by John Glynn
“That bathrobe is fa-shun,” said D.Lo.
“It looks like it’s screaming at me,” said Mike.
Kirsten kept dancing around, flipping her sashes and tossing Goldfish into her mouth.
Matt was laughing so hard he bent over and grabbed my arm. “This is the randomest house ever,” he said. I agreed.
He told me about his week. He had just switched from the audit department to client strategy and the new workload was an adjustment. He’d worked until midnight three days that week.
“I don’t mind the long hours,” he said. “But it gets depressing eating Westville chicken at your desk every night.”
On the upside, he loved his coworkers. His finance company was very gay friendly. They sponsored gay events and supported LGBT charities. It sounded like the opposite of Shane’s situation.
“A lot of us have become good friends outside the office. But it’s nice to have the Hive crew on the weekends.”
“Are you coming for the Fourth of July?” I asked.
The returning housemates kept saying how the Fourth of July was the best weekend in Montauk. Mike and Colby were already planning a house party and a beach bonfire. I’d hoarded a few vacation days so I could head out on Wednesday night. I pictured Matt and myself drinking beers by the bonfire as snarls of driftwood crackled and burned.
“I’m missing it,” Matt said. His voice was froggish, slightly affected. “I made plans to go to Provincetown back in, like, March.”
“Oh. Well, that’ll be fun, I’m sure.”
“Trust me, I’d much rather be in Montauk. I’m going with a group of people, including my ex-boyfriend.”
I reached for the box of Goldfish. Tossed a few back.
“It’ll be fine, I’m sure,” he continued. “We’re still friends. We met at work and dated off and on for a few months, but he was just coming out and still struggling with it.” He paused. “I wish I were going to be in Montauk with you.”
Kirsten and Colby processed back into the kitchen. This time Colby was wearing the bathrobe. Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop” was playing and Colby started twerking around the kitchen, an embroidered blur of hot pink.
Ashley and Mike got back to the house that night with a large cheese pizza from Pizza Village. They were the first ones home from the bar. They flicked on the deck lights and the bugs gathered around the glow. Ashley unsheathed two Marbs and they smoked on the back porch, listening to the sounds of the crickets. The rest of the house trickled in, some lingering for a slice or a nightcap before passing out on sand-strewn mattresses.
Colby was the last one home. He got back at three a.m. with two guys and a girl he had met at the Mem. The trio were college friends from Princeton and they were staying at the Beachcomber on the Old Montauk Highway. Colby had promised them a party.
The pizza was gone, but not the alcohol. They played a drinking game, Fuck the Dealer, in the kitchen. One of the guys, Joe, undid the top three buttons on his shirt and ran a hand through his cropped chest hair as he danced around the table. The other guy was Pete. He and Joe had played football together in college. The girl’s name was Vanessa. Colby wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning.
They took a round of tequila shots. Pete began to make out with Vanessa against the kitchen island. They were both tall and British and maybe models. Pete’s hands reached around her back and grabbed her butt. She made space on the counter and he sat her against the ledge. Colby and Joe stepped into the living room to give them some privacy.
“Bro, thanks again for having us. And sorry about them,” Joe said. They took a seat on the living room couch. It was dark, except for the light that leaked in from the kitchen.
“It’s no problem, this house has seen way crazier, trust me.”
“Oh yeah?” Joe rested his hand on Colby’s thigh. “Like what?”
“You name it,” Colby said.
Joe’s tongue slid into Colby’s mouth. He rested Colby against the couch and started to undress him.
“You told me you were straight,” Colby said.
“I am.”
Colby attracted people like this—big, masculine, confident guys, and girls who were beautiful in an affluent way. As Colby took off Joe’s shirt he could hear rhythmic moans from the kitchen. Pete and Vanessa were fucking against the counter.
The next morning, as the housemates coalesced, Pete, who boasted flowing hair and a Crest Whitestrips smile, earned the nickname One Direction. It was also revealed that Joe had nipple rings. The trio had vanished before most of the house woke up.
“Colby!” Kirsten tossed a pillow at him from across the living room. “You cannot date someone with nipple rings!”
“Who said anything about date?”
“What if you’d accidentally ripped one out?” Mike said. “What if his nipple had fallen off on our couch?”
We starfished across the living room in various states of ruin. I lay on my back, limbs sinking into the shag carpet, counting the knots on the ceiling. We called these sessions Morning Therapy. The girls came down in men’s boxers and oversize T-shirts as the guys brushed their teeth in the kitchen sink. Hungover, exhausted, arms smeared with bar stamps, we were defenseless and unvarnished in a decidedly collective way.
Matt was sprawled out next to me in his blue Lululemon shirt. “I think I left my credit card at the Point.”
I writhed on the ground. “I think I left a horcrux.”
“You kill me,” he said, laughing.
“We’ll go into town and gather them both today.”
We curled on the couches and chairs and laughed until our abs hurt. We fought to get a word in. Someone always came through with the perfect line. In the fizzy terrain between drunk and hungover, we sought comfort in physical proximity. But most of all we sought reassurance. We wanted to know we hadn’t done anything too embarrassing. That we weren’t that bad. That honestly, we were fine.
