It's 8PM on a Tuesday and I’m awash with optimism on 17th street. That’s how June dusk always makes me feel, the sky swirled with the purple and blue of a Trix yogurt and the air warm and wet like I’ve opened the dryer mid-cycle. Just how it was when I was little and my mom and dad would let me run around the yard in my PJs before bed, freshly bathed but it was still light out so what the hell, I’d go to sleep with dirty feet.
Now I’m wearing shoes as I walk towards the C train, but everything still feels just as gleefully illicit as it used to. I get reckless in a mood this good, a pep in my step violent enough to crack the sidewalk underneath me, soft smiling at every passerby and getting only looks of wary confusion in return like I’m a Green Mountain Energy salesman. But that isn’t a problem tonight. No one I walk by will meet my eye-line. They’re all too busy looking at each other, beaming and gasping agog with disbelief as soon as they pass a trio of people walking about a block ahead; a woman flanked by two men. Famous people, I think. My favorite.
I bring my brisk walk to a slow jog and catch up with them at the intersection, planting myself respectfully at 250 degrees SW. I hear her voice before I see her face. I know it like I know my own mother’s; I’ve probably listened to just as many cumulative minutes of both. Sarah Jessica Parker is standing in flip flops just six feet away, talking excitedly about the new ice cream shop that’s opened on their block.
I’m blushing with joy when Matthew Broderick turns to look at me, somewhat warily, I think, probably profiling me for my playfully layered swaths of summer-weight fabric and my diamond-less left ring finger as exactly the kind of fashion-conscious single twenty-something that would think of his wife as the disciple that she is. I try to signal to him using only my eyes that I won’t bother them, I’m really quite evolved, I just want to bask in his wife’s aura until we hit 8th Ave.
I could see her out of the corner of my eye, now, her praying-mantis jawline and loose Pinterest waves pulled back in a neatly combed ponytail. Her gaze pans the streets in front of us and I can’t Help But Wonder if the glimmer in her eye means she feels the same ecstasy that I do, the sky’s pastels turning to deep, ruddy streaks. And that’s when she says it: “Oh look, Matthew, the kids are out. Isn’t it wonderful?”
This observation, delivered with the breathless sincerity of every monologue Carrie ever gave, contains in it the essence of summertime and everything I love most about it. The kids are out, I’ve seen them:
On a Saturday morning I pass two little girls set up a folding table on the sidewalk outside their building, taping to it a sign made with crayons and printer paper that reads “Savannah and Maddy’s Jewelry.” Said jewelry dots the table, all crafted from rubber bands. It is truly garbage and I wish I had the cash to buy the lot.
High school seniors fill the plaza in Fort Greene, their skinny legs in jean shorts tangled together in the coffee shop’s outdoor seating, signing each other’s yearbooks.
A little boy keeps one foot on his scooter, unmoving, applying his full attention to the cone of chocolate soft serve held in his right hand. He has to tilt his head back to keep his helmet from pushing his hair into the cone as he licks. I can tell this is a lesson he had to learn the hard way — there are three rainbow sprinkles clinging to his bangs.
Even now, twenty-something, when the season means drinking wine outside and buying plane tickets to Croatia (I guess) more than making crafts with your neighbor for profit or running through the yard in your pajamas before bed, the essential markers of summer are still the ones we constructed in childhood. In them we find the actualization of doing exactly what we want to do, finally given the daylight to do it. The essence of every choice is the same: the unbridled joy of living without responsibility. Or at least, in our case, the simulation thereof.
In the twilight of my twenties, I’m gripped with phantom limb syndrome for taking three months off. Time enough to fit four weeks camping in Wyoming and half that on a writer’s retreat in Greece and maybe just as many in Croatia (I guess.) But with 10 days of PTO at my disposal, I look for little ways to have a summer like we used to, to collapse the space between 27 and running around in the backyard barefoot. Sometimes I go searching for them, eating an ice cream cone in Elizabeth Street Garden alone after work (if it’s in a cup it doesn’t count), and sometimes they land in my lap.
By the grace of God and a woman named Emma, the haircare brand Odele offered me and a plus one of my choosing VIP passes to Gov Ball. My little sister Helen flew in from Austin for the weekend and we went together. It was my first VIP experience of anything, if you don’t count the time in 2012 when I went on crutches to a One Direction concert at George Washington University and the strobes made me almost pass out so they took me backstage to use the elevator. I did not see Harry or Niall etc. but I did get to touch the crimson leather couch they sit on for “More Than This.” (Where are my true heads.)
After donning our distinct interpretations of festival wear, Helen and I took our comped Uber to the Moxy Hotel in Williamsburg, where Jaime, the brand’s PR rep, ushered us into a private suite. The room was filled with professional hairdressers and makeup artists waiting expectantly to help us get “festival ready,” with laminated menus of the options they had on offer — bejeweled braids and blow outs and pig tails with a hundred little hair ties in them to make both look like mini sausage links. Helen opted for “beach waves,” while I sat down with a makeup artist named Angel. She was tall and thin and beautiful, Puerto Rican by way of Miami and Queens wearing a black Adidas crop top with a matching mini skirt. When she asked me what I wanted I told her “Glossier” and that I was sorry.
