KURESSAARE HAS A RATHER swank, swish, monied feel to it, though not necessarily intentional. Just something about those spurting fountains, outdoor cafes, with patrons who reek of cosmetics and cologne and strawberry-flavored vape, all dressed in muted colors if not black. The speakers are a retro wonderland of Haddaway (‘What Is Love?’) and NKOTB (‘Step By Step’). The houses of the town are tidy, painted warm pastel tones, and cared for, and the Saaremaa capital reminds me of Skagen in Denmark, lots of hideaway getaway back yard gardens and the sea is never far. At the Vinoteek, the dim, candelabra-d interior of which looks like some Pyrenees mountainside tavern, the white bearded bartender informs me that he has no desire to leave the island of Saaremaa. ‘I only go to the mainland for weddings, funerals, and birthday parties,’ Whitebeard says while polishing off wine glasses at blue midnight, ‘and fortunately in recent years such events have been few and far between.’

‘EXCUSE ME, aren’t you that famous travel photographer who took the photo of the Dalai Lama blowing on his soup?’ Garcia was standing outside the door of the beloved Krishna Sweet Shop in Sag Harbor when he was again accosted. This time it was an older woman with a straw hat who had spotted him from afar as she came out of the Whaling Museum. There was nothing unusual about these kinds of run-ins with his growing divisions of fans, but this one was a bit more of an embarrassment because of the company he happened to keep. “Who is this very lovely young woman with you?” the woman nodded to Miss Enid Bryant, who stood at Garcia’s side with an amused look on her face and a hand on his arm. “Is this your daughter?” Enid Bryant’s blue eyes rolled back into some cavern within her skull and then resumed their default positions. She felt for a moment quite faint and then let out a nervous laugh, which the woman in the straw hat seemed to enjoy. “You look so familiar,” the woman said to Enid. “I swear I have seen you somewhere in Dan’s Papers. Or maybe in The Wall Street Journal weekend edition?” Garcia cleared his throat and removed his sunglasses. The June sun beat down upon his dark, shoulder-length hair, and he wiped away the accumulated perspiration with his shirt. “It’s true, I’m the one you think I am,” he acknowledged to the lady in the straw hat at last. “But this young woman beside me is not my daughter. We’re just friends.” “I see,” said the woman, looking directly into Enid’s eyes and then directly into Garcia’s as if waiting for them to divulge the truth. What could they tell her though? That they had been meeting secretly for weeks, roaming the sands of nearby Barcelona Point and reading each other stories and poems? That they would congregate on the neutral streets of Sag Harbor, far from the overbearing eye of Enid’s titan of industry father Ethan Bryant and stroll along the docks eating ice cream flavored with honey, turmeric, and ginger from the Krishna Sweet Shop? The proprietors, a father-daughter team named Rao and Geetha, paid these new regulars almost no attention, only happy to serve Mr. Javier Garcia his Hanuman Jungle Sundae, which came studded with nuts and banana chunks, while Enid liked the smooth and fruity Passionfruit Namaste Surprise. These they devoured while inspecting anchored yachts and chartered fishing vessels. Garcia would regale Enid with stories about Shiva and his special role in the Panchayatana puja. So far they had not kissed, but there had been one time when Garcia and Enid were so inspired by these constellations of Hindu deities that her soft, smooth hand had found its way into his larger, hairy one. Garcia had been startled by how aroused he had been at that moment, as was Enid. She did not especially seek the sexual company of a Galician photographer twice her age, nor did he seek out young women from prestigious families. Yet they were oddly complementary. A perfect mismatched fit. Their ears burned as red as temple candles. The curious woman on the street took note of that blood rush glow and continued to hawk over them, waiting for all of their prurient tales to be revealed. She had very light-colored hair and very light eyes, with a distant, eastern look to them, and few freckles, either natural or spotted by the sun. Garcia and Enid played dumb excellently though. It was as if they both held their breathe within. Sooner or later, this East End interloper would leave them on their own. “Well, your darling friend is very lovely, and you are a talented young man,” she informed Garcia. “Thank you, madam,” Garcia answered. “How did you even get that shot of His Holiness? The one with the soup? Did you have lunch with him? It’s been reproduced everywhere, you know. I think they are even selling t-shirts with that remarkable image.” “Oh,” Garcia shrugged. “You know us photographers. We have our ways.” “Well, you must exhibit in my husband’s gallery,” the woman said. “It’s just opening up and we would love to have you there.” “Where is it?” asked Garcia. “Out in Westhampton Beach.” “Oh,” said Garcia. It sounded like it was far away. “I guess I could consider it.” “You must exhibit with us,” the woman insisted. She tugged a card from her purse and tucked it into the front pocket of Garcia’s shirt. A moment later she was gone. Enid exhaled and let out an anxious laugh. Then she blew upward, lifting her dark hair in the breezeless day. When the woman was out of sight, Garcia pulled out the card and examined it in the sun. “Eeva Raamat,” it read. He turned it over. “The Raamat Gallery.” Strange name, he thought. All those vowels. Quite peculiar.

