TUESDAY

My Uber driver is listening to the national anthem. I am staying at a hotel called the Cadillac, like the car. Is this a Lana Del Rey song? No, this is Florida.

My balcony overlooks the beach and a mid-rise construction site. The wind roils the sea. A turbulent landing and a long taxi on the tarmac meant I didn’t get the chance to do much before heading to the HQ of Dacra—a developer of the Design District, Miami’s core of fashion, furniture, and large public art commissions since 2016.

Every year around the fairs, Dacra’s founder Craig Robins presents a new exhibition excerpted from his immense collection in his company’s office space. This year’s exhibition, The Sleep of Reason—which rings these glass-walled offices—features wallworks, freestanding sculptures, and some design objects, as well as design-adjacent sculptures like a chromed Rikrit Tiravanija set of tables and chairs.

The Sleep of Reason spans two floors. Kai Althof anchors the first floor. He’s a painter that never spoke to me but never bothered me, but seeing him set in conversation with Goya and Marlene Dumas brings out some energies I like. Also, seeing so much at once. The consistency of vision but freedom of forms. The textiles, the creepiness, the puncturings.

The Annunciation by Bony Ramirez.

Breaking from the tour group, I spend some extra time with works by Bony Ramirez, Tschabalala Self, and Sasha Gordon. A Richard Tuttle tacked above a Virgil Abloh bench really draws me in. The collection is a “microcosm of the neighborhood,” Robins explains, pointing out that some artists like Ramirez, Jill Mulleady, and Urs Fischer, whose works feature, also have or have had public commissions in the development.

I and some others peek through glass-walled private offices to see the art usually on display—even without a tour group in attendance. Robin’s mother featured in a Warhol silkscreen, which hangs in his office. So did his mother-in-law, whose silkscreen doesn’t.

Noticing our wandering gazes, Karen Grimson, the curator of this current hang, jokes about remixing Zoom backgrounds, and I wonder what clients think when they see a mass of leering women rendered in low-contrast black on beige. I respect this choice.

With Or Without by Jana Euler.

We continue, pausing for a while along a wall of works by the German painter Jana Euler. In one, a messianic hippie inflected by sunset colors plays a recorder. In another, a mottled cow sits upright, looking metaphysically ran-through and forlorn, holding a takeaway cup. “It’s a cow drinking coffee exhausted by… I don’t know, probably capitalism,” remarks Grimson.

For once, I’m not tired. An LSD “microdot” pill—which I bought with a promo code from the brand sponsor of a documentary screening—is carrying me. We’re lingering by the reception and since I’m not here as part of a pair like most of the others in the crowd, I start observing them. Their clothes run the gamut of all-logo high-end (camel-colored Loewe shorts with curlicue cutaways, Prada sandals with little dangling triangles) to all-logo freebie (Dia Beacon hats). I see a guy with jarringly large brown eyes. How did I not notice these remarkable orbs before? He’s fidgeting a bit. His eyes aren’t big, it’s his pupils. Dinner-saucer-big black pools overtake his retinas. Uhoh, do I look like that? I go to the bathroom to check my face in the mirror. I look perfectly normal. Phew. Okay, but I’ve got to get out of here.

I traipse the Design District, checking out the new outdoor sculptures, inspired by Ndebele jewelry, by Nicole Nomsa Moyo. A lot of the Design District is luxury shops, and I consider going to Prada to see if they’ll replace the nose pads on my sunglasses but decide there are better uses of my time. Namely, checking out Open Invitational, a new fair co-founded by David Fierman and Ross McCalla which centers galleries and non-profits who support artists with disabilities.

Open Invitational brings together 11 organizations. Fierman says that while at the main fairs maybe one or two of these artists might be shown (Creative Growth also has a booth at NADA), this new fair is an opportunity to show the breadth and dynamism of these artists, which he hopes will mainstream them further, rather than isolate them from the art-world conversation. Open Invitational operates at a “human scale” unlike some of the bigger operations run by conglomerates or “sponsored by car brands and fashion brands.” Some of the works sell at “prices even an art writer could afford.” I do consider buying some grid paintings by Christina Constantine, but tell Fierman I’ll sleep on it. Me and another exhibitor have vodka sodas and Parliaments, look at the crescent moon rising above the Hublot shop.

I finish my drink and stomp to Gucci’s celebration of its snowglobe sculpture where I have hors d’oeuvres and where two gay waiters say, “I really like your shirt.” I can’t tell if there are three step-and-repeats or just three photographers. I’m looking at my phone. I nurse a gin and tonic. I’m like, Okay, that’s enough screen time. I walk to the Institute of Contemporary Art for the opening of exhibitions by Lucy Bull, Ding Shilun, and Marguerite Humeau, and to see a phenomenal exhibition by Keeichi Tanaam. Usually I’m indifferent to contemporary figurative painting, but I keep going back to look at Shilun’s bodies that unzip their own skeletons and heave and tug against each other. Uncanny dynamics emerge. Furniture reads like the passage of time.

