Out East

by John Glynn

  Back in the kitchen, everyone glowed a healthy crimson. Drunk from Cyril’s, Timmy donned a pair of Ashley’s wedges. He dropped his shoulders, twisted his hips, the shoes sliding along the linoleum floor. Kelsey O’Brian twerked up against him, the two of them dipping and grinding like mating butterflies. The night had started.

  Matt was testing the limits of my iPod, requesting songs he thought I was missing. I played “Countdown” by Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty.” I played “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips. Everyone in the house began to sing along.

  “What about Garth Brooks?” he asked.

  Beyond a few down-home frat songs and Johnny Cash, I was never a big country fan. I told him I had “Standing Outside the Fire.” But that was it.

  “John. I’m appalled!”

  He went to the living room and returned holding Shane’s L.L.Bean beach tote. He grabbed my hand.

  “Come with me.”

  I followed him through the back porch and onto the vast split-level deck, dimly aware of the beguiling feeling gathering in my chest. To our right, at shoulder level, lay the garage roof. It was low-pitched and climbable, the perfect angle for stargazing. Matt climbed up, his pink shorts flaring in the dark. The indoor music gave way to night sounds—crickets and owls, wind through trees.

  “It’s so peaceful out here,” he said. “I need a break from inside.”

  He arranged the portable speakers on a brown beach blanket and plugged in his iPhone. He turned to me, eyes raised.

  “Aren’t you coming up?”

  I pressed my palms to the roof, the shingles coarse like sandpaper, the sharpness digging into my elbows and knees.

  “I have to pick the perfect song,” he said. “Just like you always do.”

  “The pressure’s on.”

  I lay next to him but kept my eyes trained on the hillside.

  “How do you do it?” he asked. “How do you play the exact right song at the exact right time?” His hand grazed my wrist for a fleeting moment, a touch so light it could have been an accident, a mistake. It redirected my gaze. He was looking right at me.

  “I don’t know. You just kinda read the crowd and anticipate what they want.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna do that now, but for you.”

  He pressed play on a Rihanna song, “Do Ya Thang.” I had never heard it before, but I liked it immediately. The melody felt serene and adolescent, dipped in hues of pink and purple. Like an eighties pop song infused with hip-hop beats. The lyrics spoke of an expansive type of coupledom, a lover who gives her partner the freedom to embrace his true nature. It was somehow catchy and soothing.

  We lay on the blanket and gazed up. The stars draped the sky, as big and low as lanterns.

  “Don’t you wish we got stars like this in the city?” His hand touched my arm again, and lingered.

  He hit play on a Garth Brooks song I’d never heard before. Garth was his favorite artist. Matt had written his college essay about “The Dance.”

  “‘Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.’”

  “The dance is always worth it, right? Have you ever seen him live?”

  “No. He basically stopped performing. If he ever goes on tour I’ll see every one of his shows. I’ll like, quit my job and follow him like a Phish fan.”

  “Why do you like him so much?” I asked.

  “He reminds me of growing up. He was my dad’s favorite, too. I used to lock myself in my room and listen to him. A lot of his songs are really sad.”

  I thought back to my high school experience—the basement pregames, the endless drives, the secret bonfires by the Connecticut River. We weren’t the good kids, but we weren’t the bad ones. We got A’s and B’s in honors courses. We played sports. We volunteered at Special Olympics events and diabetes walkathons.

  I’d felt everything so deeply back then. The comforting knots of friendship. The girl I thought I loved. The heartache I’d felt was real and bottomless but seemed self-inflicted in hindsight. What did I have to compare?

  “What made you sad?” I asked. We were lying close together. Our bodies were almost touching, but not. Everything felt accelerated, dangerous, intensified, shot through with light against dark. Our hands and legs kept touching and this time I did not flinch.