For the first time since the car accident I felt swaddled and safe. I felt protected in a way I hadn’t since childhood.
“I’m so hungover,” Kirsten moaned. “I can’t do this. I need to go back to bed forever.”
Colby stood over her, togged in his workout gear. “Girl, if Britney can get through 2007, you can get through this day. Grab yourself some Tina Juice and make a glass for your father.”
I listened to the sounds of recovery. The stream of the tap. The shake of an Advil bottle. The eye-opening crack of a cold Bud Light. Cars came and went, taking orders for the Bake Shoppe or Herb’s Market or Jack’s Coffee in Amagansett.
The screen door slid open, sweeping in a cool pine breeze. Ashley entered in a sports bra and yoga pants, body glistening with sweat. She had already gone for a five-mile run.
Our Morning Therapy sessions harkened back to high school, when my parents and I would return from Sunday Mass to find my friends Bryan and Brett playing Nintendo in our living room. You didn’t have to knock on our door, you could just walk in—even, my friends figured out, when the Glynns weren’t home.
“We just called Annie. She’s on her way,” Brett would say, without looking up from Mario Kart. “Grab a controller. You can be Yoshi.”
My parents loved it—the familiarity, the liberation, the way our friend group took on the hues of a family. Our house became the hang-out house, the place where we’d go when we didn’t have a plan.
As I grew older, I assumed those days were behind me—the carefree intimacy of profusion. The sense of living life as a group. But the Hive, by definition, was communal. We existed as one unit, for better or worse.
We got to the beach around eleven and set up camp at our spot beyond the volleyball nets. I was sitting in a beach chair next to a housemate I hadn’t met before. Her name was Kelsey O’Brian, and everyone called her by her full name. She had straight blond hair and flawless pale skin. I could tell already that she was quick-witted and vulgar. Due to the rotating schedule, our weekends hadn’t previously overlapped. But within our first fifte
en minutes on the beach, she had already made multiple jokes about Daisy Buchanan’s asshole. I was on board.
“Oh my GOD!” Kelsey shouted. She was clutching her phone with both hands, face twisted with panic.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Fucking Christ!”
“What is it?” Mike asked.
Everyone turned to watch her. She was bent over laughing, freckled hands covering her face.
“Guys, I…” She was laughing so hard she was wheezing. Finally she composed herself enough to finish. “My phone just emailed porn to my ex-boyfriend’s mom.”
For a beat the entire group went silent. Then we erupted into laughter.
“My email says, get this: ‘Dearest, I found something I thought you would like. Check out these pics of me and my friends.’ The link is of two chicks riding a double-sided dildo.”
We were doubled over on our chairs and beach blankets. Kelsey, like me, was a new house member. The Hive seemed to attract these unfiltered extroverts. People who weren’t afraid to wave their freak flags.
“I haven’t seen or spoken to this woman in five years.”
“Did it send to anyone else?” Mike asked. “Or did it, like, single out your ex’s mom?”
Kelsey scrolled through her sent items. “Oh no!” She clicked through another email. “It sent a weight loss program to my obese college English professor!”
Kelsey was staring at her phone in abject horror, clicking on links between sips of Bud Light. She went silent for a minute, her fingers tapping out a message across her touch screen. For the rest of the morning she remained locked in a battle with a Taiwanese bot, attempting to wrest back control of her email account. By lunchtime she had prevailed.
After a swim I was flipping through an issue of Vanity Fair. The pages were stiff and salt-battered, mixed with water droplets and grains of sand. They crinkled when I turned them. Every few minutes I’d look up from the article about Pippa Middleton to check the crowd at the Sloppy Tuna. Once the deck started to look like it might collapse, that was our cue to head over.
Approaching the entrance, I was surprised to see a line. Most of the people waiting between the switchback ropes wore bathing suits and flip-flops, but some were teased up in full-fledged club gear. Chests burst through fitted graphic tees. High heels stabbed into the sun-softened blacktop. The dichotomy reflected the general vibe of Montauk that summer. The beachgoer and the scene seeker. To the locals they were probably one and the same, I thought, as Ashley kissed the bouncer and ushered us through the line.
We paired off. Colby with Kirsten. D.Lo with Perrie. Ashley with Mike. Me with Matt. If you ordered a Transfusion but swapped the ginger ale for seltzer, it technically became a vodka soda with a splash of grape juice. This drink was four dollars cheaper, plus it tasted better. I got Matt’s first round and he got my second. We found my college friends and Tribeca neighbors, Caroline and Charlotte, drinking rum punches on the deck.
“Where are your shoes?” asked Matt.
“Shoes?” Caroline looked at Charlotte. “We don’t use those things.”
“Isn’t there a rule?” I asked.
“Of course there is. But not for us.”
Matt looking on approvingly. “I’m sticking with you guys.”
I got in line for the bathroom. The urinals were speckled with sand and wads of gum. EDM music was muffled by the swinging doors. As I washed my hands, breathing in the caustic scent of piss, I kept my head down, avoiding the mirror. Sometimes the sight of my reflection kicked up a feeling of disappointment so intense that it overshadowed any excitement around me. One glance could sink me into a pool of dread. I’d inspect my reflection and ask myself the same question over and over. How is this me?
