by John Glynn
“Two rum punches!” Kirsten called, pointing to a drink in a yellow beach pail. She and Colby had been boozing at the house all morning. Kirsten was slurry and delightful, but Colby had grown taciturn. He kept checking Instagram and staring into nothing. Even in the few days of knowing him, I could tell by the way he swung from masculine to feminine, boisterous to insular, that he pendulumed toward extremes.
“We need to go upstairs before it gets to capacity,” said Kirsten. “I don’t want to wait in the line.”
I followed Kirsten and Colby upstairs, where a large balcony overlooked the beach.
“Have fun last night?” I asked Kirsten.
“Ugh, I’m in a dark place,” she said. “I hooked up with Stefano again.” She looked down at her phone. “And I told him to meet us here, but he hasn’t responded.”
“What’s his deal?”
“I don’t know. He grew up in Croatia, went to Harvard. He’s very well-read. We talk about books a lot. He’s just…intense.”
“Intense how?”
“Like…he looks into my eyes. And I feel like he’s penetrating my soul.”
I nodded. But I had no idea what that was like. I asked her.
“It’s uncomfortable. And exciting.” The ocean wind was whipping her hair and she covered herself with her sweatshirt hood. “I don’t know. Let’s go inside and take a picture together. I want to geotag it so he knows where I am. I want him to see I’m having fun.”
Ashley was standing against the balcony, getting quizzed on finance by D.Lo and Tyler. D.Lo worked as an interest rate analyst, and she was a rising star on her team. Tyler worked in foreign exchange, and his hours were grueling.
“Wait, so explain this to me: If a central bank is using foreign exchange currencies to stabilize the market, is the direct ask price reciprocal to the ask price or the bid price?”
“The ask price. But we normally do a cross rate against another…”
Ashley stopped listening. Someone had grabbed her attention across the bar. He was built like a swimmer: tall, broad, V-shaped with a face that looked wave-smoothened. He wore a red-and-blue Berkeley College windbreaker, khaki shorts, and Reef sandals. His hair—brown, thick, and wavy—looked like it could be at home in a hockey helmet.
She removed her sunglasses. They were big and round. The shiny black frames caught her reflection as she clamped them shut in her hand. She nervously covered her mouth with her fist.
“Ash?”
She was willing him over. Channeling his gaze through the crowds that were watching tennis on the outdoor TV. She was praying for him to approach. To ask her out. To take her to a wine bar in the West Village and share a chaste kiss on West Fourth Street, to let her slip away in a cab before he could do more. She’d leave him guessing and he’d text her back, ask her out again. In that moment he became the locus of her entire future.
As their eyes met she tried to convey that he had been cast in this role, that she didn’t know him yet, but that she had the capacity to love him entirely.
“Do you see someone you recognize?” I asked.
“No. It was no one. Just some kid who looked like my brother.”
I was introduced to a flurry of people. There were other houses, other names. Here was Sam from the Slide House. He grew up in Alabama. This was Madison. She stayed with Kirsten’s friends in a place called the Mansion. Rivers’s House (who was Rivers?) was currently sleeping thirty. The Tree House sat on the edge of Amagansett. The kids from Scrim House got evicted last summer. Don’t ask.
At one point Colby finally looked up from his phone. A Villanova couple, Casey and Brendan, had corralled him. They wore baseball caps and matching shirts from Barry’s Bootcamp. Colby introduced them to me, and I was disarmed by their alacrity. They were delving into the kind of chatty details usually reserved for very close friends.
“So how do you think the house is going to compare to your last summer?” asked Brendan. “I remember you loved it.”
I was about to correct him, but didn’t. He had no idea I was new. He had folded me into his memories. He had assumed I was always a part of the Hive.
Afternoon bled into night. A windy blur. Back at the house people napped on sinking air mattresses. The girls sardined three deep in the cold king-size bed. For dinner Shane cooked hot dogs on the grill. Smoke billowed up and mixed with the trees.
The Hive, with its strange rooms and curios, was beginning to remind me of my grandparents’ apartment on Sorrento Street. Both homes spoke of incremental accrual. Preservation. Spin dial radios and paper plate holders of thatched bamboo. The Hive held a history that didn’t yet belong to me, but I could feel myself adding to it, in the same way I had as a boy back in Springfield.
Pop-Pop had lived in the two-family house on Sorrento Street for eighty years of his life. His mother died in the 1918 flu epidemic, his father in a car accident. Orphaned at six months, he was raised by his three spinster aunts—Anna, Helen, and Murr. Anna was the secretary for the chief of police. Helen worked for a car dealership. Murr, who died before my mom was born, was the homemaker. I knew them only through their personal effects—a hand-stitched quilt, pendant lamps, old hat boxes—that continued to gild Sorrento Street into my childhood. Kicki preserved their heirlooms, and her own, with great care.
Kicki was a pack rat, but she never minded when we played with Sorrento Street’s treasures. On Sundays we’d sift through her old things: porcelain birds, loose keys, a bronze baby shoe, costume jewelry, and a wooden dollhouse.
