Read Dear Dad for Free Online Page B

host. The great Al Pacino and Robert Deniro would just shoot up this place and head off to some after hours party to be celebrated for shooting up the place.
     
    So, I summoned all my powers and sat in the photo booth and closed my eyes for a minute. My thoughts headed into the show, where my friends were probably stage-diving by now. I opened my eyes and popped in the fifty cents and closed the curtain, and lo and behold my countenance was that of the great Deniro/Pacino spirit! If you don't have the Deniro/Pacino spirit, I suggest you get one. I got mine meditating in a Thousand Days of Sodom. . . or was that Sardine?!
     
     
    PART THREE
     
    After being selfish and crazy for awhile, I delved into solitude and the sweet subtleties of sipping tea in the evenings and staying sober. There was one person left in my circle of friends that was not self-destructing or raising a family. Haas was a travel writer who I had met at the local gym. He was soft spoken and had a depth of wisdom that was rare for a man his age, or any age. I looked forward to seeing him and we played tennis once a week in the Summer and watched the boats floating in the bay from his cabin on the beach.
                  He was in-between writing & research jobs, which took him all over the world, to offer me a surprise trip to South Beach, Miami. I hadn’t traveled for years and was burnt out from work and gladly accepted.
     

    CUBAN CASH
     
     
    My great friend, the late Haas Mroue, who penned "Beirut Seizures", a very popular poetry book around the UC Berkely scene, and I flew to South Beach, Miami, to bask on the white sand beaches and to drink the little white styrofoam cups of sweet, very strong Cuban coffee. Parts of Miami seem strangely subdued and rundown, but on the strip near the beach there are the bikini girls and the Lamborghinis driven by big black rappers from NYC. The homeless are also sprinkled into the mix and mostly add an eccentric flair. There was one large Jamaican looking guy who had white sand stuck to the side of his face, probably from sleeping on the beach, which wouldn't be a bad homeless shelter at night. I could see a designated area lined with Tiki-torches and a miniature bar of Nightrain and Mad dog bottles and Old English 800 - In a perfect homeless world, right?
     
    One guy, in particular was a total character. He looked like a skinny Cuban Johnny Cash. He had a decorated dog that sat on the handlebars. The dog had figurines riding along on his back, probably Cuban Voodoo dolls that warded off the other, not so friendly, homeless people. One man walked past Haas and I and screamed behind himself at the top of his lungs "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!!" of course there was no one there, it was his tormenting hallucinations that probably followed him endlessly into a sleepless sordid night. Anyways, Cuban Cash was our man. He deserved my dollar that was sitting alone in my wallet. If I had more, I would have emptied my wallet into his hands or into his dog's mouth!
     

    OLD SCHOOL MIAMI
     
     
    It's Old School South Beach, filled with new money. This picture was taken with an old Kodak. The colors are rich and you can almost see the branches moving. It's hot and the breeze is the only thing saving the air from being stifling sauna-like. Restaurants have little air-conditioning misters that act like sprinklers, that spray out this fine vapor onto the eating patrons. There are exotic girls lost in thought, or lost in space, a space filled with the chaos of a drug-induced party, the dance of ecstasy, where everybody gets lost in a sea of sweating bodies. There's Plantains being seared with butter in the kitchens and there is Cuban coffee in little white cups. White girls down here only want dark boys: "If they know how to dance, they know how to F**K" they would say. So, I stayed in the hotel and watched TV.
     
     

    THE FIRST OF THE LAST
     
     
    Well, after our trip, Haas had to leave again across the Atlantic. I