Getting the Heck Out of Dodge

On leaving, returning, and eating alone.

Every so often, I receive a text from Katie that says, “let's get the heck out of dodge this weekend.” Meaning: Let's go to the beach or let’s go outlet shopping on Long Island or let’s go upstate to look at pumpkins. Where we go doesn't matter nearly as much as where we are not.

I googled it recently and the phrase “getting the heck out of dodge” dates back to the wild west. It refers to Dodge City in Kansas, which was apparently a favorite stopping point for criminals, gamblers, and brothel patrons, policed by the likes of Wyatt Earp. In the 1950s, it served as the setting for a radio show called “Gunsmoke” in which local good guys tried to keep local bad guys “out of Dodge.”

These days you could call it a synonym with “gotta go” but I think there remains a western spirit to it. Like you’re running away from a burning building.

I feel compelled to leave New York when: 

A. The city has become monotonous and repetitive. I know, I know, imagine thinking New York has nothing new to offer! And yet…
B. The city has become unbearably [insert weather condition]. In the winter, it can be bitterly cold but snowless. Freezing temperatures should at least yield something pretty to look at and fun to slide down. In the summer, well, you know.
C. I'm annoyed in the grand way, frustrated in the difficult-to-shake way. 

I spent much of this past winter in a state of ABC. How could it still be this cold? How could the trees still be this bare? How could my soul feel so pale? I thought endlessly of summer, vowing to take better advantage of my remote worker status and get out of Brooklyn the moment it ticked above 80 degrees. I planned and saved fastidiously, my mind never drifting far from its goal. Summer on the east coast, summer on the beach. Summer not here. 

It got a little obsessive. I started searching for “nantucket vlog” and “cape cod vlog” on YouTube, filling my ears with vocal fry, nodding deliriously to girls preaching pilates and exercise sets and iced coffee. I revived my Pinterest account and trained my algorithm to show me J.Crew catalogues from the 90s, people in sweaters on the beach, cuffed jeans a little wet at their bottoms.

In these thirty years of life, I’ve learned well enough to be suspicious of the grass appearing greener. Summer always looks more desirable during the winter and I know there are those among this email list who dream of snow and fireplaces during the thick of August humidity. But summer for me has always lived up to its year long fantasy. Maybe it’s my Leo placement or maybe it’s an attachment to childhood — No homework! No bedtime! Ice cream for dinner! And vacation, vacation forever.

Growing up my family to go to the Outer Banks in North Carolina for a week every summer. We endured a twelve hour drive for the promise of what lay on the other side: beaches, warm water, bike riding. I could barely sleep the night before we left, but I don’t remember being specifically happy to see our house in the rear view mirror. It was all about the destination.

These days I feel the rear view mirror more acutely. I think it’s about leaving as much as it’s about going. 

I told my boss I was taking a French approach to August and he thought, reasonably, that meant I was going to France. No, I said. Just leaving town for the month of August, which now, I have. I left Dodge on July 26th and won’t return until after Labor Day.

This first week I’ve been on Nantucket, renting a perfect-for-one-person apartment on the south side of the island. I’ve been truly blessed with great weather and I’ve spent hours on the beach, on a bike, and at my computer, writing. See below, for today’s station. Did you know Apple actually recommends occasionally giving your laptop access to fresh salt air¹? It’s true, it’s good for it. 

Nantucket is kind of designed for socializing. It’s all families and couples and friend groups. So it’s been interesting being here alone. At home, I eat in restaurants by myself all the time. In fact, it’s one of the great pleasures of New York life, the food standard being high and the social thermostat set permanently to “mind your own business.”

It might just be because it’s my first time here and I’m still getting a hang of the place, but I’ve felt surprisingly self-conscious. I’ve practiced how to ask for a food menu at the bar and even worse, I’ve flubbed it, talking too quickly or quietly to be understood. In theory, I know people don’t really pay all that much attention to strangers. And I also know there’s nothing particularly pathetic about a woman eating (well, I might add) on her own.

And still, I really do think I’m catching stray looks here… I have come to two conclusions. Either the sight of a woman on her own really is so troubling and so sad to the Nantucketers or they are perhaps mistaking me for some sort of gorgeous, mysterious, possibly French? celebrity. 

More likely, the call is coming from inside the house. I’ve been curious about this self-consciousness. Am I actually that comfortable being out on my own? Because while I do dine solo in the city, I also almost always bring a book or my phone, which crucially contains the New York Times games app. 

