SelfAbsorbed.ME : ‘It’s Your Life, We Just Write it Funnier’

After hearing outrageous stories about the Hamptons and its night life for years, I ventured into Long Island this weekend to check it out for myself. In conjunction with praise for the Hamptons-style getaway, I’d also heard from particular friends that the Hamptons were overrated and that the glamorous nightlife was actually a bunch of posers, guidos and misled Manhattan socialites. After seeing it all for myself, my consensus is that the Hamptons are overrated if not downright sucky. I feel confident enough about this statement to want to sky write it over route 27 and graffiti it on the jitneys.

Why? Well, my journey out there was actually quite pleasurable. Scruff and I drove out with a bunch of friends Saturday night at around eight p.m. We hit no traffic and picked up fabulous Greek food in Queens on the way. Painless. Then we arrived at my friend T’s South Hampton share. The house was spacious and charming with a great deck, green yard and large pool. Everything was going well so far.

After drinking and changing clothes, it was time to hit our first destination. Memorial Day weekend means the grand opening of most Hampton clubs. We arrived outside of an establishment called Dune after paying twenty dollars to self park our car in a weedy patch of sand. If that cost twenty I was afraid to know the cost of valet? Fifty? It was just midnight and the heard of people already outside Dune resembled this fall’s immigration march in new york city. After many uncomfortable moments in line, Scruff finally picked us out of the crowd. We then past a large Maxim ad where certain douchey individuals chose to pose and have their picture taken by some kind of fake paparazzi.

When I envisioned a Hamptons club I was thinking outdoors and on the ocean with men in suits and women with backless evening gowns sipping champagne. Instead, Dune was entirely indoors and smoky with the décor of a dive bar. It was so crowded that moving literally equaled pain. I was stepped on and shoved by some vicious Long Island girls on the way to our table, which was of course was typical toilet bowel size and squeezed between a wall and a wooden stool. For our party of twelve to fit into this area we’d have to learn the trick of the sixteen clowns who stuff themselves into one car.

We attempted to hover near our table while bottles of Trump vodka arrived (Trump made a vodka? Dear God, why!?). One male friend of Scruff’s established himself as head of the table by sitting in the only available seat, spreading his linen clad legs apart and bobbing his greasy-haired head to the music like a crow. Oh – he was also wearing sunglasses.

SUNGLASSES?

And he wasn’t the only one. Didn’t men get the memo that wearing sunglasses in a club was code for slimy loser after nineteen eighty nine? Meanwhile, the DJ was spinning a different song every thirty-five seconds. We’d literally hear ten bars of a piece of music before it changed, and we were doing transitions like Fifty Cent to the Beach Boys to Madonna to Fergie to The Red Hot Chili Peppers to Bon Jovie to Ludacris. My ears almost went into epileptic shock. Perhaps as an artist I’m overly sensitive, but songs in my book actually have a beginning, middle and end. Blending is fine, chopping them down to twenty seconds each and tastelessly scrambling them together is just unacceptable. Songs changed so often that I worried that by twelve thirty this heinous DJ would run out of material having already played every song in the English language.

As someone who goes out often, I’ve seen many drunken people in my day. I’ve seen very tipsy women leaving Marquee, I’ve seen people dancing with themselves at four thirty in the morning, and I’ve heard occasional rude remarks from people fighting over a five a.m. cab. None of this prepared me for the Hamptons, where people were just shit-faced. Behavior at the Dunes was so wildly inappropriate that it made your average new york club look like a monastery. People were dancing obscenely like monkeys, many seemed like they were attempting to imitate fourteen-year-olds at a high school dance. I saw one fifty year old man joyously try to climb the wall. The majority of the women couldn’t even stand. My male friend went to the bathroom only to witness a full-fledge fight break out – and it was only twelve thirty. If these people were the Hamptons classy and fabulous I wanted a one way ticket back to Manhattan stat. Me and one of my girlfriends looked at each other with such confusion and disillusionment, shrugging our shoulders as to how it was possible each of the tables in this horrific institution were selling for a thirty five hundred dollar minimum. What was the world coming to?

After half an hour we escaped Dune through the back door and piled into our cars to go to Pink Elephant. I was in disbelief about what I had just seen and clung to the hope that there had been some mistake, that the fabled Hamptons nightlife was still somewhere out there.

The good news was the music at Pink Elephant didn’t make me want to knock myself out with an ice bucket. There was also an outdoor section of the club – not on the ocean mind you, but in the courtyard of some motel with fake sand. In addition, everyone from patrons to staff of Pink Elephant Manhattan was there. Creepy.

I bee-lined for the outdoor area. If I had wanted to be in a muggy indoor club I could’ve stayed in the city and gone to the bar below my apartment. While Pink’s music and ambiance was a definite improvement, the condition of the people mirrored Dune. I saw older women jumping erratically around the outdoor beds like chimpanzees and an attractive blonde hump a tree only to break into a full out striptease. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge supporter of drunken fun, but there’s a difference between a party and a shit-show. T and I ventured back to the house at three. The scariest part of all was that nearly all the hammered people we saw would be driving themselves home. Get me outta here!

Hanging out with friends by the pool the next morning was great. But for most people hanging out with friends anywhere is a guaranteed good time. Why people flock to the Hamptons remains a mystery to me. Sure it’s a beach, but the water’s fifty fucking degrees.

I knew in my heart that if I saw another pair of robin’s egg blue pants (yes, on men), oversize diamond watches (on men and women) or Lacoste polo shirts (on every breathing thing) I was going to strangle the nearest passerby. Hence I left South Hampton earlier than Scruff and co. and for a whopping twenty nine dollars was transported back to the peaceful reality that is new york on a long weekend.

Phew.