Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches

by John Hodgman

I knew it would turn out this way. But I was compelled to grow it. All men, I think, wonder who the secret man that lives inside them is and whom they will meet in the mirror when they stop shaving. They wonder if that man is better than the one they know. If that elder sage or fantasy wizard or feral mountain man will be wiser than they, and when they are lost, if that dude will light up his staff and guide them through the dwarven mines and out of the wilderness.

This is a book about me and my beard wandering through three wildernesses: the green mountains of rural western Massachusetts where I disposed of my youth, the mercilessly painful beaches of coastal Maine where I will eventually accept my death, and the haunted forest of middle age that lies between them. And here is a second apology. I will be honest with you: there are no fun fake facts in this book. While I may evade particular details and change some names in order to protect the privacy of those who did not ask to know me, the rest is all the awful truth about my dumb thoughts and feelings. I am sorry for this. It is all I have left.

I would never call him my “best friend” to his face. I am from Massachusetts and he is from Connecticut, and New Englanders do not say things like that. “Yankee ingenuity” means the canny improvised fixes, repairs, and craftwork our predecessors employed to keep their barns and brains intact through long winters without ever having to break down and ask anyone else for help. Shame, embarrassment, and crippling emotional reticence is what this part of our nation was founded on, at least the white part, and Jonathan and I adhere to this legacy.

Now normally I consider nostalgia to be a toxic impulse. It is the twinned, yearning delusion that (a) the past was better (it wasn’t) and (b) it can be recaptured (it can’t) that leads at best to bad art, movie versions of old TV shows, and sad dads watching Fox News. At worst it leads to revisionist, extremist politics, fundamentalist terrorism, and the victory—in Appalachia in particular—of a narcissist Manhattan cartoon maybe-millionaire and cramped-up city creep who, if he ever did go up to Rocky Top in real life, would never come down again.

This country is founded on some very noble ideals but also some very big lies. One is that everyone has a fair chance at success. Another is that rich people have to be smart and hardworking or else they wouldn’t be rich. Another is that if you’re not rich, don’t worry about it, because rich people aren’t really happy. I am the white male living proof that all of that is garbage. The vast degree to which my mental health improved once I had the smallest measure of economic security immediately unmasked this shameful fiction to me. Money cannot buy happiness, but it buys the conditions for happiness: time, occasional freedom from constant worry, a moment of breath to plan for the future, and the ability to be generous.

Some white people found that standing up for the humanity of non-white people somehow threatened their humanity, and made a point of saying so on the internet. They fought the Black Lives Matter idea with a fervor that was unseemly and dumb. It reminded me of the offense I took when I realized I would not live forever: how dare you suggest I am not the hero of this story? I am a straight white man! I have been right at the center of this culture for a long time, and now you ask me to be quiet for a few days to listen to someone else’s experience?

We who are white men can’t change who we are. But we could do worse than to follow what I took that summer as his example: to be aware of and curious about the world around you, to give what you have with neither apology nor self-congratulation. When praise comes to see you, get out on the fire escape. When it’s someone else’s time to talk, listen. Don’t turn your house into a museum. When your work is done, get out of the way.