Is It Okay to Summer?
Hosting, Guesting, Here-ing, There-ing…Burning Questions for the Hottest Season (Part I)
Well folks, we’ve made it to the official kick-off of Summer in these United States. I personally hate the season and always have. Not only do I never really know what to wear in warmer weather, I only really succeed at wasting structured time – automatically having too much that is unstructured makes me feel like a basketcase. I almost never get it together to plan vacations until late Spring (when nearly everything is already booked) and don’t have a second home (but actually prefer New York City when everyone is gone, tbh). I don’t like hammocks, boats or beaches. I do like fireworks, but 9 times out of 10, I decide I will retire to my bed before the first one launches. With all of this said, however, do I still feel totally qualified to tell you how you should and shouldn’t treat this complicated season? Thank you for asking, because yes I do.
Holiday Road.
Is It Okay…to Invite Yourself I have discovered that of my fellow Summer-haters feel this way for precisely the same reason Summer-lovers do: you have to go somewhere to make the whole thing feel worthwhile. Sometimes, you have to go a lot of places. This doesn’t always mean the seaside; it doesn’t have to involve a ferry or an airplane, but you are expected to get away, especially if you live in a decidedly urban setting (which can be unbearable when it’s hot and humid), or if all your friends are rich. If you are not so endowed yourself, you may be relying heavily on the munificence of people with homes in attractive destinations, which may mean constantly fishing for invitations.
Though I’m pretty sure that if I were loaded I’d live like even more of a hermit than I already do, the good news is that many people with second homes do like to have people come stay. I suppose this because the locations are so remote and the regional pleasures so limited or specific that introducing new people makes the time spent there seem more novel/worth it. All of this is to your benefit. So while I don’t recommend anything as forward as “I’d love to spend a weekend at your country house” or the more direct “so when are you going to invite me to [charming hamlet in the forest/by a lake where I will likely be devoured by ticks and mosquitoes]?”, pay attention for any opening when said weekend house may be mentioned and follow this script to the letter:
Potential Host: “You’ll have to come visit us!”
You: “That is so nice of you to offer, I would really love that. I’m sure we’re both so busy this Summer – should we pick a weekend now?”
Et voilà. You just made you first plan.
Only 11 more weekends to fill.
But the beauty of this is that it gives the host ample time to prepare for your arrival without feeling encroached upon – even people who love having company like a break every now and then – and means that another year doesn’t go by with several unfulfilled promises to make this visit happen.
As I am sure you already guessed, I am a perfect houseguest. I am told this constantly, and by people of both fine breeding and abundant taste. And while I am a virtuoso, I do not claim to be prodigy: any success I have had in this field is all the product of diligent work.
Because even though this is the “time to sit back and unwind” season, you should be aware that if you have accepted an invitation (and especially if you have lobbied for it) you still have your end of this solemn bargain to uphold. Unlike staying with people for the holidays or a family obligation that you are just expected to show up for but have zero say in (wedding, bar/bat mitzvah or funeral), if the calendar reads June, July, or Augus, it’s likely you who are the main event. You have been summoned to break up the monotony of a place where the nearest Target is 35 minutes away and all social life comes to a halt if it rains. This means: you must not sleep until noon, stay in your room all day, hold the members of the household hostage to your obsessive workout schedule and byzantine or absurd food demands, ignore resident kids, antagonize other houseguests, make a mess, get too drunk, request detours that require taking you anywhere other than the village train station upon your arrival and departure(farmer’s markets and antique fairs excepted, but only if your host is into that sort of thing).
The following are sometimes welcome, but it really depends on the host, as well as how close your relationship: making plans to visit other friends while in town, using the car, doing absolutely nothing, opting out of some programming (like trips to farmer’s markets and antique fairs). This is your mantra for your stay: be game, be interesting, be resourceful, be helpful. Try to go easy on the people and things before you and treat anything you use as (or better than) if it were your own. “Thank you for coming” at the end of the stay means nothing (and maybe even worse than nothing); “It’s been nice having you” a B at best. It’s when your host tells you “you’re so easy!” that you will know you have nailed the guesting game and are likely be invited to come back again and again.
