Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2020 i Esquire

THE CUSTODIAN EUGENIO MESA ENVIRONMENTAL-SERVICES WORKER, NEWYORK-PRESBYTERIAN MORGAN STANLEY CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL New York City I’M FROM THE neighborhood, so I live about two minutes from the work site. I’d been applying to this hospital for years. I went to the interview—it was on my birthday. I got my job. WE WERE CALLED into the office by our supervisor. It was a Saturday morning. They call me by my last name. “Hey, Mesa, can I speak to you?” In my mind I’m thinking, Am I in trouble? She was like, “I’m not sure how comfortable you feel about going inside each room with COVID-19. Can you go in if I asked you to?” And I said, “Of course.” I didn’t hesitate. I’M NOT SCARED of anything. I’m brave. It takes a…

BACK IN THE 1980S, THE R&B STATION IN ST. LOUIS used to play a track from Fatback called “Backstrokin’,” whose lyrics—pretty much in their entirety—said, “Lookin’ for the good stuff? Why don’t ya tighten up on your backstroke?” When I was a young boy, the words struck me as deeply melancholy: No matter where you are in life, the song seemed to say, the best things will always be in your rearview mirror. As my life stretched out ahead of me, this funk band told me I’d spend it straining to turn backward, to the way things were. Forever grasping at the past as life sped into the future Now that I’m older, I realize the song is almost definitely about anal. But my youthful interpretation of it has proved…

BESPOKE TAILORING CAN APPEAR A LITTLE DUSTY THESE DAYS. It takes a long time, it costs a lot—and it requires showing up to multiple in-person appointments. When Swedes Saman Amel and Dag Granath first set up the brand Saman Amel as a custom clothier, however, they brought a modern attitude, appealing prices, and a Scandinavian sense of minimalism to the old-school way of making clothes. Their bespoke options require just one visit, for one thing. And now, with a growing collection of even more accessibly priced ready-towear offerings available exclusively at online-shopping specialist Mr Porter, they’re bringing that same mentality out of the showroom and into reach for those of us who prefer shopping off the (digital) rack. Speaking of the showroom: It’s in Stockholm and supplemented by temporary trunk…

It took Washington decades to start acting. And when he started, he did it in secret. THE INJURY THAT SET EVERYTHING IN MOTION started with a violent pop. To demonstrate the noise, John David Washington juts his two front teeth toward his iPad and balances the screen with one hand. He scrapes the bottom of his teeth with the nail of his thumb. Fliiiiick. I’ve spent the past week talking with a dozen or so of the actor’s family members, friends, and colleagues. Under normal circumstances, I would spend many hours with Washington, over the course of days, soaking up as much as possible about this thirty-five-year-old who’s gone from NFL running-back hopeful to the world’s next great action star in just seven years. Because we’re both stuck inside weeks…

ON A BRIGHT MORNING IN FEBRUARY, when we still gathered without fear, the sprinter Justin Gatlin steered his BMW into a parking lot at Montverde Academy, a private preparatory school west of Orlando. He walked uphill to a rubbertopped track. Until shelter-in-place restrictions made it impossible, Gatlin and around a dozen other runners, all Olympians or Olympic hopefuls, trained here five days a week under Dennis Mitchell, himself a former Olympian. “If they train with me,” Mitchell said, “they’re at least hopeful. Gatlin stretched in the sunshine. He joined a conversation about shows some of the runners were watching. He was familiar with most, but not all, of the references. “I’m from another generation,” he said sheepishly. Gatlin, thirty-eight, has a patch of cotton-ball white hair. Nobody has seen white…

TWO WEEKS INTO THE QUARantine, I lost it. Early one evening, as I was doing the dishes, “Night Moves” came on the radio. I have heard that song, by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, one million times, and I’ve enjoyed it each time. But on the one million and first, I cried. Not the sort of eye misting that’s easy to explain away. I openly wept. My wife walked into the kitchen to find that her husband had become the real-world avatar of the Crying Michael Jordan meme. I wrapped my arms around her and let my body go heavy. I know what you’re thinking, and I agree: “Night Moves” is a terrific song. But it had never moved me to tears until that day. Not even close.…

Back in 1974, Neil Young recorded what his label was absolutely sure would be an album stacked with hits. Young was certainly in the market for a few—Time Fades Away and On the Beach, his two previous LPs, hadn’t fared well with fans. But Homegrown, a de facto musical companion to 1972’s behemoth Harvest written in the wake of his breakup with girlfriend Carrie Snodgress, was never released—until now. “It was a little too personal,” Young said in 1975 of the decision in an interview with Rolling Stone. “It scared me.” He echoed the sentiment recently as he announced the plan for the legendary work to emerge: “It’s the sad side of a love affair. The damage done. The heartache. I just couldn’t listen to it. I wanted to move…