–

Other East End Stories

• Dinner with the Bryants
• Shinnecock Hills
• Laszlo Tuffdick Delivers

THAT SAME NIGHT, Laszlo Tuffdick drove west from his estate in the knolls of Amagansett and passed through the towns of East Hampton and Southampton (and Bridgehampton, the superfluous Hampton), cruising in his convertible white 1966 Ford Mustang past lawn ornament sellers, antique dealers, diners, boat yards, seafood purveyors, and high-end restaurants that catered to the black tux and white designer dress crowd. He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. He looked cool in his black shades and black polo shirt, he thought, like Lou Diamond Phillips in La Bamba, before the plane crash. Ancient windmills spun in the breeze, and the whole of the East End reminded him again of a giant ornate miniature golf course. He imagined himself as a single white golf ball, rolling west along Montauk Highway into the gold fading rays of the sun, until he at last reached the shady periphery of the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, a remaining hunk of indigenous soil surrounded by oceans of posh anglo settler estates. Few outsiders dared venture here, save to frequent the annual powwow, but Tuffdick drove down East Gate Road past rows of single-story family homes, headed for the end of East Point Road, and the dense forests and marshes that stretched out into the Atlantic Ocean. Here he parked his car on the edge of the road and began the long trek into nature, following nothing more than a footpath for what seemed like miles. Families of deer from time to time leaped away before him, and he heard the cries and songs of strange birds. It was at the end of this path, upwind from the water, that he encountered Weetoppin’s hut. There was a small fire before it, filling the dusk air with blue smoke, and a pot set atop it that boiled with a sweet-smelling stew. “Weetoppin, are you there?” said Tuffdick. From the door of the hut emerged a young man clad only in a loincloth, the rest of him nude and greased with animal fat that shined in the light of the fire. These IT guys are all the same, thought Tuffdick. He said nothing though, and his only gesture was to brush a buzzing mosquito away from his ear. The man just stared at him a moment longer, then spoke. “Would you care for some nourishment?” he gestured to the pot. “Three sisters? Corn, beans, squash?” “No thanks,” Tuffdick declined. “I had some grilled swordfish at Massimo’s,” he said and smacked his lips. “Outstanding.” Weetoppin helped himself to a bowl of the broth. He blew on it, sipped it and looked over the fire. “Suit yourself, Tuffdick,” he began. “You know, I used to be like you, enamored of their ways. In their world, my name was Sean Dennis. Just a regular East End boy. If you didn’t know I was Indian, I could pass for Italian or Jewish. There was even a local Jewish girl who wanted to marry me, until she discovered the horrible truth.” “What was her name?” Tuffdick asked. “Yael,” Weetoppin answered. “We both went to Southampton High, then NYU. After college, I got a job as a quant at a big financial services company.” “Sweet,” said Tuffdick. “Worked on Wall Street for some years, then went into programming, made a fortune. Ever hear of eToro?” Weetoppin asked. Tuffdick nodded. “The company that Alec Baldwin is always pimping on YouTube?” Weetoppin crossed his arms. “That was all my idea. I still day trade, you know.” Weetoppin pulled a laptop from a nearby bag made of deerskin. “Wait, you have wifi out here?” Tuffdick asked. Weetoppin shrugged. “I can pick up a signal from Billy Joel’s house. Just made a fortune today on this freshly listed tech company.” “What’s their ticker?” asked Tuffdick. “I’ll tell you later,” said Weetoppin. “But first you have to deliver, Tuffdick. Do you have what I need? Can you deliver?” Tuffdick nodded and pulled a folder from his yellow Kånken knapsack. “Nice bag,” said Weetoppin. “It’s Swedish,” said Tuffdick. Weetoppin took the folder and opened it, scanning briefly through its contents. His eyes lit up, illuminated in part by the fire, and it was the first time that evening he showed any emotion. Then they resumed their glazed over, seen-it-all sad look. Weetoppin spoke. “We will take back this island, or at least our part of it,” he said. “This material you have on the Bryants is brilliant. Is it really true, about that photographer Garcia and their daughter?” Tuffdick grinned but said nothing. “They’re serious donors to the Democratic Party,” said Weetoppin. “See, this is the kind of material we need. This will help our cause but we need much more to accomplish this.” “Oh, there’s plenty more,” said Laszlo Tuffdick. “I’ve got eyes all over the East End, from Quogue to Orient. This tidbit came from a pair that runs a sweet shop in Sag Harbor.” “We leak this to Dan’s Papers or even The New Yorker, or threaten to, and we might really have something on these fuckers,” Weetoppin said. He gestured to his wigwam. “Step inside, stay a while,” he told Tuffdick. “I’ve got some other stock tips for you.”

