was well-traveled in dry heat; Los Angeles was basically a desert. And after living over a decade on the East Coast, I was also pretty good at surviving snowstorms. But humidity? No fucking way. There is something about Florida that always leaves me deeply unsettled, precisely because of how closely it mimics California. It boasts the same palm trees, a dominant Spanish-speaking population, and vibrant coastal neighborhoods that feel like a distorted mirror image of Venice Beach or Santa Monica. Yet, there is always an uncanny valley effect -- an unshakeable reminder that I am definitely not in California.
It was the random iguanas crossing the road in the middle of the city. It was the way the local colors felt aggressively oversaturated, as if they were dialed up on purpose to mask something ugly from underneath. And then there was the air conditioning, blasting the moment you stepped inside, carrying a distinct, musty odor. It smelled like it hadn’t been turned on in a year, suddenly generating so much force that it blew out a full calendar year’s worth of dust from its metal vents. Nothing smelled truly clean or fresh; everything was either dusty or overpowered by globs of sunscreen.
The humidity, though, was the absolute worst part. It made me wonder how anyone on Earth could possibly live in this kind of climate. The only thing comparable was a miserable Fourth of July spent in Washington, D.C., with Sarah. The The heavy, atmospheric weight was so drastically off the charts that while sitting outside for dinner, I had what I can only describe as a panic attack. I excused myself from the table and spent ten minutes inside the restaurant trying to cool off. Sarah got so concerned she abandoned her dinner just to wait inside with me until my body temperature returned to normal.
To this day, the humidity and I do not mix. Visiting Lutz during the absolute dregs of August felt like a personal test of endurance. I am convinced that if I die and go to Hell, it will look exactly like Miami. If Dante had ever experienced South Florida in late August, the Inferno would have featured a tenth circle dedicated exclusively to the humidity.
That evening Lutz and I went to Carbone. He suggested that we sit outside. This was a mistake. I sweated through my new dress while Lutz told me, at length, about the time he auditioned for American Idol.
“What do your parents do?” I asked, because I had been trying to reverse-engineer how a thirty-year-old PhD student paid for a first-class ticket and a Rolex and a Brickell Heights penthouse.
“Oh they’re tenured professors at Tufts,” he answered casually.
I blinked at him. “Oh.” I said. “How nice. What do they teach?”
“Biology.”
“Interesting.”
So it was safe to say that he did not have rich parents. Unless it was some kind of form of generational wealth that I didn’t know about.
“And you said that you are a full-time PhD student, correct?”
“That’s right,” he was going to town on the spicy vodka rigatoni. “You need some skincare tips, I’m your guy.”
“Right.” I sat there, confused. Where the hell was the money coming from?
“And what do you like to do? For fun, I mean?” I asked. “Outside of school and studying, and making music, obviously.”
“I play poker.” He answered nonchalantly.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty good at it. Mostly online poker.”
“Cool.” I said. “How often do you play?”
“Well, like almost everyday.”
“Is that so?”
I felt my stomach drop. In the course of a single summer, I’ve found myself on a date with a closeted alcoholic (Ray), and now I was in Miami with a neurotic gambler (Lutz.) Were there ANY normal guys left in the world with NORMAL hobbies?
“Yeah, it’s how I pay the bills.”
“Oh.” I said. “How much do you typically win?”
“Like around $10,000.”
“Per year?”
“Per week.”
I choked on my wine.
The penthouse, the Rolex, the first class plane tickets, it all snapped into place. He was a professional gambler getting a PhD in dermatology to keep his parents from asking questions, playing in a punk/rock band on whenever he had some downtown, and flying women to Miami on a whim because he could.
“Your parents must be so proud,” I said.
“They’ll be more proud once I have the PhD,” he said cheerfully. “After that, I’m getting the band back together and we’re going on tour.”
Then he brightened, “Hey, I think there’s enough pasta left for leftovers!”
Day 3
The third day was the worst.
I took an Uber to the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, a Gilded Age estate on Biscayne Bay. The kind of Italianate palazzo that makes you feel briefly like you are somewhere sophisticated, which is a feeling I was aggressively seeking in Miami.
Where I was staying in South Beach was cool and retro. The whole area appeared as if it had been frozen in time since the 1950s. Hot pink umbrellas, turquoise tables, neon signs, and old-fashioned Cadillacs lined the streets. This surreal vibe was something Dante should have taken note of for his circles of Hell. When I first arrived, I was excited to sample the food, having heard that the Cuban cuisine in Miami was unreal.
As I strolled down the main drag of Ocean Drive on my first day in Miami, walking past these iconic, pastel Art Deco hotels, I checked out the menus of the colorful beachfront restaurants. That’s when I noticed something bizarre. While every hotel was architecturally unique, their menus were completely identical. Not a single place stood out or offered anything imaginative; they all served the exact same food on the same exact laminated menu I’d seen three blocks back.
A sad, obligatory Cuban sandwich, a generic Caesar salad with dry grilled chicken, and a massive, syrupy $40 bulldog margarita with two upside-down Coronas melting into it. You could walk next door to a gorgeous, pastel-pink Spanish Revival property, and there it was again -- the identical overpriced shrimp cocktail and the same uninspired skirt steak with chimichurri. It was straight-up culinary plagiarism.
The only oasis of individuality was the Versace Mansion. Rather than pandering to the masses with the same copy-paste tourist fare found at the neighboring beachfront spots, its upscale Mediterranean cuisine actually matched the opulent luxury of the estate. It was far from a casual walk-up trap; gaining access to their high-end seafood, handmade pastas, and the famed million-mosaic swimming pool required a strictly coveted reservation. Recognizing it as the ultimate escape, I promptly booked a solo lunch for one of the days Lutz would be working.
Beyond that, the entirety of Ocean Drive felt like that eerie scene from A Wrinkle in Time when Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin arrive on the planet Camazotz. It was a chillingly perfect, cookie-cutter trap where everything operated in terrifying sync and individuality had been completely stripped away. Despite the distinct architecture of each building, the open-air restaurants beneath them were all trapped in the exact same monotony.
I was hoping the Vizcaya Museum would provide a dose of actual refinement, offering a much-needed escape from the gaudy, overstimulated scenery of South Beach.