  “It was weird. I loved high school and was happy. I had a lot of friends and got good grades. But I was also really sad at the same time. I was starting to figure out I was gay. And the weird thing was, I had nothing to fear. I had this great family. But when you’re from a family that genuinely gets along, you never want to disappoint them or have them worry about you.”

  “The stakes feel higher,” I said, picking up his thought, “because you care so much. It’s the same with my family.”

  “You never want to be a burden. Not that being gay is a burden. But back then the world seemed less hospitable toward gay people. I didn’t want my family to worry about me facing isolation or ridicule or anything. I wanted to protect them. But I was living a lie and it was only getting worse.”

  “That’s where Garth came in?”

  “Haha. Yup.”

  We lay there, clicking through songs, talking about our childhoods, our families, our darker moments, our hopes. It felt as if he were verbalizing my thoughts, and I his, that our perspectives, our words and feelings, were indistinguishable. I imagined that this was what birth was like, if one could experience it cognitively—the torturous slipstream of untested senses, the prising open of chambers and vessels, the instability of air, the terrifying power of proximity, vision, and incidental touch. I had never felt more immediately pinned to the present. Yet every moment also grasped at the future, stretching toward the promise of a new and expansive life. I saw my future—our future, together—as an infinite unfurling moment transmogrified into scenes domestic, quotidian, and grandiose. A car ride where we held hands. A mudroom filled with kids’ soccer cleats. A morning spent in blankets as the windows swirled with snow. These visions nested in each moment like hard, smooth pearls.

  The stars crystallized above us. More and more appeared. Time sped up, slowed down, and dissolved altogether. Three hours had passed with us on the roof, and I didn’t care what anyone inside was thinking. Every other thought faded to mist. I sensed my old life dematerializing, my soul reconstituting itself around him. I had never felt more connected to another human. My heart was opening and breaking all at once.

  That night, on the roof, Matt became the organizing principle of my world.

  Kirsten was hunting for Stefano. He had posted a photo from Zum Schneider, a German beer hall by the Mem that served ale in glass steins. She did a lap through the bar with Perrie, holding her hand, avoiding gazes, driven by a singular purpose. She refused to text Stefano. She would not ask him where he was.

  When it was clear that he was not there, they returned to the Point, where the rest of us were downing shots of Fireball.

  Perrie saw through Kirsten’s vacant smile. “Fuck Stefano. Go find the tallest tree in the bar and climb him. Look, Kirsten, look. There are the Tots.”

  A group of guys was clustered at the back of the bar. They had met the Hive girls one weekend in early June, sharing watermelon drinks from their glass pitcher at Ruschmeyer’s. They were fresh out of college—twenty-two and twenty-three. They barreled around Montauk like a litter of golden retrievers. Their beer cans always seemed to open with explosions of foam.

  Nick was tall, six foot five, in a gingham shirt and Rainbow sandals. He had been pursuing Kirsten for almost a month, but she had rebuffed his advances. She was still hung up on Stefano. She didn’t have the room for him.

  Objectively, Kirsten was perhaps the most attractive girl in the house. Her large, almond-shaped eyes and bee-stung lips evoked a delicate, avian beauty, a mesmeric power akin to the sand art of Tibetan monks—colorful and exacting, precarious, transitory. She had been broken many times.

  As Kirste
n grew increasingly unmoored, her instability infected her self-image. She would never return to the abyss she’d occupied in college, but she was deeply unhappy with her body that summer. She covered herself with men’s clothes. Plaid button-downs half tucked into old Abercrombie jeans she fashioned into cut-offs. She wore a leather belt her dad had made in the seventies. In reality, she was five foot seven, 126 pounds. But Stefano’s vicissitudes only amplified her insecurities.

  When Nick Tot approached her that night, she decided to let him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On Monday, July 1, Mike was panicking. The Fourth of July was the busiest holiday in Montauk. Twenty-seven people were scheduled to stay at the Hive.

