Out East

by John Glynn

  D.Lo and Dana stepped outside for some fresh air. Dana was different from the other Hive girls. She had long brown hair and bangs and wore vintage clothes. A dress designer for a high-end fashion company, she spent most of her afternoons with a cup of coffee and a sketchpad, patrolling the universe for mystic inspiration.

  “I’m never going to meet anyone,” D.Lo lamented. “Every guy in New York is gay or a douchebag.”

  “D.Lo. Look at me.” Dana grabbed her by the shoulders. “There are a bunch of sevens in our house, a few eights, a couple nines, but only one ten. You are the ten.”

  “I feel like a zero.”

  “That’s your problem. You need to start acting like a ten.”

  “How?”

  “Fake it.”

  “Fake what?”

  “Fake like you’re having the time of your life right now! No one wants to date someone who’s sulking around. You need to exude confidence. You need to act like you’re having the best time ever. It’s how you pull positive people into your orbit. It’s the law of attraction.”

  D.Lo was a wearing a black silk dress and the highest wedges she owned. She chugged the remainder of her vodka Red Bull.

  “Let’s go to the main bar.”

  Mike and Parker were in the adjoining room, their faces shadowed beneath the Mylar-backed light. They were talking about their mutual obsession with horror movies. They both loved to be scared.

  At parties Mike normally flitted from person to person, extracting quips like nectar. He and Parker had been chatting for forty-five minutes. The energy between them was electric. When he looked into the other room and saw Shane wobbling across the black concrete floor, lips pursed, he felt trapped. Trapped, and guilty and confused.

  Tyler walked into the adjoining room in the Pink Panther head. Mike pushed Parker in his direction.

  “You should hook up with Tyler tonight,” he whispered. “He’s the best.”

  Parker turned to Tyler and his smile faded.

  D.Lo and Dana ordered another round of tequila shots. The humid crush of bodies hemmed them to the bar.

  “This is insane!” D.Lo said.

  “I know!” Dana shouted back. “And it’s not even midnight!”

  The Mem’s main bar glowed with beer signs and red lights. Strobes filled the air with frenzied energy.

  “Wait, Dana. Is that a…bicycle?” D.Lo pointed to the bar’s central pillar. A yellow bike wrapped around it just below the ceiling, its metal limbs like a pinwheel.

  “Oh my God. Is that new?”

  “How have we never noticed that?”

  The bartender uncapped two Bud Lights. “Because you’re always drunk,” he said. “It’s been there forever.”

  They orbited to the dance floor. D.Lo had started off faking it, but now she was having real fun. She let the strobes wash over her, forgetting everything else. She was about to climb up onstage when a hand suddenly touched her arm.

  “Hi,” said a tall guy with blond hair.

  “Hi.”

  His name was Everett. He was from Atlanta. They danced, then went outside to talk. Somehow it came up that his mom was a gynecologist. He had gone to Duke, worked for a start-up, lived in the East Village, did a share in Hither Hills. They exchanged numbers.

  “Do you want to come home with me?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, do you…want to go on a date with me, this week, or…”

  “That’s not what you said.”

  “I want to take you on a date,” he repeated.

  D.Lo was drunk, her energy fading. She had had her fill of empty promises. She tossed her drink into the trash can.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said, and went to hail a cab.

  I woke up in the darkness of Bedroom 4 on the Navajo-print futon. Tyler was cocooned on the air mattress. Next to him lay Parker. I realized they must have hooked up.

  Perrie was awake and searching for her keys. She wore a macramé blanket over her shoulders. Despite the heat, she was still cold. Mike was awake, too, and the three of us drove into town for iced coffee. Along the way we passed Ashley, who was already halfway into her five-mile run. Perrie beeped and waved.

  “I don’t know how she does it,” she said. “Every morning. Like clockwork.”

  “She’s been coming to the SoulCycle studio, taking two, three classes a day,” Mike said.