It was a beautiful mansion, but it was sweltering the day I arrived. Worse, I thought I had done everything right. I drank a ton of water, carried my water bottle everywhere, and stayed in the shade. But the house wasn’t actually air-conditioned. True to the Tuscan villa it was supposed to resemble, everything was completely open-air.
While walking through the gardens, I started to feel dizzy. Extreme humidity like this makes me feel like I’m being cooked alive from the inside out. It’s not a great feeling. Trying to be responsible (and still believing I was doing everything right to keep from overheating), I went back inside the villa to cool off for fifteen minutes, even passing the time with one of my Duolingo Italian lessons. Once I felt better, I headed back outside to explore the cove.
Just five minutes later, everything went dark.
I had passed out on one of the stone bridges that encircled the cove and woke up with three security guards standing over me. I looked down. Blood was spilling out of my left knee and ankle.
“Did you drink enough water?” One of the security guards asked me.
“Yes,” I answered. “Hey, could I possibly get a band aid?”
“We’re gonna move to you the shade now,” another security guard helped me up.
“Okay,” I said. “Can I get a band aid for my leg?”
“That looked like a nasty fall, did you hit your head?”
“No.” I said. “Can I get a band aid?”
“You sure --"
“Yes.” I said. “Band aid?”
“Because if you’ve hit your head, we’ll need to call an ambulance --”
“I NEED,” I said interrupting, pointing to the blood that was now pooling generously around my ankle, “a Band-Aid!”
They gave me one Band-Aid, held at arm’s length, as though I were a feral animal who had selected this moment to become their problem. I hobbled to the bathroom, cleaned myself up, and considered my options. I called an Uber to the Fashion District and had lunch at the Dior Café, where the staff was kind and the food was good and I sat alone with a bandaged leg.
What the hell am I even doing here? I thought as I fought the tears suddenly prickling behind my eyes. I was here because some rando wanted me here, and yet he wasn’t even physically with me. I had tried to convince myself that I didn’t care whether Lutz was around or not -- that I was independent, happy to do my own thing, and perfectly content entertaining myself on solo adventures until the evening. And I was. I am.
But passing out at Vizcaya changed everything. Bleeding all alone while a group of strangers ignored me, and waiting over five minutes for someone to procure a single, pathetic Band-Aid, made me desperately wish someone had been there. Someone looking out and advocating for me. Someone to tell those idiot security guards that I was hurt. Didn’t they see how much I was even bleeding? Even though I prided myself on my independence, that was the exact moment I suddenly wished I wasn’t alone.
Because despite being flown out on Lutz’s dime to hang out when he wasn’t working, the reality was that I was alone. I was mostly alone for the entire trip. No matter how many solo activities I planned for myself, that dark cloud hung over me.
A part of me was furious at him. I’m here! I wanted to yell. You’re the one who flew me out here to this godforsaken place! Why aren’t you the one taking me out and showing me a good time?
Honestly, if I hadn’t injured myself at Vizcaya, I probably wouldn’t have spiraled into these thoughts. But suddenly, the fun was completely gone. I hated being alone. I hated the humidity. I hated Lutz, and I hated Miami. All I wanted was to be taken care of. Lutz paying for my flight had created this false illusion that because he took care of my travel, he would actually also take care of me.
And then Lutz texted. Hope you’re excited for tonight! I’m going to take you rock climbing!
About that… I replied.
Thirty minutes later he appeared at the Fashion District, looked at my leg, and said: “You’ll be fine. It doesn’t look that bad.”
We went to the rock climbing gym. There were no ropes, no belay systems -- everyone was free solo climbing, which with a functional left ankle is a challenge and with a freshly scraped one is a form of punishment. I climbed. I was bad. I could see Lutz recalibrating his assessment of me in real time. I was, in his eyes, becoming a wet blanket. And maybe I was. But as an injured woman who secretly wanted him to look at me -- to really look at me, recognize that I was in physical pain, and have the awareness to suggest literally anything else -- while I simultaneously and stubbornly refused to say a single word out loud, I was equally furious with myself.
We had dinner at Dolores But You Can Call Me Lolita, which is a magnificent name for a restaurant that Nabokov would have appreciated. I did not want to share a dish. I wanted my own dish. I wanted to order pizza and watch Rick and Morty and be held by another human being in a blanket. But Lutz asked if I wanted to split the surf and turf, his Rolex watch flashing on his wrist.
Who the hell was this man? He was card shark, a PhD student and liked serving leftovers to the girls that he brought back to his penthouse.
“Lutz,” I said. “What’s your favorite movie?”
“Oh, I don’t really go to the movies. I think the last movie I saw in theaters was the newest Final Destination film. Hard to go out when you’re a PhD student.”
“Okay.” I said. “What about books? Do you have a favorite book?”
“I’m currently reading all of my textbooks for my classes,” he answered.
“Yeah, I get that.” I said. “I mean were there any books that you liked reading when you were in high school? Anything by Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Rushdie… God forbid, anything by David Foster Wallace.”
Please don’t say Infinite Jest, I mentally begged.
“Nah, I wasn’t really into reading,” he said, plunging the knife deeper into my chest. “Like okay, you wanna know what my favorite book is?”
“Yes,” I said. Because you must like something humanitarian, right?
“Okay,” he said, putting down his fork. “My favorite book,” he said slowly. “Is All My Friends Are Dead.”
I paused. “What?”
“Yeah, it’s funny.”
A pause.
“The… picture book that’s in your bathroom?” I clarified.
“Yeah that one! It’s great!”
All My Friends Are Dead is a gag gift. It consists of a collection of simple illustrations paired with short, depressing jokes about the bleak realities faced by specific characters and inanimate objects. For example, if you’re a dinosaur, “All my friends are dead.” If you’re a pirate, “All my friends have scurvy.” And, if you’re a tree, “All my friends are end tables.”
This was his favorite book. I had asked about Fitzgerald. I had asked about Hemingway. I had opened the door wide enough to walk through with even a middling literary reference like fucking David Foster Wallace because I know that neurotic, down-to-earth, dude-bros read (and like) his shitty writing.
But no. Lutz had chosen (basically) a coffee table book.
I almost wish he had said, Infinite Jest. It would have at least proved to me that he liked reading!
Back at his place, he pulled out his laptop because he wanted to introduce to me his favorite TV show. I assumed that he and I were gonna lie in his bed and watch an episode of Rick and Morty, or South Park, or literally any show that would confirm we inhabited the same cultural universe.
