My first boyfriend came from a rich family. Like, old crazy colonialist rich. By the time his generation came along, there really was no more money at all, although there were still vestiges of wealth, including the house on the rocky isolated beach in Rhode Island where I lost my V-card. Plus connections in Newport. My boyfriend went to John-John Kennedy’s birthday party as a small child and can be seen in the home movies cavorting with the elite on the long green lawn. I was never really comfortable in that world. I went to a wedding with my boyfriend and the snobby Newport attitude was overwhelming. I hate to say it but it was just so damn PROTESTANT. I felt like the papist Irish maid, sneaking wine in the pantry. I was separated from my boyfriend at the rehearsal dinner – we were seated at different tables (like, what?) – and I was wearing a vintage black dress and a little velvet hat with a veil – all of which I bought for like 20 bucks at the Johnnycake Center. It was my idea of chi-chi. Meanwhile I am surrounded by women in floral dresses, Laura Ashley style. I now know that I looked fantastic but at the time I was like, “Jesus, my taste is WAY off.” I handled it by getting drunk, sitting all by myself at this unfriendly table with unfriendly people I didn’t know. At one point, someone said something to me about how they “summered in so-and-so” and “wintered in such-and-such”, and they were thinking of re-doing their home in Newport “French country style” and – fine, you have money – good for you – but by that point I had had it, and I said, three glasses of wine in to my evening, “Yeah, well, my Irish great-grandmother cleaned houses like yours.” This did not go over well and of course I didn’t mean it to go over well. Cutting a swath through the florals in my little veiled hat and little black dress.
Boyfriend’s family owned an island in the St. Lawrence seaway. There was a big house on the island, inhabited by a branch of the family that had maintained its money – and on the otherside was a small sliver of land inherited by my boyfriend and his siblings. They built on it a rustic cabin. Rustic indeed. No amenities. But shelter. One of the things he and I did every summer was go up there for a week. One summer a group of friends came with – Mitchell, Jackie, Brooke – we are all still friends today. That week was an absolutely insane vacation, so much fun that we still laugh about it.
But in general, I never had a good time there. When I go on vacation, I want to sit on the beach, go swimming, and read 5 books. I don’t want to cut down trees and build shit. I just had a different rhythm and boyfriend never liked that rhythm. He was always like, “Do you want to spend two days building a lean-to?” No. I don’t. He saw my desire for CHILL as lazy and it irritated him.
Years later, Mitchell said to me, laughing, “You fucking hated that island.”
It was the company I kept that was the problem.
Here I am, after a swim in the FUH-REE-ZING cold water, drying my hair on the “porch” and … doing my best to chill. I want to tell my younger self: “Sheila, get in the rowboat and make a break for it. And never look back.”
