Summer Accommodations: A Novel by Sidney Hart Page A

with the mosquitoes of Monticello, and they all the while feeling sorry for him for being trapped in the smoky, humid heat of New York City in the dog days of summer. Then the women would cluck their tongues and wag their heads in disapproval and the silent lamentation that seemed to say “Men” rippled through their assembly until another story was told.
    The men also came in all shapes and sizes, if they came at all. Many were happy to toil in the city all week long and settle for weekend visits. Some families stayed for the whole season in the cottages located along the small lake across the state road from the hotel’s main buildings. They were entitled access to the hotel’s facilities, the swimming pool, tennis courts, shows and dances at the recreation hall, but they cooked their own meals and did their own laundry. Husbands might spend a week or two on holiday and then come for weekends, but the wives and children were there by themselves most of the time. It was always rumored that many of those women were lonely, horny and available. And many of their husbands looked as though they weren’t particularly happy to be in the company of their wives and children when they were together which seemed to lend credence to the tales of the women’s sexual availability. I fantasized about some of them but guiltily because it was as though I was invading someone else’s domain. It’s not as though I thought of women as property, it was just that they belonged to someone else. Wasn’t that the way the songs of those days expressed love? “You belong to me, I belong to you.” Whether single or married I had been instructed women were either seduced or misled but never voluntarily pursued illicit relationships. This victimology was my mother’s teaching which stemmed from the experience of her sister, my aunt Ceil, who had a long series of broken hearted romances with married men, “the using bastards” as they were called by my father. But, since losing my virginity had been one of my goals for that summer, that there were sexually experienced, horny women potentially available for pleasure was both exciting and daunting.
    2.
    The first meal served to the full complement of newly arrived vacationers was Sunday supper and it bore very little of the burden of the hotel’s reputation as an eat-all-you-can-eat, stuff-it-in, wrap-the-rest-in-a-napkin-and-take-it-back-to-your-room, medium sized hotel with a kitchen reputed to be worthy of the Concord or Grossinger’s. Whether or not it deserved this reputation was never something the dining room staff concerned itself with. We were fed leftovers buried in a brown gravy sauce that overpowered the flavor of any meat immersed in it. Even garlic couldn’t defeat it and this unappetizing fare fostered something called “scoffing” a term meaning eating on the sneak. It originated with the British Merchant Marine in the 1800’s and some romantic must have felt it suited the crew manning the dining rooms of the Catskills because it took root there quickly and was understood by everyone who ever set foot in a hotel kitchen. Scoffing was elevated to an art form by the quick handed basketball players brought up to play in the hotel basketball league. Ben and the other owners might have wanted to field good teams in the Friday night basketball circuit but they weren’t about to serve then prime ribs for their efforts. So an extra steak might come out for a guest who did not appear for dinner, or one who was delegated the reputation of consummate glutton by the waiter who then brought extra portions out to his side stand where they were partaken of quickly and furtively, as if by hyenas, between trips to the kitchen. More commonly, breakfast lox and dinner desserts were consumed in a single swallow on the fly with one’s back to Stuart Stein who was responsible to intercept and interdict such activity. I