College days, Friday night, I had an idea.

“Let’s go to Miami,” I said to my roommate and lead singer of the One V Dub, Rob e Rob. Let’s do it he said, still dressed as if he had just spent the last 12 hours working as a line cook in whatever greasy pub was hiring at the time. Without any more planning, we filled up my beater for about a buck fifty a gallon and hit the road.

After about 4 hours of listening to the new Blackout! CD later, the old Volkswaken with a broken windshield that I bought for like $400 had us arriving on South beach just in time for Ocean Drive to start getting lively. We spend the night walking the strip while periodically checking on my illegally parked shitbox.

The closer to 3am it got, the bigger the crowd became and we joined in on a cypher around 10th st. where all the art deco hotels with the neon lights are. Rob rapped, I watched.

“Hey you got a ‘port?” A voice called out while crossing Ocean towards my side of the street. “Na,” I said as I turned my body while keeping my attention on the shadowy figure approaching me.

Then I did a double take. I glanced over for my friend Rob just so he could verify what I was seeing. “I got this though,” I muttered as I passed my last ember in his direction. He grabbed it and when he grubled “good lookin’ out son,” I was sure it was him. Tical himself, Jonny Blaze, frontman for the Wu-Tang clan, Method Man.

We just kicked it for a minute but that’s all it took for him to make an impression.

Dude was a trip. Not just the content of what he was saying. His whole aura. At the pinnacle of his career, world famous, he was running around without a care in the world. He had this vibe like it was his world and we were just living in it.

We kicked it, I let out a hazy sigh of incredulity and then he was gone.

We crashed on the beach and woke up sunburnt around noon the next day with sand in my beard but I immediately knew I had it easy compared to my usually light skinned but now lobster red Portuguese buddy.

With a glance and a shake of the head, we corroborated our night’s experience, hopped in the car and headed home as I let the parking tickets blow away in the wind.