I'm easily in the weirdest place I've ever been in my entire life: The Hamptons.
"WHAT!?!?" You exclaim.
Shhhhh!!!! Don't tell Anyone! They don't know who I am and I don't want to blow my cover.
They think I'm a writer. I don't tell them it's a blog.
I don't want to be an ungracious guest, but it's a surreal scene: twenty room mansions, golf courses for front yards, six different cars, one for each occasion.
The host's father is tanned a deep bronze which, when combined with his silver hair and teal terrycloth button-down, makes a nice variation of 4th of July red, white, and blue.
They joke that he's a goomba, but honestly, between the accents and gesticulations, I can't tell a Jewish business tycoon from an Italian mafioso.
His daughter is a high-society shoe designer shoes.
Her husband the Brit hops about from one exotic locale to another -P.V., the DR, The Maldives- shooting emmaciated supermodels for a magazine called "Elle".
His sister reports in a raspy voice of partying with aging British rockers -the Who, Pink Floyd, Dexy's Midnight Runners- and hitching a ride home in a famous celebrity's husband's helicopter.
Their family villa is larger and closer to the beach, and a two-page spread torn from a Spanish tabloid outs their cousin as the new boyfriend of a third-class European princess. They're photographed in the pool -his fresh face the epitome of metrosexual; she hulks behind him like an ogre.
The trip to the beach -a half mile as the mourning dove flies over sand dunes and a large reed-lined pond- is made in a caravan of three or four vehicles.
No one mentions global warming, their carbon footprint, or the price of gas.
They don't hoard used chopsticks or drink from jars.
"Live simply so others may simply live" is a phrase in an unintelligible language.
The title of my next story will be "The Wimpiest People in the World".
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