Put Down the Drink, and Step Away From the Dance Floor

I had a friend who lived in Miami who I’d go to visit pretty frequently. We went to college together, and although basically everyone who so much as glimpsed him from across an eight-laned highway immediately deemed him a grad A dirtbag, we always had fun together and somehow, through no fault of my own (or so I tell myself), things always always got just a little bit out of hand.

Maks lived in a fancy-pants building downtown and the first time I went to visit it became patently obvious he had been putting his womanizing skills to good use: literally every fake-boobed girl (or mom for that matter) who walked by us in the halls was all too excited to say hi, grip his biceps with delight, lick his earlobe (ew), and be on their merry way, their immovable and overexposed chests glistening in the Florida sun as they stepped outside. By my third trip to see him, he had cycled through close to two dozen “girlfriends,” and was currently lamenting the fact that his new target, Lucy, seemed unequivocally uninterested. “Woe is you,” my Still Single self said, rolling my eyes and flopping on the inflatable mattress he had set up for me in the living room. Some people’s lives are just so hard.

It was on this particular visit that we went to the club his family owned. The word “club” here, however, meant the establishment was much more like Ricky Ricardo’s Tropicana, than, say, a “real” Miami club like LIV. Instead of a Cuban theme, Anastasia’s was wholly Russian and located in some strip mall on the outskirts of the city. I was fairly skeptical when we rolled up: what kind of supposedly fine dining and exceptional entertainment venue is located next to a Publix and Gold Toe Sock store? But the drinks would be free, so I was in no position to complain. Bring on the borscht!

Anastasia’s, however, turned out to be nothing like what its Quik-E-Mart exterior seemed to portend. The gilded ballroom was filled with tables of loud Russians decked out in sequins like it was the 80’s in the Catskills; a live wedding-sized band in starched white tuxes got their groove on to Top 40’s like the Black Eyed Peas; girls who looked like the Russian Olympic gymnastics team swung from the ceiling by ribbons, while contortionists bent and writhed in various locations around the dance floor; and the wait staff focused very intently on what you were saying because they, too, like the vodka we were downing, were imported directly from Russia. 

After dinner, when the stroganoff and piroshkis had been cleared, I was shuttled over to the bar. After promising I wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone, Maks told me that the girl he had been pathetically pining for and had simply refused to return his affections was actually one of the girls in a bedazzled bikini dangling from the ceiling. But just as I was offering up some faux words of encouragement, the bartender began juggling several alcohol bottles, a handful of ice cubes and garnishes, did a behind the back hand off, followed it up with a spin and a twist and some sort of complicated Cha-Cha move, and then quickly extinguished a small fire before the most wondrous looking blue drink I had ever laid eyes upon was presented to a lady with a gargantuan Louis Vuitton purse. “I must have that drink!” I squealed to Maks, who looked at me as if I had instead demanded we could go to Toys-R-Us and purchase one of those pink plastic Barbie mini-Jeeps. Now.

When my own blue drink was unveiled before me, I clapped with glee and sucked it down like a champ. This is where, not surprisingly, things started to get weird. As soon as I drained my cocktail, the infamous Lucy bounded over, all glittery hairspray and eyeliner and, as one might expect, Maks more than immediately forgot I existed. Within seconds he was rubbing her knee and whispering in her ear, his eyes moist with who knows what sort of repulsive, affected emotion. Typically, I was left to my own devices, alone at the bar, while Maks and Lucy slipped away into the recesses of a red velvet couch in the far corner. Knowing I should’ve seen this coming miles and miles away, I sighed, and ordered another on-the-house blue drink and befriended the cute Russian behind the bar. I mean, come on, I really had no other choice.

Somehow, between the bartender’s acrobatics and Maks’s pitiful efforts to woo Lucy, it turned out to be three in the morning and I heard myself pleading with Maks to get one of the singers to do a Justin Timberlake song: “Any JT song!” Eventually, Cry Me River filled the now almost empty ballroom and there I was, dancing, twirling around all by myself, blue drink in hand, in the middle of the dance floor, like the closing credits to some feel-good movie about a lonely high schooler. But after my personal serenade was finito, I realized I was too, and bounded over to Maks to announce I was ready to go home. “OK,” he said, and threw me the car keys which, due to a loss of any and all coordination, I didn’t even come close to catching. “I’ll meet you in a sec.”

Maks and Lucy came out to the car after what I thought was only a few minutes, but had evidently been over an hour. We took the twenty minute ride home, and as you should all know by now, I of course got car sick, and puked out the back window for about nineteen of those twenty minutes. Maks was not impressed, to say the least, and immediately hustled Lucy into his bedroom when we returned. Somehow I managed to get into pajamas and under the covers on the inflatable mattress while Marvin Gaye started blasting from Maks’s bedroom.

The next morning, the sun was beating directly on my face before nine. The mattress had somehow deflated entirely during the night, and I woke up on a flaccid piece of plastic atop a very hard tiled floor. As I groaned my eyes open, standing over me was Lucy, now in tiny shorts and an even tinier tank top, with Maks’s hands in both her back pockets. I mumbled some sort of good-morning then rolled over, hoping to die. But if I didn’t have a headache then, I most certainly did over the course of the next forty-five minutes while Maks and Lucy retreated into his room and reenacted the previous evenings activities that, thankfully, I had been practically unconscious for and missed entirely during the first go-around. When they were through, we went out to the car to drop Lucy back home and from the rear passenger side window to the trunk, a blue, sticky, vomit-y substance covered the car. “Oopsies,” was really about all I could offer before sprinting to the nearest garbage can and heaving up whatever was still left in my stomach. 

Just another night (alone) in Miami.

Giant blue drink in FL several years later. I'll never learn...