  Ashley called him from the Old Montauk Highway. She had stayed out the night before—a Surf Lodge Sunday. She reported that both the Hive toilets were broken. Mike assured her it was not her fault. The plumbing was not designed for such high-volume traffic. It was bound to give out eventually.

  Mike sat cross-legged on his couch in Stuytown. His laptop was cradled between his thighs. He called the owner and left a voicemail. Then he opened his email. He had two hours to follow up with his beta users before his shift began at SoulCycle.

  Since launching his company Mike had worked from home. He kept his important documents in a mahogany breakfront—an antique table Shane had procured. To Shane, Stuytown was just a sprawling repetition of redbrick high-rises, a dry run before their real apartment. But for Mike it carried hints of romance. His grandparents had lived in Stuytown for a time. His mother had lived there as a newborn. When Mike launched his company, the apartment became his headquarters. But for Shane it felt like an extension of dorm life. Their lease was up at the end of August, and Shane was counting down the days.

  Shane didn’t see the world the way Mike did. Shane was miserable. His antidepressants weren’t working. He resented Mike for his failed start-up and his false promises of financial security. Mike detested Shane’s obsession with material things. In public they wore a veil of harmony, but that summer the seams of their relationship were beginning to show. They hadn’t had sex in months.

  The owner called back. A plumber was booked for Tuesday, the earliest available appointment. Mike thanked her, and asked that she keep him updated. He ran a hand through his red hair. The first housemates were supposed to arrive on Wednesday afternoon, and not all the Hivers were low-maintenance. Everyone had an opinion about room assignments, divisions of labor, and the allocation of house funds. Broken toilets would be, at best, a point of contention. For Mike, the Hive was the one sphere in his life where he had total control. When something went wrong he felt it was his fault.

  Adding to his anxiety was the fact that he had invited a guest. His name was Parker. He was what Colby called a “stray cat.” Mike had met him at an “Out in Finance” happy hour, then they ran into each other again at SoulCycle. Parker was new to the city and had never been to Montauk.

  Mike refilled his coffee. Parker’s toothy smile and easy laugh conveyed to him something virtuous. Mike was drawn to him. He didn’t quite know why. Maybe it was Parker’s loneliness. Mike felt an urge to take him in, to protect him.

  As a failsafe, Mike contacted Callahead and reserved a portable toilet. The representative emailed him back almost instantly. She seemed truly dedicated to the disposal of human shit. He knew the Hive was in good hands.

  That Monday morning on my walk to the 6 train, I said a prayer to my grandmother. Something was happening to me. Something physical. My muscles were weak. My hands grew shaky. When I took a deep breath, my rib cage compressed, and everything around me felt precarious and blurry. I walked down Duane Street, passing West Broadway. I carried my sneakers in a worn gym bag, the straps constantly threatening to come undone. Kicki, I prayed, I don’t know what I need. But please help me.

  A random song came on my iPod and my eyes grew unexpectedly dewy. I felt wholly disarmed, overwhelmed by the loneliness and beauty of the world. I felt everything at once. Excitement. Anxiety. A mix of elation and terror that left me nauseous.

  I knew what this was. I knew it by name. I’d thought I had experienced it before, but I hadn’t—at least not in such a rich swirl of colors and tones, shades and nuances. Not with the same depth and intensity. Not in its true form. This was what my parents talked about.

  I was falling for someone.

  That someone was a guy, not a girl.

  I was so unbalanced, I could barely breathe. These feelings—of love, infatuation, blinding euphoria—were entirely foreign to me. I had always anticipated they’d come attached to a woman. I understood that sexuality wasn’t always fixed, and the events at my Christmas party—a shared ice luge, Fred’s affirmations—had already made me think about my own capacity for same-sex attraction. But that encounter had been soaked in Fireball. My feelings for Matt, however, were concrete and experiential. I was falling for him and I didn’t know what it meant. All I knew was what I felt: a kind of giddy, queasy, terrifying downrush that framed all my waking thoughts.