  I watched her through the back window, running in her black sports bra, and my heart strained with a fierce and abiding loyalty. I saw in Ashley’s obsessive exercising some of my own physical compulsions. I had been working out six, seven, sometimes eight times a week. The goal wasn’t to get fit. The goal was to become unobjectionable.

  “She’s doing the bikini contest today,” Perrie said. “Are you guys gonna go?”

  Mike was smoking a cigarette out the window.

  “Of course.”

  “She is legit crazy for doing this. I could never.”

  “You know what? Ashley may be crazy. But she’s our crazy. I hope she wins the damn thing.”

  We went to the Sloppy Tuna that afternoon. The “fashion show” was held on the patio amid a cadre of day-drunk Manhattanites. We ordered our usual Transfusions and Rum Buckets from the bartender, who controlled the chaos with his soothing Australian accent.

  The contestants were rated by round of applause. Ashley was the last to take the stage. The Hive took up the entire front row. We had pulled everyone we knew off the beach—our BC friends, our Montauk friends, our friends from other share houses.

  The communal energy reminded me of my cousin Billy’s basketball games, the way our family always occupied a huge swath of the gym. Some of my relatives, in the heat of the game, occasionally got ejected for their adversarial heckling. Others would grow pale and silent, almost too nervous to watch.

  When Billy’s team made the tournament, my aunt Ellen bought the younger cousins Hanes T-shirts and wrote CATHEDRAL BASKETBALL across them in purple Magic Marker. I was six years old, and I’d grow restless, sneaking away by myself to play under the bleachers. I climbed through the jungled beams, breathing in the scents—popcorn, sweat, floor wax, and the heavy perfume of the teenage girls who sat above. I’d find where my family sat, climb beneath them, and watch them watching the game.

  When I came back, Kicki would give me a peppermint candy. I’d sit next to her while Billy drained threes. Everyone, myself included, screamed and taunted. But Kicki, who never missed a game, cheered with quiet pride. The point wasn’t how loud you were. The point was that you were there.

  “Our next contestant is Ashley from Alphabet City. Ashley loves football, tennis, and water sports. Please give a round of applause for Ashley.”

  Ashley slinked onstage in a lavender bikini laced with frills. She was by far the most striking contestant, but clearly the least comfortable. She was smiling sheepishly and pressing her palm to her face. It didn’t matter. As she walked across the stage and waved, the crowd erupted. Everyone at the bar knew and adored her. Those who understood her felt a deep need to protect her. Ashley was the Mayor of Montauk. She was beloved. She had earned her free drinks.

  After the beach we went to Cyril’s, then Mike had an errand to run. I told him I’d go with him.

  We were thinking about going to Ruschmeyer’s that night but worried about the crowds. Of all the hot spots in Montauk, Ruschmeyer’s had proven the hardest to penetrate. A chic, Dirty Dancing–style retreat, it echoed its own past as a summer camp—moonlit cabins, hammocks, a backyard strung with Chinese lanterns. At night people flooded the mess hall–style bar overlooking Fort Pond. A few times we’d managed to brave the line and ordered pitchers of the signature cocktail, the Ruschmeyer—a jalapeno-infused vodka drink mixed with muddled watermelon.

  “We’re going tonight,” Mike said. “We have to.”

  Mike ran into 7-Eleven and I waited in the car. I was petrified to talk to him about Matt, but if I didn’t soon I’d snap. He returne
d with a large hot coffee.

  “This is the important errand you needed to run?” I asked. “A 7-Eleven coffee?”

  “Trust me. You’ll thank me in a minute.”

  The car ride was the perfect opportunity to talk to Mike. I summoned my courage.

  “Can we have a real talk for a second?” I said.

  “Of course. What’s up?”

  “It’s stupid, and it’s not a big deal. But I just need to talk through something.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  I’m falling in love with a guy. The words were right there, dangling in front of me, but as they were about to emerge they got washed away, lost in a cascade of conflicting thoughts. Was I gay? Could I never go back to dating girls? Did it matter? Would the rest of my friends care? Would I lose them? And then the big one: What would my family think? My parents were Massachusetts liberals, emotionally intuitive and culturally evolved. But they had few openly gay friends. They had built their lives around my future, and that future involved a wife. Would my happiness come only through the destruction of theirs?

