981404891 | 2001-02-05


I have not been this happy, in months.

I am literally just overflowing with joy. Permagrin on my face. All from a long weekend.

It was. So. Much. FUN.

The Delano is unbelievable. I am obsessed. I must go again next month. It was so college. The Delano was our campus.

We ended up meeting select members of a professional hockey team and the minute we all met, we were best friends. They were a movie unto themselves. The cast of characters were: The all-star rookie, the seasoned all-star, the agent, the "money man" and the on-air sportscaster who travels with them.

In-fucking-sane.

We had so much fun with them, we are planning to meet them for the same weekend next year and we are going to stay in bungalows next to each other.

Here are the highlights:

Friday: Late night at the Delano, after drinking all day, then through dinner at Pearl, returning to the Delano and drinking 7 (yes, 7) bottles of Veuve and one mini-bottle of Piper, among 5 girls. It was a little decadent, totally unneccesary and untterly glorious.

After last call, the bartenders make an exception and lock me and D. inside the bar while they make us drinks and prepare buckets of Veuve. People are pounding to get in and we are cracking up seeing there silhouettes through the smoked glass. My friends are in tears because they know we've manage to get into the bar after it's closed and they know we're not coming out without an army of alcohol.

We emerge with the alcohol and head to the bungalow.

Three warnings from security after the neighboring bungalows called and complained about the noise. The neighbors were moved to a penthouse at 5AM because of the debauchery.

I leaped out of my chair when the sprinklers started going off in the courtyeard. I pulled up my skirt and started jumping in the sprinklers. The girls all called me Marilyn Monroe and said I had her facial expression from the scene when she stood over the vent, skirt blowing. I believe this event was documented with photos. Along with many of the other events.

One of us skinnydipped with no warning. She stripped and ran out of the bungalow and into the pool before we even knew what happened.

That was followed by me and my friend D. jumping into the pool, fully-clothed and racing. We collided mid-lap but kept going. Second lap, I crashed into the wall of the pool. You have no idea how difficult it is to swim while drunk. We got out before security caught us.

Then the Argentinian men we picked up jumped in. One of them dropped his glass of champagne before falling in. He called me over to the pool, and frankly, if a beautifully tan, half naked spanish-speaking man calls you over to a pool in the early hours of the morning - you go. I walked over and stepped on the glass. Ouch! He had to pull it out and it began bleeding everywhere. I cut a pressure point.

The EMT had to come to the bungalow. After a while we were able to stop the bleeding (around the same time that security came back and said that if they had to come back again all of the guests were going to be removed from the bungalow) - meanwhile I was laughing the entire time, yelling "RA's here!," sitting in my soaking wet clothes and drinking champagne. We called it a night after they patched me up and headed to bed.

I got really, really sick on Saturday morning, around 7:30 AM. The merlot mixed with the vodka and the champagne was not my friend.

Saturday: No one was doing well. I can't even walk do to the cut on my foot that starts bleeding again as soon as I get out of bed. It was all I could do to float in the pool. However, the hockey team and entourage had no problem rallying and started drinking at 11AM. Those boys are CRAZY. They had all heard about our near eviction and my early morning first aid. They shook their heads and laughed.

By 5PM, I was drinking again. We started for the evening, sitting in our bathing suits on our lounge chairs with the hockey players. At one point they went over and were chatting with this television star that one of our girls was in love with - so they invited him over. We were dying. The hockey boys couldn't believe they met us. They kept buying us drinks and toasting us. One of the toast's was something like, "In this town of beautiful people, I say forget the fake boobs and the pretense, you ladies are are the beautiful people and we are lucky to have met you." Then we all got kisses. They were so funny. They are setting aside tickets for us when they play Phillie and NYC. We programmed their numbers into our cell phones. Turns out that they LOVE the drunken dials. They almost died when I gave them a business card, they couldn't believe we had real jobs.

Around 8:30PM, I decided to go to my room and shower. We had dinner reservations at Tantra, but frankly, we were all pretty bombed, so it wasn't looking like we were getting there.

I came back to the pool around 9:30PM and it's full-on scene. All the Miami locals have invaded the beach bar and my friends are still sitting in their bathing suits on lounge chairs. We do shots with the hockey team. They buy us more drinks. They show us where they are hiding their bungalow key in case we make it back for late-night before them.

We head to our bungalow and find a full on dance party going with the rest of our group. The place is trashed. Drinks are spilled all over the floor. Everyone is sliding across the room. I call housekeeping to mop it up. The bride, when walking back to the bungalow, stubs her tow on a palm tree and breaks the toe. We advise her drink more. We tape her toes together with band-aids.

Security asks us to shut the curtains to the bungalow - it would appear that guests to the bar were confused and thought there was some sort of "open party" in our bungalow. The hotel has to assign extra security to our front entrance. It's hilarious.

It's amazing we every left the hotel that night. we left around 12:30AM and we were bombed. We missed dinner. So did the hockey team. The bride couldn't even walk due to the broken toe and I'm so bombed I don't even think about the cut and keep going.

We head to a lounge. We are in no mood for clubbing, which in Miami is a life of it's own. The lounge is great but we are bombed. I end up making friends with some guys at the bar who tells me that I "look like a nice girl in a city filled with shitty people." So we get drinks real fast.

However, we can go to the Rose bar in time for last call. I get there at 2:06, the bar closed at 2AM. I slide my face in and ask if I can get a few drinks...the bartenders laugh and tell security to let me in. People in the looby also see this and they try to get in. It's not pretty.

I order enough drinks for a floor of Betty Ford and emerge from the closed bar. People are confused. The girls are dying. We drink and ordered room service to the patio until the early hours.

Truthfully, we just couldn't pull it out.

Two of us were already in bed. D. and me were on the patio and two others went to a club to meet up with the hockey team. We ran into them, returning from club, in the lobby.

The rest of Saturday night can't really be posted here. It's not my story to tell. Let's just say, late-night at the bungalows got crazy. A type of documentation may or may not have been made with the hockey team.

Sunday at the pool felt like the last day of college when you have to say good-bye to the friends you've lived with for the past year. I almost cried. As they walked me up the lobby, the left-wing said, "yo, girl...where do you think you're going?" No one wanted to be the first to leave. We hugged good-bye like we had known each other for years. The wait-staff told me to stay another day. I promised I would be back in March.

I sat outside the airport, alone, smoking cigarettes and smiling. I thought about how much fun I had, all of the incredibly fun people I met, and how funny they were. I thought about how much I hate airports. Even if I am going somewhere, they make me feel like I am leaving someone or something behind.

And it reminded me the phrase I've said all my life that still makes my friends laugh:

"I hate when the visitors leave."

Even, when I am the visitor.

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