Miami and Asheville

I’m in love with two cities – Miami and Asheville. The former is sultry and sensual and likes to dress in string bikinis and dance to the beat of Cachao’s bongos; the latter is artistic and soulful and enjoys stimulating conversation and vintage wine. I liken one to electrifying my body at Starbucks with a triple espresso, and the other to pampering my body with a shiatsu massage.

Which one do I prefer? It depends on the time of year, my mood and my digestion. The heat of Miami in summer is like a sauna – which is okay if you are into saunas, which I’m not. The cold of Asheville in winter is like being inside a refrigerator – which is fine if you are into refrigerators. Do I need to say I’m not?

Miami is bright-colored, quick and now. I love its vibrancy and sensuality, its noise and its kitsch. I like to sit at one of the myriad outside restaurants dotting Miami Beach and watch the women strut on the sidewalk, hips working and necks tilted in that arrogant-yet-insecure way that screams, “Look at me! Am I gorgeous or what?” By the size and type of their breasts and nose, I can usually tell if their plastic surgery was done in the United States or abroad. Sometimes, I can even tell who did it. Plastic surgeons, after all, have their own signatures. Occasionally, one will catch me looking and will stare back at me, lips pursed like biting into a grapefruit, as if saying, “So what?”

Asheville, on the other hand, is pastel-colored, oblique and surprising. The women of Asheville are into tattoos and rainbow-colored hair, into wine and literary workshops, into art and cooking lessons, into exoticism and piercings, into self-expression and expanding their kundalini. Forget about plastic surgery and physical insecurities, Asheville women are more interested in self-realization than in physical reconstruction. They are more inner-driven than outer-directed, more into displaying that marvelous ruby pierced to their navels than showing off their massive, er, muscles.

The truth of the matter is that I am in the throes of a dilemma. I love them both.