“I’ve never actually seen Rick and Morty,” he said. “South Park I never got into.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Instead, he opened YouTube to show me an obscure cartoon called Golan the Insatiable, a show that survived a mere two seasons on Fox’s Animation Domination lineup before cancellation.
It wasn't hard to see why the audience had stayed away.
The cartoon lacked substance, favoring arbitrary violence, dismemberment, and dark fantasy over the genuinely sharp, structured wit found in Bob’s Burgers or The Simpsons. To keep myself tethered to reality, I latched onto the voices of the two main characters, recognizing them as Rob Riggle and Aubrey Plaza. But when I brought it up, Lutz’s blank expression confirmed the worst. He had no idea who they were, leaving us stranded in completely different cultural universes.
I didn’t get it. Lutz was completely out of touch with mainstream pop culture. If I’m being honest, staying fluent in trends is pretty much a requirement if you want to be in a serious relationship with me. You need to be up-to-date on your pop culture knowledge; otherwise, you’re just lagging behind with nothing to talk about around the office watercooler.
“So, you’ve never seen Game of Thrones?” I asked. “House of the Dragon? Battlestar Galactica? Star Trek? Star Wars? Stargate SG-1?”
Jesus, I sounded more like a nerd than him.
“Nah. Not really my thing,” he said, getting up. “Oh hey! I still have those Carbone leftovers if you’re hungry.”
Day 4
My last full day I got up early and walked the shore of the beach before the humidity peaked. South Beach is genuinely beautiful in that hour -- the pastel art deco hotels glowing in morning light, the empty stretch of sand, the sense that you have arrived somewhere that once meant something.
Later, Lutz took me out to breakfast before driving me to the airport.
“We’ll definitely have to do this again,” he said.
“Uh-Huh.” I answered back.
We were definitely not going to do this again.
He knew it. I knew it. We hugged. We kissed. He waved me goodbye.
I never saw Lutz again.
I cried on the plane ride home in my first class seat. Not about Lutz, exactly, but with the specific relief of returning to a place that is yours. I cried in the cab from LaGuardia, stuck in real New York traffic, watching real New York infrastructure pass outside the window, skyscrapers and all. I laid down on my couch when I got home and thought to myself, If I had just agreed to Monday morning breakfast with Suyin, none of this would have happened.
I wouldn’t have met Lutz. I wouldn’t have been flown to Miami first class. I wouldn’t have passed out at a Gilded Age estate and demanded a Band-Aid from knuckleheaded security guards. And I wouldn’t have watched two seasons of an obscure cartoon I have already largely forgotten.
Yet, I also realized that the entire experience wasn’t wasted. Yes, Maimi was a city that I had always been curious about visiting. Now I finally had and can draw my on conclusions and opinions that I had for that city. I finally got to know Lutz better and discovered that perhaps Lutz wasn’t my guy either.
Because learning what you dislike is just as important as finding out what you like and figuring out what you’re actually looking for in a serious relationship.
“But seriously, how are you meeting these men?” my running coach, Christina asked, when she and I met up again for our Precision Run workout class at Equinox.
“Out in the wild.”
“But where?”
“Buses and trains, mostly.” I shrugged.
She looked at me. “That can’t be all.”
And she’s right. It isn’t.
Looking back, the way I met Ray and Lutz carries a lot of weight.
I met Ray on my way to cheer on Juliana and our friend Sophie at their 10K in Central Park. I met Lutz on my way back from Steph’s baby’s baptism on the Cape. In a way, these two men bookended my summer -- like punctuation marks around a sentence I was still figuring out how to read. Both times, I was in motion toward or away from the people I love. And yet both times, some stranger was brave enough to muster up the courage to speak to me while I was thinking about someone else entirely.
And okay sure, nothing lasting came from either encounter. But there is something beautiful about being a woman who was approached twice in one summer, completely in the wild, while being distracted by her own beautiful and chaotic life. I wasn’t hunting for a relationship. I was thinking about Juliana and Sophie crossing the finish line, or how incredible it was to see Steph as a mother with Valerie in her arms. Yet, while my heart was full of my friends, the universe threw me two wild cards: A phone number on a bus and a dare on a train that landed me in Miami.
My time in Miami gave me a vital reminder of my own resilience. I can take care of myself in a strange city, even when I’m literally bleeding from my knees and my ankles. Independence can be lonely, but it is also empowering. It its own way, being single is a privilege.
The secret to meeting people in the wild is simply showing up for your own life. Prioritize your people, move through the world with confidence, and eventually, someone will tap you on the shoulder -- regardless of whether you’re at a crowded bar, waiting at a bus stop, or sitting on a plane -- just to ask you to look at a weird bug bite on their neck.
So Suyin, I’ll take the afternoon train next time.
Monday breakfast will be on me.
And let’s make sure not to leave any leftovers.
It was, from what I could remember, a relentless parade of flash floods and canceled outdoor plans that reduced the entire city of New York to a damp, steaming grievance. And yet, against all statistical probability, I was approached by two different men in the wild. Not on the apps. Not at a bar where the whole premise is a meat market dressed up with Edison bulbs. I mean in actual real life. Outdoors. Like a nature documentary. This almost never happens to me. I want to be clear about that.
The first was Ray. We met at a bus stop last June. He was cute, attentive, and wholly presentable -- a legitimate meet-cute that my Substack-brain immediately began drafting into an essay that I shared back in March (you can read all about that here.) He predominantly took me to dive bars, never offered anything resembling dinner, and pressed for sex with the quiet persistence of a slowly leaking tire. When I ended things, he confessed he wasn’t looking for anything serious. In retrospect, I might have intuited this from the fact that he shared joint custody of an extremely ugly rat-dog named Katie with his ex-girlfriend, and that every time I suggested a restaurant or a bar above a certain price point he would say, mouth slightly open, “Wow. That’s pricey.” You make more money than I do, I wanted to tell him. The whole point of you is to impress me. I sent the breakup text from the Hamptons, which felt appropriate. After all, the Hamptons have been absorbing women’s complicated feelings about men since the 1970s.
But there I was again. A free agent. A Single Pringle, as I had taken to calling myself, with perhaps more humor than the situation strictly warranted.
That was until July.
