At the end of his tandem review of my three memoirs, Ambidextrous, Men Who Loved Me, and A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay, the respected critic Jesse Monteagudo, referring to the last of the three, wrote in a weekly online magazine, Gaytoday/badpuppy.com, that “Picano’s Fire Island excluded eighty percent of gay men.” He then appended a note indicating that 98 percent of these men died—as though there were somehow a cause and effect. The first statement is patently untrue. And, while the second sentence is accurate—it’s an approximate quote from the book—the linkage between the two statements is a problem, imposing an implied censure and blame directly upon the several thousand victims of AIDS and its ravages.
WHAT WAS Fire Island Pines and exactly who was included and who excluded? From 1965 to 1985, the years that I knew it, the Pines was one of eight or nine communities on a long sandbar that had grown at the edge of the Great South Bay, blocking the southern coast of central Long Island from the Atlantic Ocean.
Early communities on Fire Island go back to the turn of the 20th century. The Pines was settled much later, in the 1950’s, as a “family community,” but because of its picturesque little harbor and its central ridge almost sixty feet above the shoreline, it soon attracted those wanting to build houses with great outlooks and views. By the early 1960’s, the price of property and houses had risen above those of the other beach communities on the island. Architects and designers of note from New York, at the time the design center of the world, began to tear down beach cottages and erect “architectural statements” in their stead. Odd, grotesque, brilliant, experimental, some small but most large and a few monstrous, the houses had a kind of grand ephemerality about them, even the most solidly fortress-looking. Those on the beachfront were subject to hurricanes and tidal encroachments—no matter: soon people like Calvin Klein, Halston, and Angelo Donghia had places in the Pines, and they were followed by celebrities like Tommy Tune and James Levine. At the same time, the boats parked around and within the little harbor grew accordingly in size and luxury. Elizabeth Taylor, Nureyev, and Burt Reynolds could be seen being entertained upon their gargantuan decks.
The family community had become by 1968 a mixed community. The Sandpiper restaurant began to transform itself into a nightly dance club and attracted younger singles until 4 a.m. Unattached gay gentlemen with a lot of discretionary income bought or rented those former family houses, fixing them up to increasingly high standards. I first visited homes like this—a stock broker’s rental—in the Pines when I was still a starving young writer. Already the place had begun to contrast sharply with the neighboring gay community, Cherry Grove, a more obviously working- and middle-class resort, where roughly equal numbers of men and women played. Nevertheless, despite the differences, interaction between the two communities was incessant.
By 1975, the era detailed in my memoir A House on the Ocean, a House on the Bay, many younger gay men and women had been “liberated” thanks to the impetus of the Stonewall riots, increased exposure about gay people in the media, and a heightened politicization. The newer generation, the “Stonewall Babies,” were by no means as affluent as their homosexual predecessors, but they were more numerous by far. Instead of alcohol they tended to use recreational drugs like grass, LSD, coke and early versions of Ecstasy. They listened and danced to rock, soul, and disco music rather than ballads and show tunes. Some, of course, were wealthy and had their own places, but most of the newcomers ganged up, sharing houses and even sharing rooms. As a result, suddenly there were a great many younger gay men, and to a lesser extent lesbians, visible in the Pines. Soon some members of the previous “Gin & Judy [Garland] Set” retreated to the Hamptons and other spots where liquor flowed freely.
This change represented a real democratization of gay life in Fire Island Pines. To be sure, celebrities still came out, and so did heirs to great fortunes like Johnson & Johnson and Campbell’s Soup. But the run-of-the-mill Pines vacationer was more likely to be a 30-year-old publishing editor, ad exec on the rise, or small business entrepreneur than a trust fund baby.
Rather than being racially elitistt, the New York City gay scene that fed Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove was one of the most Hispanic I’ve ever belonged to. Its main club off-season was Flamingo, named after Havana’s famous nightclub of the 30’s and 40’s. Flamingo was the brainchild of Michael Fesco and a group of talented Caribbean, Central American, and South American gay men. During the era I write of, the Sandpiper—the main disco of the Pines—had as its head lighting person a Cuban, Jorge Maldonado, who worked alongside his lover, DJ Howard Merritt. Among the many guest DJ’s at the Sandpiper were Junior, who came from the very ethnic Paradise Garage, and Flamingo’s own Ritchie Rivera, who was also a talented record producer.
