Stranded
In the movie The Endless Summer, the filmmaker documents a group of surf bums chasing the eternal wave all around the planet. I think the title and the poster were more famous than the movie itself. As I recall, the narrator sounded a lot like Warren Miller, the guy who made thousands of ski videos with similar narration. He, like Miller was the exact opposite of the people he was portraying. They were wild, reckless and crazy and he was staid, conservative and understated. He almost sounded bored by it all, which just made the movies of these daredevils all the more appealing for some reason. Truth be told, the narrator wants to be them, which is why he makes the movies.
I am stranded here all by myself on this deserted beach of pink sand and crashing blue and white waves. The wind has not died down in the past day and the steel grey sky is neither threatening nor inviting. To my left are beautiful coral rocks that would prevent me from going north. To my right is a long stretch of beach littered with dried seaweed and a lone seagull fighting against the wind. It feels like a very lonely spot.
I know that in ten days it will be anything but lonely here. This is prime Spring Break territory for the monied set. It may not be as wild as Fort Lauderdale or Cancun, but there will be volleyball on the beach, beer pong up on the terrace and wet t-shirt contest somewhere nearby. The beach will be littered with bikinis, thongs and droopy board shorts. The hotel staff at The Elbow Beach Club will tolerate these shenanigans because the ring leaders will be the children of longstanding and valued clients of the Club, the sort of people who spare no expense for a week in early October after the hurricanes and before the chill of winter. These people drop a bundle each year on the Club and it’s staff and expect some leeway on these things. They ski at Aspen and Deer Valley in winter and summer on the beaches of Southampton or Cape Cod. Spring and fall are Bermuda season for this crowd.
I am a narrator for this crowd. I like to dispassionately describe them and their ways and antics. One might detect a tone of disdain in my voice, ever so slightly. I needs to be ever so slight because I spent fifteen years skiing at Deer. Valley and another fifteen years summering in the Hamptons. And guess what, I even used to come to Bermuda in the shoulder seasons. I can try to say that it was all coincidental and that I am not one of them, but it may not work. I did not go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Dartmouth, but I did go to Cornell. I didn’t pay and scam for my children to go there, but I did give enough to the University for my kids to get that little extra consideration given not just to legacies, but to the inner rung of legacies. They all three attended.
You see, I am now stranded on this windy beach in Bermuda. I do not respect the sort of people I seem to have tried hard for fifty years to emulate. I have been admitted to a few of their clubs (NYAC, Westchester Country Club) in the past, and yet they have denied me entry into other (Greenwich Country Club and Rockaway Hunt Club). I’ve bought homes in the outer-boroughs of their tony cliques. I was in Quiogue not Southampton. I was in Park City, not ski-in-ski-out in Deer Valley. My house in San Diego is not in La Jolla or Rancho Santa Fe. My apartment is downtown, not in Carnegie Hill. I prefer not to associate with them and choose to live in more diverse areas, but I am still a card-carrying member of their set by virtue of what I’ve done over fifty years and where I still tend to hang out at the fringes.
As a joke, I once got my wife calling cards that mimicked the ones socialites hand out that declare their addresses in Manhattan, Aspen, Palm Beach and London. I made up ones for her that said, Staten Island, Escondido and Ithaca (where we happened to have homes at the time.). I am somewhat unclear about what that all says about me. Am I a social climber who cannot afford to get as close to the rich and haughty as I would like, or am I a person who consciously keeps my distance while acknowledging that I want a comfortable lifestyle nonetheless? All I know for sure is that I am somewhere stranded in the middle ground.
I was raised by a woman who would be happy to see that I had the presence and self-awareness to ponder my own predicaments and failings. She would, however, be greatly puzzled by my particular quandary about being part of the crowd or not. She never thought twice about such things. She did what she wanted and if it intersected with wealthy people, so be it. She never chased anybody else’s dreams and certainly never compared herself to others in a way that my foibles would indicate that I do. In the words of Wayne’s World, I am not worthy. And that very sentiment would probably piss her off even more.
So here I am, stranded on this beach ten days out of season. I look to the left and the waves are still crashing on the rocks as the tide works it’s way in. I look to the right and the sand still stretches out for a few miles. But now, out there on the horizon is a lone windsurfer with a parasail. He is making his own waves whether the surf is up or not. He is cutting right and left at breakneck speed, skimming over the tops of the waves. What would the boys of The Endless Summer think of this guy? Would they embrace him as a great innovator in their sport, who crashes the boards his own way, or would they snub him as a charlatan who doesn’t do the real work of traveling the globe looking for the perfect wave and just fabricates his own excitement?
It’s all put a smile on my face in either case because I see the excitement and pleasure he is generating for himself and those of us hangers-on that are watching from afar. He’s not stranded, he’s just choosing to make his own fun, just like we all must. Mom would be happy with that conclusion.