I exited the bathroom just as the women’s room door was swinging open. I couldn’t help but peer in. Ashley was standing in front of the mirror, her big pebbled bag resting by the sink. Her head was cocked at an unnatural angle. Eyes trained forward. It took me a moment to register what I was seeing. She was running her hair through a hot metal clamp, then combing it out with her hands. The movement carried a manic energy, a compulsive freneticism I found both fascinating and unsettling. That she had brought her hair straightener to the beach, that she had chosen to use it at the Sloppy Tuna. These facts suddenly seemed to inform all the others.
Upstairs Colby was posing for a photo with Perrie. Behind them the ocean extended as far as the eye could see, the waves crashing in wild curls of cerulean. D.Lo snapped a few pics and handed the phone back to Perrie. She inspected the images and selected the best one for Instagram. She uploaded the photo, applied a filter, and posted.
It was three p.m. and Colby was already very drunk. He was sloshing around his second rum punch and some of it had spilled on his shorts, though his dirty-blond hair was still perfectly swept to the side. He leaned over Perrie’s shoulder and inspected the post. His brows knitted together. He trapped Perrie’s arm.
“Take it down.”
“What? No way! It’s so cute!”
“I look fat. Take it down.”
“Oh, please. You look so handsome. It’s such a great pic of us.”
“Fine. If you don’t take it down I will.” Colby seized her phone and shark-finned across the deck.
“Colby!” Perrie caught up to him and attempted to pry the phone from his hands. “Colby, give it back, I’m serious!”
Colby swung his elbow so violently that Perrie jumped back. He clicked delete and handed the phone back to her. “Don’t ever embarrass me like that again.”
“Colby, you’re being insane. That was a perfectly fine pho—”
“Stop being a fucking BITCH, Perrie.”
“Colby—”
“Get the fuck away from me. I’m serious. The only reason you’re in the house is because of me. No one else even likes you.”
Perrie’s eyes started to well up. She took her phone back and placed it in her bag. Matt and I watched her run down the stairs.
Something was wrong with Colby. His eyes were sunken. His cherubic face hung slack. He was working twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. He was not eating well or exercising. He had told me once, on a drive back to the city, that his uncle had died of a heart attack at forty-three. He was worried he was driving himself to the same fate.
Over the past month Colby and I had grown close—he’d told me I was his new favorite housemate—but I always treated our exchanges with hypervigilance, afraid at every turn I’d set off some invisible trip wire. I wasn’t yet sure if he was always like this, or if something bigger was going on.
Colby went home, and Perrie managed to shrug things off. We drove to Cyril’s fish shack, drank banana drinks in the gravel parking lot, and returned to the Hive. On the way home I asked Shane to let me off at Gurney’s. I needed an iced coffee, and the seaside hotel had a small café.
The hours of five to nine were reserved for triage. Drunk and sun-crisped, we hovered near the air vents, stuck our faces in the thick coolant of the freezer. We changed into T-shirts and tanks from local shops like Air + Speed, Wampum, and Whalebone—clothes designed for comfort. Some took showers, some reached for beers. Mike had a Ziploc bag filled with pills, his “trail mix.” The blue ones were Adderall. He’d place them on our housemates’ outstretched tongues like wafers of holy communion.
Some people cobbled together meals—peanut butter and white bread, hot dogs and eggs, half a bag of soggy potato chips. I had learned early on that my panacea was caffeine. At Gurney’s I slid a few soaked bills across the counter and returned to the Hive with my iced coffee in tow.
Night fell and it was my turn to shower. It was an unspoken rule that the girls showered in the blue bathroom upstairs. Mike and Colby, who were particular about their bathrooms, also showered upstairs. Everyone else showered down.
I turned on the water and stepped into the beige overlay tub. My skin was burned, and the warm water seemed to release the heat I’d absorbed throughout
the day. Showering was the only time in Montauk when I was truly alone with my thoughts. Even then people would sometimes come in to use the bathroom. As the water streamed down my back I felt an unfamiliar sense of totality. A sweep of emotion, so saturated and confounding it froze me to the tub. I was overwhelmed by the Hive’s abundance—the way it gave my weeks shape and momentum. Not quite purpose, but direction. And I feared what would happen when it went away.
I fought in vain to keep the dark thoughts at bay. You are alone, you will always be alone, you are destined to die that way. Everybody wants to be your friend, but no one wants to truly get close to you because if they did, they would see that at your core, you are entirely, inviolately, perfectly unlovable. Individually your physical features are benign. On others they’d even be attractive. But the coalescence of those features has created a force field so repellent that no one will ever love you.
I got out of the shower and stood facing the mirror. I leaned against the sink, dripping naked on the shaggy brown bath mat that lay across the linoleum like a square of bear fur. I was trying to breathe. Trying to psych myself up. Trying to will everything to be okay. I streaked my hand across the mirror and stared at my reflection through the steam. You got this, I kept telling myself. You got this. You’re awesome. You’re with your friends. You’re going to have fun. I stared into my eyes and forced myself to smile.