  I mentally flashed through every person in my family. My aunts, my uncles, my three waves of cousins. The entire gymnasium. As they appeared before me, my brain mined data I hadn’t realized it had stored. My cousin Tony was good friends with a lesbian coworker, so maybe he’d be accepting. My cousin Mikey had dated a girl who turned out to be a lesbian, so maybe he wouldn’t. My aunt Trisha was the least judgmental person I knew. My uncles were masculine, with a blue-collar aesthetic. I’d heard my cousins call people fags. But back then I had, too. And didn’t my family love me unconditionally? Didn’t we embrace each other no matter what? I had to believe that they’d accept me, if this ever turned into anything. The alternative was too painful to contemplate, and in that moment I was too locked into the microworld of my emotions to see anything with clarity.

  “That Shark Attack party, is it even worth it? I don’t think I want to go.”

  “Oh, that? I don’t think I’m gonna go, either. You’re totally fine.”

  We circled around Fort Pond, passing ranch houses with basketball hoops and truck beds with surfboards. My window was down, my leg leaning against the window. We pulled into Ruschmeyer’s and drove up to the backyard entrance, tires pluming clouds of dirt.

  “Dave!” Mike called to a man in a white golf shirt.

  “Yo, Mike!”

  The man was tan with a hardened face. I recognized him as the bouncer from one of the nights we braved the line. Those nights he had seemed impervious to emotion, but now, upon seeing Mike, his expression brightened.

  “Large hot. Half-and-half, one Splenda,” Mike said.

  “I can’t believe you remembered! Thank you! Will I see you later?”

  “You bet.”

  Mike did things like this. He befriended the right people; he listened and remembered. His gestures were self-serving, obsequious, his motives comically transparent. But his actions stemmed from a genuine interest in others. Throughout the summer he delivered doughnuts to the Surf Lodge parking attendant. He met the owner of the Mem and attended an art show for his sister. He helped a Sloppy Tuna bartender launch her surf company’s website. In Montauk you didn’t need wads of cash to get VIP treatment. All it took was a friendly conversation, or a cup of coffee made the right way.

  I’d squandered the perfect opportunity to talk through my feelings that afternoon, and as the day wore on I thought of little else. A prickling shame waxed over me. I’d have to weather my emotions on my own.

  Back at the house the finance bros were getting ready for Shark Attack. Bradley donned a Hulk Hogan tank top, leopard-print pants, and lime-green Wayfarers. His girlfriend, Nadia, painted everyone’s cheeks with tribal neon. To Bradley, a small-town Vermonter, Montauk was the crown jewel of a well-rounded city life. When he moved to New York he knew hardly anyone. Now, two years later, he had a thriving career and a healthy relationship. He had a summer house in Montauk. He had real friends, and he was happy. I envied his lightness.

  In the Game Room I watched Bradley cut lines of coke with his Amex gold card. Arthur was still in his bathing suit and had no intention of changing.

  “How many do you want?” Bradley asked me, his card clapping the wall mirror that had been laid across the pool table.

  “I’m good, dude. Thanks, though.”

  “You sure, man?”

  Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sureness of this act. The ritual.

  “Yeah, bro. I’m not even going to Shark Attack. Sounds wicked fun, though.”

  I watched the lines take shape, glowing like strands of silk. What did the finance bros think of me? Did they sense my internal reckoning? Did they lump me in with Colby and Mike? Or did they view me as one of them?

  I had an instant connection with Colby, Timmy, and of course Matt. But I was also developing close bonds with the bros, Arthur especially. He was gregarious and easygoing, oblivious to cliques and divides. He was single, fit, and handsome. Girls liked him and he liked girls. But inside he still felt like the overweight nerd he’d been growing up. In high school he’d joined the swim team and his body changed. To psych himself up before his events, he’d imagined his opponents laughing at him. His insecurities could fuel him to victory.