I WAS BORED, STUCK ON A BUS THAT HAD already gone an hour in the wrong direction, when inspiration struck. As I mindlessly scrolled through Instagram, a vintage photo of John McEnroe snapped me out of my daze. His white Sergio Tacchini polo flowed seamlessly into a pair of (very short) white shorts. There wasn’t much to it. It was just… white. But it was loud, and it was brazen, just like McEnroe himself. Then I remembered: I had a terry-cloth polo-and-shorts set in my closet. From Tacchini, no less. I hadn’t worn it yet. I think I was afraid of it. Nevertheless, I had nothing to do except make grand plans, so fuck it—this summer, I’d make it happen. Better yet, I’d do it with blue, and gray, and…

IT’S A PECULIARITY OF DRESS WATCHES—especially the smaller ones, and especially in gold—that in summer they stick out on a naked forearm like stilettos on a vicar. Which makes them an ideal go-to for the man who has the nous to wear them in untraditional ways. Cartier’s legendary watches, for example, have a surprising history of popping up on the most undressy wrists. Muhammad Ali wore a Tank. So did Andy Warhol. For years, the indestructible Keith Richards wore a Panthère de Cartier with his faded denim and threadbare T-shirts with a nonchalance that could not have been imagined by Louis Cartier when he created its forebears, first the Santos in 1904 and then its tiny cousin, the Tank, in 1916 Cartier first developed the Santos (in an edition of…

WITH THE FLICK OF A KNIFE, I felt transported back to my childhood. Melted butter, flecked with fresh herbs, poured out of a cut in a breaded chicken breast and formed an amber pool on my plate. I was in a new restaurant in New York City, Veronika, which occupies the second floor of a cool new photography museum, Fotografiska, but I had ordered a dish that I first encountered at some moment in the 1970s when my parents took me to a fancy restaurant that probably specialized in the same sort of European grandeur that Veronika aims to revive: chicken Kiev. I remember falling in love with chicken Kiev back then. What kid wouldn’t? It’s basically a supersize chicken tender magically stuffed with butter. But I also remember falling…

NOLET’S GIN A martini made with Nolet’s and its big, flowery notes will remind you of an eternal spring, even when you’re stuck inside.—K.S. THRASHER’S COCONUT RUM Todd Thrasher sent me this coconut rum the week I would have been on an island vacation. It was a very good substitute.—K.S. JAMESON COLD BREW Ten hours after waking up to a cup of black coffee I wish I could season with whiskey, I get to close my laptop and drink something richer, sweeter, smoother, stronger: this, on ice, made all the better because I held out.—Sarah Rense TEMPUS FUGIT CRÈME DE BANANE We made banana boats in Girl Scouts—bananas with all the fixings, wrapped in foil, then stuck in the coals of a campfire to melt into caramelized dessert goo. Sweet…

NUMBERS REVEAL ESSENTIAL truths, but they don’t provide much comfort. With 3.9 million confirmed cases and 270,000 deaths* in 187 countries on every continent but Antarctica, the coronavirus pandemic has already altered daily life beyond recognition. It will shape our lives for years to come, mostly in ways that are impossible to predict, let alone understand. ¶ Yet faced with the biggest public-health crisis of the cen tury, we need all the comfort and understanding we can get. So Esquire turned to the best source we know of: the stories of others. We asked twenty people—from an eight-year-old in Indiana to the governor of Washington—to share their experiences in the first few months of the outbreak. Each of their stories is a reassurance that none of us are facing this alone.…

1959 LITTLE JOHN OATES LAY ON THE LIVING-ROOM FLOOR at his friend’s house, propped up on his elbows, his chin in his hands, staring at the blind man on the record cover, listening to him sing. John was in sixth grade in North Wales, Pennsylvania, a nice workaday suburb of Philadelphia. He lived on Tenth Street, a straight line between Prospect and Walnut, and he could walk to the house of this one friend whose parents had a console stereo. The turntable was built into a handsome wood cabinet, and the sound that fuzzed out of the big speakers just wrapped itself around little John Oates. Not many people in North Wales had console stereos, so John used to love going to this one friend’s house and listening to records…

