My Luxurious, Lazy European Summer… In Manhattan

I wake up, late in the morning, from a deep sleep. I was out late dancing and sharing a friendly kiss with some guy after too many negronis. I throw on a black bathing suit and an oversize fraying white shirt that once belonged to my father, whom I greet outside on a sun-dappled terrace. He’s reading the paper and drinking fresh-squeezed blood-orange juice. I sit down and drink a café au lait out of a bowl and spend a long time buttering a baguette. I am in the first week of a whole summer in Italy, and the day has just begun.

OK, well, at least that’s the fantasy. In real life, I am often awoken by the sound of jackhammers and reach for my phone to read whatever bad news has bubbled up overnight before I put on sweatpants and make a grim breakfast of some kind of protein-powder based smoothie: all fuel for work, for ambition, for optimizing my life in New York City.

I am not spending a summer in Europe; I might not be even going on vacation at all, given the state of the economy and my finances. But reality has never stopped me. I’ve committed myself, no matter where I am, to living like I’m on a European vacation. It may be a shopworn fantasy, but it’s what sustains me.

Consider me a student of the genre. My favorite kind of movie and book is what I call “people enjoying their summers in Europe.” There is of course Call Me by Your Name, both the luscious book by André Aciman and the film adaptation by Luca Guadagnino that introduced us all to Timothée Chalamet as Elio (Elio, Elio). It has all the qualities I look for: beautiful people, a grand but slightly ramshackle villa, a pool, crushes, sex, plates of dessert and pasta cooked by some motherly local, long naps, and a lot of big emotions.

It may be a shopworn fantasy, but it’s what sustains me.

I started off with the easy stuff: clothing. Instead of sneakers or Birkenstocks — never, ever seen on any of the cool Italian girls Elio romances in Call Me by Your Name — I put on a pair of black espadrilles I bought 10 years ago. At that moment, as I head out to go buy groceries, I remember why I never wear them. Even a three-block walk is somewhat arduous without any kind of foot support; I’m essentially walking on a bolt of fabric. The look I’m going for is je ne sais quoi, so, like Elio, I wear a big vintage navy blue Lacoste polo and some beat-up Levi’s.

I momentarily mourn my leggings and sweatpants but I do look undeniably cooler as I walk out of my way to the supermarket with the good produce to stock up. I buy cavaillon melons, the best in France. (These were grown in Chile, but who’s counting?) They’re the size of a grapefruit and just enough for one big plate topped with ribbons of prosciutto and finished with some arugula and fresh ground pepper. The whole thing takes about five minutes to make, and even though I’m just at home on a Wednesday eating lunch between deadlines, I take a little more time than usual to sit down, eat on a proper plate, use a linen napkin, and listen to a podcast. Peace has been achieved.

Make that temporary peace. That night I receive a text message from a charming but rakish man I have been totally not dating for six months now. Sometimes I call him my lover to sound more mysterious and sophisticated. I hadn’t heard from him in several weeks. Was he out of town, or had he moved on to another woman? Or was he dating 10 women? I didn’t really want to know, and frankly, my feelings about him are ambivalent. I liked what we had. Sometimes I thought I should end things entirely to make room for something less amorphous in my life, and other times going on one date a week or two felt like too much commitment. I reply that I’m around for the next weekend and would love to get dinner. I never hear back.

Luckily, these kinds of relationships are basically endemic to Europe and only intensified on summer vacations. Think of basically any Sally Rooney novel or most of Eric Rohmer’s filmography. His film A Summer’s Tale was made in the pre-SMS 1980s, but Melvil Poupaud is the kind of hot-but-confusing guy who transcends technological advances and eras.

Plus, it could be worse. I could be having a psychosexual romance with my dad’s best friend who is currently the boyfriend of his ex — it’s very French; keep up! — as in La Piscine from 1969, where a very young Jane Birkin pouts in a white bikini and giant round sunglasses in a country house outside of St. Tropez while flirting with Alain Delon. In fact, it was watching Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, a remake of La Piscine with Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson, that inspired me many years ago to go on vacation to Pantelleria, where it was filmed. What I lack in A Bigger Splash lifestyle — therapeutic mud treatments, cliffside restaurants, Matthias Schoenaerts as my boyfriend — I make up for by avoiding murder, which sadly also happens in the film.

Which is one thing we often forget to talk about in the European summer lifestyle: the darkness. I eat a scoop of pistachio gelato in a park, and yes, I drink two glasses of white wine at lunch on a Friday and take a three-hour nap afterward. So yes, I can dress and act like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Marge, living it up on the Amalfi coast in The Talented Mr. Ripley. But it’s not all easy breezy. Sometimes there are unsettling moods, cold wars with enemies and frenemies, and death.

One night, I attend the opening of a boutique and its afterparty at a restaurant nearby. Like Liv Tyler’s virginal-hot character discovering herself in Tuscany in the Bernardo Bertolucci film Stealing Beauty, I show up to the event in a skirt and blouse meant to make me look like an ingénue whom everyone wants to seduce. Unfortunately, there are no straight men in sight.

Also unfortunately: I see someone I have a totally unreasonable and one-sided adversarial relationship with. Someone takes a photo of the actor Chloe Fineman, and I can be seen distantly in the background, my eyes narrowed, my lips pursed: the look of a woman staring down her hapless enemy, as in Bonjour Tristesse, the Françoise Sagan novel that Otto Preminger adapted in the 1950s (starring Jean Seberg) and has been adapted to the screen once more this year by director Durga Chew-Bose. (I’ve seen it; I had to force myself not to book a flight to Marseille.)

Like the characters I’m basing my life on, I’m not shallow, but I’m also trying not to try too hard.

Luckily, I have the wherewithal to get out of town. Specifically, on a three-day work trip to Los Angeles. As I pack a blue shirt identical to the one Romy Schneider wears in La Piscine and a slip dress inspired by Stealing Beauty, I blast Exile on Main St., which The Rolling Stones recorded while avoiding taxes and life at Villa Nellcôte, a 16-room mansion in the Côte d’Azur.

I do not party like the Stones once I arrive in L.A. I don’t even party like the nightclub scene in Call Me by Your Name. But I do drink two negronis and a glass of wine over steak frites while gossiping with friends. The next day, after work, I head to the poolside terrace, bringing Brideshead Revisited to read — characters in Euro summer vacation movies do not read mysteries or romances; they read dense classics.

Back at home in New York, it’s raining. To cheer myself up, I put on bright pink Chanel lipstick — wearing no makeup but for a bold lip or eye is very Euro summer — and head to a café for breakfast. As I gently tap the soft boiled egg served in an egg cup, I don’t read, nor do I text, nor do I work. I just stare outside and think about life. My thoughts feel diffuse. They’re deep — what do I want from my love life? — but not urgent. Like the characters I’m basing my life on, I’m not shallow, but I’m also trying not to try too hard. I may not be in Europe, and it may not even be summer, but in my head I have achieved the final level of the European summer. Which is realizing that it’s a year-round state of mind.