  “Who was that brunette girl you were talking to last night?” Arthur asked me. “In the VIP room?”

  “Oh, that was Francesca. Just a college friend.”

  “Just a friend, sure,” he joked.

  Francesca and I had chatted for nearly an hour. Her grandmother had died and her mother was struggling. No doubt we’d transmitted an emotional intensity.

  “Looked like more than friends to me,” he said.

  “Ha, well. You never know.”

  I sipped my beer. I was more or less sober. Arthur’s country music was blasting from the boom box.

  “Dude, we’ve got one more line,” Bradley said to me. “You sure you don’t want it?”

  I looked around at the Day-Glo streaks and stars-and-stripes regalia. The last line of coke was a smear, reflecting its own deviance. Without a Shark Attack ticket, I didn’t really see the point in indulging, but part of me knew what that line represented. A bond. A proving ground. A way in. With a gutting desperation, I touched the bill to my nose and breathed in.

  We went to Ruschmeyer’s and took photos of the Chinese lanterns. They were orb-shaped and the color of cream. Some were big and some were small. Their proportions evoked a solar system within the trees, a distance and space I cosmically assimilated.

  Nick Tot was inside on the dance floor, and Kirsten was avoiding him. Stefano texted her from the Mem, and she campaigned for us to go to town. We drained our watermelon drinks and texted for Henry’s van. We always moved as a pack, rarely splitting up, even when it made little logistical sense. Once we’d found everyone in the crowd, we thanked Dave the bouncer and headed outside. We got in the van, all twenty of us, stacking the seats three deep. Mike was in the way back, knees buckled against the door. He texted Parker: We’re on our way to the point. Fuck shark attack and come.

  We bounced between the Point and the Mem until two in the morning. I won the favor of the corner bartender and she gave me a free Bud Light. Her name was Jade and her shoulders were covered in ornate mythic tattoos. Over a shared tequila shot she confessed she had a crush on Ashley. I told her she was in good company.

  I waited in the bathroom line, the doors swinging open and shut. I spotted a man between the urinals sprinkling cocaine between his thumb and pointer finger. Someone attempted to cut the bathroom line, and the guy behind me called him out. The cutter spun back and head-butted him, shattering the man’s nose in a gruesome spray of blood.

  The Mem could be rough-and-tumble, but I’d never witnessed that kind of barroom violence up close. The chaos of the attack was destabilizing. Bouncers descended and the police arrived. D.Lo and I vacated to Pizza Village and split a cab home.

  “He texted me this morning
,” she said in the cab. “The kid I was a bitch to at the Mem. I was convinced I’d blown it.”

  “That’s great! Sounds like you didn’t.”

  “He asked me on a date for when we’re back in the city. First time I met someone at the Mem and actually got a text back.”

  “Made at the Mem,” I joked. “Watch this guy turn out to be your husband.”

  “What the fuck!” D.Lo shouted as she walked into the Hive living room. I was holding our large cheese pizza a few steps behind her. As I reached the hallway I saw it, too. Shane was passed out on the staircase, bent at the waist like an abused Ken doll.

  “Shane!” D.Lo yelled.

  He was lying at such an unnatural angle that I momentarily worried he was dead.

  “Shane, what the hell!” D.Lo pulled his arm and it dropped like a sandbag. His gingham shirt was unbuttoned. White jeans smeared with dirt.

  “Shane, get up!” she yelled.

  A low groan, a leg twitch. I attempted to turn him over. His eyes flickered as he slowly came back to life.

  “Let me sleep,” he mumbled.

  “Dude, you’re on the staircase!” I said. “At least sleep on the floor.”

  “No.”

  “For someone who’s all about class, this is not classy, Shane!” D.Lo huffed.

  “Fuck you,” he slurred through pursed lips.

  D.Lo tried pulling him up again, but he remained obstinate. “Fine,” she said. “I’m leaving you on the stairs. You’re a train wreck this summer, Shane. What the hell happened to you?”