STORE INFORMATION For the items featured in Esquire, please consult the website or call the phone number provided. The Short Stories, p. 11: Giuseppe Zanotti espadrilles, giuseppezanotti.com P. 14: Mark Cross bag, markcross.com P. 15: Coach bag, coach.com Filson bag, and towel, onia.com Celine by Hedi Slimane bag, celine.com Altea sweater, mrporter.com P. 18: Aimé Leon Dore sweatshirt and shorts, aimeleondore.com P. 19: Tombolo shirt and shorts, tombolocompany.com Todd Snyder shirt and shorts, toddsnyder.com 18 East shirt, shorts, and hat, 18east. co. Artemis Design Co. loafers, artemisdesignco.com Loro Piana polo, loropiana.com P. 21: Cartier watch, cartier.com P. 24: Saman Amel jacket, knit polo, and trousers, mrporter.com Escapology, p. 66: Etro suit, jacket, shirts, trousers, sandals, belt, and neckties, etro.com P. 67: Hermès jacket, tank, trousers, and sandals, hermes.com Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello shirt, ysl.com Fendi bag,…

Yeah, yeah, we heard it. But it made no sense. Why the hell would he want to kiss her? Our big sister? Her? She was totally obnoxious. She’d whisper things in our ear, like “You’re being an asshole.” She was nothing like our friend’s big sister—our friend’s sister was cool. ¶ Annoying as they were, our older sisters weren’t even in the back forty of the mine-filled battlefield we lived in growing up: There were bullies and cliques and the first four chapters of The Catcher in the Rye to read by tomorrow and sex and changing for gym, and if we were going to make it out alive, we were going to need some help. Recon, if action movies taught us anything. We needed a scout. ¶ Whom could…

THE ESPADRILLE IS THE MOST EGALITARian summer shoe. It eschews elitism, and it doesn’t differentiate between tax brackets, much less genders. It doesn’t even discriminate between your left and right feet. (Really; with old-school versions, you can switch it up.) You can buy espadrilles in fancy boutiques and online, but these are quintessentially simple shoes, and best when you don’t muck about with them. In their native Basque and Catalan regions (straddling the border of France and Spain) and all of southern France—where I stock up—you can pick them up for a song at supermarkets and gas stations. But for me, the Côte d’Azur is their true stomping (or maybe shuffling) ground. They’re ideal for lolling about at home or hitting the market or the beach, yet ironically—for something traditionally…

AS I WRITE THIS, I DON’T know what summer will look like. Will we be heading to sandy shores, cracking open a cold one, and re-upping our vitamin-D supply? (With six feet between blankets, of course.) Maybe! But it’s equally possible we’ll be socially distancing in a deserted lot behind the 7-Eleven while blasting Don Henley from a single earbud. And while summer has always been a time when you’ve had to haul around a lot of gear—sunglasses, sandals, sunscreen, six-packs—a post-pandemic world means we’re going to be lugging around a lot more. Face masks, hand sanitizer, and latex gloves are all getting promoted to everyday-carry items. That means you need a bag. One that’s simple, because these times are not. One that’s hardy, because we all need an extra…

The closest thing to a getaway in your near future may be a Sunday stroll down the block. But dressing like you’re on vacation? It’s never been more necessary. Mix it up. Throw together elements of your “travel wardrobe”—kilim loafers, ikatpatterned trousers, a linen shirt—and dress like you’re anywhere but here. Though it won’t change up your routine, that’s not the point. The point is feeling like you’re adventuring. Hiking a volcano it is not, yet busting out those ikat trousers might feel just as good. Make yourself a mai tai. Crack open a cold one. Lean all the way in. Your passport can gather dust. Your clothes, however, don’t have to. Let your summer style be a ticket to somewhere bright and bold. Even if it’s your living room.…

TOO SOON, YOU SAY? GIVEN THE MENDACITY THAT emerged, we say not soon enough! “Personally making a worldwide pandemic noticeably worse” is not a challenge we would take on, but not everyone suffers from such a lack of ambition. At a moment in history when America came together to slow the spread of a deadly virus and keep our nation’s medical professionals safe and healthy, a few dozen special people stepped forward and said: One of the deadliest viral outbreaks in a century will not stop me from being garbage. We truly don’t know what the world will look like when you’re holding this printed material in hand. We hope you’re alive to read it! We hope we’re alive to regret its tone! But if we’re all still here, it…

THIS ISN’T THE 2020 I ANTICIPATED IN DECEMBER. AS ONE decade prepared to lap over into another, I planned to split time between Washington, where the president was being impeached, and Iowa, where the Democratic candidates seeking to pry his hands off the national executive would face their first real contest. I would have some happy holidays—I was a new grandfather—and get right into another campaign, with the third impeachment of a U. S. president as a kind of constitutional lagniappe. Then I got hit by a car. I cracked two lumbar vertebrae and got twenty staples in my head and spent Christmas and New Year’s flat on my back. I watched the deliberations of the House Judiciary Committee from my hospital bed, doped to the gills and wondering whether…