Brickell City Centre is a beautiful mall but also not really a place I can hang out. Had lunch with my dad at Tacology recently: four beers plus two entrees came out to a hundred bucks. There’s a nice movie theater with a sports bar in the lobby but tickets are $25 apiece so I’ve never been inside.

The mall’s popular on Instagram for this outdoor walkway that overlooks South Miami Avenue and a colorful building across the street and at night there’s a bazillion little lights that make for a pretty metropolitan starscape of a background.

I come here every morning for coffee and a nice place tow rite but I’ve got a weird FOMO resentment that stems, I think, from knowing that a person I was recently dating came here to get drinks with a friend, texting me all the while, and later that night hooked up with another guy in some other part of town. Then also there’s the ocean of photos on social media and dating apps with beautiful people looking posh and happy with a glittering opulent cityscape behind them.

There’s an air of financial comfort to the people walking around. Not even wealth, necessarily–but still. It’s intimidating just to watch people buy a pretzel without sweating.

Being here at Brickell City Centre every day I still don’t feel like I belong here nearly as much as, like, the 70-year-old man with $400 flipflips who’s only gonna be here for an hour: he’s gonna buy a purse for his dog and an $8 empanada, he’s gonna smoke a seven-inch cigarette in the elevator, insult the valet, and then never come back again. Alas, he could probably navigate the place better than I.

I like it, in other words, but it’s bringin’ me down.