Sketches of Fire Island Pines
by Michael Safdiah

"just for a minute, think:
if el nino washed away all of Fire Island, then where would you go" -Eric

I want to tell you about Fire Island, about how beautiful it is, and to ask that
you change the idea you hold of it's bad reputation, the scenes, the parties, the sham of status, glamour, sex, drugs, the promise that it will show you the way to stardom. Of course it might do all those things, don't get me wrong; but there's something more which moves me and I don't want you to miss it.

Fire Island is so tiny you can barely see it on a map unless you are looking for it. It's a bare sliver of an Atlantic Coast barrier beach just south of the Long Island south shore. It's been dubbed one of the five most beautiful beaches in the world. It's around 31 miles long, and an average of half a mile thin. Lots of small communities dot the island along its length. The two gay ones are Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove. They are neighbors, like sisters. Newbies like to make comparisons, but it's silly. The entire island is designated as National Seashore which is sort of a national park, in that it's protected from development and nature can run wild, which it does.

The Pines, the newer, larger and more residential of the two, is my home.  You walk from the bay to the ocean in minutes. It's a sandbar really. The ocean washed the sand up and created the island eons ago.  Deer run free and they're tame. Wild geese, ducks and swans nest here, crabs, clams and oysters are easily harvested and good to eat. Blues and Striped Bass run along the ocean, if you've never eaten a fresh-caught wild striped bass, you're in for a treat. The deepest part of the natural bay is around twelve feet. Across the six mile expanse of the bay you can see Long Island. There are no cars, and the streets are all wooden boardwalks which run like a roller coaster through the community, often beneath tunnels of shaded trees and other times past sandy patches of dune.

The wilderness area of pines, scrub brush and sand dunes which separates the two communities, is known affectionately as 'Judy Garland Memorial Park', or, the 'meat rack' for its reputation for sex-al-fresco.  Go there with bug repellent, and a sense of adventure.

There's one doctor's office (the best on Fire Island), three bars, one grocery, a meat market, a cinderblock 'hotel' and a community house which doubles as a church, meeting house, synagogue and theater. The grocery store is considered one of the best resort markets in the country for the quality and variety it offers.  The Pines even has its own phone book. To get here you have to take a ferry across the bay from Sayville. Like most of the great resorts of the world, it's small, rustic and somewhat isolated.

Therein lies its charm. There is the risk of its being ruined by commercialism, but so far it has resisted. Still, you can find just about anything here if you need it.

There are a few tiny guest houses and charming B&B's where travelers can also stay, but one needs to know where to find them, as the zoning laws officially forbid them. I recommend these. Call ahead and ask any local realtor, they all know what's going on. Or call me.

The place is tiny, but its reputation isn't. Every summer thousands of young men rent "shares" in houses with lots of other people they really don't know, they squeeze into small spaces and time slots in order to make their access to the island possible and to fulfill their dream of a summer romance which will last. Many of them have scrimped to set aside the money to pay for their summer shares and have forgone needed things such as decent apartments, clothing, restaurants, movies and a winter vacation. But few have spared the effort to pump up at a gym.

Hoards arrive on Friday evening and depart on Sunday - there are block long lines to board the Sunday departing boats, which have got bigger every year, to carry the increasing loads of people. The town dock is at the center of the residential community, it's next to a small commercial area. As the boats unload, passengers struggle with their burdens of Balducci shopping bags laden with foods for the weekend, plants, pets running willy nilly, luggage, household supplies, etc. You can tell who is having a party; big shipments of sodas and beer and sound equipment are the giveaway.

The ferry is the lifeline to the island, everything needed is carried here by either the freight boat or the passenger ferry. One important daily social activity is to hang out at the harbor to see who's arriving and to catch up on the latest gossip. Real estate brokers perch like lizards waiting to catch a renter or property owner to negotiate a deal. Networking happens here.

There is a web newspaper, just begining to publish, called the Fire Island Q News www.fireislandqnews.com you can get more info from there.  It focuses on the two gay communities on the island, The Pines and Cherry Grove.

Another unique event is the Annual Invasion Of The Pines by the 'Ladies' of Cherry Grove.

