My year in Connecticut
A rather blunt summary of my exile
Not all years hold identical value. There are some that one waits out: childhood in unhappy families, adolescence in suburbia I am told and that last year Anthony Hopkins just felt the need to spell out for the world. There are others that must be spent under the influence: all of your twenties for sure, some of your thirties maybe. But your forties are too valuable to waste because you are simply running out of years.
That was the reason behind my reluctance to abandon New York last August. I just did not want to turn 43 a gay divorcée with kids in the countryside. Not that there is anything wrong about that but I do not drink anymore, let alone when I just woke up. Granted I have been single seven years but it never mattered in NYC where couples are just a way to make rent more affordable. I also feared that what was presented to me as a “temporary” pandemic move “for the twins” could turn out to be a permanent exile. Maybe the antechamber of THE end, of MY end. I feared moving to rural Connecticut was the slippery-slope to a vertiginous descent into full Americanization. Also I have seen Diane Keaton in Baby Boom twice. So I had an idea of what happens to people like me when they take their family to the countryside besides to Hudson, NY of course which is just an extension of Williamsburg by now.
Here I must introduce a quick disclaimer. I am truly grateful that the effects of the pandemic on us were mild. I did not get sick, the twins helped each other, they helped me and I did not run out of money. I do not want to be flippant about it, we are lucky! I am flippant, aren’t I? Leaving the city during the crisis was a privilege (here I said it). It was a choice too but many did not have that option.
Actually, in retrospect it might not have been a choice.
Before I moved to Connecticut, I was living with some random guy that had happened to be slumped on my couch when March came in and had stayed there by default. How quickly one graduates from casual sex when the end of the world kicks in. The twins had ben caged for six months in my crammed up Hell’s Kitchen apartment. I had been working — a lot- from my bed and my couch as the couch guy had colonized my desk with the casual egotism of his generation. There was no possible exit. Like the Egyptian servant upon the death of his king: about to be buried alive. My survival instinct kicked in. Or maybe, it is the fact that my ex — the other father of my sons — is a skilled negotiator or a con artist depending which side of the mediation you sit in.
I rented the first house I visited in Newtown because Rochambeau officers had slept there in 1781 when it served as the Town Tavern. Also because it was far enough from the skilled negotiator’s new lake house. Three weeks later I vacated New York trailing a rather rough coterie of Uzbek movers. I fled.
After that I made a bunch of more bad choices for nine months. It is poorly recorded in my 100 pictures on Instagram. Moving houses thrice in a year (after 5 months in the Caleb-Baldwin house Newtown, we moved to my current “estate” in New Fairfield in February and now we are packing up again). Playing golf. Riding my Bianchi Sempre 2011 in lycra (un “sport de ploucs” I was told growing up). Owning lycra in the first place. Buying one of these KitchenAid Professional 5 Quart Mixer. Gardening (an activity for “old British ladies” also told growing up — you could never win!). Wearing rubber boots. Watching “Rich and Famous” for the first time as well as all of Xavier Dolan and reading all of Olivier Adam. Buying five more Harris Tweed jackets. Eating dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Driving 20,000 miles in a Rav4 Toyota. Going to playdates. Touring the same Woodbury antique shops two week-ends in a row. Trusting the reviews for Bethel Cycle. Playing monopoly with the kids. Not getting laid. Attending bi-weekly baseball games. Having not one but two gigantic plastic Christmas trees. Riding my Bonneville T100 fast without a helmet. Hoping the young guy who sprayed the lawn against ticks was gay — he isn’t. Renting a bouncy house. Getting a wheelbarrow.
I also feared this expedition would bankrupt me. And it did take a dent in my already fragile finances in part because of the two moves, my wrecking the car, running into my own garage door (on a different occasion), a country club membership we never used, easing my mood by buying more books, many tools and Xmas decorations.
Yet, I am returning to the city with the same reluctance I left it with a year ago. In fact I have not been to New York since December. I enjoy nature much more than I suspected. I love the slow pace of rural-living and getting a glimpse of what life could have been if I had been straight and American or if the world had been just a little more accepting. And, of course my sons are happier in the woods. And I am happier being with them all the time. I cannot fathom anymore how I could casually drop $150 on tedious dates at the Polo Bar or $250/month on an Equinox membership just for the locker room action. But then again I also cannot fathom how I could stay up at the “Oman” in Tel Aviv ten years ago long enough to see the sunrise. Well I know “how” — it’s called MDMA. And now… I lived in New Fairfield. The few men I still cared to see along with three women took the Grand Central-Brewster commuter train. On the other side of ambitious, chic , fast-paced and high, there was an alternative world which felt more real, age-appropriate and decent. I have started to suspect that French history intentionally obscured how much Napoleon enjoyed Saint Helena.
The autochthones were very welcoming. In fact, both schools the twins attended were flexible in welcoming the boys at the last minute. They were also incredibly thoughtful about them having two dads. My son’s baseball coach switched from “moms and dads” to “moms and dads, dads and dads or whatever” after he grasped our odd situation. It might sound insane but a single gay man with kids can live in rural Connecticut today. For Pride there was a small display at the library with Call me by your name, Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight, a David Sedaris book and Augusten Burroughs’ novels. The CTPost even printed a story when I attended Biden’s inauguration which punch line was that the state ought to attract more families like ours. And my Newtown neighbor stitched the antique French flag that flew for a year in front of my home (where is that flag going to fly back in NYC? Mystery. Anyway I probably need to burn 70% of our belongings to fit back in a New York box).
I wish I could say I became less of a conceited f*ck, as a result of my year in the country and the kindness of strangers, but that would be a lie. I might even have gotten worse last year as I grew concerned by how much I enjoyed the country.
Case in point, I did identify some shortcomings in my generous hosts and the land. 51% of the inhabitants of New Fairfield voted for Trump. The social fabric is eroded. Racial segregation is a state hallmark (I am not the one saying it). There are no town centers left. No shops. The infrastructure is dilapidated and public transportation is almost inexistant. No regulator attempts to rein in architectural creativity from Italian columns, overlapping decks to palatial gates. La “malbouffe” and overconsumption seem commensurate to the cultural penury. And the obsession with “boat parades”, high school athletics and trucks make daily life a never-ending extension of the American high school experience. Athleisure is a pandemic of its own but one without its Fauci. In fact, I witnessed firsthand that materials like wool and leather are a thing of the past in the acrylic blur of small-town America. Here I am done criticizing. It was bad an ungrateful. Let’s not think about it any longer. Let me just add the ticks problem. And poison ivy … here I am done. Besides it was fantastic.
I am returning to NYC a somewhat changed man: not the least interested to re-enter the fast lane and convinced that city-living must be balanced with some access to nature. The country side which I thought to be only for vacations, people in witness protection, madmen, or geniuses actually now appeals to me. Yet, the pandemic is under control in the city and it is time to gradually resume the office, travel and even a social life: all of which require for me to leave my exile.
Anyway if anybody knows of a rent control classic five in the upper west side, hit me up.