hate for the island

I was born and raised on Long Island in a hamlet that rests along the Great South Bay.¹ Known to most as a ferry town, this charming suburb lives and breathes the ocean. Most every resident has access to some kind of boat, whether through personal ownership or advantageous friendship. In the 90s, the town was voted the “friendliest town in America,” a slogan that still adorns the sign as you drive into town, by a mysterious group that awards such superlatives. That accolade, along with our yacht clubs, country clubs, lack of racial diversity, and generalized fear of anything outside the norm makes the town the near picture of 1950s suburban ideal.

In high school, the boys play football and the girls cheer them on; they graduate, marry, inherit the estate of their landed parents (who go on to relocate to the Hamptons or some other rich, desirable location), and have children of their own, thus completing their cyclical destiny. They do not fight. They do not divorce. They do not struggle, financially. They avoid anything seen as even slightly improper, for fear of damaging their social standing. And should the rebellious teenager stray out of line, their indiscretions quickly disappear, through privilege and influence and money. These people live happily trapped in their ticky-tacky homes and in their ticky-tacky lives.

I have always felt at odds with that world. In high school, for an English class free-write, I composed an essay likening the residents of the town with vampires whose venom sucked anything interesting or genuine from a person. I did not fit within the grand picture of conformity and normalcy. I wanted to break out, to rip at its edges.

But the town’s carefully honed image was in flux; insularity was at threat. Manhattan was constantly encroaching, bringing along its noise, its commercialism. Drive just five minutes out of town and you are bombarded by retail, restaurants, parking lots lit by high power LEDs akin to those found in football stadiums. Roads have become highways and highways freeways; drivers race along them, always in a rush to their mysterious destinations, from early in the morning to late at night. For only so much longer can this little marina hold; the tide will soon fall and urbanization will cast anchor. What reminds of small-town ways of life will soon wash away.

I moved away seven years ago and at last found some peace. I could see the stars. I could breathe air free from the ocean’s salt, air that did not stifle or oppress. I could establish a new life without the weight and pain and baggage, without feeling like an outsider. I can grow. I can expand. I can sow my roots into a soil of possibility. I can carve out a world of my own, in which at last I feel I fit. And that feels like home.