Volume 11: Florida Face
Hurricane Season, Vodka Crackers, PURNA! and Four Other Things
Hi there,
First, take a moment to catch your breath. Another neuesletter?! In a consecutive month with the last one?! I understand why you gasped upon reading that this issue landed in your inbox. It’s been awhile since the word frequent could be applied to anything related to this publication.
But, yay! Here we are. There are three reasons this issue came together more quickly than usual. 1) It is about my most reliable muse, the manic pixie dream girl of my prose, yes buddy, the flawed state of Florida. 2) I wrote most of it last year and got too scared to send it. 3) This is an issue where the only strangers mentioned were named by the World Meteorological Organization.
Yes, reader, today we’re talking about hurricane season.
But first, context!
If you know me, you know that I probably wear the scarlet letters of my growing-up state too proudly, for all its faults. In New York bars, saying that you’re from Florida immediately evokes a widening of the eye and a widening of the space between you and whomever you’re speaking to. I call the response, “Florida Face.”
When the person eventually recovers, they inevitably make a Florida Man joke after I tell them not to get me started by making one. And then I inevitably explain (read: rant about) how Florida Man exists because of the state’s transparent public records laws.
So because of what I’ve chosen to do with my identity, every hurricane season I get a lot of text messages asking me whether everyone seems to be okay. Usually, I don’t even know there is a hurricane happening by the time I get the first of these. Because I grew up in Florida I look outside to check the weather rather than resorting to apps. This does not always work. (There’s also the issue of my Bostonian grandfather implying that the weathermen make the weather, cursing them anytime inclement conditions impact Bostonian roads… but I digress.)
These text messages are nice because they are acknowledgements that I am, indeed, from Florida and do, indeed, care about a lot of people and buildings and ways of being that the state contains. I tell myself that they’re nice because they are a symptom of caring, even as my heart rate increases, and I panic-text my parents about the storm.
Truthfully, the hurricane questions also make me feel guilty.
They make me remember that I’ve forgotten to worry about the places and people I know best. They make me remember that I chose to leave. And they also point out my personal, incredibly lucky experience with a type of natural disaster that some people don’t get to come back from.
Last year, these feelings were particularly salient because my hometown got walloped by Hurricane Ian. But, my parents and their home and our friends and our friends’ parents were all okay. Very lucky.
Hurricane days, hurricane nights, hurricane… delights?
To me, a hurricane is standing around in the hot-wet with my best friend who lived across the street, elated that my mother is letting us drink the ice cream that melted when the power went out. In the middle of the day! Imagine. We thought we’d be in school, and instead we’re drinking by-default milkshakes while watching our parents board up windows and drain backyard pools. A different show than we’re used to. The air is full of something impending.
At nine, hurricane prep feels as acutely suburban and celebratory as smearing face paint across our cheeks for a Super Bowl Sunday block party or lighting sparklers for the Fourth of July. It’s a deviation from neighborhood kickball and waiting for our friends to finish their homework so we can play it. For once, we aren’t jealous of our northern counterparts who have snow days. Hurricane days are just as good, we think with ice cream still on our lips.
A hurricane is not knowing to be afraid.
To me, a hurricane is a hurricane party, hosted by the Macleans* across the street because they are the house on the block with a generator. They wield their power and status well. Their first act as our new leaders is to power up a margarita machine that melts off the edges of fear our parents had been hiding from us milkshake-drinkers all day. The kids watch a movie — something mundane made special by our inability to turn televisions on at home anymore. That’s how I saw A Series of Unfortunate Events for the first time. I didn’t like it. Our parents laugh long into the night. Then, past our bedtimes, the storm picks up too much, and we all go home.
At six, at nine, at ten, at twelve, a hurricane is a long night of candles, huddling together with my parents and our dog in whichever room has the fewest windows. A crack of thunder, a quiet house. The dog panting because she’s not scared of storms, but she is scared that she can’t hear the buzz of electricity anymore. As if, to her, it was the metronome under everything that kept us all ticking forward. As if, to her, time had stopped, and she was the only one to notice.
Every few hours we bail out the pool with buckets. As I get older, I’m allowed to help instead of being left to grab at the dog’s collar, watching my parents’ suddenly vulnerable silhouettes dipping in and out of the water. Each glimpse lightning-bolt-long. Each breath category-4 strong.
A hurricane is discovering how to be afraid.
To me, a hurricane is the acutely suburban embarrassment of my dad making me wear a bike helmet outside the morning after the storm. We walk around surveying the felled trees. He’s scared that something will hit me. Everything is loose. Our power flickers on because my aforementioned best friend’s mom works for Florida Power and Light (FPL), and they always fix the utility workers’ streets first. That way, they aren’t worried about their families while they manage relief crews and piece the world back together for the rest of us.