The top apartment was two stories, and the third floor, with its floral wallpaper and emerald-green runners, was a cache for ancient belongings. One day, bent on exploring, I ventured up there alone. I dipped into my old bedroom (we had lived on Sorrento Street until I was five) and entered the closet, running my hands through Helen’s old mink coat. The space was sloped and shallow. If I stretched my arms I could almost reach across it. I pulled the light string, and something caught my eye.
Affixed to the back wall was a tiny metal slide bolt, and above it, a cabin hook. I squatted down, discovering a small square door. I couldn’t believe I’d never noticed it before, but the sight of it sent my heart thrumming. I unclasped the bolt and the door slowly opened. I found myself staring into a small dark room.
For a six-year-old, there could be no greater discovery. A secret crawl space. A door just my size. I ran to Kicki to show her. She knew of the crawl space, of course, but played into my excitement. It was too dangerous to enter—the floor beams were rickety and spiked with nails. But Kicki devised the perfect solution.
“Let’s peer in with a flashlight,” she suggested.
Together we illuminated the dark.
My mom, too, had known of the hidden door. When she was a girl she’d shared a bedroom with her sister Bambi. On summer nights they could hear the roar of a lion that lived in the Forest Park Zoo. The zoo sat within walking distance, and they loved to visit the animals. Peacocks, buffalo, Morganetta the elephant, a polar bear named Snowball, and Jiggs the monkey, who would spit on his onlookers. But when the lion’s roar carried through the dark, they’d lie awake, pinned to their beds, picturing the lion breaking out of his cage, clawing through the park, finding his way to Sorrento Street.
On those hot summer nights only one thought brought them comfort. If the lion ever escaped, they knew exactly where they’d hide.
The door became a scrim for my games of make-believe, but it also hinted toward a more capacious reality. Even a dwelling as fixed as Sorrento Street could be filled with secret rooms. Before my grandparents moved, I took a picture of the hidden door. I wanted to remember it was there.
The pregame for Sunday was themed The Great Gatsby. The movie remake had just come out and we blasted the Fergie song from the soundtrack, “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody.” The girls wore black flapper dresses and scarves in their hair. The guys did linen shirts and pocket squares. We pretended we were in East Egg and drank with abandon.
Later, we went back to town. Across the street from the Mem stood a bar called the Point. It was a bit brighter and I liked it better. Warm wood walls trapped the heat and the sound. You had no choice but to dance. We formed a circle in the heart of the bar. The girls leaned into the two big floor fans, pretending to be Beyoncé.
When we were done at the Point they stamped our arms so we could come back. We crossed the street to the Mem, kicked back shots, and danced to the live band. We went back to the Point, then back to the Mem again, shuttling between the bars like a beachside game of running bases.
I stayed out late, until the sky glowed purple. I danced with a few girls, but none who showed interest. At bars, at clubs, I mostly struck out. I had experienced a single one-night stand since moving to New York. A girl with a crop of pyramids tattooed on her neck.
Matt had left around two a.m., stopping first for pizza. I found myself wishing I had left with him.
When I got home the kitchen lights were on, but everyone was asleep. The remnants of our Gatsby party looked sad and garish—cigarette butts, whiskey bottles, smashed lime rinds, and wine globes stained red. A disaster of chips and pretzel sticks sanded the Formica. I was too tired to start cleaning. The kitchen was equipped with an unusual number of light switches, and I flicked through each one.
I went down to the basement and was about to open the door to the Game Room, but stopped. I heard rustlings and moans. I creaked the door open just a bit and light spilled across the futon. An unzipped sleeping bag was bobbing up and down.
I was about to shut the door when Colby’s head popped out. His gelled hair had come unlocked. He squinted, face flushed, eyes red.
“Oh son, I’m sorry, is this your bed?”
The kid beneath him, I recognized, was Brendan from the Sloppy Tuna, the one who had confused me for a second-summer Hiver. I’d thought he was dating the girl he was with. Hell, I realized, maybe he still was. I gave a quick wave and shut the door.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m ready to get the hell back to the city.” Matt was standing in the living room with his duffel, waiting for Timmy to finish packing. I felt the same. Three days of drinking had left me anxious and rattled. I needed to leave Montauk as quickly as possible.
Timmy thundered up the stairs. “Matt, ya ready, let’s get the fuck out of here, bye everyone, have a great week.”
Timmy blared out the door and Matt turned to me. “Well, looks like I’m off.”
“When are you out again?”
“In a few weeks.”
“Cool. I’ll be out here.”
“Great. Well, I’ll see you.” He leaned in for a hug, two arms, an embrace more solid than a three-day friendship might otherwise merit. But it still felt oddly insufficient. I attributed our instant connection to the boisterous atmosphere of the Hive, friendships coalescing in a vortex. When he left, I felt an absence. I was glad we had become good friends.
That night, back in Tribeca, I got in bed but couldn’t sleep. I cracked open Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers but got tripped up by the language. I turned off the lights and the ceiling glowed blue.
The joy of the weekend dissolved, and dark peregrinations of thought took hold. I was compulsively afraid of dying alone, and now that fear began to animate a waking nightmare. I pictured myself as an old man, living in a basement apartment in an isolated neighborhood, my parents, the only people who loved me unconditionally, long dead. I had passed through life without finding true love. An existence devoid of physical passion and intimacy. I failed in my career, I never had children, I no longer had any hint of a family. Life had moved quickly, beyond my grasp, and it would only continue to get worse until I died and there was nothing.