–

Other East End Stories:

• Dinner with the Bryants
• Shinnecock Hills

ON THURSDAYS, East Hampton entrepreneur Ethan Bryant met with some other East End men for a round of golf at the Shinnecock Hills golf course, a pleasant stretch of green located in a piece of the adjacent Town of Southampton, which also happened to be the subject of a land dispute with the nearby Shinnecock Indian Nation, a matter that had never troubled Ethan Bryant much, as he was only vaguely aware of the presence of indigenous people on the South Fork, and in those few fluttering moments when he encountered any trace of their presence merely scratched his head and thought of something else, the stock market perhaps, or his vivacious wife Tilda’s extra-marital conquests. What most preoccupied Mr. Bryant though was his golf game, and, in particular, his rivalry with Ray Bright. Bright ran an army of illegal laborers, recent arrivals from Guatemala and El Salvador, who lived 10 to a room in the few lower-income neighborhoods that still existed on the East End. It was these workers, mostly males, who tended to the hedges and lawns of the local celebrities and intelligentsia, the hot-blooded nouveau riche and blue-blooded old money alike. Bright had built his empire with some shamelessness and ingenuity, but he had amassed enough of a fortune that the upper class was unable to ignore his achievements, being a major benefactor of libraries, museums, hospitals, nature preserves, and other public works. At 50, his hair was still thick and black, and he kept a short trimmed dark beard, as well as one silver hoop earring, which earned him the nickname “The Pirate” by both critics and admirers, an image he played up. Bright was the kind of man that a savvy investor like Ethan Bryant loathed, a man who had earned his wealth through such a simplistic business model. Their friendship was an uneasy one, but Bright was one of the few who was willing to put up with Bryant and his standoffishness. Privately, he regarded the pirate Bright as a stain on the pink polo shirt of Hamptons’ dignity, but Bryant was happy to accept his offers to golf for the very reason that there was almost nobody left who was willing to golf with him. There was also nothing he would enjoy better than besting that silver-earringed brute, he told his wife Tilda while lacing up his shoes in the morning before he set out for the big game at Shinnecock Hills. A third man would also be joining them, he acknowledged, a publisher from the city named Laszlo Tuffdick, who owned chains of trade publications that linked cities and markets across the world. Tuffdick was actually a half-Hungarian, half-Tuscarora Indian from upstate who had grown up in Buffalo, a relative unknown on the Hamptons high society circuit, and who was secretly advising some of the Shinnecock elders on their land issues on the side. Tuffdick too enjoyed a good Long Island golf game. But he had other reasons for going to the Hills. Tuffdick was out to obtain compromising information that could be put to good use. And so the three met in the morning hours under a hot springtime sun. By the end of the match, one would be in jail with a black eye and on the cover of the East Hampton Picayune Star. The other would have enough kompromat to blackmail the Towns of Southampton and East Hampton to his fancy. And the third would have played a very competent golf game for just some upstart East End lawnmower man. That rogue Bright was not half bad. Not half bad at all.