I spent the last weekend of the month on Cape Cod with my Boston friends for the baptism of our friend Steph’s daughter, Valerie Karen Goode, who may in fact be the most well-behaved baby ever to emerge from the human body. She barely cried. We went to the beach, attended the baptism, and ate barbecue at the grandparents’ house of Steph’s husband, Nick. It was a super fun weekend.
To avoid the Sunday-evening catastrophe I had engineered two years prior -- when I’d made six friends haul me from Cape Cod to South Station so I could reach Penn Station in time for the House of the Dragon season finale (all while avoiding my phone for spoilers) I decided this time to stay Sunday night with my friend Kira in Boston and take the early train Monday morning. Mature. Responsible. The decision of a woman who has learned from her past mistakes.
“Do you have to leave that early tomorrow?” My friend Suyin asked me when she, Kira, Gen and our friend, Fiona and I had stopped in Quincy on the way back from the Cape for dinner. We had Pho. “I was thinking we could all grab breakfast together Monday morning before your train and before we each peel off to go in for work.”
One of Suyin’s favorite TV shows was Friends. She especially loved the scenes where the characters gathered for breakfast before heading to work. While these moments provided a cozy setting for plot-driving dialogue, real-world viewers have correctly identified this as television’s most audacious lie, a greater fabrication than any of the science fiction shows NBC aired alongside. And yet Suyin, magnificent Suyin, was committed to making it a reality. It was one of my favorite qualities about her.
“My train’s at six,” I said. “Next time,” I promised. “I’ll take the afternoon train. Breakfast, absolutely.”
My train left from Back Bay Station, which I still take out of habit from my years living in Kenmore Square, despite the fact that South Station is the first stop on the line and therefore, by the time the train reached me, was already packed. Every window seat had been claimed. I took the first available spot next to some guy and settled in.
I want to be transparent about how I looked. I was wearing basketball shorts, a Mount Holyoke Swimming & Diving t-shirt that I’ve owned since sophomore year of college, a Red Sox hat, and my signature cat-eye glasses. I had three bags (four if you count the Lululemon crossbody.) A large matcha from Starbucks was in my hand. I looked, as I would later describe to my friend Juliana, like Larry David if he decided to cross-dress.
The conductor came through. He asked my final destination.
“New York,” I said.
“New Yawk!” said the man next to me, in what I can only describe as an attempt at humor.
I ignored him. The matcha had not kicked in. It was too early for men.
An hour passed. The train moved through Rhode Island and into Connecticut. The man next to me -- I’ll call him Lutz -- had been making small, ambient observations about the scenery in the manner of someone hoping to be engaged. “Oh, look at that boat.” “Oh, look at that water.” He was pointing at things through the window like a golden retriever alerting to geese.
Meanwhile, I was trying to listen to Kesha’s newest album when the man next to me tapped me on the shoulder. Or rather, poked me in the arm.
“Hey, do I have a bug bite here on my neck?” He pointed to the area of his skin and stretched it out.
“No.” I automatically answered.
“Are you sure? Because I definitely can feel something here.”
“There’s definitely nothing there,” I gruffed, wanting to go back and being sad about missing my friends. And also, I think I was also still half asleep at this point.
“Would you mind just checking for me?” The guy insisted.
I sighed, annoyed. This fucking guy.
I got out my phone. Turned on the flashlight. Lowered my glasses.
“You’re fine,” I said.
“’Kay.” He paused. “By the way, I’m Lutz.”
Suffice to say, I was now slightly more awake.
“So is New York your stop?” I asked.
“Hartford. Visiting friends.” He turned to me. “Hey, do you like music?”
He was the lead singer of a band, he explained, and wanted to know my thoughts on his latest song. We struggled briefly to get my wireless earbuds to pair with his phone, which failed. I braced for him to offer me his earbuds, caked in God knows what. But instead, he handed me his sunglasses -- Ray-Ban Meta glasses with surround sound -- and played me a song.
I had subterranean expectations. But his music was actually good. His voice was good! The song he played for me sounded like Blink-182 and Simple Plan had a very competent punk-rock child. I listen to both bands at the gym with some regularity, so this was not nothing new to me.
“Not bad,” I said, handing his Ray-Ban Meta glasses back to him.
He told me he specialized in punk, rock, and metal. And this is when I knew I was in trouble. Because I actually like that genre of music. And the more he talked, the more intrigued I became, a sensation I recognized as dangerous the moment I registered it.
Lutz had gone to WPI before transferring to Tufts. He was from Wellesley, Massachusetts, and was currently pursuing a PhD in dermatology at the University of Miami. He was getting his doctorate and playing in a rock band simultaneously, which, depending on your perspective, is either extremely attractive or a bright red warning flag with a pennant attached.
“You should come visit sometime,” he said. “You ever been to Miami?”
I had not. Miami, for New Yorkers, occupies a specific aspirational space. Somewhere between the Hamptons and a Carbone reservation you can actually get. Several of my friends had recently posted Instagram content that was aggressively pink and pastel, with boat-related captions and Wynwood street art.
My own Florida history was not encouraging.
My first time visiting Florida was a chaperoned Spring Break trip my sophomore year of college to Fort Lauderdale where my two friends and I did not drink, did not shop, and did not party. Instead, a friend’s father shepherding us gently between the hotel and the beach. So yeah, it wasn’t all that exciting.
My second time visiting Florida was when I spent Thanksgiving in Naples with my then-boyfriend J.P.. There, I was greeted with palm trees, blue water and a lot of bumper stickers that said, “Trump that Bitch” on a lot of cars. Both of J.P.’s parents thought that was hilarious. I did not.
My third time visiting Florida was during a long weekend at Universal Studios in Orlando. I was with Suyin, Kira and one other friend who complained about the long lines we had to wait in throughout the entire trip. This trip (thankfully) was redeemed only by a wand a former coworker of mine let me borrow that allowed you cast spells throughout Harry Potter World -- which is genuinely one of the more unexpectedly moving experiences I’ve had as an adult.
“Then you should definitely come out and visit,” Lutz said.
“Sure,” I said, in the tone of someone calling a bluff. “Buy me a plane ticket and I’ll come.”
He bought me a plane ticket.
Right then and right there.
On the train.
He pulled out his phone and, while I watched, purchased a first-class round-trip ticket to Miami for the last week of August.
