Angela In America: Racing In The Hamptons

Everyone knows the Hamptons for its beaches, fancy circuit cocktail parties, and charming windmills. But a racetrack? In Westhampton? Not horses — go-karts.

I learned about the track in the late 1990s, during the summer gig I’d landed singing at the Bath & Tennis Hotel and the Dune Deck, both on Dune Road. The properties are known for their gorgeous ocean views, but that summer the beach took a back seat to shiny gold lame bathing suits, pre-Botox leather skin and endless frozen daiquiris.

The gyrations I witnessed from the Dune Deck bandstand made Alec and Hilaria Baldwin’s Instagram antics look award-winning. We started calling the Dune Deck the Debauchery Deck.

That’s when Larry appeared. Mid-50s, wiry black hair streaked with creeping strands of gray, always smelling of aftershave, reasonably handsome if you looked past his paunchy belly. The abundance of gold jewelry he wore though, was too much, even for Westhampton Beach in the 1990s.

Larry would find me during my breaks and hold me hostage with his tales of woe: his wife was a nagging witch, their marriage was loveless, life was passing him by.

One day in July, Larry snapped. He was done. He threw a bunch of his designer clothes in the trunk of his white Cadillac, ditched his wife and their mega mansion in Roslyn, and headed straight for the Hamptons.  No summer rental, no plan. He was living out of his car, he said, taking hotel rooms. Yet in the few haphazard weeks since he had bolted, he had somehow managed to find a young girlfriend.

“She lives in Southampton. A single parent with an 8-year-old son, an Irish waitress,” he said. “Maybe she’s 28, or 30,” he fudged. She’d pop over on Saturdays to drink with Larry at the Dune Deck, sometimes with her son in tow. Larry wondered if she was using him. She was.

“Want to see the racetrack?” he asked one day, looking especially forlorn.

“Sure,” I said. Who doesn’t like an adventure? Besides, I was getting tired of entertaining drunken rich people in the heat for hours. So much new-money-madness. Did anyone ever walk the beach or put a toe in the ocean? Hardly. As much as I loved Donna Summer’s music, I was also getting tired of singing She Works Hard for the Money in G minor.

“I can go with you,” I told Larry, “but I have to be back in an hour to get ready for my set.” And off we went in his big white Caddy.

The go-kart racetrack was noisy and dusty and, frankly, kind of dull. Zoom, zoom. What goes around comes around, I thought. I liked that it was so “un-Hamptons.” But as we drove back along a secluded dirt road, Larry suddenly picked up speed, as if we were in a go-kart race.

“Whoa,” I told him. “C’mon, you’re doing 60 in a 30 zone!” His face contorted.

I clung to the door handle as though that would protect me. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror. And then he sped up even more.

“It’s my wife,” he gritted. “She found me.”

Apparently, someone had tipped off his wife that he was dating a younger woman in the Hamptons with brown hair. I was 29 then, with brown hair. This was the day she decided to jump into her matching white Cadillac to claim her husband and drag his sorry ass back to Roslyn. Lucky me.

The road curved to a cul-de-sac, and we were trapped. Larry slammed the brakes. “Go ahead, hit the car, hit it — you’re going to get it all anyway!” he yelled.

“Are you crazy?” I shouted. Larry was really starting to annoy me.

Her car screeched around, like a bad “Cagney & Lacey” chase scene. She jumped out, all 4-feet-7 inches of her, nostrils flaring. Larry and I got out. He just stood there, cowering as she screamed obscenities at him. Then, like a hawk eyeing its prey, she turned her beady eyes on me.

“And you!” she pointed.

“Hey, I’m sleeping with the guitarist!” I blurted. A lie, but a good one under pressure. In retrospect, I should have said the truth: “Do you think I would sleep with your wimpy cologne-reeking husband — never! Now back off, lady!” But I couldn’t. I was too nice. And too scared. What if she had a gun?

Instead, I said with great importance, “I have a gig to do!”

The wife followed us back to the hotel, a caravan of Caddys. I left them in the parking lot to duke it out. Later she apologized to me in the ladies’ room at the Dune Deck for the mistaken identity. “Whatever,” I mumbled, flushing the toilet twice for effect.

I never saw Larry again after that day, nor did I ever return to the racetrack. The track is long gone, like so many things locals once treasured in the Hamptons that had nothing to do with flash and cash.

But I still have the photograph I took from the bandstand that afternoon: Larry, his wife and the waitress girlfriend, all dancing on the deck. Three people, each about four feet apart, moving in their own orbit. Larry’s wife in the middle, trying to prove she could dance like she was 30; Larry on one side, tequila in hand, facing away; and the girlfriend on the other side, dancing defiantly, perhaps knowing deep down, this would, indeed, be her last dance.

Angela LaGreca

Editor, Co-Founder/Publisher

Angela LaGreca, Editor-in-chief and co-Founder/Publisher of Spark Hamptons, is a four-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, producer, writer and comedian/host. Her TV credits include NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “The View,” and, most recently, the primetime cable news program “Cuomo” on NewsNation. On the East End, she was the Creative Director at LTV, VP Features/Events/Photo Editor at Dan’s Papers, and has performed at Guild Hall, Bay Street Theater and the WHBPAC. Her publishing career began at Modern Photography, where she was managing editor. LaGreca lives in Manhattan and East Hampton and can be reached at angelatvmedia@gmail.com and angela@sparkhamptons.com .