But we were best friends by the time she got to my lip gloss. She told me gently that my skin not only lacked moisture but also hydration. I said I thought those were the same thing. “Mm. No, girl,” she said. She urged me to get rose hip oil as she passed me a handheld mirror to see my finished product. I had the same personality crisis I have every time I see my face with foundation but I liked her so much I committed to keeping it on.
She kept saying I reminded her of someone and I told her about the clerk at The RealReal who’d said I look just like young JoJo and she said, no, she was thinking Addison Rae. I screamed, thanked her, and got up to get a falafel sandwich from the catered buffet. I sat talking to Jaime while I ate it, asking her about how she met her husband (The 40/40 Club) and how she’s handling screen time in raising her three boys. She told me I was an old soul, and that she bet I got that a lot. I do.
This duality, this bracing whiplash of old soul and Addison Rae, is the exact balance I am talking about. This is summertime at 27. This is Van Leeuwen on my lunch break. The rest of the day strikes this balance seamlessly, every single experience crafted from layers of contemporary pop and adolescent nostalgia.
We start at T Pain, whose entire set recalls scenes of my middle school dances. We’re standing just behind a teen couple in front of us pantomiming a lap dance to “Booty Wurk (One Cheek At A Time).” With Nütrl seltzers in hand we run watch Role Model next, his crowd pulsing with the same palpable adolescent yearning of that One Direction concert. His set is very hip-and-crotch-forward and when he says “yes ma’am” girls collapse. The two in front of Helen and me alternate taking photos with his projection on the jumbotron. Helen knows one of them from TikTok.
He sings a cover of the song I had my first kiss to and when he turns his back to the crowd I see a glucose monitor in the back of his arm. “OH MY GOD HE HAS DIABETES?!?!” I scream at Helen, and immediately write almost exactly that in my notes app, one in a long string of observations I don’t want to forget. I am 1.5 tall-boy Bud Light seltzers at this point and I do cry. At 11 years old Nick Jonas conditioned me to think that Diabetes was a death sentence and no amount of new knowledge or technology will ever allow me to unlearn that.
My feet are covered in dirt, my little sister and I talk about our first boyfriends. We bathe in the glow of Benson Boone’s sepia-toned backflips in a crowd where the only people who know all the words are two 6-year-olds sitting on their parents’ shoulders. We get dumplings and onigiri, watch Tyler the Creator and take the $150 Uber home where we share my double bed. We haven’t since I was 16.
I watch the videos I’d taken on my phone before turning out the lights, still wired and a little buzzed, my feet clean now. wet and cold in the breeze of the AC. There’s one of T Pain crunking, one of Helen getting immediately hit on at the Nütrl booth, and one of Role Model yelling with his signature nasal into the microphone, his teeth barely opening. “This is gonna be the best summer of our fucking lives!!” Why not believe him.
Pony Recommends:
This week was a big one at work (just like they all are because my women never rest). We launched a swimwear collaboration with Left On Friday and it’s so good and cool and I’m so proud of the way it came together. LOF makes insanely good swimwear out of trademarked “Smoothing Dream” fabric (hello whimsy) and it completely lives up to its name. It sculpts without constriction, equal parts flattering and comfortable. Like wearing sexy waterproof Spanx. Our collab features LOF’s first ever printed suits in our leopard print, a
iconic signature right next to knitting the most beautiful tiny sweaters and a sixth sense for wallpaper (read about the collection from her perfect POV in her latest letter.
My gorgeous friend and colleague
art directed the shoot, held on Jones Beach. Y’all CLAP AT THIS.My brother recommends that I do a lot of things (i.e. chill out, invest in real estate) and a lot of the time I forget to listen to him, but this week I did and thank GOD. Love On The Spectrum is the most fucking incredible show I’ve ever watched in my entire life. I started on season 4 and watched to its completion and cried no less that 3 times per episode for the displays of complete unadulterated human joy and humor and unabashed sincerity and whimsy and Tanner. Y’all have got to watch it y’all have got to see this scene to believe it.
This Alex Mill top makes me feel beautiful and sophisticated and like Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in Talented Mr. Ripley but exclusively the way that she is before she has to deal with the murder and everything spoiler alert. The fabric is so high quality, the tailoring gives me gorgeous and structure and I always get 150 compliments when I wear it. It’s a perfect balance of country club and sex appeal on account of it has darts and a square neckline but also you can see my belly button if I play it right. I love my friend
and her genius at this brand!!
My grandmother (hi Nonna!!!) got me a subscription to The New Yorker and it brings me untold happiness every time I read an issue (Naomi Fry if you’re reading this I love you like a sister). In the May 5th issue, there is an essay by Alex Schwartz that I’ve read no less that six times, two of which were out loud to people I forced to listen. It’s called “The Promise of New York,” and it articulates the complex, twisted and undying nature of what it means to love living here. Got choked up reading it and still do now.
Odele (my best friends in the hair care space) keep doing it and did it again with their latest product. Their “Air Dry Styler” is a summertime godsend for someone (me) who has to at least rinse their hair before work and post run lest I walk into the office actively steaming from all head pores. I use this close to every day. Nonna if you’re still reading this just please pretend you don’t know I leave the house with wet hair.
LOVE YOU MEAN IT XX PONY
Forever supporter of leaving the house with wet hair. I don’t have the time!!! Just pretend yr an Olsen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Never forget Nick Jonas’ diabetes and how I thought he was going to die