The Return To Innocence

We reached Sag Harbor last night. It was easy and fun. My parents are ecstatic. Last night I slept so well that I needed to be nudged awake.
Today, we shall simply hang out, watch Netflix and play Playstation 3 and Adam can play games with Dad. Mom and I can go through her jeans collection or visit thrift shops. We can have New York pizza and New York bagels. Mom and I can bicker over my mental and physical health, my spending, my life, my eating habits. It will be a rich, full week of comfort and security and love and happy. Also I have so many books to read. And we can walk to Long Beach. And the library.
Also, Thanksgiving will mark thirteen years since Adam and I officially became a romantic couple. We are at the seven and a half mark of marriage. Awesome.

Yesterday, I spent my first full afternoon and night at Gurney's Inn Resort Spa hotel.
It's lovely.
Montauk Beach is right there, where the ocean rolls and pulls. The sound helps me sleep at night and relax during the day.
Yesterday evening, Adam and I went out into town for dinner. Most of the East End of Long Island closes around six or seven. We found Point Bar And Grill, which turned out to be perfect. I ate a bison burger with guacamole while Adam enjoyed mussels in garlic white wine sauce. At the IGA grocery store, I found the exact same mini cheesecake and mini flourless chocolate cakes sold in Gurney's little deli, with the same Gurney's label. The cheesecake is amazing. We picked up small food items to eat in the hotel room to avoid continuing to eat at the hotel restaurants.

Today, Adam was able to leave work early and met me at our room ahortly afer noon. For lunch, we went out to a clam shack called The Clam Shack, which Adam has wanted to visit for eleven years (we've been together for nearly thirteen years). Raw pearl oysters, lobster salad roll, Ipswich clams with butter. Vacations really are about the food.

No really, it's about the food. It's the Hamptons.

Also, I still feel terribly horrible. Sore throat, itchy eyes, severe fibromyalgia attack, neck pain, headache. But fuck that, whatever. I really don't care. I'm on vacation and I have been eating amazing food next to the Altantic Ocean in a fabulous Inn Resort Spa hotel the Hamptons. Repeat: Vacation. Amazing food. Ocean. Hamptons. Fabulous Inn Resort. So, hey, pain and stuff can fuck right off. Even though it won't. I will just yell at it with pills.

You guys. YOU GUYS.
This is so COOL.
We took our own car, by the way, with a coworker driving the big truck.
So, Adam and I stopped at my parents' house in Sag Harbor to say hello and eat dinner. And then we drove the Montauk. We got two niights at an adorable little oceanside resort, but we will only use one because GUESS WHAT? Today and the rest of the week, we get to stay at GURNEY'S. AUGH.
http://www.gurneysinn.com/
WHARGARBL.
Adam will be working his job there until FRIDAY and the client wants him and the coworker close by. So we are staying at one of the best and most beautiful resort inns on the East Coast.
Eeeeeeeeeeee!
Vacation. Awesome. Whargarbl. Augh.
So. We have not had a room booked yet. So Adam will work, and my parents will come get me whileI sit in the lobby, and I shall spend the day in Sag Harbor until Adam gets our room and such and it will continue until Friday afternoon and OMG THIS WILL BE SO AWESOME YAY IN CASE YOU CAN'T TELL I AM VERY EXCITED.
I brought a huge pill bottle full of a weeks' worth of drugs and right now my body is rocking the Ultram, Soma, and Klonopin, and I am so ready.
Also I am eating a slice of cold pizza with extra mozzarella, from last night delivered to the hotel room. NEW YORK PIZZA YOUSE GUYS. IT WAS LIKE EATING MAGIC.

BULLETINS AS THEY OCCUR. FROM THE HAMPTONS.

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Any cheese pizza from anywhere in New York City and the boroughs. Although, I am partial to Patzerias Perfect Pizza in Manhattan. Also, the Margherita pizza specifically from American Pie Pizzeria in Bridgehampton, New York, in the Hamptons.

Tonight's dinner included Adam's amazing handmade pizza with whole mozzarella and local Monocacy Ash goat cheese, on top of a garlic basil marinana. with Parmigiano Reggiano sprinkled on the bottom of the organic crust.
But it still wasn't a New York pizza.

