It's Sunday afternoon. I am at PH's family's house in Amagansett, which is on the ocean, on Long Island. A few things are on my mind.
First: a friend of mine, Geoff (not his real name), recently sent another friend of mine, Jim (not his real name), a letter with a wax seal on it. (I doubt that either of them read this blog, btw, and I'm as certain as I can be, without being absolutely certain, that Geoff doesn't read it. If he does, Hi Geoff...)
I want to be clear about what I mean by, "a letter with a wax seal on it." People, of course -- a long, long, long time ago -- used to write letters to other people and put them in envelopes and then seal the envelopes shut with a wax seal. This seal had three purposes, as far as I know: first, to keep the envelope shut; second, to identify the sender; and third, to act as a primitive sort of "tamper-proof packaging" -- the recipient of such a letter would know, if the seal had been broken, that someone else who was not the intended recipient of the letter had already read the letter.
Today, of course, for a dollar or two, you can purchase a box of envelopes which, this being the twenty-first century, come with their own adhesive. If you prefer, you can spend, say, ten or fifteen or more dollars for a box of really nice envelopes, which also come with their own adhesive. There is, in other words, no reason to seal an envelope shut with a wax seal unless you mean to say to the recipient, "I am a very sophisticated man. Also: cultured. Also: a man of breeding, and of means: you don't see tradesmen [a word which Geoff would actually use] donning letter-writing trousers and writing and then sending letters in envelopes sealed with artisanal Italian wax and stamping the wax with expensive wax-stamping things." (Actually, there is another reason: the sender may wish to say these things to himself as much as to the recipient.)
Here's the problem, though (or, one of a few problems): yes, Geoff can spot a 2,400-dollar necktie from an impressive distance; yes, Geoff knows that espresso is called "espresso," not "expresso," and he know this before Starbucks; yes, Geoff owns approximately seventy copper pots and pans because he believes that "Revereware is shit" (that's a direct quote). But these things don't... I mean, for Christ's sake, I wonder if Geoff has ever finished a book that didn't contain pictures or --
I'm stopping. I'm not being charitable towards my shallow friend Geoff. (Who is, in some ways, not a shallow person at all.) I know that none of us is perfect. I know that all of us lie about what sorts of people we are, to impress ourselves as well as to impress other people. I do think that for some people, the lies are nearly all-encompassing, while for other people, they're not. I do think that some people have almost completely modeled their lives on catalogs while others of us are taken in less often by their promises. But let's talk about something else.
After I say this: I'm appalled: wax-sealed letters. Pardon my language, but give me a fucking break.
Moving on. As I said, PH and I are in Amagansett. Amagansett is in the Hamptons, but PH does not speak of going to "the Hamptons," and neither do her family members; this is one of the things I like about her, and about them. This weekend, it's just PH and her father and I out here; PH's mom is an actor, and she's in a play at the moment, so she will come out here later this evening, but after PH and I have gotten on the train to go back to the city.
I like coming out here. One of the reasons I like coming out here is that sometimes (rarely but sometimes) Mr. H refers to PH and me as "the kids." As in, he was on the phone with PH's mom yesterday, and said to her something like, "the kids just went for a swim, and now we're going to go to Sag Harbor to get an ice-cream cone." I like this! I'm forty years old, but that's still young enough, apparently, for someone to think of me as, in some sense, a "kid." Which is just absolutely fine with me. (It is also not true that I'm forty; I'm thirty-nine. But since I turned thirty-nine last November, I've caught myself thinking of myself as forty. I did a similar thing when I turned twenty-nine. Perhaps I want to get the "transition" over with, even though I understand that there is no "transition." Anyway, I've enjoyed my thirties so much more than I did my twenties... We'll see.)
Another reason I like coming out here is that there's, like, nature. I grew up in Maine; lots of nature in Maine. I'm very glad to have grown up there, but can't imagine wanting to return there to live (too much nature, partly/maybe, or perhaps I just got most of the nature I needed before I went to college). But: nature. Like, frogs! Here is a photo of a frog, whom PH rescued from the strong currents of the pool yesterday. Here he is (these are PH's hands, and small bits of PH's face are also visible):
(Sorry, a toad; this is a toad, not a frog, I've been told by PH, Nature Expert.)
Happy summer evening.
Seal image copyright HAAP Media Ltd. Used with permission.
