Mes Dépêches

The trek out from the Long Island Rail Road’s palatial, ornate if entirely empty terminal at Grand Central is predictable, as are most things in a boiled-over world this week.

We make the obligatory stop in Jamaica, dodgy as ever as we pop in for a Tim Horton’s coffee, then leverage the caffeine to stay awake through the banality of Nassau County’s featureless suburbs. But eventually this Montauk-bound beast – a double-decker diesel, as the single track out here will never be electrified – winds its way into tall pines, reedy creeks and the occasional dilapidated trailer, just like home.

Suffolk County may share an island with purple-haired Brooklyn, but the similarities end there.

A group of loud day-trippers exits at Southampton. There is a miserable breed of sub-human who answers calls on the train or takes it upon themselves to provide entertainment from a personal Spotify playlist, and I glare at the girl disembarking – finally, after two hours – the stud in her nose glimmering as she giggles at her visibly annoyed boyfriend. At least now she’s his problem, not the train’s.

A few toots of the horn and we charge through sunflower fields and behind the old Kmart, eventually sliding into East Hampton. There are only a handful of us left by this point, and all but the backpackers stand to exit.

We’re technically still in the last day or two of summer, but as we step off it feels sufficiently fall. Away from the city, with its radiating pavement and body heat, it’s perfectly crisp here, with only the still-green leaves betraying the season. My travel companion and I simultaneously take in the air, now freed from that need in the city to hedge every breath, lest your lungs be filled with a surprise hot wind freshly blown through the subway grate over a dog’s business.

Wittendale’s has swapped summer shrubs for orange and yellow mums, a handful of gardeners gathering as the shopkeeper diligently sweeps his terrace in anticipation of the Saturday crowds. A few boys run past, kicking a soccer ball between them as they head into the park.

Newtown Lane gives the appearance of a main street, lined with bustling brick shops and cafes as it winds from the town’s red light to the train depot, but the road conveniently goes to nowhere of import, so the traffic is local, meandering and quiet, of no real danger to the boys and their occasionally errant kicks. Not wanting to ruin this pastoral scene, we dutifully keep our conversation low.

Elsewhere in the world, respectfully low conversations have been in short supply. Shouting matches land like firebombs without discretion – with friends, at dinner tables, fully in public – all over the ultimate litmus test, whether it’s sadder that the children of a murdered Christian activist must wake up each day without their father, or that the children victimized by the country’s endemic school shootings won’t wake up at all.  

Underpinning the litmus test is a deep-seated assurance that America is in the midst of a zero-sum culture war, one over which every random Joe on the street is surely obsessing and picking a side. It’s unfathomable to the culture warrior that perhaps they and their social media connections – “friends,” in some bastardized use of the word – may be in the vast, however vocal, minority as they spend day and night enraged, railing against a phantom opposition growing ever more grotesque with each subsequent comment.

Is this our best use of life? Anyone with cognitive function and a desire to be rational knows that there is no viable mass conspiracy out to get them or their way of life. Those who actually believe this are called schizophrenic, and are often locked up for it, so it stands to reason that most people only believe it to an extent convenient for social inclusion. Emotionally, the pull toward an idea of oppression, a feeling of union with fellow warriors against the shadowy oppressor, however mythical, is powerful.

Inside Gubbins sporting goods store, photos line the wall celebrating runners from East Hampton High. The Bonackers, they’re called, a mascot named for the farmers and fishermen who have lived on the less fortunate side of the highway for centuries. In this town where the average home price is in the millions, plural, there is still class divide to manage, friction between weekenders from the city and locals just making their lives.

The bells at First Presbyterian stir to life as we stroll by. I wonder if it’s the weekend financiers from the city who put up the rainbow flag out front, or those working class Bonackers. We all make assumptions to simplify a complex world, deciding in advance who our friends and foes most assuredly are, and then are shocked when those preconceived notions are so often wrong – when we learn that most people aren’t infected with political rabies, and generally opt to just be decent.

At the Palm, we sit for an afternoon martini. Dry with gin, the vermouth in and out because I’m not one of those dreaded beta males, paired with bleu cheese olives. The bartender knows his game, leaving ice chips on top solid enough for round of hockey. The bar is empty, the autumn sun positioned to bathe the room in angular Edward Hopper light.

It’s silent in here. A television is on in the corner, showing Clemson losing to Syracuse at home in the rain, Tigers fans I’m sure apoplectic but it’s muted and thus that dismal energy is reserved for some faraway place. I watch the afternoon sun slowly move, gently testing different angles of light through the corner window, each attempt equally worthy of a perfect fall day.

And I don’t pick up my phone. I don’t check Twitter, I don’t live in the unhinged histrionics of Jesse Watters or Abby Phillip, although I do wonder if Dabo Swinney will survive the day. I just breathe, and I appreciate the moment.

And I wonder if maybe some of the culture warriors ruining so many dinners and friendships couldn’t just shut the hell up for a minute and try the same.

We wander back north and as we traverse the crosswalk, someone lays on the horn. He’s Black. The enraged mind makes a judgment on his race, another quick simplification of the world, but I choose to just see him for what he is – a jackass. Not a vast, oppressive agenda but a lone shooter, a common enemy.

Back on Newtown Lane, the town is hosting an end of summer festival, one last gathering of weekenders and locals before the weather turns and forces everyone inside for the long winter. There are a handful of hedge fund types grabbing beers as two kids from a local working family test their strength with the hammer. An Hispanic dad successfully pleads with his wife in favor of funnel cakes.

Some will go home tonight below the Montauk Highway, some above, but on this night in this normal American town, folks with little in common other than happening upon this street at this moment, all made the decision to step away from a riled-up, miserable world and enjoy this life.