These dark visions lacked an origin. They simply were, and while I lived with these impressions every moment of my life, they usurped my thoughts when I was at my most vulnerable. The effects of drinking had reduced my defenses, and the bad thoughts were unrelenting. I couldn’t stop them. I could only hope to replace them. That night, for the first time, I replaced them with thoughts of Matt.
Chapter Ten
The next weekend was our five-year college reunion. I took Friday off and drove up to Boston with Mike.
“Waze says take the Merritt, but Google says to take Ninety-Five.”
“What’s Apple say?” I asked.
“Apple thinks we’re in Ohio.”
“Go with Waze.”
We drove beneath the Merritt’s ornate stone overpasses and chatted about the Hive. I told Mike I loved it, that I was sad not to be there. I also told him I’d been nervous. I’d never been in a group of so many gay people. I didn’t know where I’d fall. He told me not to worry, that I fit in well.
“Colby told me last week that you’re his new favorite housemate. He thinks you’re hilarious. Plus you have a six-pack. When did you get that, by the way?”
The Hive had been exhilarating, but I also wondered if my sleepless Monday night was a common Montauk side effect. Did everyone return to the city in a halo of dread? I kept this thought to myself.
“I have two abs at most,” I said. “Look, there’s a McDonald’s. Pull over and I’ll make them disappear completely.”
Mike and I had met the first week of freshman year. He was like me, a planner, a corraller. I’d walk down the hall to pregame in his large corner room. He made every new visitor sign his wall with a Sharpie. By the end of the year he had collected hundreds of names.
His room had a huge black sandal tacked to the wall. It was a Mike’s Hard Lemonade promo, the kind of thing you’d see in a liquor store. His friends from home had stolen it for him. His goal freshman year was to assemble a cohort as solid as them. He became the architect of our friend group, just as he was the architect of the Hive. Sculpting. Discerning. Quietly pulling people in and cutting others out.
When Mike came out to me, I was happy for him. He had never been attracted to girls, he admitted. He always knew he was somehow different. Mike and I had spent all of college bemoaning our singlehood. He’d figured out his bulwark and removed it. That year he was buoyed with optimism, with possibility. I remember envying him for that. Hoping that someday it would be my turn.
We lived in a six-man “mod” that year, a beer-drenched townhouse. We called Mike’s room the revolving door. Every night was a Kelly Clarkson concert. He was embracing his sexuality. I knew that something wasn’t working for me, but I also knew that I was not wired like Mike. I enjoyed having sex with girls. I just needed to meet the right one.
We drove through lower campus, passing the gothic stone dorms, the church, the Plex, the dining hall. Our football stadium was bannered in gold. It stood so high it blocked the sun. The few remaining summer students looked impossibly young, their knees bony, their expressions unburdened, their backpacks full.
We checked into Edmonds Hall and received a white card with a room code. Sheets and pillows were folded neatly at the foot of each bed. A welcome agenda detailed breakfasts, barbecues, dances, and Mass. I was rooming with Mike, my Tribeca roommate Evan, and our friend Mallory. The dorm felt unchanged. White brick walls, sturdy furniture, a gray carpet soaked in decades’ worth of beer. I made my bed just as I had years before, the white sheet unfurling and catching the sun.
The weekend was exhilarating but surreal. Time bent in odd ways. Five years dissolved, then stretched to a chasm. On Saturday I ate grilled chicken and pasta salad under a big stretched tent, the heat beating against my neck. I spoke with people I’d seen every day for four years, then not again. The exchanges followed a pattern. What are you up to, where are you living, who do you still see, are you dating, are you married, are you nowhere near ready to have kids, what are your plans for tonight, and then, as the conversation neared its natural end, the sad realization that, despite our shared history, despite the time we got written up together for funneling beers in our sweatpants, this was probably it for another five years, or ever.
At the end of the ba
rbecue I ran into my college girlfriend Betsy. She was living in Texas and working for a tech company.
“Oh, and I have a boyfriend! We’ve been together for nearly a year.”
I smiled, the announcement threading its way through my own personal failures. As I walked back to the dorm I thought about why it was that, even though I’d gone deeper with Betsy emotionally than with anyone else, my feelings had still seemed insufficient.
It just takes the right girl, my dad always said.
Mike had assembled a thirty-five-minute video collage from our college years. He invited a couple dozen of us to the cabaret room in Vanderslice Hall and rigged his laptop to a projector. The cabaret room had high ceilings and big windows that reflected the sunset as the movie showed. The video began with freshman year, a slapdash of photos and video clips from Mike’s vast archive. It moved chronologically. An unfolding of our four years, the best times, the funny drunk moments we forgot. Underage sake bombing. Case races. Endless pregames and drunk dancing to the “Call on Me” music video. A random Monday night, heart of winter, when we went out and pushed each other into snowbanks. In one video clip I’m passed out with my head in a toilet. Mike flushes it to wake me up.