At 21, a hurricane is being in college and forgetting all of the lessons I’d learned about stocking up on supplies. It’s realizing I only have vodka, bottled water and crackers. It’s waiting in line with Sienna* at gas station after gas station, trying to fill up her car in case we need to evacuate, long after the city has run out of its supply. It’s almost grabbing her by her ice-blonde ponytail when a man provokes her in the growingly futile fuel line, and she moves to get out of the car and scream at him — a hurricane of her own. We’re all hopped up on the electric air and fear and that baseline instinct to survive that kids from the suburbs like we were usually discover too late.
To me, a hurricane is crying at a drive-through Mexican restaurant because my parents are in the line of the storm, further south, and their cell service has gone out. It is finding a penny on the sidewalk, a wind-blown heads-up. It’s huddling with my roommates in the one closet that is far from any windows late into the night as the wind howls.
Nothing feels impending anymore. Everything has happened; we just don’t know about it yet.
A hurricane is being powerless, regardless of the power lines.
To me, a hurricane is a text message from someone I have a full-body, drowned brain crush on in New York informing me that a tropical-storm-turned hurricane has my name. Then a flood of others following suit.
At 25, a hurricane is synonymous with my ego, my whispered hopes, my vanity. It is both torrential and my storm’s eye during a time that I had lost my sense of what matters.
To me, a hurricane is opening my phone to now-serious text messages asking whether the people I love are okay, whether my home is okay. I didn’t even know there was another hurricane.
There are headlines and stories and think pieces ridiculing people in my hometown who refused to leave. It’s coverage that doesn’t explain, doesn’t understand, that people who live in Florida, who really live in Florida, Do Not Leave. It’s a point of pride. It’s a culture. And it’s also expensive to leave. Not to mention the fuel shortages every time there’s a disaster — if you leave you risk getting stranded.
At 25, a hurricane is thanking God my parents are out of the state. It’s crying at footage of my sinking hometown. It’s thinking about how the buildings that are the least fortified against storms and floods belong to people who have the least money. It’s realizing how many small businesses will later be destroyed and acquired by hedge funds. It’s reckoning with the end of what my home was as I most easily remember it.
It’s thanking God again my parents are out of the state. They have had a home in Florida for 23 years. Hotels and hurricane shelters — those mammoth concrete community buildings — aren’t always welcome to dogs during crises. They would have stayed at their house. My dad would never leave his dog.
To me, a hurricane is logic and emotion and logic and emotion. It’s a seesaw and a dance. It’s everything.
At 26, the person I had a crush on last year texted me about a hurricane.
This time, to me, a hurricane is the reason I hit send.
Now, as always, here are Four Things:
Something old: In honor of my beloved manic pixie dream state, listen to my manic pixie dream playlist! Awhile back I went on a bizarre scavenger hunt for all the songs I regularly listen to that are about manic pixie dream people. Have an addition for me? Send it!
Something news: In the best thing for my ego since Hurricane Nicole, I am now officially co-hosting my writing group! Come watch the power rush to my head at Writing Under the Influence (WUTI), a weekly gathering for writers. Basically, we bring our laptops and notebooks to a bar and write together in 20-minute sprints. Don’t worry, we sling back a few drinks while we do it. Join us for community, commiseration, collaboration and a lot of laughter! Thanks to original host and now co-host Jon Rose for the vote of confidence. Listen to folk music goddess Sierra Ferrell in his honor.
Something borrowed: Awesome and talented friend of the neuesletter Julia introduced me to a new-to-me storytelling mic in the city! It’s called New York Story Night, and you should definitely check it out. Great people, lots of talent.
Something cool: PURNA! Seriously, Purna (photography account), Purna (f*cking amazing multimedia writing-photo-diary collection that is my favorite place on the internet right now), Purna (FOOD she MAKES). Purna is my friend and lately I keep thinking about how thoughtful, talented and just like, cool-but-kind she is. CHECK OUT HER ART. If you become her friend and tend toward lite hermitage like I do she will tell you whether it is hospitable enough to go outside, which is the only true weather report I need, hurricanes aside.
And thaaaat’s all, folks! Did ya like this one? Or was it too one-note? Email me, comment, etc. to let me know.
As always, it’ll be nice to meet you tomorrow,
— N. Graney I
P.S. Lucky penny for your thoughts? I’m thinking about Jess’ birthday in a way that has been probably embarrassingly sappy and about THE FIRST EDITION OF CAROLINE CALLOWAY’S BOOK, “SCAMMER,” THAT SUMMER LENT ME. Send me whatever your brain’s been occupied with, and I’ll give you a cent for your two cents.
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Aaahhhhjh love you so much. Ty for the mention ❤️