Dan's Papers - February 15, 2008

A proposal on the table in East Hampton to limit house sizes is giving me nightmares. Literally.

The most recent version of the proposal states that the habitable space of a house can be 12 percent of the property size, plus an additional 1,500 square feet. That nets out to a 3,400-square-foot house on a half acre - reasonable by any standards.

Yet a member of an organization called the East Hampton Citizens for Fairness in Zoning complained that 3,400 square feet was not large enough for a single family residence. That thinking is the stuff of nightmares.

Specifically, it's a recurring nightmare that I often had living in the city, but never out here - until now. It goes something like this:

You're sidling through your tiny, cluttered studio apartment, inching your way past the ceiling to floor bookcases, around the upright piano your partner just had to bring along, carefully stepping over the enormous, immobile tomcats and heavy laden coffee table. You open a closet door to discover the incredible: On the other side, to your delight and amazement, is a room, beautifully furnished with a king size bed that barely makes a visual impact in the enormous space. The windows open out onto a balcony with an unrestricted view of the Hudson.

Then of course, you wake up. It was just a dream - the recurring nightmare of found space. As a Manhattan-ite for 20 years, I had this dream regardless of my "living situation" (a New Yorker's term of endearment for "home"). Whether I was asleep in the tiny room I first rented in a lease-holder's apartment, in the quieter bedroom of my own Upper West Side two-bedroom, or in the room that looked out to the Empire State building in my partner's spacious 1-bedroom in a tony West Village condo - I had the dream.

Sometimes it was the discovery of an extra room, other times an entire wing or even an additional floor. There was excitement, joy, a sense of relief and ability to breathe. Then, upon waking, that turned to abject despair.

I rarely shared this dream with others, out of house shame or fear of closer scrutiny. When I finally did, I learned I wasn't alone. Friends, neighbors and coworkers were also plagued by this tormenting fantasy. Apparently the physical and psychic need for more space is so powerful in the city that it had found its way into the collective unconscious. Like so many other neuroses shared by driven, A-personality overachievers drawn to Manhattan, here was another, manifesting itself in our subconscious during the wee hours.

Since humans were not intended to be in confined spaces - it is used as a punishment, after all - the stimulus for the dream is understandable in a town that besieges its inhabitants with a cluttered barrage of images, messages and density of every kind. A place where a need for space is literally, a dream.

So imagine my surprise when I had the found space dream recently, right here in the Hamptons - with its vast beaches, farm fields, and tracts of woods - as I lay in my spacious bedroom of my house in the Northwest Woods that I share only with my partner and son. We have four bedrooms upstairs, the luxury of a dedicated playroom downstairs. By most standards, plenty of space.

But there was the dream: On the other side of a linen closet (large enough to constitute a room by city standards) was another bedroom and bath.

Waking up, I couldn't believe I'd had the found space dream again. Why did I no longer feel that I had enough? The answer quickly became clear.

I had been reading too much about that size limit proposal set forth by town Supervisor Bill McGintee and his advisory committee. Ostensibly, the original goal was to block the construction of McMansions in the dunes of Amagansett - more castles made of sand. The proposal has gone through a few iterations, but still comes down to a 3,400-square-foot house on a half acre.

In the rest of the country, beyond the nonreality of the East End, the size of the average single family home is about 2,400 square feet - closer to the size of our house, with which I am quite satisfied. But that insatiable dissenter of the proposal had planted the seed of discontent. I blame him for my nightmare.

Isn't 2,400 square feet big enough? Won't people ever be satisfied with what they have, ever stop wanting bigger and more? Yeah, sure they will. In your dreams.