The timing for this, our opulence issue, could not be better. I can finally get back to the things that actually matter to us in the Hamptons. For nine months of the year I worry about the big scary stuff. Memorial Day starts to bring me some well-deserved psychic relief. And getting serious about opulence is pure uncaring summer bliss.
It is an about face from the torments of presidential politics, the war in Iraq, the relentlessly bad news about the economy, the price of gas, the frightening number of species of wildlife disappearing daily, the melting glaciers that will gradually but surely unleash havoc on the shorelines of the planet, even though, try as I may, my imagination cannot conceive of dreadful happenings in the Hamptons. My worries do not stop there. They get cosmic. There is a real possibility according to some scientists who do not come off as obvious quacks that the Large Hadron Collider, an enormous particle accelerator lying under the Swiss and French Alps, might create an unforgiving black hole that will totally swallow the earth. Well, maybe not totally. A few burnt particles might remain, which would be of some comfort if any of us were there to get a cinder in our eye.
It’s not that any of these situations actually improve in July and August. It’s just that a new, more local set of cares and woes displace them. We get back to the central text, the core curriculum of the Hamptons. I stew more about how to dodge traffic on Route 27 than I do about climate change. Getting the right table at Nick & Toni’s on Friday night trumps any observation on political debates, and the triage involved with getting to at least two or three out of five parties on any July weekend night is so compelling it leaves no mental room for fretting about China or Iran.
Forgive me for being cranky, but the state of the world is abysmal, and the problems will no doubt still be there in September. Right now I’ve got other distressing things, I assure you. Take food. I know the world is facing shortages and high prices, even severe hardships in some countries. That’s grim news and I am not belittling it—I’m just postponing all those awful thoughts for these couple of summer months. (And even after that, I have no solutions except to drive less, take my canvas bags to the market—and hope.)
In the meantime I will only worry about the food in front of me. I wonder, for example, if that perfectly grilled porterhouse steak I am about to be served at a barbeque came from an animal that was slaughtered humanely, or did I forget and accidentally eat a fish that is threatened with extinction by those huge commercial fleets from Southeast Asia, or should I leave the room if my hosts are insensitive enough to offer genuine foie gras?
Life is fraught. Frivolity has its price. It’s not exactly a biblical toll, but everything is famously expensive here. Getting things right in a Hamptons kind of way can be a minefield. So call me shallow. Call me vapid. It’s all true, at least until after Labor Day. I want to escape now into a season of opulence, fully aware that opulence in the Hamptons is no more than a pitch perfect blend of commerce and hedonism. But so what? I’m going to indulge myself during these fleeting, irreplaceable, golden days of summer.