Suddenly Last Winter
Looking back, it was the winter of our gratification, the months of our conspicuous consumption. Even here in Georgica, where money never seems to be in short supply, the amount of building and renovation and improvement is staggering—as I presume are the number of large checks being written to enable all this. My own house is dwarfed by a huge new replacement for what was a modest shingle house next door, with an owner who seems barely out of his teens. Another major new house is being constructed in back of me—but at least the owner is seemly enough to be over 30. Vast wealth now rains down on young people who in a different generation would have been cornering one of the early curves of their career track. I’ve read that it produces a kind of ennui called “sudden wealth syndrome”.
Richard III had to wait for his winter of discontent to be made into glorious summer. We can’t wait. We don’t put up with a day of dejection much less a season of it in this new millennium. We go right from prosperous winter to ecstatic summer.
Awash in all this prosperity around me, I was quite content, if tired, this winter. Because of Lyme disease, the affliction of the East End, I rarely went to New York City, so I was not competing with my friends for tables in marvelously expensive restaurants, nor sidling up to the counters of those Madison Avenue shops for the newest must-have trinket. Out of practice now, I’ve lost that nice old-fashioned cutthroat need to get it all done, completely and immediately. I might also have lost a few of my best friends by this out-of-the box attitude—but my need to sleep just did not permit me a decent dose of New York ambition.
Signs and symptoms of the sudden wealth syndrome:
Summer role models: The vaguely young, very rich and comfortably complacent will be coupling with the very young, decidedly sexy, good-looking and narcissistic. Such couples may at first have trouble focusing on one another instead of themselves, but soon that won’t matter and they will pair off in a lovely swirl of self-adulation and luxury goods. The rest of us—older, in relationships or needing eight hours of sleep at night—will be deeply tempted to emulate them.
Ritual activities: Hey, New York: give us your energetic and your rich. The huddled masses from the city that never sleeps will soon begin weekend commutes in their SUV’s and private jets. All will claim to be on a quest for quiet and rest. But the lure of clubs and parties and polo matches will win out. There will be no rest for the determined and the driven. Ultimately we are all slaves to the sybaritic pleasures of a rigorous Hamptons social calendar.
Pushing the not-so-hot buttons: Nothing serious will impinge on the golden cocoon of summer in the Hamptons between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The level of interest here in the presidential campaign may trump our interest in decoy carving—by a whisker. The senate race will perhaps create a frisson more excitement if Hillary and Rudy show up. Politics, however, will not even come close to beauty, fashion, gossip, love, sex, the beach and all the other things so dear to us in the silly season.