The East End is like the city, only simpler and better. Discovered by city people as a safe haven from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, the east end of Long Island is a place where air conditioners are over-rated and everything that you need is accessible by a bike ride through what’s left of a thinly wooded scrub oak forest. Its a place where people, if they’re the right kind, would rather listen to the radio than watch T.V. and prefer to eat clams on the half shell in their bathing suits on the beach rather than in an air conditioned restaurant. It’s a Jimmy Buffet song brought to life. Nothing is more consoling than stepping out of a stuffy car after a three hour ride and breathing in the first breath of ocean air. Each breath tastes of salt and is cool, even in the most severe of heat waves. I still do not understand how anyone, including my parents, can bear to sleep late out there. I rise with the birds and the sun, anxious to start biking to town, fishing, and swimming until the moon rises. It’s a place where the success of the day is not measured by the amount of things I accomplish, but rather if I can feel the waves rocking my mattress as I drift off to sleep. Out east, there isn’t a window closed at night and the life requirements of food, shelter, and water are replaced with fresh fish, a beach chair, and cranberry, orange, and lime served in a cold copper Smirnoff, mug. I can look up at the stars, without the city glare, and stare for hours. The East End is a relief an escape far more comforting than any drug.

In the summer of 2006 I befriended a fellow child by the name of Jay Hunt, but it wasn’t until the passing of only a few more summers that I learned sharing common interests with someone does not ensure that we will always get along. I was just one year older than Jay and an argument with another child, who assured me he was trouble, only drove me closer to Jay. I saw him playing basketball down the street at the dead end and boldly walked down to introduce myself. Our shared passion for fishing soon became apparent and it was not long before we were at my house begging my mom to allow us to walk to the bay down the street to wet our lines. His dad had a fishing boat and a freezer full of frozen bait, which only made me further admire his life. He got to live on the East End all year. His hair always appeared to be dried and salted as if he had been swimming in the ocean earlier, and he always had on a bathing suit. Jay would wear shoes for half of the year at most, and just as dogs who live in cities have perfectly manicured nails from walking on the concrete, Jay’s daily walks to and from the beach served him a world class pedicure. As we pulled away on Columbus Day evening filled with sadness over the end of our season out there, he would lace up his sneakers. When we returned in late afternoon of the Friday of Memorial Day weekend the next year to initiate summer, the other arriving children and I would sprint down the street to greet our friends who lived there year-round, only to see Jay in his natural state: shoes off, hair salted, and bathing suit on.

Jay and I hit it off our first summer as friends and he did an excellent job of masking what his home life was like. While his dad did have a boat, Jay was not on it as much as he said he was. It wasn’t until a few summer passed before I discovered his alleged absences from our Sunday sessions of basketball, fishing, and walks to the candy store were not caused by outings on the family boat fishing with his dad, but rather because he was inside hoping to give the illusion that he was bonding with his father. His father was on the boat fishing, just not with Jay. As Jay began to distance himself from the other kids and me on the block, parents began to speculate as to why he would lie about something like that. Some said that his mother had a drinking problem. Others said that he didn’t receive a lot of attention at home as he was the youngest of six. One thing that many lose sight of is that, while eastern Long Island is filled with celebrities and prominent wealth during the summer, at the end of the season each town reverts back to a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. The hypotheses of the nosey mothers on my block were a few pebbles in the long winding driveway of speculations of Jay Hunt’s life problems.

Jay’s words left us to wonder about the true stories behind his fabrications. There was always something to his story that didn’t add up, but we were unsure why he found the need to fib. When confronted about a lie, Jay would explode saying “Ask my dad,” knowing that his dad would never be around for us to ask. It would come out that some of the theories concerning his family life were true. Jay was always alone. Ironically, the time of year that was the most deserted, the winter, was Jay’s favorite. He received attention from teachers and was only lonely on the weekends. With school every day, Jay found comfort knowing that his teachers would look for him when he was absent and that he was a priority for them. He would tell lies to our gang because as summer kids from the city, our parents’ priority was to be sprawled out in a beach chair listening to the crash of the waves by noon , and he hoped that with a lie juicy enough, he would convince us to ask our parents to allow us to skip out on the beach and accompany Jay on fruitless fishing trips to the dock down the street or swims in local Trout Pond around the corner. If he could not convince us to stay, Jay would seek the ultimate gift: a trip with us to the ocean beach and membership into our family for the day.

Facebook friendships with Jay and his older sister allowed me to see more into his troubled life. Jay’s sister suffered from depression and self harm and in the footsteps of her mother, alcoholism and drug abuse. Constant status updates of her loneliness opened my eyes as to how difficult Jay’s life was. Other friends who had the privilege to live there year-round relayed stories of Jenni’s constant suspensions from school for skipping class to smoke weed or for coming to school hungover, having slept in her car the night before after being kicked out of the house. Jay’s negligent parents foolishly thought that kicking her out would drive her away from alcohol, but it only made her to drink away her sorrows. As kids in grade school, neither my group of friends nor I realized why Jay would scold us when we rang his doorbell at 4:30 in the afternoon. “My mother is sleeping,” he would say after shushing us. She was actually nursing a hangover from a night of hard drinking.

Reflection is one of the most important things we can do to better ourselves. Eventually, our gang would get sick of Jay’s lies and the constant fights that would break out whenever someone made a face or smirked after he told one. It wasn’t until later when it became clear that Jay was no different than any of the other boys I hung out with. Like my other friends, Jay too loved to fish, to swim and to stay at the beach as long as possible. However his family situation, combined with my lack of knowledge of it, drove us further apart. I was gifted with the privilege of a complete family that did things together and that was always around, and the notion of someone with a lesser situation was incomprehensible. Looking back on the experience brings pain because I was unable help him.

Jay moved to Pennsylvania during February break. He left without telling me and as I ran down the dead end street on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend enthused to greet my friends, Jay was missing. His absence from my road had a bigger impact than I would have predicted. Gone were the days of great stories of giant striped bass being caught down the street or of day-long barefoot basketball games in front of his house. He was gone and I was left to hope that wherever he had moved to had more understanding and more tolerant kids than on my block.