The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld by Justin Hocking

Author:Justin Hocking
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55597-087-1
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2013-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

SPONSORS AND SPONSEES

One early summer weekend, Asa and I take another trip out to Montauk, where we pitch tents in Grodin’s backyard. Andy Kessler invites us over to his current summer rental for a barbecue, along with a couple of his NA sponsees who are out for the weekend. Andy’s place is in a quaint old motor motel, built in the fifties, abandoned in the eighties, and boarded up for twenty years. Everything’s perfectly preserved—all the Formica countertops, the linoleum floors, the mid century furniture, even the linens. Andy found a little stack of fifties-era postcards with a photo of his room, containing all the exact same furniture. He gives them out as souvenirs to everyone who visits.

We eat out on the lawn, on a rickety picnic table, where Andy tells us how he came to rent the place. He was out at Montauk during the spring and happened to see workers prying boards off the windows.

“They give me the number for the owner, who I call three or four times before he finally gets back to me. We go back and forth on price, the length of the lease, all that bullshit. I think it was obvious how much I really wanted the place. But right before we’re about to seal the deal, he says to me, ‘You’re not a surfer, are you?’ Swear to God, those were his exact words. I’m not going to lie to the guy, so I say Yes, in fact I am a surfer. He basically hung up on me.”

“You must have been livid,” Asa says.

One of Andy’s sponsees—this haggard-looking guy with a crew cut—pipes up. “Fucker did that to me, I would’ve taken a shit in his mailbox.”

Andy laughs, puts his hand to his forehead. “You know, there was a point in my life when I would’ve done just that. But I realized he was basically just this sad old man, you know? I was out here in Montauk when we had that last phone conversation; the whole ride home I felt at peace with it. I figured it just wasn’t meant to be. But then two weeks later he calls me back, says he had a change of heart. So here I am, by the grace of God.”

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