I am not presently on a yacht, enjoying a Euro summer. This is funny, because everyone else seems to be on a goddamn yacht, enjoying their Euro summer: Dua Lipa, Kylie Jenner, Dakota Johnson, Charles LeClerc, that beauty micro-influencer I sat next to at a dinner party in Soho once. She was dating my guy friend’s college roommate and we talked about Sofia Coppola’s collaboration with Augustinus Bader, which somehow led to us following each other on Instagram? Anyway, two weeks later they broke up, and we’ve never seen each other again. But she keeps posting pictures of herself on a unicorn pool toy somewhere in the Tyrrhenian with a totally new guy. Good for her.
I’ll spare you what I’m doing this summer instead (office, spotted lantern flies, hazes of existential dread in subway cars without air-conditioning), but I will say this: Every night, in my New York City apartment, I scroll through it all. Not just the boats, but the villas in St. Tropez; the beach clubs in Ibiza; the girls who treat Cartier Love bracelets like they’re bangles from Claire’s, but keep asking if anyone wants to sublet their Nolita apartment for three weeks in August.
It’s a strange feeling, being stuck in this uncanny vacation valley. Once you view one post of the Hôtel du Cap or Le Sirenuse or Scorpios, the algorithm keeps sending you more. Suddenly, a lifestyle very few people can afford begins to feel like a lifestyle that everyone has…except for you. And I think about how eerie it is that we’re constantly bombarded with cyber versions of the sirens from Greek myth: beautiful, alluring, visions that, if you aren’t careful, will lead you to ruin.
But then I turn my brain off, throw on The Summer I Turned Pretty, and decide to be a little bitchy instead.
Below, my musings on what your European summer vacation says about you. If you’re offended, just remember…your credit-card limit is likely triple mine.
“But babe, I want to go to Shellona. BLOND:ISH is playing,” your girlfriend* says as the tender approaches. “I told you already,” you say back, exasperated. “They couldn’t do a 3:30 seating. So we’re going to Cinquante Cinq.”
“What?” she cries, adjusting her Jacquemus minidress. “It sounds like you’re just mumbling a bunch of vowels.”
You sigh. “Club 55.”
“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”
You wave around. “Because it’s French! We’re in France!”
She pushes down her Celine Triomphe sunglasses to look you straight in the eye. “You’re wearing Ray Bans and, like, a Brooks Brothers shirt. Everyone knows you’re American.”
“It’s Loro Piana,” you say, a little hurt.
You both sit in silence on your ride to Pampelonne. You look back at your charter—an 80-foot Sunseeker. It looked so huge when you first saw it. Until a 300-foot Blohm+Voss anchored right behind you.
*girlfriend is a generous term.
You are so over party Europe—you’re a changed man now. Less cocaine at Gospel, more IVs at Remedy Place. So off to the Dolomites you go, like an Alo Yoga–wearing, AmEx-wielding Captain von Trapp, seeing if the mountain air will magically undo the hearing loss you got when Rüfüs Du Sol played at Shellona last year.
When you return to the States, you’ll tell everyone how many vertical feet you hiked. In reality, you never left the pool at Forestis.
You are under the age of 30, say “yacht daddy” unironically, and just want to rage face at Alemagou in a crop top and some body glitter. If you are over the age of 30, congratulations, you’re on the fast track to a liver transplant.
Mykonos? Oh, please. You aren’t a degenerate. You care about wine. Art. Culture. You’re reading Nicholas Boggs’s 1000-page biography of James Baldwin, for God’s sake. That’s why you chose Patmos, a remote, civilized retreat away from the fist-pumping crowds. Where you can sail the deep blue Aegean Sea on a kaiki and ponder the mysticality of the island while finding yourself.
Although you didn’t realize the beaches would be so…rocky. And you didn’t realize you had to share your private cabin on the eight-hour ferry ride from Athens with three strangers. One of them went through four bags of Cool Ranch Doritos.
That night, as you sit at Benetos, the Meltemi blowing so hard it’s exposing your bald spot…you kinda wish you had the Gwyneth Paltrow biography to read instead.
You used to go to Mykonos. Yet two shamans and an ayahuasca trip later, here you are, ordering chocolate mushroom bonbons with a raspberry ganache and picking out the perfect DC10 outfit from Annie’s Ibiza. (Gold disc mini skirt and matching top. Total cost? $3,000.) You considered renting a villa from Le Collectionist ($30,000 a week) in Es Cubells, but settled on the Six Senses ($2,700 per night) in order to “embrace your spirituality” on the north side of the Island. Thirty-four minutes into your Mercedes Sprinter van ride to Jondal (where your meal for four people cost $2,000), you deeply regret this decision. You don’t even like yoga that much.
“How was your summer?” Your friends in New York/London/Los Angeles/Dubai ask when you get back. You give an enlightened sigh. “Ibiza is just, like, so chill and bohemian. Really makes you think about what matters in life,” you say. Your financial manager texts you that you maxxed out your third credit card.
“Can I still do Burning Man?” You text back.
You asked ChatGPT where to have the “perfect Euro summer” and it spat out Capri.
So you arrive at Caesar Augustus with a suitcase full of Pucci dresses, a pair of Hermès Oran sandals, and a dream of taking a viral TikTok of the blue-and-white umbrellas at La Fontelina.
Yet when you arrive on the island, you—along with that girl who fell in love with her psychiatrist—realize just how dirty that little robot bastard did you. This isn’t the island of Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, and Clark Gable, where the mythical sirens resided in Homer’s Odyssey. (Well, you think. You’ve never read it. Too long.) This is the island where you almost get crushed to death by a stampede of tourists hell-bent on some Gelateria Buonocore.
