I started coming down here 15 years ago to be with my bff. It’s a lovely town where nothing happens, Mayberry RFD. With sand.
(Location to remain semi-secret because it’s already way too popular. When we first started coming it was the anti-thesis of hip. Sometimes you’d find that you’d rented next to a house full of pajama men. Those unwanted men, forgotten by their families, dumped by the state into boarding houses along the shore, they’d wander town or camp on benches or front porches, in thier pajamas and slippers, smoking cigarettes, shuffling, smelling vaguely of urine. One step away from paper slippers. We should have seen it coming. That description sounds suspiciously like the East Village and Williamsburg just before they slid into hipster-ness.)
I came this weekend with the intention of…
a) spending quality time with my peeps – totally forgetting it’s Father’s Day weekend and everyone scatters to spend time with fathers, past, present and in-lawish. Well, it would have been the same had I stayed in the city, but here I got to sleep in to the sound of rain pattering on the front lawn, stay in my pajamas all day watching the entire season of Real Housewives of New Jersey with my peeps (and “prostitution whore” becomes shorthand for ‘Jersey trash’, much like the phrase, “with a minimum of makeup” is shorthand for ‘she looks a little bit like an ape don’t you think?’) and be woken by having my god-dog crawl into bed with me and dance all over me until I slid over and made enough room for him.
b) doing laundry. There is something comforting about the smells & sounds of the dryer going round when it’s in your own house. It doesn’t have the same charm and coziness in the basement of an apartment building with bright fluorescent lights and strangers wandering around. My god-dog sleeps next to me as I write, the dryer hums below me, the birds tweet from the telephone wires outside the window.
c) writing. To spend a considerable amount of time writing, editing, reading, generally being productive. Outside of this post, none of that has happened. The other housemates are better, they do some of their art, their writing. I am best at doing nothing down here.
I am terrible at doing nothing Any. Place. Else. The beach house gives me permission, in a way that no other place or time does, to do nothing. To sleep in or watch crap on television. To not get properly dressed for two days in a row or putter aimlessly. To get down on all fours and play with my god-dog and be absolutely one hundred percent silly. To not care what my hair looks like or think about makeup. To sleep on the beach when it’s sunny. To walk on the shoreline at night, and feel simultaneously significant and insignificant. To partake meals made from group efforts. To not have to be anyplace or anyone other than who and where I am at that moment, who I am when my guard is down. To laugh until I almost wet my pants.
When I’m here, I get to be the authentic jodi. The chattering stops, the world slows down, my heart opens, my silly comes spilling out and my laundry gets done.
love you, girly.