–

For more East End Stories, read “Dinner with the Bryants.”

I’D ALWAYS LONGED for some deep, fulfilling, forever connection, but these were hard to come by. Most of my loves were new age transients, spiritual hobos, riders of the rails. These free love devotees could see only about as far as the lights of the next city and that was all. If I was lucky, I might be made the centerpiece in some get-rich-and-famous scheme, or just coopted as an accomplice in the survival game. I offered flexible and accommodating company, and going along for the ride provided me with a thrill and some hope. Nevertheless I was left standing time and again at the stations in Bury St Edmunds, Roskilde, Bangalore with that dumbstruck look on my face. I was looking for something grander, but all I got was another ticket to ride. Forever could wait. Their resignation letters were of impressive boilerplate legalese. “It’s not you, it’s me.” “We’re just different types of people.” “Don’t worry, I’m sure your next sweetheart will be arriving soon, on the next train in from Tumakuru already, with a first class ticket on the Vishwamanava Express Special!” And so the latest of these next-in-lines saddled up her knapsacks and charms and disappeared into the chai and samosa porters and dust. I had a seat at a cantina where I ordered myself a plate of Dal Makhani and waited. The train was running on time, an off-duty conductor told me. It should be arriving soon.

I READ THE NEWS about America, but I don’t particularly feel like an American anymore. It feels distant and irrelevant to my daily life. I suppose I feel like a European, which to American ears sounds like having some finesse for bureaucracy, love of fine culture, and enjoyment of good cuisine, but to me means something like, a free and unfettered life. About a decade or so ago, when I was first living here for a stretch, I remember watching some program about UFOs in Europe. It had a horrible electronic music soundtrack, and I thought Europe was just so stodgy and weird, stale and decadent. It was so lived-in and boring that people had to indulge themselves in drugs and orgies just to get that tiny thrill or kick. Recently, I was watching a documentary on piracy in the Caribbean that made me revisit this feeling. This was an interesting documentary, because it showed the internal disagreements within the British Empire (nothing like hearing Charles Vane shout “fuck your fucking king” on his way to the gallows). At the end, the narrator said something along the lines of, “Some say Anne Bonny lived to see the founding of the United States of America.” And I thought, “So what?” Like someone read her the draft terms of the Treaty of Paris and she died happily? Who really cares? As a writer I am an American, in that I am not afraid and have a knack for publishing inflammatory statements that might disrupt society. As an uncultured American, there is almost nothing expected from you here. If you can even manage to tie your own shoes, it is a great feat in the face of these highly cultured Europeans. I suppose I enjoy the best of both worlds, and in and in the true spirit of the Golden Age of Piracy to boot. Maybe Master Vane was on to something.

IT STARTED OFF THIS WAY, some kind of coastal area, with me flying over beaches (and sunbathers) out along the coast, through patches of fog and wisps of clouds, and then landing in a cave complex built into the side of a cliff, like those high bluffs outside of El Pajar on Gran Canaria. The interior of the cave system was lit up with glowing stars, placed in dazzling geometric patterns. These had clearly been installed by human hand, and this turned out to be a new Estonian spa. Jüri the Singer was there with his chiseled good guy face, like some kind of Sinatra on the Baltic, playing some sort of aquatic bowling game with waves and silver metallic pins. I remember the woman at the desk in the spa said, “Oh, Jüri? He comes here every day now.” I joined him in the game. Later I found myself in a school, or some other kind of public building. Merike was there with some other musicians. We were about to leave, but I just couldn’t find one of my socks. I searched through all the cabinets and inspected all the hooks. Then, when I thought I had exhausted my search, who should I see but Jüri, the Baltic Sinatra, standing at the end of a row of lockers. He was leaning against the final locker quite casual, as if nothing was amiss. Jüri the Singer was holding my missing sock. “I believe you’ve been looking for this,” he said, tipping his fedora hat. I took the sock, put it on, and we left the building together.