Damn, I miss my birth home. We won't be in the Hamptons until November, and then for less than a week. But I will see my parents and eat amazing pizza, and that is what matters. Also, this Thanksgiving will be my and Adam's twelfth anniversary as a couple. We will have been married for officially six and a half years. That is worth a celebratory pizza In the Hamptons.

VH1 is showing "The Fabulous Life Of The Hamptons," which details the celebrity swank and insane money of the richest beach resort in the country. The Hamptons boasts some of the most expensive, wildly beautiful real estate in the world. It really is one of the world's prettiest places to live.
In 1991, my parents and I moved to the Hamptons, at the east end of Long Island, NY. No, I take that back. We moved inside the Hamptons, to a tiny little hamlet called Noyac, which is part of the tiny village of Sag Harbor, which is part of the larger town of Southampton, which is one of the "fabulous Hamptons." In the early 90's, the price for the tiny house my parents bought was a pile of pennies compared to what things are really worth. Calvin Klein's summer home in Southampton? Steven Spielberg's summer home in Easthampton? Paris and Nicky Hilton's house in Southampton? The horse farms of Bridgehampton? Those are worth so much money that my head spins to look at them. Yes, those are the beauties. And you can watch Spielberg's boat, the gorgeous Mirabella, sail into the docks at the Sag Harbor Wharf, where the dockmaster (my father) helps rope it in and keep in safe.
Money, money, money.
But I get ahead of myself.
I have lived in this powerful ritzy explosively pricey place for most of my life, after a childhood in Brooklyn. It's... really not that awesome and glitzy once you've lived there. Not unless you have money, of course. It can get repetitive and tedious unless you know what to do and where to go. If you have money. Of course.
My mother, being an artist and art teacher, has several rich and several famous students. I've occasionally modeled for private multi-millionaires, members of royal families, and top celebrities. Mom can say, "Oh, hi, Kate, how's Steven and the kids?" as she greets actress Kate Capshaw in a class; my father has already befriended Mr. Spielberg himself on the docks. They're very sweet people. I've met some of the world's most famous writers at banquets for the local Hamptons Shorts publication. But it's not about who's famous to the residents. To be honest, nobody really cares much. It's only people. It's why the famous come there, to be left alone, to relax, to mix and mingle with locals who won't necessarily scream and fawn, depending on where the celebrities go. Sag Harbor? Eh. The main towns of Southampton, Bridgehampton, and Easthampton? Meh. Oh, hey, Christie Brinkley at Guild Hall. Wow, she's pretty. Not the best artist, but she's got presence.
I don't go slack-jawed and gaga over celebrities because I can see them when I go home, if I know where to look. And they're just people. People with money, still only people.

I'm watching this VH1 documentary and I'm grinning because I know most of those places. From the outside, of course. From a distance. I don't have money, see. And my parents are too content to live as they are -- even thought their paintings and sculptures don't sell as much as other artwork in the Hamptons.

Yes, yes, everybody is rich and famous in the Hamptons. And those who aren't... well. you know. That's us.

However, this is making me miss home. The pristine, powerful beaches. The huge mansions and castles and seaside resorts whose architecture and sizes take my breath away. The deep breaths of fresh air, the intense green of trees and plants. It's really a beautiful area and I am grateful to have a home there. I can't wait for the week of Thanksgiving. That's when Adam and I get to go home there.

I apologize if this entry sounds bitter or sarcastic or eye-rolling. It isn't. It's just... the truth. There are a lot of big names attached to these towns. However, it makes me laugh when screaming fans go crazy, because it makes those big names seem too big. It's another reason why I personally backed away from the Harry Potter mania. If JK Rowling showed up in Southampton in a coffee shop and smiled at me, I'd just smile back. Oh, and she has been to Southampton, by the way. Last year she dropped a staggering 76,000 pounds ($153,000) per week on a rental house for when she's in the States. I wasn't there, but Mom says a couple of her friends ran into Ms. Rowling, who was "very polite and sweet, but seemed hurried and nervous." Mom's friends told her to "just relax, you're okay, that's what this place is for!"
I'd still just nod and smile.