I meet up with Whitney and Maya. We’re starving. We’re like, But do we really need dinner? We decide to see if the Cartier Trinity ring centennial event next door has hors d’oeuvres. We traverse its step-and-repeat into a five-room labyrinth, each space bringing us seemingly no closer to what we hope might be passed plates. We enter a large video-installation of reflective rings in which we take photos of our warped reflections, a room with a projection mapping, another with a table displaying three metal balls—white gold, rose gold, and gold gold—orbiting seemingly on their own accord through sand. Each room has carpet so plush I feel I’ll fall over as I plod across it.

At last, an elongated stairwell conveys us into a spacious lounge where, yes, white-shirted men shuffle miniature food items about.

A gay waiter says, “I really like your shirt,” as he offers us some tomato bonbons. There’s steak tartare and also some truffle pastry. The waiters start targeting us as they realize we’re wolfing down snacks every time they come by, chasing them even. I wonder aloud if there are only three snacks because of the Trinity ring, then a less-gay waiter comes toward us with a freshly laid plate of cornucopia-shaped tortillas topped with bubbly roe. “Try it, I know you’ll like this one,” he winks at Maya. Um…

We leave, still hungry. Try to buy tacos. An old guy outside is complaining about what he saw at a fair preview today: “Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay!” Five gays. Miami is simultaneously the most homophobic and most homosexual city, which I guess could be explained by its Catholic undertones or by its being in Florida, DeSantis’s cradle of fascism, an ideology that in the ’30s famously got a lot of traction with homophilia and excessive bodybuilding.

Back in Miami Beach, an afterparty for one of the ICA artists. I’m not on the list and they google me to decide if I am necessary to let in.

Apparently I am. The ceilings are low and the bartender is like, “It’s an open bar, why don’t you order top shelf?” Three Azealia Banks songs play. “Is this Chanel Beads?” we keep asking each other of the DJ. I have no idea who Chanel Beads is but the name is on the invitation I’m shown. It isn’t Chanel Beads, because they’re apparently a band, and perform later.

I ask an Australian art advisor how his day was. He says, “I had dinner, then I went for drinks.” This dialogue won’t work. I ask an artist what she did today. “I found 450 Canadian dollars on the ground. Everyone was just stepping on it.”

I’ve got to get out of here. I realize I left my phone on a table. When I retrieve it two French advisors sitting on the teal banquette lift their hands to clap silently in what I take as admonition. I’VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE.

My energy’s waning. Do I take another microdot? Do I chug a Red Bull? Do I haunt the bathroom for a stall that reveals three pairs of Prada loafers and hope I know one of the pairs’ owners? No. I go back to the Cadillac, because the next day I am performing as part of the program “Climate of Grief” organized by The Whitney Review of New Writing at NADA.

WEDNESDAY

After missing a Serpentine brunch because 9 am is a coercive start time, I down two espressos and head to Design Miami.

I feel like it used to be kind of easy for shelter magazines to make grand (and shoppable) pronouncements about design trends: chubby furniture, neo-memphis, quiet luxury. What are they gonna say this year? The theme is mass polarization: nobody’s design TikTok feeds are the same. There’s general surreality in a few spots, I guess. Bottega Veneta and Zanotta’s collaboration on The Ark, re-editions of Poero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro’s Sacco chair (one of the original bean bags!) in cartoony, animalian shapes. Or from the Dubai-based designer Roham Shamekh, angel-winged chairs. There’s a lot of what I’ll call post-digital wood, either CNC-milled in unexpected ways or 3D modeled and then hand carved in the case of Sam Klemick’s chairs, whose solid fir visually behaves like upholstery (on display at the carpeted booth for Objective Gallery).

In terms of “would I put this in my apartment?” il·lacions’s exhibition 12 out of 100K, which was “inspired in Barcelona,” stood out. I especially liked the cyan block of aluminum by Antoni Pallejà and a curvy metal cantilever chair with a giant spring by Kutarq Studio.

Another coffee, another microdot. I can’t take this much fuschia clothing. Did you know Chanel made so many flat quilted platform sandals? What’s the difference between a beachy patterned two piece and pajamas? Nobody knows. I’m also wearing matching tops and bottoms (not pajamas).

It’s time to go to NADA. Can’t be late. Maybe a beta blocker? Like, I’m supposed to perform with Eartheater, Maya Martinez, AND Macy Rodman? I’m honored and scared. It goes great. Thank you, Whitney.