I was, in order, shocked, astonished, and then — I’ll be honest — somewhat turned on. No one had bought me a plane ticket on a whim since J.P. and I dated. But this was different. This was someone looking at me in my Larry David ensemble, four bags, and deciding I was worth a first-class ticket to Miami, Florida.
Big Dick Energy, I thought. In the wild!
“By the way,” Lutz said, “I can send you more music samples, if you’re interested.”
I recognized the move. Ray had used a variation of it at the bus stop.
“Is this your way of asking for my number?”
“Is it working?”
“You did just buy me a plane ticket to Miami.” I handed him my phone.
Our next stop was Hartford. As he stood to leave, I got my first look at his full profile. He was really cute -- dark-skinned, Asian, with jet-black hair and a distinctive birthmark above his left eye. He looked, I realized with a sinking feeling, a little bit like Bruno Mars.
I really need to stop dating men who look like Bruno Mars. Nothing good can come from it.
“See you in Miami,” he winked, and got off the train.
I checked the Delta app. The tickets were real! Confirmation codes and everything. I stared at them for a long time.
What the hell just happened?
Candace Bushnell wrote about this actually. In her early columns -- the ones that would become Sex and the City -- she documented a New York in which it was apparently standard for men at parties to jet you to the Swiss Alps for the weekend. This was the early 80s. Pre-smartphone, pre-location sharing, operating entirely on blind trust and the assumption that your host was not, in fact, a murderer. My friend Juliana -- before she met her current boyfriend, Hugo -- had been offered a trip to Switzerland by someone she’d been on one date with from Hinge. I remember thinking to myself, What kind of insane person offers to fly a total stranger across the world after one date? Turns out, many people. Especially if you’ve ever had someone make a grand gesture and felt the specific warmth of being chosen.
“You’re not seriously thinking of staying at his place though,” Juliana said, correctly, on a walk through Washington Square Park.
“No. I’ll get a hotel for myself.”
“And share your location with us. I don’t want to see you on Dateline.”
She also advised me to FaceTime Lutz a few times before the trip, to confirm he was not, in her words, an American Psycho type who would “peel your face off and wear it for fun.”
This was, I admitted, reasonable. I had been reading Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City when I met Lutz, which means I had spent several weeks immersed in the story of H.H. Holmes, the nineteenth-century serial killer who seduced women with charm and good looks before luring them into his hotel. The parallels were not lost on me.
Lutz was charming. BUT SO WAS H.H. HOLMES!
Lutz was handsome. BUT SO WAS H.H. HOLMES!
Lutz had gone out of his way to buy me a plane ticket to see him. H.H. HOLMES HAD BEEN A MASTER MANIPULATOR WHO...
Yeah. Something told me Lutz was nothing like not H.H. Holmes.
Call it women’s intuition, or the fact that I have a black belt in taekwondo and could cause him meaningful physical harm if it came to that.
I booked a room at the Hotel Clinton in South Beach. I scheduled weekly FaceTime dates with Lutz, during which I learned the following about him: He was thirty years old (two years my junior, so I could absolutely kick his ass.) He was entering his second year of the PhD program at the Univeristy of Miami. He had an older sister who was also a dermatologist and had married an Italian man from Salerno. He was not scary or unsettling. He was, if anything, kind of a goofball. A nerdy, goofy person getting his doctorate in skin. I found myself thinking, after our last call before the trip, that I might actually like him. But the jury was very much still out.
He did, during one call, show me a box of medical tranquilizers he kept in his closet, which he assured me were not for his serial killing sprees. Beige flag, I noted.
Lutz made it clear that he would be working the week I flew into Miami, though his evenings would be completely free for us. I didn’t mind at all. I was self-sufficient enough to do my own research and keep myself entertained while he worked on his PhD in the mornings. That meant I could hit up all the cool spots I’d seen on my friends’ Instagram feeds -- vibrant, candy-pop glitter venues awash in pink and pastel. I love being independent in a brand-new city; it feels incredibly freeing. And with Lutz busy during the day, I eagerly charted out my own daily itinerary.
Lutz flew me in on a Tuesday, a total of four days in Miami. I wore Lululemon leggings on the plane, which seemed reasonable at LaGuardia. But then felt criminal the moment I stepped outside in the Miami sun. The humidity hit like a warm, wet hand pressed flat against my face. People on the street were in cotton Lilly Pulitzer dresses and flip-flops. I was dressed (and looked like) I had just finished a fully intensive Pilates class.
I had spent the morning at LaGuardia waiting for the text that would cancel everything. You know the one. The one that always arrives at the eleventh hour, the one where the man realizes this was a mistake, makes up an excuse and then retreats into the ether.
Sorry, I can’t do this. I’m not emotionally ready for this. Blah, blah, blah...
I had mentally braced myself when I arrived at my gate. My Group was called. I scanned my ticket. No alarm. No cancellation. No void ticket. I boarded the plane and sat in first class and flew to Miami, Florida.
The whole time I kept thinking, This is either the beginning of something special, or it’s gonna make for extremely good source material.
DAY 1
Lutz picked me up at my hotel once I’d showered, changed and unpacked. He was, in person, as cute as I remembered -- and he was wearing a Rolex, which I noted and mentally filed away. We drove to LoanDepot Park for a Marlins game against the Atlanta Braves. On our way over, we drove straight through downtown Miami, a city that appeared to be assembled by someone who had gotten hopelessly distracted. It was a landscape of half-built highways and idling construction equipment, carrying the distinct aesthetic of a Lego set a child had abandoned mid-build.
At LoanDepot Park, Lutz bought me one hot dog. This was my dinner. I had not eaten since eight in the morning.
The stadium was, I want to say charitably… intimate. Even though we were sitting behind home plate, I couldn’t help but notice that the stadium was very nearly empty. There were more Atlanta Braves fans in attendance than Marlins fans, which at a Marlins home game is either very funny or very sad. I’ve been to Dodger Stadium. I’ve been to Fenway. I’ve been to Yankee Stadium, where the collective ill will of forty-five thousand people toward the opposing team functions almost as a kind of civic infrastructure. The Marlins game felt like a small dinner party where only one person shows up. I had second-hand embarrassment… for the whole team. The Marlins lost 11 to 2.
After the game, Lutz took me back to his apartment, which was a penthouse with facial recognition entry and a rooftop jacuzzi that overlooked Brickell Heights. I floated in that jacuzzi under the dark Miami sky.
