A weekend on Long Island

Dear Emily,

The Yankees are playing the Red Sox and I am meeting my friend at the bar for a few beers and a night of baseball and excitement in about 15 minutes, so I will make this quick. Long Island was an interesting, exciting, fun time; but mostly, it was really very interesting.

By the time Craig, Chris and myself reached the Long Island Expressway – by way of Newark, New Jersey; by way of the Gothels and the Verrazano Bridges that connect New Jersey with New York with Long Island – we were stoned and beyond excited with our lives and our hopes. We stayed in that state of excitement for more than most of the weekend.

The six of us – me, Chris, Craig, Silvie, Megan and Suzanne – spent most of Friday night playing cards and drinking in excess and then I fell asleep in my woodsman type sleeping bag on her front lawn; june bugs were singing their loves songs in the night. It was a fine night with conversations that centered around our memories of each other and Iris and Washington.

I found myself waking up to the humming birds, singing their love songs Saturday morning; empty beer bottles surrounding me. My head felt empty. Saturday afternoon I found myself sprawled out on the wooden living room floor, Jimi Hendrix’s abstract, drug induced rendition of Our National Anthem at Woodstock, 1969 playing loud, very loud on the stereo. I felt alive. I gyrated my hips to every high note that Jimi bent on that Strat; I was drunk and stoned and it was 1:00 on a Saturday afternoon and for the first time ever in my life I felt proud to be an American: Craig flew all the way from Wisconsin and we were on Long Island, and America, I thought, was a great place to be. Chris was sitting at the dining room table feverishly writing in his notebook and Craig was staring out the window. The three girls had gone shopping for the afternoon.

Suzanne seemed to already be flustered with our behavior by the time the sun was high in that hazy and hot Saturday afternoon; Megan and Silvie seemed to be going along for the ride. It got worse when she invited the three of us to a cocktail party at the Swordfish Beach Club, pending that we could and would behave ourselves. Suzanne seemed to be specifically staring at me when she defined what proper behavior would be; we, the three journalists (already drunk and stoned at 1:30 in the afternoon) would not embarrass her and give her rich prick peers the impression that she spends her time with a bunch of raving lunatic losers. (Chris wrote this in my notebook; I feel that it is a 100 percent, on point accurate recollection of that moment: “I could care less, I had been waiting, in fact secretly hoping for her to deny us – that’s why I was able to stomach her put-down, it was written well before she spoke.”)

“What will we do for dinner?” Suzanne asked us. “We can eat crackers and strawberries!” I yelled. As Suzanne frowned, the other two frowned in unison; Chris and Craig burst out laughing and slapping their knees. “If we are going to spend $12 to go to a cocktail party, then I am going to eat $12 worth of crackers and strawberries!” I yelled, laughing. “Are you guys stoned?” she asked. We just laughed harder and harder until I had to stop because my stomach hurt so much. I was happier than I had ever felt, surrounded by my two friends, under the influence as 1:30 in the afternoon on Long Island.

As you can imagine, the Swordfish Beach Club is the epitome of the stigma that the Hamptons’ carry and the stigma that its residents pride – all Polo shirts and trophy wives; all martinis and Wall Street, stock market conversations. Craig, Chris and myself sat back and wrote in my notepad; we observed what we witnessed as complete and utter amazingness. I swear when a woman of about 80-years-old caught a glimpse of me, with my greasy brown hair hanging into my eyes, my body awkward with my fifth gin and tonic, she pulled back into herself and had to restrain her gag reflexes with all her might not to puke. I smiled, took a raspberry shrimp off the waitress’ plate and asked the bartender for a grapefruit juice and vodka.

