Rance: why does he blog?

Postcard from The Hamptons (a.k.a. Long Island)
There are about eight thousand parks and beaches in California alone that are nicer, but when Hollywood goes away for summer vacation, it goes to the Hamptons, a 30-mile-or-so stretch of resort towns in Long Island, two hours from New York City by car (on the handful of occasions per summer there isn’t molasses-like traffic (but hopefully this is irrelevant as you’d be coptering it.)) The non-stop status Show & Tell (cars, clothing, poodles) that is Hamptons main streets, beach club outings and parties has been well-documented. As so much as expressing a predilection for domestic beer in the Hamptonscan all but get you strung up, I don’t do well there. However, I was invited there recently by a good friend from California we’ll call Bill. I was on the fence about going until he mentioned we’d be having three-and-a-half pound lobsters at his dinner party Saturday night. I’d always thought that smaller lobsters tasted better, but Bill assured me, “That is a myth invented by poor people.” Bill fits in very well in the Hamptons, by the way. In any case, as you may have surmised from previous entries, quality has always taken a back seat to quantity for me when it comes to crustaceans. So I hit the Hamptons.

Bill had a few other guests, including his college roommate, whom we'll call Perry. Perry, in his late-twenties, trades derivatives or dirigibles or something like for a Wall Street company. About seven or eight drinks past dinner Saturday, Perry told the story of his journey from Manhattan to Bridgehampton.

Perry sold a lot of whatever it is he sells in 2003. It was far and away the best year of his young career. Consequently, he was anticipating what he called "The Porsche Bonus,” which is to say the first bonus that would enable him to go cross-town to the dealership and plunk down cash for a brand new Porsche, which for him symbolized success. Early this year, the envelope with his check arrived. A half-hour later (to get two miles in NYC by taxi (i.e., not much traffic)), he was at the dealership and, just a few minutes thereafter, had struck a deal with a Porsche salesman. $88,000 for a new 911 Carrera 4.

Unfortunately for Perry, though, a lot of other Wall Streeters had had good years in 2003, so he would have to wait “a couple of months,” according to the salesman, to get his Porsche. But what was two months? Perry had waited two decades already. And he really didn’t need the car until June--specifically, Bill’s annual star-studded lobsterfest, a much-coveted invite as it turns out. In Perry’s mind, the moment he roared up Bill’s crushed clamshell driveway was the moment he would literally and figuratively have arrived.

The problem was the couple of months turned into four months. And that Perry might have to drive to Bill’s in his father’s old Taurus, which began to appear likely, was the stuff of his nightmares. With a week to go before the party, the Porsche had yet to arrive from Germany or wherever. Perry called or e-mailed the dealership three times a day and on the few occasions he got responses, they were questionable--along the lines of "storms hindering shipping."

The Friday before Bill’s party, having failed to receive a returned call from his salesman, a forlorn Perry took the subway home. Without the Porsche, he’d decided, he was better off not going to the Hamptons at all. But when he got off at his stop and emerged from the station, he saw that there was a voice message on his cell. From the salesman. The car had arrived! Regrettably, the dealership had closed by the time Perry got the message.

The next morning, the Saturday of the lobsterfest, Perry got to the Porsche dealership fifteen minutes before it opened. A short while later, he saw his car, an event he related like a father describing the first sight of his newborn son. And not long thereafter, he was roaring Hamptons-ward. Well, not roaring exactly. It took four-and-half bumper-to-bumper on the scalding, channel of exhaust fumes that was the Long Island Expressway. Perry savored every second.

Finally, he arrived in Bridgehampton. As he turned onto Bill’s street, his heart was beating high. He reveled in rehearsing the modest remarks which he would deliver in response to the dropped jaws of his peers at the sight of him emerging from the sparkling new 911 Carrera 4.

As he pulled onto the crushed clamshell driveway, though, his heat nearly stopped. Parked there, beside my rented Pontiac, were two other sparkling Porsche 911s. Bill’s 2004 Carrera $102,000 Carrera 4S (I suspect the S means simply $ as there was no appreciable difference, particularly in the New York area, where you seldom have the chance to exceed 30 MPH). And beside it, a third friend of theirs from college’s 911 GT2, which runs just shy of two hundred grand. Perry quietly parked his car and shuffled inside.

The moral of this Hamptons story: Work hard and make more money than your friends so that you can buy a better car and your self-image will be good.

Later,

R