IT WAS BREATHTAKING...
AND I WAS BOWLED OVER BY THAT, due to the fact that it was exactly the sort of a place a couple of decades ago I would have despised anybody for going to.
One of the great things about getting a little bit of pocket money to spend is that you can do all those things that you used to eat your heart out about when you watched other folks doing it and detested them for it: sitting around in an exquisite restaurant wearing sunglasses that cost what you used to earn in a month, ordering up flamboyant indulgences like a dab of Beluga Caviar, being pampered hand and foot by - and get this, this is a very important and significant part of what happens to you in an East Hampton restaurant - staff who treats you as if you were rich and famous, whether you actually are or not - they truly and sincerely want you, not just any old guy sitting around in a sun hat and glasses, but you personally, to feel that there is nothing in this best of all possible worlds that you have come to for you to concern yourself about anything in any way at all. We don't even dislike you for being as loaded as we think you are.
The home I was staying in was extremely pleasant, incidentally. I'm sure you are anxious to know what it was like, since you may or may not be able to afford to go there on your own. It was not what one would call enormous but it was very comfortable and sunny and tastefully decorated in pastels softened by the addition of gypsum. My favorite item was the balcony that overlooked a bit of the ocean because it had an awning that automatically raised and lowered depending upon where the sun stood in the sky. I thought that this was very funny. I would sit and laugh and laugh and laugh and have another shot or two of Glenlivet Scotch and then laugh some more.
We now come to another rather embarrassing part of the story about which I have so far been extremely silent. I was in the Hampton's on money that I hadn't actually earned. Nor had I stolen it. I simply inherited it and I hope very much that you will forgive me for having said that you may or may not be able to go there on your own, because I couldn't afford it either, and I promise I won't mention it again.
Allow me to be aboveboard, there's nothing harder than being a ludicrous impostor with a devil-may-care attitude pretending to be something that they are not. It's desperate stuff, yet one of the most blissful joys of doing it is to be able to pull-it-off, even for just a little bit; although the unfinishedness of it is that your bankroll will eventually peter-out.
So I asked myself, what difference does that make? There have been idle ne'er-do-wells who had no problem passing themselves off as something that they were not since the days of the female pirate Anne Bonney back in the 1700's, an Irish lass who cross-dressed and disguised herself as a male in order to team-up with her lover, Jack Rackham, and had a hell of a time pillaging Spanish treasure ships off Cuba and Hispaniola until the British Navy captured her along with her lover. He was hanged. She was pregnant and no record of her execution has ever been found. Rumor had it that she eventually became a tavern owner in the south of England, where she regaled the locals with the tales of her exploits.
Maybe that is why I enjoyed it as much as I did, by virtue of the fact that I was having a hell of a time, too. I was now in a world which compared to a pre-fall Eden, an entire innocent and benign Paradise of the well-to-do, never burdening myself with the task of justifying the fact that I did not actually belong in such a heady crowd; and thus remained inextinguishably happy.
I was, after all, at the pinnacle of one of the most sublime moments of my life. Not because I was mingling with the those folks who had it made, but because I was in a place of magnificent and stunning beauty in the atmosphere of what nature can do, where you could find the stars and the sea, both intermixed in the realms of pure, creative artistry. Not a bad place at all for a man with limited means to find himself...even for a little bit...
AND I WAS BOWLED OVER BY THAT, due to the fact that it was exactly the sort of a place a couple of decades ago I would have despised anybody for going to.
One of the great things about getting a little bit of pocket money to spend is that you can do all those things that you used to eat your heart out about when you watched other folks doing it and detested them for it: sitting around in an exquisite restaurant wearing sunglasses that cost what you used to earn in a month, ordering up flamboyant indulgences like a dab of Beluga Caviar, being pampered hand and foot by - and get this, this is a very important and significant part of what happens to you in an East Hampton restaurant - staff who treats you as if you were rich and famous, whether you actually are or not - they truly and sincerely want you, not just any old guy sitting around in a sun hat and glasses, but you personally, to feel that there is nothing in this best of all possible worlds that you have come to for you to concern yourself about anything in any way at all. We don't even dislike you for being as loaded as we think you are.
The home I was staying in was extremely pleasant, incidentally. I'm sure you are anxious to know what it was like, since you may or may not be able to afford to go there on your own. It was not what one would call enormous but it was very comfortable and sunny and tastefully decorated in pastels softened by the addition of gypsum. My favorite item was the balcony that overlooked a bit of the ocean because it had an awning that automatically raised and lowered depending upon where the sun stood in the sky. I thought that this was very funny. I would sit and laugh and laugh and laugh and have another shot or two of Glenlivet Scotch and then laugh some more.
We now come to another rather embarrassing part of the story about which I have so far been extremely silent. I was in the Hampton's on money that I hadn't actually earned. Nor had I stolen it. I simply inherited it and I hope very much that you will forgive me for having said that you may or may not be able to go there on your own, because I couldn't afford it either, and I promise I won't mention it again.
Allow me to be aboveboard, there's nothing harder than being a ludicrous impostor with a devil-may-care attitude pretending to be something that they are not. It's desperate stuff, yet one of the most blissful joys of doing it is to be able to pull-it-off, even for just a little bit; although the unfinishedness of it is that your bankroll will eventually peter-out.
So I asked myself, what difference does that make? There have been idle ne'er-do-wells who had no problem passing themselves off as something that they were not since the days of the female pirate Anne Bonney back in the 1700's, an Irish lass who cross-dressed and disguised herself as a male in order to team-up with her lover, Jack Rackham, and had a hell of a time pillaging Spanish treasure ships off Cuba and Hispaniola until the British Navy captured her along with her lover. He was hanged. She was pregnant and no record of her execution has ever been found. Rumor had it that she eventually became a tavern owner in the south of England, where she regaled the locals with the tales of her exploits.
Maybe that is why I enjoyed it as much as I did, by virtue of the fact that I was having a hell of a time, too. I was now in a world which compared to a pre-fall Eden, an entire innocent and benign Paradise of the well-to-do, never burdening myself with the task of justifying the fact that I did not actually belong in such a heady crowd; and thus remained inextinguishably happy.
I was, after all, at the pinnacle of one of the most sublime moments of my life. Not because I was mingling with the those folks who had it made, but because I was in a place of magnificent and stunning beauty in the atmosphere of what nature can do, where you could find the stars and the sea, both intermixed in the realms of pure, creative artistry. Not a bad place at all for a man with limited means to find himself...even for a little bit...
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