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“So many men think that all a girl needs is to be sold a dream, but I won’t fall for it.” -- Mary J. Blige

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of my good Aussie friend, Bridget, I have had access to this lovely beach house on Phillip Island down here in Victoria. I have lived on islands like this before. If you don’t get your errands accomplished by 5 pm, it’s not getting done. The population swells from hundreds of thousands in the summer to the intrepid bare bone locals in the winter.

There are no traffic lights on the one main street. A few meager pubs. No sushi joints. Grocery stores that close at 10 pm and do not sell fresh cilantro.

I wake up to the oddest bird noises, like children gossiping loudly on a playground. The road is unpaved. The house, like most beach houses, hearkens back to modest, simpler times and I love it. There is no telephone. The television has five channels that you access by turning a big, loud knob. No broadband access. It is the opposite of flashy.

The decor reminds me of my earliest years of consciousness, the late 1970’s, when everything was olive green or mustard yellow. These plastic plates with a happy barbecuing
man in pressed brown slacks and periwinkle loafers seem so familiar to me. I can smell the Popsicle sticks and bright red grilled hot dogs. It will always be summer when I look at these plates.

I told Sexy Jay when the other boys first came to stay at our little beach abode that I felt like I was playing house, which is a lovely luxury for this decidedly Manhattan girl whose freezer overflows with take-out menus and whose stove has only been turned on to warm the apartment or to reheat Quad Tall Soy Lattes.

“It’s nice because I know it’s not forever.”

“Yeah, if you really were a housewife, doing the dishes and making the beds would probably start to lose its entertainment value after awhile.”

He’s right. I know that I could not live this life forever. That I will always need a variety of experiences and that I cannot live a life full of days with predictable lists of chores and the neverending maintenance of The Domestic Machine. But, for now, it is exactly what I need and want. I brought a pile of my old writing to sort through and I found something I wrote that alluded to the fact that someday I would look back and long for this time, whatever time I was writing from. I try to remind myself that this is true now as well.

I know that very soon, I will be caught up in the whirlwind of my New York City life. I will be battling for cabs on Friday night, getting annoyed with surly drunk customers, sending dirty text messages to cute strangers and staring wistfully out my gorgeous window facing 52nd street in noisy Hell’s Kitchen. And wishing for a days with achievable To Do Lists. Days that will always be 1979 even when they are not.

In Italy, cafe latte is almost always prepared at home, for breakfast only. The coffee is brewed with a stovetop Moka and poured into a cup containing heated milk.

(The Moka does not produce true espresso, but rather a double-strength coffee. Also, unlike the international latte drink, the milk in the Italian original is not foamed.)