IN THE WANING DAYS of ninety-three, there was an ice storm. There had already been successive snow falls, and a good base of white powder had built up in the yard. When the ice storm came it coated everything in glass. Icy tree branches tinkled in the wind like chimes. The yard became a rink, and Aidan and I played hockey on it, wearing nothing but our regular winter boots. Then it became a horizontal mountain face, because if you lied flat on the surface of the ice, you could look forward and pretend it was “up,” and that way, slowly, you could inch forward and pretend you were scaling a mountain, like real mountaineers in those glossy photos in National Geographic. “Hand me an ice pick,” I would call “down” to my friend Aidan, who also lied flat on his belly, and he would hand me a hammer, I would reach forward, drive it into the ice sheet, and pull us both along. On the morning of the new year, we went for a walk. We tried to walk around the bay, and came down that hidden gulley in between the Smiths’ property line and that abandoned mansion that had been taken over by a splinter Christian group, the one where there had once been a swimming pool on the second floor in the 1920s, before the water rotted through the floor. Once we had seen a woman dressed in the attire of a Catholic abbess standing on the point beyond there looking out at the sea. She just stood there, the wind making her black shawl dance. “It’s like one of those creepy seventies movies,” Aidan had said. At the end of the gulley, we turned toward the harbor and came around the coast of the bay, mostly sand and reeds. At one point, a flat stretch of shoreline stretched out. I took the first step and found myself waist deep in mud. The mud bubbled all around me, and I could smell dead fish and dead clams. Imagine if the seabed here was deeper, was my first thought. I would be dead already. My head would be beneath the mud. My body would stink like dead oysters. Aidan grabbed a tree branch and I took hold of it. He pulled me out. “I guess we can’t walk around the bay anymore,” I said. “Are you kidding me, man?” said Aidan. “You have to go home now. You’ll freeze!” We came back up the gulley, past the haunted mansion, then down the road to my house. Two girls we knew from school came walking from the opposite direction. “What happened to you?” One of the girls asked, motioning to the lower, browner, wetter part of my body. I was embarrassed and blushed. I had specifically hoped that something like this wouldn’t happen. “I fell in the mud,” I said. “That’s what it looks like,” the girl said. “Happy New Year.” That’s how that very weird year began. Soaked in dead clams and mud and eel bones and other kinds of pungent sea detritus. The ripe stink of the sea seemed to steam off my body. It wasn’t ninety-three anymore. It was ninety-four.

MY DESIRE is for you and I want you and you alone, but I’m not sure where this want comes from. It just appeared to me one day like you did. Now it’s my elujõud that wants to take root and blossom in the warmth of your conscience. Maybe it’s because it’s springtime now that such blooming energies are coursing through me. They flow through me, you see, up and out and through, though they are not of me, nor do they belong to me under my name. They aren’t mine, they cannot be, and I lack the words to truly express them. Even if we cannot say or write things though, it doesn’t mean that they do not exist. All I can think of is pulsating euphoria, all helices of the senses intertwined, so much that it would make one’s soul or heart sing and vibrate. All I can see is jellyfish floating in the stomach of the green sea, umbrella-shaped bells, dangling tentacles, propelling themselves toward tranquil eternity. The incandescent seeds of life traveling underwater, all so deliberately. There is nothing more beautiful than that.

ACCEPTING DEFEAT. The most challenging challenge. Giving up on a dream, a hope, a concept, a plan. Giving up on a connection, a friendship, a love. Giving up and walking away in defeat. Giving up on a core truth. If you give up on the truth, was it ever really true? Is anything true, or is the truth just something we tell ourselves to make it easier to sleep through the night? A fog of insouciance rolls in like the fog into San Francisco at dusk. The moisture of defeat. Maybe none of that was true. Maybe everything you ever thought was true was just a story. These were all just stories and there is no truth. There is only the fog in the city and acceptance of defeat. What else is there to do other than cruise into North Beach to get a bite to eat, order a strong coffee, sit and breath a while. Forget about defeat, forget about the truth, forget your own name. There’s no need for it out here. Out here, all you need to do is sit and breathe. How I miss San Francisco.