I disappeared for a long time; I sat on the beach and watched the sun sink into the Atlantic Ocean. The wind was blowing hard. In the distance, sea gulls were singing. I was amazed by the simplicity of the land and the ocean. Redistribution of wealth in America – I repeated it like a mantra in my head, over and over. We must encourage a Vietnam War! Their stocks will plummet when the prices of rubber and rice are under the iron fist of the communist, North! The sun had sunk into the ocean and the sky was orange and blue with its remnants. My cup, once filled with ice, grapefruit juice and vodka was empty, again. I walked into the women’s room, washed my hands and wrote KARL MARX ‘04 on the wall next to the sink with the pen from my pocket. I felt better about myself. I jumped up and down and I laughed. I went to find a new drink. I spent the entire night with a paperback copy of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald stuffed in my back pocket and I showed it to everyone.

Suzanne seemed to be greatly frustrated by this point; I think the real kicker was when I threw a drink off the balcony and into the pool.

The three ladies would go to the bar that Saturday night. “What will we do with the night?” we asked. They didn’t know and they didn’t seem to care, so we stayed at the beach for the night. More weed would be smoked, more beer would be drank and the three of us made friends with the employees of the beach club; I made friends with her. The moment I saw her, when I said hello and she smiled, I knew I had found her – Skyler, an eccentric lifeguard with an eccentric name; she stood almost as tall as me and she was beautiful. I would sit with her, our legs touching from our hips down to our ankles; her head resting on my shoulder; her long brown hair covering her face and draping over my shoulder like a soft cotton shawl. She told me about her life and I told her how the moon, moving across the sky, is proof that everything is always changing. She told me about how she loves to take photographs more than anything in the world and, as Chris would later tell me, that, from hundreds of feet away, he could hear me laughing and yelling and stomping my feet, happily lecturing, “Look at all this sand, Skyler! Look! One day I am going to be dead. One day you are going to be dead. But, even though we are dead, this sand will still be here! Millions and maybe billions of grains of sand!” We were both drinking Coors Light, sitting on the life guard tower 20 feet away from the crashing waves; “The lunar pull of the moon never stops dragging the ocean and the waves onto the sand,” I told her, giggling and laughing. We kissed and everything felt beautiful and I was happy and my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest and swan dive into the too cold, late June, Northern Atlantic. Chris and I slept on the beach that night and the next morning, waking up, cold, covered in sand, Chris told me, “Jason, you were electric last night.” My head felt empty.

We spent Sunday staring at each other, tired and worn out, ready to leave that society Fitzgerald must have had in mind when he created the character Jay Gatsby and when he thought of the plot for “This Side of Paradise.” When we said goodbye to Megan, Silvie and Suzanne, this time, there were no tears; it was only a well rehearsed, “Well, I guess I’ll see you around someday.” It wasn’t like we were angry or upset or sad, it just felt like acceptance.

We drove home, across Long Island and into New York City, sober and quiet. We stopped at a convenience store somewhere on the Montauk Highway and Chris bough three $1.50 cigars. We smoked them and stayed quiet, reflecting and observing.

Pulling onto Kingsbridge Avenue, downtown Bronx (or, as Chris normally very affectionately calls the Bronx, “The BX”) I said, “I think this puts closure on the Washington experience.” Chris and Craig looked both a little confused and a little offended. “I mean, I don’t know. It’s like I think the letters will stop. I feel like I have weeded out my friends from that mix of journalists.” Even though I explained my intentions, they still both seemed to be perturbed by the feelings I was trying to express. On Friday night, drunk, I had said to Chris, “Sitting around a table and talking and rehashing the past makes me feel awful.” “Why?” Chris asked. “I don’t know,” I said, then I threw an empty beer bottle across Suzanne’s yard. I didn’t hurl that bottle out of anger or frustration; I honestly don’t know why I threw it, but for a moment something in my heart just snapped and made me sad. That was why we were there, after all – because of the past. I hope you understand. Maybe? I think the past is going to stay in the past in my heart.

Regardless of anything – social class structures, Liberals VS. Conservatives, girls VS. boys, Everything – it was an amazing weekend. I wish more of you could have spent it with is. The view was beautiful.

And, with that, GO YANKS! You can have Clemens or Pettite, cause we’ll win it All without them!

Sincerely,

Jason Mills

PS. It turns out that I didn’t make that so quick afterall.

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