THE END OF THE WORLD AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Montauk musings, "Expensive Regrets" and Fourth feelings.
Hello hello! How did we ring in America’s big beautiful birthday? Did we have fun celebrating the continual collapse of our nation? Did we hit the beach (at the least the weather’s nice in hell)? Speaking of heat, did we fire up the grill (I hope everyone crying over Zohran Mamdani eating with his hands civilly sliced up their hot dogs with a fork and knife)?
My weekend was low key (though waking up Saturday morning with two full days of rest stretched before me = very high key. Something about a Friday vs Monday off hits different). I’m back in LA after two weeks in New York and Chicago. Like any good Angeleno, this meant lots of hot yoga, green juices and Goop kitchen. Energetically restored by my plush West Coast lifestyle, I was organizing my freshly-painted pink office (JH Wall Velvet in 154 for maximum Miami-flamingo-by-day, 80’s-boudoir-peach-by-night vibe) when I came across my copy of Eve Babitz’s Black Swans. I’m aware this is my third week babbling about Babitz and if you don’t like it, you can, in the words of Meredith Marks, LEAVE!
Published in 1993, Black Swans is Babitz’s look in the rear view mirror at the 80s and early 90s, as told over nine short stories. I bought a copy for one in particular, which has all my requisite trappings for falling-in-love: house porn, gorgeous surfer boys, industry gossip and great footwear. In it, Babitz recounts her friendship with the glamorous Kate Lake. Lake, an alabaster redhead with a penchant for silver shoes (“[they] make me feel light”) is a New York artist who decamps to Hollywood after marrying a beloved indie-producer-turned-studio head (the aforementioned surfer). The Lakes live in a verdant hillside palazzo, the perfect backdrop for their legendary soirées. I’ve long wondered who Kate Lake was based on, as all of Babitz’s characters are pulled from her real life, like the salacious and scandalous tales she tells. Like Thompson (though women’s names rarely get cited in that context), she never shied away from inserting herself in her accounts or using her life as material. She lived as hard too, blowing an entire book advance on so much coke, “even her cats were running around high.” Reading Babitz is like sharing a naughty bathroom ciggie with the coolest senior in school (basically the plot of her debut “The Sheik” in which she mythologizes her time - and the baddies she ran with - at Hollywood High). Eve knows things you don’t yet and isn’t afraid to tell you. Her writing feels like permission, encouragement, to be wild, because I, like her, feel my most inspired after tying one on. Being feral fuels my creativity.
Our big NY/Chicago adventure began innocently enough, with a Connecticut detour (to visit Peter’s grandmother, Doris) before we crossed state lines into Carroll Gardens to meet friends Marie and Latane’s new baby girl. Wholesome quota met, we boarded the LIRR on Saturday morning, a group of party monsters Montauk-bound. It was my first time in the Hamptons and my understanding was that, unless you’re a WASP bound geographically by your bloodline, it’s a place you go to lounge by day and party your nips off by night. Once checked in, our crew descended upon the beach, gorging on plates of fried chicken and lobster rolls, sharing pina coladas and letting the sun solar power us up for the long night ahead. We even witnessed a native ritual in the form of a particularly tense (and very public) gender reveal. We danced, we drank, I covered everyone with rhinestone butterflies and we stayed up laughing until the sun rose (“beautiful, not scary,” we all agreed). When we finally crawled into bed, I pulled out my phone and saw that the US had bombed Iran.
In Rumaan Alam’s Leave The World Behind, married New Yorkers Amanda and Clay find a miraculously-available luxury rental and take it as a sign to flee the city’s oppressive summer heat. They pack up their kids, some light reading and head for Long Island, keen on a reset. Instead, they get a midnight visit from George and Ruth, who not only claim they own the house but happen to be bearers of upsetting news - weird things are happening back in the city. The world as they know it seems to be ending.
I agree with you that opening my news app (fine, Twitter) at any hour feels apocalyptic enough - doing so at the crack of dawn with an already racing-heart wasn’t the best move. As I lay there, I had two thoughts: the world will kill us sooner than a million all-nighters, and wow, I can’t believe we might all die while I’m covered in rhinestone butterflies. That Montauk has been monikered “the end of the world” felt apt, and also wholly American - of course nothing could exist beyond it.
The world, of course, did not end. We carried on and back in the safety of my office, I gave Black Swans another crack (if I had more time to live, what better way to spend it than with a good book). I found the story I was looking for, the one about the Lakes, and settled in. “Expensive Regrets” begins with Eve waxing poetic about the Chateau Marmont (understandable), where she’s just arrived to meet Renzo, an old friend, fellow writer and possible new paramour. Their chemistry is instant and as they drive around in Eve’s leopard-print-upholstered car, it’s clear that their only destination is bed. They hole up in his room, diving into the sort of lush, velvet sex that makes you forget what day it is, so they don’t think twice when they smell smoke (their passion is so fiery, they assume it’s them). When they finally come up for air, the city is eerily still. Renzo reaches for the newspaper and they realize why - only a few miles south, riots have broken out, in protest of the Rodney King trial. Throwing clothes on, they rush downstairs to a packed lobby, everyone rapt around the radio listening for updates. In an increasingly-dystopian, post-Handmaid’s Tale world, it’s less shocking reading a piece like this, one that feels so prescient you wonder if the author had access to a time machine. But still, reading about an LA in flames, protests for racial injustice, police brutality, a nefarious Republican government, an in-decline-Hollywood (favoring mega-blockbusters-over-thoughtful-storytelling) feels like looking into a funhouse mirror. I knew Eve was ahead of her time but here she’s a canary in the coal mine (even if the coal mine is a suite above the Sunset Strip).