Twelve West and The Loft were the main feeders into Fire Island, which meant that their regulars would visit, stay in the Boatel, or find shares at Pines houses. With increased casual contact came more couples consisting of an Anglo and a Hispanic gay man. In my novel Like People in History, the narrator’s two housemates are such a couple—as would have been natural in that era. Among my friends at the Pines were Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Colombians, Brazilians, and Venezuelans. Among the more colorful Pines characters were the artist Gustavo Novoa, the trannie runway model La Putassa, and the guy we called Santa Ana. Among the vast number of Pines-goers who died, probably a good third were men of Hispanic descent.
With African-Americans it was somewhat different, as might be expected in the America of that time—but not because of racist policies at Fire Island. To the contrary, I can recall being on the Manhattan-based Public Radio station with Isaac Jackson, an African American, the night before the 1978 Gay Parade in New York City, the two of us exhorting black lesbians and gays—ostensibly numerous among his listeners—to join us the next day. Few did. Years later, writer Jewelle Gomez helped explain why, and how much she and her African-American colleagues felt conflicted in those years between being black and being gay. Many of them had just settled into accepting “Black Pride”; going the step further to “Gay Pride” was seen as difficult, almost contradictory, given that many African-American leaders of the time characterized homosexuality as a “white disease.”
Among my own African-American pals of that era—who were in the group Black and White Men Together and the BlackHeart Collective of writers—only Dave Frechette came out to Fire Island Pines occasionally. Because Dave was personable, smart, and funny (although by no means a “beauty”), he was, like the other gay black men out in the Pines, “laid, relaid, and parlaid,” as he put it. Dave felt comfortable there and had fun. So did several other black gay men like Bob Brasswell. When I tried to get Dave to invite out other pals of color, his comment was, “Sorry. Too much competition.”
What’s more, middle-class Hispanics and African-Americans were welcomed in the Pines. So were gays without much money at all—especially if they were attractive, sexy, friendly, or knew someone who had a place or a share on the island. Then there were those gay men like my friend David “Miss Sherry” Jackson, who were willing to come out to the Pines on an early Saturday morning ferry and, in Sherry’s words, “look for love or adventure.” More than once I came upon him on the beach and invited him to sleep in our living room. “Don’t bother,” he’d say. “I like the challenge of finding a place on my own.”
Because Fire Island was also a state and federal park, anyone with the price of a Long Island Railroad and ferry trip ticket could come for the day, use the beach, walk around, find love, lunch, dance, drink, dine, and return on the midnight boat. I never saw or heard of anyone refused entry. (It is true that there were no public toilets at the Pines Harbor unless you patronized those restaurants and bars, and this discouraged daytrippers with no money at all.)
Far from excluding eighty percent of potential visitors, then, the Pines excluded virtually no one at all. Of course, there’s a difference between just being there on whatever terms and being part of the in-crowd, the “A list.” And yet, to draw from my own experience, it wasn’t until almost two decades later, at a dinner party in California at which I was reintroduced to an old Pines acquaintance, that I heard him say, “Felice was part of the A-crowd, but he was always nice to me.” I was never aware of any such classism, much less that I was considered to be on the A list. I simply hung out in the Pines with my usual city friends, although I sought romance and sex among the entire population, the way most gay men did and still do. I’m reminded of another friend who strove so hard to join the private club Flamingo in 1979. “But you can’t dance,” I argued with my pal, “You dress badly. You don’t do drugs. And you’re terrible sex! Why would you want to join a club that emphasizes all of your shortcomings?” His answer was simple: because everyone else wanted to join.
And let’s not forget that there were various elderly, physically out-of-shape, and by no means model-attractive guys who frequented the Pines year after year. One such retirement-age personality wore a transparently obvious wig and multiple gold chains around his wrinkled neck, and sported distinct cardiac bypass scars on his eternally bared, tanned-out-of-a-bottle chest. Whenever he entered Tea Dance people would welcome him with the chant, “Here comes Spare Parts!” Mean, you say? Perhaps. But it was also accurate and affectionate. Spare Parts would always smile, wave regally, then proceed to dance and otherwise enjoy his local fame.
Felice Picano’s three memoirs,including Men Who Loved Me, have recently been republished by Southern Tier Editions.