  I crossed Church Street, passing the firehouse, my mind aflame. I thought about Matt. Then I thought about Matt. Then I thought about Matt. I had never felt this way before. At twenty-seven, I was experiencing my first true crush.

  I was so relieved I could cry.

  I spent a distracted day at work attempting to create marketing materials for a memoir called The Promise of a Pencil. I was so consumed, so enamored, I thought I would detonate. I needed to talk to someone, but the notion left me paralyzed. I was unsure of who to confide in, which of my friends would be least likely to judge.

  Mike seemed like a logical confidant, but I was afraid of his reaction. The rational part of me believed he’d validate me. He might even be thrilled. But his experience had been much different than mine. He had always known he was gay, and he’d never had relationships with girls. I didn’t even know if Matt represented a one-off, or a new way of being in the world. When Mike appeared in my Gchat list, I hovered the cursor over his name. I opened a blank chat window, then closed it. I needed to gather the courage—and the vocabulary—to explain.

  Of all the girls in the Hive, I found D.Lo the most intimidating. Along with Mike and Colby, she had founded the Hive the summer before. Though her name was no longer on the lease, she still exerted her influence in the Hive’s collective decisions. She was not fragile like some of the other people in the house. She was the most effortlessly cool. She spoke in calm assertions. Her gaze was cold, luminous, and resistant to interpretation.

  D.Lo lived in Murray Hill, a rowdy neighborhood just below Midtown. Her apartment was corralled by neon sports bars and endless packs of roving bros. “Murray Thrill,” as she called it, was anything but. She no longer found excitement in yelling into the ears of former lacrosse players at two o’clock in the morning.

  Montauk, for D.Lo, was a space for real discourse. She spent long afternoons with Matt walking from Hither Hills to Ditch Plains, delving into life’s greatest mysteries. Relationships, family, spirituality, the transcendent power of art and song. These were the types of conversations she had been craving. This was the kind of depth her city life lacked. Like many of us, D.Lo yearned for love but found sustenance in friendship. She was happier when her gaze shifted toward the Hive.

  D.Lo was twenty-six, blond, tall, attractive, confident, debt-free, and the owner of a three-thousand-dollar handbag. She was also lovelorn, adrift, confused, and hopeless. She had not had a meaningful relationship in over a year, and the self-imposed pressure of finding a match had peaked that spring. That week, as she packed her Montauk bag, she envisioned a future life animated by work promotions, travel, time spent with family. A boyfriend, a partner, no longer seemed tenable. She was destined to be single. As she packed her bag for Montauk, she decided she was done with guys.

  That night I went to Reade Street Pub with my roommates. In the past month I had seen little of them. Evan had bought into the share house but had only gone out once. Cha
uvin had been traveling for weddings and bachelor parties. They were both planning to spend the Fourth of July in Montauk—Evan and his girlfriend at the Hive, Chauvin and his girlfriend at the Montauk Blue Hotel. I was anxious about how the two circles would mix. Other college friends would be joining them, including the girls, our Tribeca neighbors, who were in their own share house off West Lake Drive.

  Reade Street Pub was a brick-wall dive with low coffered ceilings. A few regulars were drinking silently in the dull liquescent light. The bartender drew us cold pints of beer. On the countertop sat a schoolhouse globe. The three of us had come up with a drinking game that utilized it. One person picked an obscure country and another had five seconds to find it. We cradled the globe, spinning it through our fingers.

  “Find…Burkina Faso!”

  “…Suriname!

  “…Bhutan!”

  Chauvin had seen photos of our housemates on social media. He knew the girls were very attractive.

  “Are all of them single?”

  My flesh tightened. I knew where this thread would lead.

  “Most of them, yep.”

  “Are you going for any of them?”

  The question came from a place of heartfelt interest, but it clenched me like a bear trap. Chauvin and Evan were like brothers to me. I told them everything. But the Matt situation was way too much. It would change things. The idea of such a paradigm shift terrified me. I wanted us all to be the same.