Fire Island News

Tell-All Takes Readers Behind the Scenes of Beach Sharehouse
By John Blesso
June 23, 2007


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

John Blesso                                    301 W. 110 St., 8F
tel: (917) 887-4218                                New York, NY 10026
fax: (212) 857-0110                                www.johnblesso.com

Tell-All Takes Readers Behind the Scenes of Beach Sharehouses

What’s the next move for a 31-year-old unemployed male nanny after failing in his attempt to write the great American novel? Why buy and renovate a seven-bedroom beach house to share with 50 New York City singles on the car-less paradise of Fire Island. Soon after dropping his 700-page novel in a drawer, John Blesso established “Chance,” an upscale Epicurean beach sharehouse. After three crackerjack summers, Blesso has published Sharehouse Confidential: Sex, Drugs, and the Single Life Inside an Epicurean Beach House. In the way that Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential let readers behind the curtain of New York City restaurants, Blesso explains the mechanics and delivers the action that unfolds beneath the roofs (and out on the beach) of these communal houses in The Hamptons, Fire Island, and the Jersey Shore that have become de rigeur for those New York City singles who use “summer” as a verb.
While many singles’ sharehouses devolve into postgrad fraternity parties, Blesso spent three years in France and he aimed to re-create the lush lifestyle he first experienced on the French Riviera, where meals went on for hours, where sex was something to do between meals, and where no one was talking about interest rates. Sharehouse Confidential introduces the reader to a cast of characters, many of whom (Blesso included) vacillate between pleasuring the body and the soul. While most of these singles have joined Chance in search of a soulmate, many of them are willing to settle for yet another Saturday night. Blesso takes the reader on a hilarious tour of the sometimes less-than-private romps of the sexually charged atmosphere. (Including an unsuspecting male houseguest who found himself the beneficiary of one woman’s mistaken-identity pursuit.) Still, relationships blossom and much of the story is hung on Blesso’s rocky pairing with one of his house members, the aptly named “Rule Number One.”
Blesso offers a trove of insights in maintaining a strong dynamic among a group that is frequently under the influence. He explains why he bans cocaine and tries to curb the consumption of sweet drinks, and how carrying a mid-afternoon tray of hotdogs and a pitcher of beer to a crowd of house members lounging at the beach can redeem even the most grievous infraction.
While setting up Chance began as Blesso’s best attempt at cover his mortgage, he ended up providing a much-needed place of respite for many overworked New Yorkers, a community where the only competition stems from one-upping each others’ lavish Saturday-night dinners. Readers will delight in their meals of truffled scallops over grits, of the woman who home-brews raspberry wheat ale, of drinking sunset cocktails on the ferry dock, and where the subject of whether women can have sex whenever they want is just one of many running dinner conversations. Blesso came to see Epicurean living as a way to combat the never-ending workweek and the fearful post-9/11 political climate. As the weekend draws to a close, house members don’t want to leave, having been bitten by the more humane pace of Fire Island. Still, many of them take back to the City elements of the slower, Epicurean life, counting the days until they can come back to the beach for another wild weekend.
To read an excerpt from Sharehouse Confidential, go to Johnblesso.com. For more information on the Chance beach house, visit Chancehouse.com.


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