I’m trying to come up with something to say about the booths but I think that’s a cursed exercise. Like, you mean I’m supposed to grandstand about the state of global art-making from one trade show? I’m not that delusional. NADA is my number-one fair because people are excited to be at it and I see artists I’ve never heard of, but not like some of the other fairs where I wish it would’ve stayed that way. Like, there are no monumental golden orbs or whatever. It feels more direct.

Lucila Garcia de Onrubia, an artist I’ve had an exchange with over Instagram for a while, hands me a publication she’s made, Acero Inolvidable. It’s a very lovely publication. She’s got a sculptural bench—heart-shaped steel tubes—on display at the (carpeted) installation of the Argentinian gallery Calvaresi. It would’ve fit right in with the Barcelona show, sprinkling in some romance.

To me, the most exciting features of fairs are the galleries from across the world—Singapore, Guayaquil, Dubai—but also the States. Like, what is happening in Portland, Maine? Now I know like 1% more than I did: macro photography. It’s giving Flickr. Maya has a pink point and shoot whose lens won’t extend and in every picture she takes I think I look insane. Maybe I am insane? A few hours earlier I paid $20 for two of the smallest tacos I’ve ever eaten so I’m probably not mentally well, it’s true. I take back everything I’ve ever said before about my hard-earned cognitive stability. I take another microdot.

Okay: so is it Margiela, J Balvin, Tierra Whack, Silencio? No, what about the Bass opening? ICA again??? Fuck, what about W Magazine? Oh, that was last night? Oh, Future Perfect… shit that’s over. Wait whose opening? What about dinner? Where’s that quarter of Adderall? Wait, I hate Adderall. I haven’t even been to the beach. Or Twist. Okay, focus. No, yeah, the cool schnitzel place. It isn’t far. Call the car.

It’s 40 minutes away. It’s closed. We eat at an expansive Italian restaurant where we’re the only guests. The wine list is on an iPad—with pictures. After, I’m supposed to meet Taylore but she’s been on the causeway for two hours. We go to the Margiela store to pass the time. Thick, tan carpets. The Cartier waiter is there. “You were my favorites all night,” he says. Nice. He passes us three champagnes.

It’s only 7:45 pm. Let’s go to that Italian brand. No, that PR girl is doing the door. Right. Let’s go on the swings. Let’s parallel play. Let’s write our respective diaries on our dying phones so we don’t have too much to do on Friday.

We kill time, wait for Taylore and Slava. Together we head to the Design District magazine party. J Balvin is supposed to be there, but only Slava sees him and he doesn’t tell us till after. Wtf! Nami Nori is doing the food and I enjoy a tuna hand roll, trying not to let fish crumble all over the ground. Good sake. This is chic, actually. People keep complimenting me. The writer Jesse Dorris and the photographer Danielle Levitt and a couple NYC BFA documentarians are here, but everyone else seems deeply Miami. Or just unknown to me.

Whitney asks me to define post-structuralism. Taylore finds a bartender who will make us off-menu vodka sodas. Doubles. I’m, like, ready to party. We call a car. Someone else takes it. We call another car. Every Uber on the block is an immense black SUV and I’m not wearing my glasses and they don’t have front license plates in Florida anyway. We wave down a few of the wrong ones. This is the real Basel experience.

In the car, Whitney shows us a photo she took of a shag-carpet-wrapped Cybertruck. (When I later read her diary, I’ll realize Maya noted that Humeau’s show had carpets too.) We ask the driver to turn on the radio and he spends the entire journey changing stations.

We’re driving to the “villa party” for an Italian brand I’ve never heard of on San Marino island, off the causeway. A mob of at least 60 people vie to jump the velvet rope in front of the rent-a-mansion. They’re not letting anyone in. Taylore and Whitney fight to the front and sweet talk us past security as others attempt to push Slava and me aside and claim they’re the real plus-ones.

Across the threshold we’re greeted by a bronze sculpture of a pig fucking a woman. The pig has human legs and ass. This is the only decor in the red-lit house overlooking the bay, apart from a giant YSL book Whitney scopes on an otherwise empty shelf. We get vodka sodas with literally 5 milliliters of vodka. Microdosing really is in, I guess.

This party makes no sense. Everyone among us recognizes exactly one person: the quieter twin from Selling Sunset, a model who’s dating one of our exes, one of our exes. We wobble past the infinity pool to sit on the astroturf overlooking the bay, unsuccessfully chasing the smell of weed. Is astroturf a type of carpet? All the older men have $4,000 leather jackets their wives bought them and $800 sneakers they unfortunately bought for themselves. Their mistresses look good, although sometimes the injectables exceed camp. The younger men wear Nikes.

