Leaning into Life in Key West

I am, under normal circumstances, a cold-weather woman – pale-skinned, freckled, with an impressive (at least to me) collection of oversized wool sweaters that I swaddle myself in, sometimes several at a time. 

And yet, for a week now, as sweater-weather slowly cedes to springtime in New York City, I’ve been somewhere completely uncharacteristic: writing beneath a behemoth banyan tree at a writer’s residency in Key West, Florida. 

“You’re glowing,” Emmett remarked during our first of many glitchy bad-wifi FaceTimes, and I have to admit – this 100% humidity, high-80s weather has managed to do for my face what years of dabbing myself with creams and streaking my cheekbones with highlighter could not. Who needs skincare when you have your own sweaty sheen?

Sartorially, though, I’ve been suffering. Having spent two homebound years in a uniform of black yoga pants and striped long-sleeved tees so stunningly consistent that I can barely distinguish my outfits from myself, I was dismayed to discover that there is, in fact, a situation where this clothing combination is not appropriate. That situation being the searing sun of an eternal Florida summer. I, to put it simply, packed virtually nothing I could comfortably wear.

So, since my arrival, I’ve been writing every day and then, when the heat begins to break in the late afternoon, wandering around Old Town desperately seeking clothing that isn’t a) made for water sports or b) emblazoned with the words ‘Key West.’ I finally found my scene at two stores with mononymous French names – Mulier and Vignette – and have since bought every flowy white linen dress I can locate on their shelves. Then, for good measure, I ordered more dresses online. Today, since the studio my apartment abuts was closed to the public, those dresses were delivered to the bookstore next door instead – the whole situation has a lovely, informal, I-keep-a-spare-key-at-the-corner-bodega vibe about it. On the way home from a bike ride, I dropped by the store to pick up my dresses, and its owner passed me the package – “Oh, I wondered who Justine Feron was” – with an easy grace, while I accepted it with bumbling, nervous, sweaty energy. Why so sweaty (besides the weather)? Because the owner of the bookstore next door is Judy Blume.

(I will regret, to my dying day, not taking off my bike helmet before going into the store. There’s no less dignified way to meet one of your idols than while wearing a helmet so sporty someone could do the Tour de France in it).

But, clothing challenges and humiliating personal interactions aside, this writing residency – my first ever! – has been a wonderful and strange thing. 

My apartment – a cool and shadowy warren of rooms on the top-floor of a century-old carriage house – is mine to write in for a month, and remarkably, that great gift demands little of me beyond some light hob-nobbing at the studio that sponsors the artist-in-residence program. 

My time – in great contrast to my life at home, where I carefully parcel my days to pack in the maximum amount of working and parenting – is mine alone. Mine to spend well, mostly, and sometimes to waste feeling guilty and ambivalent about being away from the people I love most for weeks at a time. 

And my surroundings – verdant, tropical, teeming with chickens who wander the street like people and iguanas who look like modern-day dinosaurs – are beautiful and baffling all at once. People often say of New York that the city changes block by block, one mood yielding to another in the space of a few feet. Key West is like that too. My apartment is a quiet retreat – all whirring fans, air conditioner exhalations, and rustling leaves – and yet it’s just half a block from bustling Duval Street. Every morning, I walk to get an iced cafe con leche (made with coffee ice cubes, which, really, are a revolution that should come to all coffee shops nationwide) from Cuban Coffee Queen in Key Lime Square, and there I come face-to-face with Key West’s snowbirds and cruise ship day-trippers, the high-octane spiritual opposites of my introspective experience here. This is a town made more interesting by these dueling identities – a historic and literary Jekyll versus a hard-partying Hyde. 

I still have time left in this town. Time to savor the beauty of my neighborhood’s architecture, time to befriend my local librarians, and time to double (or triple) back to the two nearby bookstores. But, mostly, time to write.