“You still hungry?" I asked him. Because I sure as hell was. That hot dog was not enough after the day that I just had. “I can order us a pizza from somewhere.”
“Nah,” he said waving my suggestion off. “I have some leftovers we can chow down on.”
“Leftovers?” I asked. “Your leftovers?”
Because I love leftovers. Especially Thai leftovers. Thai food in my opinion is the best food to reheat afterwards. But that was only when it was my food. My leftovers.
“Yeah, I think I have half a pizza from yesterday I can warm up for you.”
“Oh, um, okay.” I said.
Here was a man who had purchased me a first-class airline ticket on a train on the basis of a thirty-second dare, and who was now, in his penthouse, beside his rooftop jacuzzi, offering to reheat day-old pizza for the woman he had flown hundreds of miles to see.
This is a specific kind of man. I have met him before in different configurations. In fact, I met this kind of man just a couple of months ago: Ray.
He leads with a grand gesture but then cannot maintain the altitude.
Day 2
The next day I explored Miami on my own. I did four rotations on the Skyviews Ferris wheel and meandered around the Bayside Marketplace. Afterwards, I zoomed downtown on the Miami Metrorail. Gliding along, it felt like a nostalgic nod to the Disneyland monorail I used to ride on as a kid at Tomorrowland. Sleek, fast, and distinctly futuristic. The highlight was a giant viewing window at the front of the car, which laid out a full, mesmerizing view of the tracks winding above the Miami streets.
But I kept being defeated by the humidity, which in August in Miami functions less like weather and more like a physical condition you have been diagnosed with.
Coming from Southern California, I was well-traveled in dry heat; Los Angeles was basically a desert. And after living over a decade on the East Coast, I was also pretty good at surviving snowstorms. But humidity? No fucking way. There is something about Florida that always leaves me deeply unsettled, precisely because of how closely it mimics California. It boasts the same palm trees, a dominant Spanish-speaking population, and vibrant coastal neighborhoods that feel like a distorted mirror image of Venice Beach or Santa Monica. Yet, there is always an uncanny valley effect -- an unshakeable reminder that I am definitely not in California.
It was the random iguanas crossing the road in the middle of the city. It was the way the local colors felt aggressively oversaturated, as if they were dialed up on purpose to mask something ugly from underneath. And then there was the air conditioning, blasting the moment you stepped inside, carrying a distinct, musty odor. It smelled like it hadn’t been turned on in a year, suddenly generating so much force that it blew out a full calendar year’s worth of dust from its metal vents. Nothing smelled truly clean or fresh; everything was either dusty or overpowered by globs of sunscreen.
The humidity, though, was the absolute worst part. It made me wonder how anyone on Earth could possibly live in this kind of climate. The only thing comparable was a miserable Fourth of July spent in Washington, D.C., with Sarah. The The heavy, atmospheric weight was so drastically off the charts that while sitting outside for dinner, I had what I can only describe as a panic attack. I excused myself from the table and spent ten minutes inside the restaurant trying to cool off. Sarah got so concerned she abandoned her dinner just to wait inside with me until my body temperature returned to normal.
To this day, the humidity and I do not mix. Visiting Lutz during the absolute dregs of August felt like a personal test of endurance. I am convinced that if I die and go to Hell, it will look exactly like Miami. If Dante had ever experienced South Florida in late August, the Inferno would have featured a tenth circle dedicated exclusively to the humidity.
That evening Lutz and I went to Carbone. He suggested that we sit outside. This was a mistake. I sweated through my new dress while Lutz told me, at length, about the time he auditioned for American Idol.
“What do your parents do?” I asked, because I had been trying to reverse-engineer how a thirty-year-old PhD student paid for a first-class ticket and a Rolex and a Brickell Heights penthouse.
“Oh they’re tenured professors at Tufts,” he answered casually.
I blinked at him. “Oh.” I said. “How nice. What do they teach?”
“Biology.”
“Interesting.”
So it was safe to say that he did not have rich parents. Unless it was some kind of form of generational wealth that I didn’t know about.
“And you said that you are a full-time PhD student, correct?”
“That’s right,” he was going to town on the spicy vodka rigatoni. “You need some skincare tips, I’m your guy.”
“Right.” I sat there, confused. Where the hell was the money coming from?
“And what do you like to do? For fun, I mean?” I asked. “Outside of school and studying, and making music, obviously.”
“I play poker.” He answered nonchalantly.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty good at it. Mostly online poker.”
“Cool.” I said. “How often do you play?”
“Well, like almost everyday.”
“Is that so?”
I felt my stomach drop. In the course of a single summer, I’ve found myself on a date with a closeted alcoholic (Ray), and now I was in Miami with a neurotic gambler (Lutz.) Were there ANY normal guys left in the world with NORMAL hobbies?
“Yeah, it’s how I pay the bills.”
“Oh.” I said. “How much do you typically win?”
“Like around $10,000.”
“Per year?”
“Per week.”
I choked on my wine.
The penthouse, the Rolex, the first class plane tickets, it all snapped into place. He was a professional gambler getting a PhD in dermatology to keep his parents from asking questions, playing in a punk/rock band on whenever he had some downtown, and flying women to Miami on a whim because he could.
“Your parents must be so proud,” I said.
“They’ll be more proud once I have the PhD,” he said cheerfully. “After that, I’m getting the band back together and we’re going on tour.”
Then he brightened, “Hey, I think there’s enough pasta left for leftovers!”
Day 3
The third day was the worst.
I took an Uber to the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, a Gilded Age estate on Biscayne Bay. The kind of Italianate palazzo that makes you feel briefly like you are somewhere sophisticated, which is a feeling I was aggressively seeking in Miami.
Where I was staying in South Beach was cool and retro. The whole area appeared as if it had been frozen in time since the 1950s. Hot pink umbrellas, turquoise tables, neon signs, and old-fashioned Cadillacs lined the streets. This surreal vibe was something Dante should have taken note of for his circles of Hell. When I first arrived, I was excited to sample the food, having heard that the Cuban cuisine in Miami was unreal.
As I strolled down the main drag of Ocean Drive on my first day in Miami, walking past these iconic, pastel Art Deco hotels, I checked out the menus of the colorful beachfront restaurants. That’s when I noticed something bizarre. While every hotel was architecturally unique, their menus were completely identical. Not a single place stood out or offered anything imaginative; they all served the exact same food on the same exact laminated menu I’d seen three blocks back.
