Every year, a small group of New York City’s most wealthy and influential male residents gathers in Long Island to occupy the Hamptons Share Commune. Located in East Hampton, the Share Commune is a place of communal luxury that combines the socialist tenets of the utopian kibbutz with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Rules:
There shall be no hierarchy amongst the brothers of the Share Commune. In this house, the senior analyst must be treated with the same respect as the summer intern, if the summer intern can afford the Share Commune dues.
All corporately branded duffel bags and totes are to be considered common property of the brothers of the Share Commune. If a brother must go to the beach and he takes a Goldman Sachs tote even though he brought a McKinsey duffel with him from New York, he is entitled to the Wayfarers and the copy of “The Fountainhead” found therein. After all, there is a plentiful supply of Ray-Ban sunglasses and Ayn Rand in the house, thanks to the collective labor of the brothers of the Commune.
Each night, after the brothers have relaxed their weary limbs on the beach at East Hampton, there is to be a meeting. The brothers shall sit in a circle, hold hands, and tell their fellow Share Commune residents which part of the day they enjoyed the most, whether it was shopping at the local Gucci store or driving the shared Maserati down the congested Montauk highway for four hours.
At the conclusion of the meeting, there is to be a vote on which night club the brothers shall attend that evening. Each brother may make a case for his club of choice, perhaps asserting that there will be women who share their egalitarian principles at one club, or that another club has a free-bottle deal for Share Communes that use a Collective Purse™ credit card.
When the time comes to harvest the kale garden in the back yard of the Share Commune, each brother shall work and consume equally. The resulting crop shall be made into a kale-only salad, in accordance with the raw, vegan diet that was voted last year to be compulsory in the house. (Obviously, the diet allows for bottles purchased at the club.)
The shared BlackBerry charger is to be plugged into one socket, and must not be moved.
The gymnasium is the holiest part of the Share Commune. A schedule shall be posted outside the gymnasium door, and this schedule must not be altered. A brother may not exceed his time on the bench press, nor may he run for less than his allotted time on the treadmill. Also, wipe down the machines.
When the weekend is over and the brothers of the Share Commune must return to the fray in New York City, another meeting is to be held in which Jitney and Uber Chopper (the Hamptons helicopter service) reservations shall be pooled and distributed evenly. If one brother has yet to experience the ride back to New York inside the Uber Chopper, he may be nominated to do so. He shall then fly in a helicopter over Long Island and Manhattan back to his apartment. The next weekend at the Share Commune, he is to write a poem describing how it feels to fly over Brooklyn at a cost of three thousand dollars, and read it to his Commune brothers.
These rules are to be upheld until the end of the summer season, at which point the Ski Lodge Commune rules go in to effect.