The still water reflects the high-rises being built on all sides, like Christmas lights on melting snow. Will this empty mansion be among the first to go? Climate of grief.

A boat pulls up. Four people disembark, strafing the narrow dock, where they’re met with black-suited security. They’re being denied entry, but their water taxi’s already pulling away. Security is waving telling them to come back each with one hand, with their other arm blocking the newbies’ entrances. One of the hopeful guests pulls out his phone, makes a call, hands the phone to a bouncer. The bouncer nods sternly. They can enter.

We know the party won’t get better than this. Time to leave.

THURSDAY

I’m supposed to depart today. I take my luggage to the main fair, where I spend a couple hours making the rounds. Favorites: Antonio Henrique Amaral (painting of a fork), Timo Fahler (stained glass sculptures), Agosto Machado (gay shrines), Antonis Donef (collages made from books with “calligraphic drawings”), Sanam Khatibi (miniature, deathly, surreal paintings), Helen Marten (studied chaos), Roksana Pirouzmand (ceramic, furniture), Mary Lovelace O’Neal (magisterial and moody abstraction), Claude Cahun (gay photos), and Sonya Rapoport (hand-stiched computer art from the ’70s).

I talk to Isaac Alpert at PPOW, who opens a small door to a backroom where there are amorous drawings by an artist whose name I forget to note of a buff Oscar Wilde fucking a clone of himself. I still haven’t gone to Twist. I’m supposed to depart in a few hours, but I decide it seems stupid to leave just to get back to New York at 10 pm, especially when my friends are hosting parties tonight. I rebook my flights, wallow in the letdown and thrill of spending money.

I drop my luggage at my friends’ hotel, which has a birch theme in the lobby (oyster mushrooms “grow” from white columns) and, it turns out, even the rooms—which are carpeted.

I work on this diary for a bit, eat some trail mix, figure out something slutty to wear under my oversized Balenciaga sweater in case I get stuck out for the rest of the day. My plan is to head to the Miami River Inn to see the installation by designer Rich Aybar. Taylore and I call an Uber. An hour and a half later we’re barely over the causeway. The exhibition is closing. Aybar texts “don’t come.” Instead, I mill around the Miu Miu store (floors: carpeted) and try on sunglasses while Taylore interviews Gigi Hadid. Then we’re off to the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

There are three lines and in every line we’re told to go to a different one. We finally get to the desk to check in and we’re told to go to a different desk. We don’t see it, but we’re beyond security anyway so just head into the museum.

We’re two galleries deep when the cops show up to escort us out.

We finally find the table where the iPads do have our names in the parking garage. Re-enter, drink strawberry-peach LaCroix. I forgot to bring my glasses so I can’t see any of the art.

Next up—EDGLRD, Harmony Korine’s skater party. It’s at a club called El Palenque, which is an aesthetically compelling venue with checkered tiles, differentiated floor levels, and red lights. The music is fun. People are starting to pack in. Socially awkward skaters and art world socialites alike. But we’ve got to go. PIN–UP is co-hosting a presentation of Silencio with Perotin at the Edition. Say that five times fast.

We sit at PIN–UP’s table. I always get too drunk when there’s bottle service. Is tequila cranberry a drink I should make or no? I drink an Evian. Go outside. Smoke a spliff, marking the first time in probably 10 years I’ve consumed weed in public. A British gallerist asks me for cigarettes, but I’ve forgotten them at home. She tells me she was just chatting with one of her clients, a Swedish billionaire, about his recent trip to Honduras to clone himself. She thinks this extremity is admirable, that he’s an artist in his own right. I say, “I have to walk over there,” and step like five feet away because I’m not sure what else to do.

I go back in and Björk is blasting. I think Eartheater is DJing. People are thrashing. I chug two Evians floating in a murky pool of what was once an ice bucket. Let’s go to Twist, everyone is saying, so I switch back to chugging tequila.

FRIDAY

I wake up at 11. I’m about to get ready for the beach but then I remember I have a flight. I pay $20 for a protein bar and cold brew. In the airport my hangover becomes religious in nature. I was raised vaguely Catholic so by religious I mean I’m mentally punishing myself. But perhaps instead I could find ecstasy?

I did not find ecstasy in Miami because I was unwilling to transgress, I think. I was not willing to sit with art in a fair for a kind of eternity and have an ecstatic experience. I did not want to be saved. I did not find wisdom in the basin of a plastic cup filled with free tequila. A Gucci snowglobe augered no wisdom either. I skirted the surface of things, the infinity pool that is my life. Where does the water go? Back to the source. I did not find ecstasy in a gay bar’s bathroom. Or, I did, but I was not willing to take ecstasy at 5 am. I am ruled by fear. I am punishing myself again. I fall asleep. I am in New York. I haven’t seen a carpet in days.