I wanted to talk to you guys about Montauk." "Don't get me wrong, I love Shane, but we're not there yet. "Wait, what? Did you think this was that conversation? Oh my God, no." My friends were moving forward, but the slides of my own life weren't coming together. I would be thrilled for him, of course, but the news would inevitably kick up my own feelings of loneliness. I braced myself for the announcement, prepping my reaction. Mike and Shane had been dating for five years, their lives like locked magnets. Before too many people get here." He was peering into the living room, his hands tremoring, and it immediately dawned on me what he was going to say. "I want to talk to you guys about something. On the balcony, Mike took a shot on the ice luge and lit a cigarette. Over the course of his final two semesters, we watched him make up for lost time. He no longer drank jugs of wine by himself. When Evan and I came back from studying abroad our junior year, Mike had lost eighty pounds, dyed his hair, and come out of the closet. An inner conflict was blooming within him.
He'd lock himself in his room with a jug of wine and wouldn't come out until he had finished it. As college progressed his mind grew unsettled. Before an exam he'd pop an Adderall, only to waste the high manically rearranging his dorm room. While Evan and I scrolled through our textbooks, highlighters in hand, Mike was playing Legend of Zelda with the guys down the hall.Įven when he wanted to study, he struggled to focus. Academics were secondary to establishing his network. He organized pregames, bar crawls, birthday parties, and spring breaks.Ĭollege, for Mike, had been about building relationships. The three of us had formed a triumvirate in college, but Mike stood at the center, the cruise director of our social group. Mike, Evan, and I went out to the ice luge. Thank you to the entire community for sharing your sand-swept home with us at a time when we needed it most. My indelible gratitude to the people of Montauk, in particular Calli and Lindsay Stavola, who read this memoir with a keen local eye. While Montauk became our sanctuary, we resided there only at the pleasure of its locals. In some instances I changed names or identifying characteristics to protect anonymity. Any liberties in perspective are animated by these conversations and grounded in the facts as they were relayed to me. They revealed aspects of their lives to me I never before knew.
The individuals who appear in these pages gifted me their thoughts, experiences, and secrets from that summer. But I never could have constructed this book without the generosity of my Montauk housemates. To cross-check my memories, I combed through a digital footprint of photos, emails, text messages, Gchats, and social media posts. The events of this memoir took place during a flexion point in my life.
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