My Summer in the Hamptons, Inspired By Jean Kyoung Frazier
When my cousin Amanda texted me, “Come spend the summer in the Hamptons,” I was sitting in the breakroom of the convenience store where I worked, eating a sad, cold hot dog. My first thought was that Amanda must have sent it to the wrong person. My second thought was that if I squinted hard enough at the neon mustard on my plate, it almost looked like abstract art.
“Why me?” I typed back.
“Because you need it,” she replied.
Amanda had a house-sitting gig for some finance guy who summered in France because the Hamptons, apparently, wasn’t bougie enough for him anymore. She’d been doing it for years and always invited a rotating cast of friends to stay with her, mostly girls who wore linen jumpsuits and posted inspirational quotes about balance and abundance. I was not her usual crowd.
But I went. Because when you’re twenty-three and working in a place where the air conditioner only works half the time, and your coworkers’ main conversational topics are lotto tickets and YouTube drama, even a borrowed Hamptons summer starts to sound pretty good.
The house was massive in the kind of way that made me a little angry. White shingle siding, manicured hedges, a pool that glistened like something out of a commercial. Inside, the floors were a pale wood so clean they looked like they’d been installed that morning. Amanda met me at the door in a breezy dress, holding a glass of something sparkling. She hugged me, hard.
“Look at you,” she said, like I was a pet she’d rescued from the pound.
I stayed in the guest room, which was the size of my entire apartment. It had a clawfoot tub, a balcony overlooking the pool, and more throw pillows than I knew what to do with. For the first week, I mostly stayed in there, reading and eating the expensive snacks Amanda kept in the kitchen. Truffle chips. Cheese that came in tiny wax-covered rounds. Crackers so delicate they felt like they might shatter if I looked at them wrong.
Amanda tried to get me to “do Hamptons things,” which is what she called her endless loop of social engagements. There were the vineyard afternoons, where everyone posed with wine glasses but barely drank. The bonfire nights, where people sat on wicker chairs and talked about their startup ideas. The Polo Hamptons matches, where horses ran around while people looked bored.
“You’re not even trying,” Amanda said after one of the bonfires, her face flushed with wine and irritation.
“I didn’t know this was something you could fail at,” I said.
She sighed and lit a cigarette. Amanda always looked better when she was a little angry, like the sharp edges of her personality came into focus.
“Come on,” she said. “You’ll like it if you stop being a weirdo about it.”
She didn’t get it. I wasn’t a weirdo about the Hamptons. I was a weirdo everywhere. And there’s something about being surrounded by beautiful people who act like life is easy that makes you feel even stranger in your own skin.
But eventually, I started to leave the house. Not because I wanted to, but because Amanda wouldn’t stop nagging me. I went to the farmers’ market with her, where everything cost triple what it should have. I went to Le Bilboquet, where I ordered the cheapest salad on the menu and ate it slowly, hoping no one noticed how out of place I looked.
And you know what? It wasn’t that bad. There was a girl at one of the vineyard afternoons who laughed too loudly and spilled her drink on my shoe, and instead of apologizing, she said, “Good. You looked too perfect.” I liked her immediately.
By the end of the summer, I’d figured out the trick to the Hamptons. It wasn’t about fitting in, or looking a certain way, or posting the right photos. It was about letting yourself enjoy something without overthinking it. I stopped caring about what I was wearing or what people thought of me. I even started having fun.
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When it was time to leave, Amanda hugged me again, softer this time.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. And for once, I meant it.
Back in the city, everything felt hotter and louder and more crowded. But I didn’t mind. The Hamptons hadn’t changed my life, not really. But it gave me something I hadn’t had in a long time: a break. And sometimes, that’s enough.
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