A sad, obligatory Cuban sandwich, a generic Caesar salad with dry grilled chicken, and a massive, syrupy $40 bulldog margarita with two upside-down Coronas melting into it. You could walk next door to a gorgeous, pastel-pink Spanish Revival property, and there it was again -- the identical overpriced shrimp cocktail and the same uninspired skirt steak with chimichurri. It was straight-up culinary plagiarism.
The only oasis of individuality was the Versace Mansion. Rather than pandering to the masses with the same copy-paste tourist fare found at the neighboring beachfront spots, its upscale Mediterranean cuisine actually matched the opulent luxury of the estate. It was far from a casual walk-up trap; gaining access to their high-end seafood, handmade pastas, and the famed million-mosaic swimming pool required a strictly coveted reservation. Recognizing it as the ultimate escape, I promptly booked a solo lunch for one of the days Lutz would be working.
Beyond that, the entirety of Ocean Drive felt like that eerie scene from A Wrinkle in Time when Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin arrive on the planet Camazotz. It was a chillingly perfect, cookie-cutter trap where everything operated in terrifying sync and individuality had been completely stripped away. Despite the distinct architecture of each building, the open-air restaurants beneath them were all trapped in the exact same monotony.
I was hoping the Vizcaya Museum would provide a dose of actual refinement, offering a much-needed escape from the gaudy, overstimulated scenery of South Beach.
It was a beautiful mansion, but it was sweltering the day I arrived. Worse, I thought I had done everything right. I drank a ton of water, carried my water bottle everywhere, and stayed in the shade. But the house wasn’t actually air-conditioned. True to the Tuscan villa it was supposed to resemble, everything was completely open-air.
While walking through the gardens, I started to feel dizzy. Extreme humidity like this makes me feel like I’m being cooked alive from the inside out. It’s not a great feeling. Trying to be responsible (and still believing I was doing everything right to keep from overheating), I went back inside the villa to cool off for fifteen minutes, even passing the time with one of my Duolingo Italian lessons. Once I felt better, I headed back outside to explore the cove.
Just five minutes later, everything went dark.
I had passed out on one of the stone bridges that encircled the cove and woke up with three security guards standing over me. I looked down. Blood was spilling out of my left knee and ankle.
“Did you drink enough water?” One of the security guards asked me.
“Yes,” I answered. “Hey, could I possibly get a band aid?”
“We’re gonna move to you the shade now,” another security guard helped me up.
“Okay,” I said. “Can I get a band aid for my leg?”
“That looked like a nasty fall, did you hit your head?”
“No.” I said. “Can I get a band aid?”
“You sure --"
“Yes.” I said. “Band aid?”
“Because if you’ve hit your head, we’ll need to call an ambulance --”
“I NEED,” I said interrupting, pointing to the blood that was now pooling generously around my ankle, “a Band-Aid!”
They gave me one Band-Aid, held at arm’s length, as though I were a feral animal who had selected this moment to become their problem. I hobbled to the bathroom, cleaned myself up, and considered my options. I called an Uber to the Fashion District and had lunch at the Dior Café, where the staff was kind and the food was good and I sat alone with a bandaged leg.
What the hell am I even doing here? I thought as I fought the tears suddenly prickling behind my eyes. I was here because some rando wanted me here, and yet he wasn’t even physically with me. I had tried to convince myself that I didn’t care whether Lutz was around or not -- that I was independent, happy to do my own thing, and perfectly content entertaining myself on solo adventures until the evening. And I was. I am.
But passing out at Vizcaya changed everything. Bleeding all alone while a group of strangers ignored me, and waiting over five minutes for someone to procure a single, pathetic Band-Aid, made me desperately wish someone had been there. Someone looking out and advocating for me. Someone to tell those idiot security guards that I was hurt. Didn’t they see how much I was even bleeding? Even though I prided myself on my independence, that was the exact moment I suddenly wished I wasn’t alone.
Because despite being flown out on Lutz’s dime to hang out when he wasn’t working, the reality was that I was alone. I was mostly alone for the entire trip. No matter how many solo activities I planned for myself, that dark cloud hung over me.
A part of me was furious at him. I’m here! I wanted to yell. You’re the one who flew me out here to this godforsaken place! Why aren’t you the one taking me out and showing me a good time?
Honestly, if I hadn’t injured myself at Vizcaya, I probably wouldn’t have spiraled into these thoughts. But suddenly, the fun was completely gone. I hated being alone. I hated the humidity. I hated Lutz, and I hated Miami. All I wanted was to be taken care of. Lutz paying for my flight had created this false illusion that because he took care of my travel, he would actually also take care of me.
And then Lutz texted. Hope you’re excited for tonight! I’m going to take you rock climbing!
About that… I replied.
Thirty minutes later he appeared at the Fashion District, looked at my leg, and said: “You’ll be fine. It doesn’t look that bad.”
We went to the rock climbing gym. There were no ropes, no belay systems -- everyone was free solo climbing, which with a functional left ankle is a challenge and with a freshly scraped one is a form of punishment. I climbed. I was bad. I could see Lutz recalibrating his assessment of me in real time. I was, in his eyes, becoming a wet blanket. And maybe I was. But as an injured woman who secretly wanted him to look at me -- to really look at me, recognize that I was in physical pain, and have the awareness to suggest literally anything else -- while I simultaneously and stubbornly refused to say a single word out loud, I was equally furious with myself.
We had dinner at Dolores But You Can Call Me Lolita, which is a magnificent name for a restaurant that Nabokov would have appreciated. I did not want to share a dish. I wanted my own dish. I wanted to order pizza and watch Rick and Morty and be held by another human being in a blanket. But Lutz asked if I wanted to split the surf and turf, his Rolex watch flashing on his wrist.
Who the hell was this man? He was card shark, a PhD student and liked serving leftovers to the girls that he brought back to his penthouse.
“Lutz,” I said. “What’s your favorite movie?”
“Oh, I don’t really go to the movies. I think the last movie I saw in theaters was the newest Final Destination film. Hard to go out when you’re a PhD student.”
“Okay.” I said. “What about books? Do you have a favorite book?”
“I’m currently reading all of my textbooks for my classes,” he answered.
“Yeah, I get that.” I said. “I mean were there any books that you liked reading when you were in high school? Anything by Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Rushdie… God forbid, anything by David Foster Wallace.”
