I said: being in Aruba felt like being in Miami, which made our taxi driver laugh. But I’m not talking about the Miami of Porche Towers, hi-rise buildings and cranes blocking the view, white-hot bodies, yachts glistening in the heat. Aruba reminded me of a faded luxury of marble lions guarding a dented white gate, the lady with the grave voice manning the cafecito window on a Wednesday afternoon, my block with no sidewalks. I remained insistent the entire drive.
On the small screen of the seat back, my two pixelated homes, Florida and Colombia, bounced off the screen as the small island got closer, yet was still unknown. How funny, I tell A, you’ve brought me in between where I am from. When we land, the heat is immediate, soaking through my Heat Tech and my jeans; when once I could wear jeans in eighty-five-degree weather, now I feel the discomfort of the denim roughing against me. Speak Spanish, A urges me, to the driver, who doesn’t want to speak to me at all, only grunts when we confirm our names and drives still too fast for empty roads to our car rental. The sun is relentless until we leave our hotel room for the night, the sight of Christmas deer against palm trees makes me laugh but also reminds me of back home (the dinged marble, the drying palm trees still dressed in baubles in a humid February). The sight of plastic snowflakes, robed Santas, artificial pine needles strewn decor on the beach reminded me of the doom of the end of year holiday, waiting to take over the electric sea.
I always arose from my sleep earlier than A, so I spent the first hour of my morning watching the sun from a semi-closed curtain panel and his dark eyelashes or reading a few sentences from my book. Once he awoke, I would try to sleep again as he grabbed coffee and cheese empanadas for us, and then we would venture. I never wore makeup, but I always splashed perfume on my collarbones and wrists, perhaps to remain in the routine of a productive day. But our days were everything but; we walked the three-minute walk to Moomba Beach instead of taking the shuttle a funny little golf cart driving next to us carrying Boomers to the hotel beach chairs, which we never used. To get beyond our humble tourist pocket, we’d take the car to other beaches; our route enveloped us onto lands littered by cacti — clustered against the stillness of the island’s air. They grew tall until they formed both backyards for the low-roofed terracotta floored yellow houses of the suburbs and gluttonous green and dirt hills by the ocean.
On our barefooted, still awe-struck arrival, we’d rent beach chairs from sun-tanned and creased men, the hot fluorescent plastic felt stretched against my browning skin as the day went by. I could not relax on our first day until my body sunk itself into the water next to A, cold and clean water, bright turquoise blue, and then one day cerulean, one day green and another grey as cigarette smoke, as the sun-tanned Chairmen arrived to their posts via Jet-Skis. With my body wet I would read my books and magazines all morning and afternoon, making sounds melt away from their human source — the Argentine child playing, Sascha the Russian from New York taking a phone call, (his goateed friend, who we saw at another beach later, contemplative in the sea, sat quietly their entire stay) the Midwestern couple, her bathing suit matching the color of Christmas lights against a night sky, smacking sun cream on their red bodies. When my eyes tired of reading I watched not only the blue of the sea but the white around it, dried coral and sponges washing ashore, silvery iridescent fish in shallow banks hidden away from the crowd, surrounded by rocks and waves and seagulls, all in perfect symphony of natural noise. A and I peered at sea snails trembling against eroding stones, crab bits, seashells that looked like smooth bone in the desert. The silvery fish swam in spirals around our feet, more perfection. When they dispersed, A swore they left nibbles on his toes.
The navy nail polish on my toes flaked off, forever floating toward Colombia or Florida, whichever shore could match its blue first. A’s back burnt into bright red in the morning as I pressed my fingertips against it, collecting its color. At dusk, we’d skip our hotel room to go back to Moomba for a to-go cocktail to drink in the sand, in a spot we had unceremoniously and quietly chosen together, between two palm trees and in between the commotion of the bar and the crash of the sea. The color of the sky changed, as it always does in Miami and Boston and Colombia and Mexico City and Rome and Greece and t/here, how it will every day, and I will forever be grateful to see it. It’s a pattern I know so well: blue, pink, yellow, orange, a purple, then again blue — but a deep blue I love, love it like I love resting my head against A’s chest like I love the two brothers playing every dusk in the ocean as their father watched from the distance like I’ve loved bad men and good friends from all my various lines of life like I love a silk scarf or a book that takes you back to a walled Berlin, like I love the Jersey Shore, the Vermont mountain, a paper moon and then that purple-blue-black I can’t capture, not in paintings or words — it’s the color I think I’ll see when I die; when my eyelids close and this soul leaves my form for another one. As the sky changed, the sea did too, so I dipped myself into it, and watched the party boats docked for the night bob on anyway, kissing the salt of the water. This became our ritual until our last night, when the night suddenly settled we went back to the bar to get drunk off frozen drinks made by a leggy Danish blonde we both liked; drank into the night then walked into town, still in our sandy wet clothing.
We did it!!!! The first year of fotocopy is done, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without your readership keeping me accountable. Thank you, truly, from the deepest bit of my very full heart. I’m so incredibly proud of myself, my friends who cheered this project on from both near and afar, and all the support I received from all of you. This is the first creative project in some years I’ve finished in full and on time (!), and it’s only helped me grow as an artist, writer, and person. I’ll always be grateful <3
This final week of the year, I had family in town, which filled my days and meant I wrote late at night in bed. I listened to a lot of Albert Hammond, mostly from his album It Never Rains in Southern California, and a lot of Nick Drake — especially his 1971 album Bryter Layter, which I think is heavily underrated. I played a lot of (Nick) Drake when I was 15 and stayed up late at night on Tumblr, hiding from my morning responsibilities, so it was a nostalgic week for me. Since I named fotocopy after the stuff I would make in my teenage years, it also felt right.
After watching the Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker this week, I’ve also been listening to the Tchaikovsky score. Classical music is so back in 2025.
The holidays become a slow reading time for me, so I am still finishing A Girl’s Story but I was gifted seven books this holiday/birthday season I am so excited to read in the new year! After A Girl’s Story, I will be re-reading McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh (I’ve been itching to for a while now…morbid gay Victorian angst is also back in 2025) and then I’ll be reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a birthday gift from A, which reminded me of one of the best scenes in The Holdovers.
In total, I read 25 books this year! I have an annoyingly lofty goal of at least 30 every year (I never make it), but I’m still proud that I’ve made reading an integral part of my life and art practice these past few years. If you ever want to talk books, please reach out.
As a gift to myself for my year-long discipline, I’m giving myself the flexibility to start the year slow. I will on a mini-hiatus in January to work on Deadword Theatre’s production of Julius Caesar (donating to us would be an excellent end-of-the-year gift for our amazing team and my costume budget!). I’ll be back here by early February.
I hope to turn fotocopy into a biweekly Substack to have time to work on other writing projects I want to pursue in 2025. I also want to open fotocopy for other writers and artists, and spend more time editing writing to enhance the quality of future issues. If you’re interested in working together, let’s chat!
If you want more fotocopy, check out the archive. Some fam-and-friends-faves are Solo Dogs, Greece, Blooms, and Provisionals from the Physical World. It’s been such a treat to write for y’all, so please tell your friends to continue subscribing!
I leave you for now, with one of the sunsets in Aruba, a sight I feel so lucky to have seen this year.
Thank you again endlessly. I hope the new year brings you everything you want + need + more. See you soon.
love love love love,
gabo