Despite being a daughter of the sixties and seventies, Eve never delved much into politics in her work; “Expensive Regrets” is the closest she got (and there are plenty of takes in it that made me cringe). I suppose it’s easier to stick your head in the sand when you live a good life; being engaged can be exhausting. After November, when the mood was somber but nowhere close to the democracy-dismantling that we’re at today, Peter and I looked at each other and vowed we’d handle things differently this time. No doom scrolling or endless news stream for us. We were going to treat ourselves with kid gloves. We felt like we deserved it, after Covid, and the fires et al. And for awhile it worked! Sure, there was a constant thrumming of anxiety, that animal instinct that helps keep us alive, but I was sleeping better, could throw myself into my work. I was staying in my own lane and that felt like all I could handle. But here’s the thing - if you’ve made it this far in your life, you should know what makes you tick. You know your favorite foods, what turns you on, your relationship red flags, your ideological non-starters - and you really should know what’s happening in the city, country and world around you. Listen, I have infographic fatigue too. I’m not a sadist - I don’t love looking at photos of dead children, Palestinian, Texan or anywhere in between. I don’t like thinking about disabled vets losing their healthcare after they were conned into fighting useless wars. But whining “why does everything have to be political” and avowing to shirk the realities of our world won’t shield you from it. You can try your best to avoid politics but politics will not avoid you.
Maybe you’re thinking then why don’t you just leave? (I don’t mean you, of course - my readers are intelligent, logical, open-minded angels). If only it were that simple. In my three plus decades of life, I’ve called the States home the longest. This is where I’ve put roots down, roots that run deep and as anyone who’s had a root canal can attest, you can’t just pull them out (I mean you can, but it’ll be excruciating and cause years of trauma and nerve damage). I felt this walking around Doris’, looking at the family photographs that lined every surface. Her mother, Anna fled 1930s Germany, narrowly avoiding the Holocaust - she came to America seeking asylum and never left. She had a family, opened a seafood restaurant, bought a waterfront home in Long Island right on the Sound. As far as American Dreams go, hers were right on the money. My own journey was a lot comfortable than hers - we moved for my dad’s work, our lives buoyed by corporate cushiness, making it infinitely easier. America may be the Land of the Free but everything has a price. My dad has since retired but I chose to stay - I became a citizen in 2016, something he always dreamed I would do. He made strategic professional moves, independent of his own interests, which is why I can sit in my pink office, reading and writing at any hour of my choosing. I have sacrifice, and yes, some good fortune to thank. It is a point of great pride for my parents that I was educated here, live here, work here and vote here. But lately, I see them second guess their decision. I watched as Peter recapped a recent visit to the urgent care, for a blocked ear (my price for marrying a Babitz-approved surfer boy) on a recent FaceTime. This otherwise rote visit came with a $700 bill. Their faces fell. America was starting to feel like an expensive regret.
Still I’m not ready to give up on it. Buddhists believe that a spiral is how you find your center. I like to remind myself of this when a news deluge feels like it’s flushing me down the drain of despair. On my last day in New York, I stopped into Casa Magazines. I love going in because what-in-the-romcom do you mean it’s a magazine shop in the middle of the West Village? It’s straight out of a Kate Hudson/Jlo-2000s joint and if you’re unfamiliar with its lore, you might walk in expecting to find one of their plucky prototypes behind the counter. But the shop was founded in 1995 by Mohammed Ahmed (born in Hyderabad) and is currently run by Ali (from Pakistan). There was a Bollywood song playing while I browsed, as regulars chopped it up with Ali. You see why it’s been referred to as a ”grown up Sesame Street,” the sort of diverse neighborhood intersection our current government is ideologically-opposed to (they’d hate most of the selection too, no doubt). When it was time to pay, I politely declined a bag, ready to whip out the tote I’ve been indoctrinated into carrying at all times. “Are you sure?” Ali asked, handing my card back, “It’s free.” He held up a quintessential I ❤️NY bag, already putting my magazine in. “You do love New York, don’t you?” Even as an avowed Angeleno, I couldn’t resist being charmed. That kind of hometown pride reminded me that this country, like all others, belongs to the people first. A man who looked like he’d be more at home slugging scotch with my dad was the mastermind behind the hottest place to pick up Italian Vogue. Where else in the world? This to me was real liberation. Ahmed, like many others who’ve been told to “go back to where they came from” may no longer be running the show (he retired a few years ago) but his legacy lives on, an iconic locale in the “The Greatest City in the World” (America does love its superlatives). Being there was a reminder that living a joyful, open life and embracing your community is your greatest resistance. That’s the kind of independance I can celebrate.
I owe ya some trip highlights, perhaps a Chopped Chilies soon 🌶️ Until then, here’s a delicious lobster roll + a cute bunny I snapped in Sag Harbor for a quick dopamine hit - big hugs xx
Beautifully written… details tug at the heartstrings….❤️
Agree w Indra — beautiful !