Is It Okay…to Bring a Guest Allow me to ask: Is the guest a kid? To avoid awkwardness and automatic resentments, first and foremost pay attention to the wording always. “You guys should come stay with us!” (Kids). “Celeste and Horatio are at camp for the next seven weeks – what weekends are you free?” (No kids). Written invitations make this even more clear – the invitation is extended to the people whose names are mentioned. You must trust that consideration has been given to whether children – or (though hopefully this is unlikely) maybe just yourparticular child – would enhance or even enjoy this event, and a judgment was made. This is the sole right of the host and should not be questioned any more than you would say “are you really not inviting our otherfreshman year roommate?” or “your boss is here? Yuck!”
Also: whether the event in question is one night or a cluster of days, don’t be the person who assumes that childcare evenly distributed amongst the assembled adults is no big deal, or who doesn’t know your kid is a total nightmare (it’s only a phase…I’m sure). Anyone can ruin anything if they’re not expected or can’t be reasonably accommodated, but kids are the demo that has this down to a science. So ask yourself if your kid can handle whatever it is you plan to put them through, and be sure to consider alllll its features – location, duration, etc. Then review the most likely, worst case scenario. If you foretell even a hint of impending disaster, allow that it might be best for your Little Acorn has to stay home. And if there’s no one on hand to babysit and you don’t have a domestic partner who is willing to let you represent the family on your own, I’m afraid you do too.
The rest of Summer Entertaining is either quite formal or quite relaxed with very little in between, so the rules should be pretty clear. If you are not sure if you have been invited to a fancy affair like wedding with a guest, again, check the envelope the invitation came in: it will have been addressed to You “& Guest” (though almost no one does that in this economy, and as a result of Gen Zs dragging along people they found on Tinder or Hinge for the specific purpose of not having to show up stag ruined it for even the most generous hosts). The ideal circumstance is that you are invited with your actual partner – by name – which is de rigueur if you live with the person and or are “serious,” but you should not necessarily expect this consideration if the relationship is relatively new or the soon-to-be-marrieds have never met her/him/them (though if they have and the person still isn’t invited, it may be a message that you’ll soon have to make a decision about who in this group has to go).
Maybe they are keeping the list tight for reasons they have not disclosed, so account for the fact that that beyond whatever financial or logistical burden pushing for a guest might create, it can create interpersonal headaches too: if their policy has been no kids or plus ones and you flout it, those who were told no the first time and stood down will be annoyed, your hosts will be annoyed, someone is probably going to bitch about it to someone and everyone will feel bad. See what your non-compliance hath wrought? So if they are standing their ground, just be advised: there is no case that can be made for the dispensation of a +1 that doesn’t make you sound like an ingrate and a jerk. If you are overly concerned that you won’t know anyone, that you might not have fun or will feel exposed if you’re by yourself, that you are taking too much time out of your own busy life for something where you haven’t been properly accommodated, why are you fighting to attend? Just RSVP no and don’t think about it again. And if you want to be really petty about it, buy the absolute cheapest thing on their registry, like one coffee mug. They’ll get the hint.
As for things like barbeques and clambakes, I find that people generally expect that their guests may have houseguests (whom it would be rude to leave at home) or will be shuttling between plans and thus have a “the more the merrier: attitude, but if you have more than a double bedroom’s worth of people in tow, you might choose to signal the host beforehand and bring extra beer, wine or spirits so they don’t panic when they see you all spill up the driveway. If it’s a true gaggle of people with you, however, that’s probably a sign to stick around the hitching post and boil your own lobsters.
And in the unlikely event that you are summoned to a sit-down affair, choose your companions wisely – as you will know if you read last Summer’s bestseller The Guest, those Hamptons dinner parties demand nothing but your absolute best behavior.
Is It Okay…to Decline an Invitation (If you are Under Thirty) At this point in your life, Summer means one thing: Weddings. All I did in my late 20s was chase invitations to weddings, plan outfits for weddings, travel to weddings, finally attend the actual weddings and then talk about the weddings for days and weeks afterwards. Some of them I talk about still – no joke. Weddings constituted the bulk of my social life and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. If this is your life right now, you don’t need to me to tell you it’s foolish to decline an invitation to a wedding because as you will one day learn, this is the very small window in your life when it’s impossible not to have fun at a wedding – you’re not cynical about love and marriage, or down in the dumps about your own romantic life; you don’t worry about getting up early the next day to beat the traffic. The only thing possible source of disappointment in this phase of your life is the party was only five hours (“How can they be playing ‘Last Dance’ already?”)
