John Glynn - Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer

The events of this memoir took place during a flexion point in my life. To cross-check my memories, I combed through a digital footprint of photos, emails, text messages, Gchats, and social media posts. But I never could have constructed this book without the generosity of my Montauk housemates. The individuals who appear in these pages gifted me their thoughts, experiences, and secrets from that summer. They revealed aspects of their lives to me I never before knew. Any liberties in perspective are animated by these conversations and grounded in the facts as they were relayed to me. Errors are solely my own. In some instances I changed names or identifying characteristics to protect anonymity. I hope Ive done our story justice.

While Montauk became our sanctuary, we resided there only at the pleasure of its locals. My indelible gratitude to the people of Montauk, in particular Calli and Lindsay Stavola, who read this memoir with a keen local eye. Thank you to the entire community for sharing your sand-swept home with us at a time when we needed it most.

Our summer began in the winter.

Chauvin bought the tree, and Evan hung the lights. I wrote the Facebook invitation and sent it to eighty-six people. We lashed a wreath to the door. We adhered stockings to the walls with duct tape.

Caroline and Charlotte were making red and green Jell-O shots. Lizzie was bringing three handles of Svedka. We spent the day vacuuming, scrubbing, dusting, and by six p.m. our three-bedroom apartment, glinting, immaculate, was warming with scents of pine and cinnamon and the cloying multipurpose cleaner we used to polish every surface.

We lived in Tribeca on a windswept portion of Greenwich Street. Out our windows we could see a sushi den, a dive bar, and a coffee shop owned by Hugh Jackman. Our building was a brick high-risethirty-four floors, concrete accents, the brutalist design at odds with the modern lofts and converted warehouses around it.

To us the apartment was an acropolis, one we occupied by stupid luck. The amenities were beyond our scope of experience: stainless steel appliances, blond hardwood floors, a bathroom with a shower wand. A door opened to a private terrace off our living room with views of downtown Manhattan. Each morning we stepped outside and watched the Freedom Tower rise up pane by panefirst a pole of spires and stents, then a half-dressed obelisk, then, with its glass coats spiraling to the top day by day, a patriotic mirror in the sky.

At eight p.m. the ice company arrived with a carved ice luge. Two men in Carhartt jackets wheeled it to the terrace and removed the cold block from a taped-up blanket.

This is the seventh one weve delivered tonight, said one of the men to my roommate Chauvin.

And here we thought we were special! he replied.

The man pressed a button and the luge lit up. The words Merry Christmas glowed in a pantheon of dissolving colors.

You are, he said.

It was unseasonably mild that nightfifty-five degrees, humid, a light mist ghosting the street. Our apartment was dim and cozy, illuminated only by the Christmas lights that wed strung across the ceiling. I poured cider into a pot on the stove. Chauvin added rum and cinnamon sticks. We set up the beer pong table in the foyer and moved the coffee table for dancing. Hung mistletoe for good luck.

Evan and Chauvin both had girlfriends. I figured Id find someone soon.

I didnt have my eye on anyone in particular that night. Since moving to the city I had hooked up with a handful of girls and quasi-dated one. Her name was Shelly. It was short-lived and she unfriended me on Facebook.

Still, we were all at the age where dating felt real. Friends were pairing off, staying in, rising early, signing leases. Marriage, kids, thoughts of the suburbs. The previous summer Id attended seven weddings. I ate seven plates of chicken franaise and danced to Shout seven times. I watched seven mothers dance with their sons.

I drank.

I drank gin and tonics on the lawns of country clubs and flutes of champagne through awkward toasts. I guzzled wine by the globeful, making small talk with the brides camp friend, the grooms coworker, the cousins from Kentucky whom Id never see again. Before the dancing I ordered shots, or if shots werent on offer I ordered tequila neat. Id kick the liquor back in one mouth-smacking swill, ready to have the best night of my life.

It was 9:15 and our guests were supposed to arrive at 9:30. I always got nervous before throwing parties, but that night my anxietywhich had steadily increased over the past few yearsgrew volcanic. I darted to the bathroom, fixing my hair, tucking and untucking my flannel shirt, smiling at my reflection, breathing against the drumbeat inside my head. Chauvin was wearing a blazer. Should I wear a blazer? I decided to borrow one of his ties.

I checked my phone compulsively. My nerves crackled. Nine thirty-five. Nine forty. I sent a few desperate texts. Where are you? You guys still coming? I glommed my eye to the peephole, blinking into our empty hallway, the sight of the warped walls and doors instilling within me a silent dread.

The three of us tested the ice luge on the balcony while we waited. The peppermint schnapps a cold river. I did two in a row before I heard the doorbell.

Finally! Evan said. Someones here.

I went back inside and opened the door.

Johnny Drama!

It was my college roommate Mike and his boyfriend, Shane. I ushered them to the kitchen, admiring their tweed blazers. Christmas, with its bright color palette and decorous wardrobe, was the ideal showcase for their coupledom. Their hair was perfectly coiffed, their cheeks pink and smooth. They seemed to exist on a different life plane, one where people wore woven belts and vintage watches.