Quick aside on the games app: What beautiful monoculture. Everyone seemed so cynical about Wordle, but here we are, years later, and you know what, everyone is still playing Wordle and they’re also obsessed with their Mini Crossword records, desperate to talk about Connections, and pretty much only interested in getting the pangram on Spelling Bee. Because really, who has the time to reach Genius? It’s been a fabulous month for monoculture between the coconut memes and the Olympics and the New York Times games app. We have so many safe small talk options. If we have someone to talk to.

There is, as ever, a relevant Sex and the City episode. 

Now I’m sure Carrie really felt she’d conquered something here but my guess is that she stayed for about an hour. Maybe ninety minutes. Because on Wednesday I discovered the outer limits of my ability to publicly sit and stare. I had bought tickets to see a band in town, thinking, let me busy myself, let me go do something I like on my own. Which was the perfect and correct instinct except that I thought it would be more of like a 7 PM kind of thing. Cut to 10 PM, no band, no light to read, a dwindling phone battery, and my brain pretty much tapped out of life’s questions to ponder. How much alone time can anyone really stomach?

After one “Titos, water, and a splash of cranberry,” the woman next to me asked where my boyfriend is and I told her I was on my own and she said “good for you” so many times I started to wonder if she really meant it. My suspicions were confirmed when I told her I was seeing him on Saturday and relief washed over her face.

The band went on at 10:30 and I stayed till 11, ensuring I had enough time to catch one of the last buses and enough battery in my phone flashlight to walk myself home. If you’re my dad and you’re reading this, sorry, I forgot the flashlights you gave me at the airbnb.

Here’s the good news. Besides the peculiar feeling in restaurants, this trip has really been a dream. I wake up early, have a coffee, and get as many of my work tasks done as I can before heading down to the beach where I write, listen to music, and swim. At the exact moment I feel a desire for lunch, I go do that. In the evenings I’ve mostly been eating cheese plate dinners and watching the Olympics but last night I had shrimp tacos on Madaket Beach and watched the sunset, headphones on, Van Morrison crooning. It’s exactly what I had in mind.

I think I’ll send this newsletter on Saturday, my 31st birthday², on which I’ll meet up with (yes, lady) mY bOyFrIeNd on Martha’s Vineyard and undoubtedly talk his ear off, after a week of repressed yapping.

I took next week off work and am hoping to go full outtie. I’ve deleted my social media apps (though, problematically this is how I missed the news that my friend Josh had contracted dengue fever – sorry Josh, glad you’re doing better buddy). As I enter phase 2 of Operation Dodge, I’m thinking more about relationships. They say humans are pretty simple creatures. Feed us, bathe us, give us love and connection, we’re set. And I’ve spent so much of my life seeking out these connections. There is nothing in the world more important than my friends, my family, my… felines and (for the sake of alliteration) Fosh.

So why, I wonder, can getting the heck out of dodge, both physically and spiritually, feel so good? I’m slightly ashamed to admit (though not enough to withhold it from this very public newsletter) that there were days this winter when I went dark, failing on purpose to respond to people’s texts, going silent in group chats. Was I simply looking for attention? Flagging to my friends that I was struggling? Maybe, but I think that flattens the reality; disappearing can feel good. Perhaps in the absence of the right kind of connection and unsure of how to ask for it, no connection can seem preferable. 

I once encountered a book on a Park Slope stoop and took it home with me: “Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Commitment.” “Conscious Loving” was written by two married therapists — I’ve spent so much time imagining what their home life is like, you have no idea. But I think they’ve got some good points. 

People in committed relationships, they say, come together and then apart. These are neutral and natural movements. They encourage their patients to find value in the distance, viewing it not as something scary but as something essential. We go away and better yet, we come back.

We get the heck out of Dodge and then we move right back in.

I told Katie once that I always relish getting back to New York. I practically skip down the sidewalks, giddy with how available everything is. The coffee and the bagels and my friends, just a subway ride away. Which reminds me, the real reason I left New York this summer: the G train is down. Much like me, it comes back in September.

Until then.

1. Please read this delightful article on the benefits of sleeping on the porch or, at a minimum, with the windows open.

2. I really believe it’s so important to tell people it’s your birthday. You can’t just expect them to remember. If this is how you are reminded to text me a cake emoji, I honor and cherish you.