This is the time when you are not the most important guests, of course, but it will feel like you are. It will feel like the success of the entire day – no, weekend – depends on you and your horde of shameless, aggressively inebriated maniacs singing “You Shook Me All Night Long” (pretty sure kids still know that song?) in a ragged circle while two or more totally unqualified people dance battle and someone hazards The Worm after he has cast his sport coat on the floor and knotted his tie around his head. And despite the fact that you might just spend every single penny you have earned for the year shuttling back and forth to places like Cleveland and the Napa Valley and the Great Lakes and Maine, to Cabo San Lucas and Greenwich and the Amalfi Coast, you will still feel like you are profiting from the deal by plain virtue of the fact that a tote bag containing Advil and sunscreen and a paper fan screen-printed with the couple’s monogram and date of the wedding is waiting for you at your hotel, and because you will consume bottomless Southsides and Mojitos followed by shots of tequila until Last Call or you are simply cut off by the bar. Because there is a high degree of possibility that you will make several friends that you will keep the rest of your life, plus a lower but still real one that you will meet someone you will date or maybe even marry yourself. But you and your life will be changed by the relationships and memories these events engender, even if you lose touch with the individuals who fostered them by getting hitched almost immediately afterward, which you almost certainly will. So don’t worry about whom you already know or if you will have a good time: your social whirl will never be as giddy and permeable or forgiving, nor amusement as easy to come by. Go every single place that will have you and see what develops. Just remember to RSVP.
(If you are over Thirty but under Forty) This is the phase in your life where you often want to go but can’t – you have kids under 5, you’re working like a maniac, or are in the midst of trying to save money for a home renovation or big move. It would be great to go to the family reunion or college friends trip or wedding, but actually getting there would take the precision, planning and resources of the Department of Defense. Would you have a great time that would likely make the planes, trains and automobiles, all the potential meltdowns and blowouts worth it? Perhaps, and maybe even absolutely. But sometimes it’s just not in the cards. Besides, we can’t live our lives worrying about what we don’t do.
My advice: take it in stride. There will be other parties. You will still be invited to them (for at least the next five years). Great if you can do it all, but if you have to choose, choose wisely. Just don’t make the classic new parent party guest mistake of taking your first weekend out of the house in ages as an excuse to get blind drunk and shake everyone down for cigarettes, or drugs – you’ll just feel dumb and crushingly hungover the next day.
Otherwise, you don’t have to go “to be nice.” Life at this stage is busy, it’s exhausting and it’s in flux. If you’re single, the “go – maybe you’ll meet someone!” argument rarely pans out, I found, and you will have to get used to the idea that you will certainly be doing some stuff solo – lotsa couples at this stage. Sure, one cure for feeling “less than” or “odd person out” is rigorous self-actualization, but sometimes just avoiding the situations whee you’re likely to feel that way works just as well.
But know that if you do have to forgo these events for whatever reason, people won’t stop caring about or wanting to see you. Your bond doesn’t have to end because they don’t have a baby/spouse and you do, or they have a baby/spouse and you don’t. It doesn’t mean they have forgotten you, though it can be easy to feel that way. Initiate low-lift plans – even a FaceTime if you don’t live in the same city – to feel connected. This was the time in my life I could not count on the passive but meaningful encounters many of my friendships had been built on. Because we weren’t all going out at night or on the weekend anymore, I had to make more of an effort to schedule the time I sought. It was worth it, and longer days, quieter evenings and Summer Fridays all may conspire to make this a little easier to pull off. Use ‘em or lose ‘em!
To keep this from being 100 pages long, I will release Part II tomorrow for Paid Subscribers. If you’re not joining me there, have a safe and restful Memorial Day weekend. And – I mean this very seriously – if you are driving, don’t drink, and if you are drinking, don’t drive!
👏👏👏👏