Please don’t say Infinite Jest, I mentally begged.
“Nah, I wasn’t really into reading,” he said, plunging the knife deeper into my chest. “Like okay, you wanna know what my favorite book is?”
“Yes,” I said. Because you must like something humanitarian, right?
“Okay,” he said, putting down his fork. “My favorite book,” he said slowly. “Is All My Friends Are Dead.”
I paused. “What?”
“Yeah, it’s funny.”
A pause.
“The… picture book that’s in your bathroom?” I clarified.
“Yeah that one! It’s great!”
All My Friends Are Dead is a gag gift. It consists of a collection of simple illustrations paired with short, depressing jokes about the bleak realities faced by specific characters and inanimate objects. For example, if you’re a dinosaur, “All my friends are dead.” If you’re a pirate, “All my friends have scurvy.” And, if you’re a tree, “All my friends are end tables.”
This was his favorite book. I had asked about Fitzgerald. I had asked about Hemingway. I had opened the door wide enough to walk through with even a middling literary reference like fucking David Foster Wallace because I know that neurotic, down-to-earth, dude-bros read (and like) his shitty writing.
But no. Lutz had chosen (basically) a coffee table book.
I almost wish he had said, Infinite Jest. It would have at least proved to me that he liked reading!
Back at his place, he pulled out his laptop because he wanted to introduce to me his favorite TV show. I assumed that he and I were gonna lie in his bed and watch an episode of Rick and Morty, or South Park, or literally any show that would confirm we inhabited the same cultural universe.
“I’ve never actually seen Rick and Morty,” he said. “South Park I never got into.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Instead, he opened YouTube to show me an obscure cartoon called Golan the Insatiable, a show that survived a mere two seasons on Fox’s Animation Domination lineup before cancellation.
It wasn't hard to see why the audience had stayed away.
The cartoon lacked substance, favoring arbitrary violence, dismemberment, and dark fantasy over the genuinely sharp, structured wit found in Bob’s Burgers or The Simpsons. To keep myself tethered to reality, I latched onto the voices of the two main characters, recognizing them as Rob Riggle and Aubrey Plaza. But when I brought it up, Lutz’s blank expression confirmed the worst. He had no idea who they were, leaving us stranded in completely different cultural universes.
I didn’t get it. Lutz was completely out of touch with mainstream pop culture. If I’m being honest, staying fluent in trends is pretty much a requirement if you want to be in a serious relationship with me. You need to be up-to-date on your pop culture knowledge; otherwise, you’re just lagging behind with nothing to talk about around the office watercooler.
“So, you’ve never seen Game of Thrones?” I asked. “House of the Dragon? Battlestar Galactica? Star Trek? Star Wars? Stargate SG-1?”
Jesus, I sounded more like a nerd than him.
“Nah. Not really my thing,” he said, getting up. “Oh hey! I still have those Carbone leftovers if you’re hungry.”
Day 4
My last full day I got up early and walked the shore of the beach before the humidity peaked. South Beach is genuinely beautiful in that hour -- the pastel art deco hotels glowing in morning light, the empty stretch of sand, the sense that you have arrived somewhere that once meant something.
Later, Lutz took me out to breakfast before driving me to the airport.
“We’ll definitely have to do this again,” he said.
“Uh-Huh.” I answered back.
We were definitely not going to do this again.
He knew it. I knew it. We hugged. We kissed. He waved me goodbye.
I never saw Lutz again.
I cried on the plane ride home in my first class seat. Not about Lutz, exactly, but with the specific relief of returning to a place that is yours. I cried in the cab from LaGuardia, stuck in real New York traffic, watching real New York infrastructure pass outside the window, skyscrapers and all. I laid down on my couch when I got home and thought to myself, If I had just agreed to Monday morning breakfast with Suyin, none of this would have happened.
I wouldn’t have met Lutz. I wouldn’t have been flown to Miami first class. I wouldn’t have passed out at a Gilded Age estate and demanded a Band-Aid from knuckleheaded security guards. And I wouldn’t have watched two seasons of an obscure cartoon I have already largely forgotten.
Yet, I also realized that the entire experience wasn’t wasted. Yes, Maimi was a city that I had always been curious about visiting. Now I finally had and can draw my on conclusions and opinions that I had for that city. I finally got to know Lutz better and discovered that perhaps Lutz wasn’t my guy either.
Because learning what you dislike is just as important as finding out what you like and figuring out what you’re actually looking for in a serious relationship.
“But seriously, how are you meeting these men?” my running coach, Christina asked, when she and I met up again for our Precision Run workout class at Equinox.
“Out in the wild.”
“But where?”
“Buses and trains, mostly.” I shrugged.
She looked at me. “That can’t be all.”
And she’s right. It isn’t.
Looking back, the way I met Ray and Lutz carries a lot of weight.
I met Ray on my way to cheer on Juliana and our friend Sophie at their 10K in Central Park. I met Lutz on my way back from Steph’s baby’s baptism on the Cape. In a way, these two men bookended my summer -- like punctuation marks around a sentence I was still figuring out how to read. Both times, I was in motion toward or away from the people I love. And yet both times, some stranger was brave enough to muster up the courage to speak to me while I was thinking about someone else entirely.
And okay sure, nothing lasting came from either encounter. But there is something beautiful about being a woman who was approached twice in one summer, completely in the wild, while being distracted by her own beautiful and chaotic life. I wasn’t hunting for a relationship. I was thinking about Juliana and Sophie crossing the finish line, or how incredible it was to see Steph as a mother with Valerie in her arms. Yet, while my heart was full of my friends, the universe threw me two wild cards: A phone number on a bus and a dare on a train that landed me in Miami.
My time in Miami gave me a vital reminder of my own resilience. I can take care of myself in a strange city, even when I’m literally bleeding from my knees and my ankles. Independence can be lonely, but it is also empowering. It its own way, being single is a privilege.
The secret to meeting people in the wild is simply showing up for your own life. Prioritize your people, move through the world with confidence, and eventually, someone will tap you on the shoulder -- regardless of whether you’re at a crowded bar, waiting at a bus stop, or sitting on a plane -- just to ask you to look at a weird bug bite on their neck.
So Suyin, I’ll take the afternoon train next time.
Monday breakfast will be on me.
And let’s make sure not to leave any leftovers.
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