Every August a phenomenon happens here which draws people from all over the world. It's a  Dance Party Event  held on the beach to commemorate the loss of the community's members to the AIDS plague.   It was started to raise funds to fight AIDs, and it still does, even though the organizations doing it have changed from GMHC to The community's own government.  It had been called The Morning Party, and now, the Beach Party.  Thousands of  'Circuit' dancers all would descend on the tiny island that week.  It would be unusual to expect anyone to get sleep, or eat properly and of course you would often see these poor victims standing on the boardwalks in broad daylight looking dazed, of course, from the bad drugs they had taken, believing thay they couldn't possibly enjoy the event unles they were high.  OK some things dont' change.

Off season when most of the homes are empty, the few who are left meet the twice-daily boat to gather, see who's around and perhaps organize a dinner get-together for later. Spring finds me at the harbor celebrating the arrival of poz friends who've made it through the winter. The epidemic has placed us in a nexus of sorts.

Drugs are common, so are overdoses, broken hearts, dancing, all night parties, and the spectres of so many long and recently dead loved ones still celebrating under the skies on that beach. The beach, ravaged by storms and eroding, being replaced each year by property owners who want to preserve the island, (and their real estate investments) is a crossroads "for reuniting the souls of an epidemics' victims and survivors." Oh yeah, there's sex. It exists more in people's minds than in actuality. Though no one admits it, I think it isn't the sex that's important. It's connecting and intimacy that means everything.

Fire Island: it's an easy target for sleaze writers who use it as settings for tawdry books. Pap written to be read in an hour on a beach or by a pool, which tells the world what a debaucherous life people lead here. Cheap shots sell books. Only fools believe these authors have any compassion or respect for the poor bastards who buy their books or the culture they describe. The worst of it is that there are so many neurotics out there who believe the myth, who want to be a part of it, that they actually make it happen! Just like a nuclear reactor which has reached critical mass, surging on its own demented energy. Then it becomes a black hole of psychoses drawing them all in, spinning them around, and squirting them out to another part of the universe. Cosmic junk, to be reborn and re-aligned, and live again as another part of another entity.
Composite photo of tea dance by Eric K.
The good news now is that Tea Dance has been resurrected on Sunday evenings. The tears I saw in the eyes of the old timers (and in my own) made me realize how wonderful that part of the Island scene is, and how great it is that it is back online. I used to wonder what there was about dancing, dancing with my friends, because words are so important to me, but this transcends words. Dancing just is. And like making love, in the moment it exists, it is everything.

I hear this said too often:"This is Fire Island. It's okay to do it here."
It's usually the weekend people, the younger ones, the ones who haven't yet learned, who think that behavior which would be totally unacceptable anywhere else is the norm here. I'm speaking about being irresponsible and disrespectful of other people's feelings. As though one could leave one's integrity and human values on the other side, get on a ferry boat, become another person and the place ("when in Rome") excuses, nay, sanctions it.

This is my home. For the majority of the year, I live here to be near
nature, the woods, the beach, the wild animals running free; for the special sky which reflects the light from both the bay and the ocean. Yeah, it's the ocean. We're surrounded by water. And the pretty men too - their light shines!

I'm here looking for love, company, companionship, but also to fulfill the dream I have that I really will be the person I want to be seen as - and who I fear I may not be. My island, like any good lover, tells me the truth, sometimes it hurts. It's a crucible, searing over the heat of reality.

I come here to be alone, to meditate, to think and to get away. It is here that I find how beautiful it is, how serenely rewarding it is, to force myself to get together with myself. But let me tell you, my friend, that is a frightening and terrifying thing to do. Most people I know are scared to death to be alone like that. You must learn to let it become awesome. The perfect solitude the island affords is the component which makes an interesting mix. That solitude can be like taking a potent drug, where I have no control at all.

I come here to force myself to be alone, to see if I can. Each of us has an inner voice which whispers to us. It doesn't scream. And in these noisy times, you have to take yourself to a quiet place to hear it. The island is a perfect place for that.

I could tell you about the sunsets; the huge empty beach shared only with my dog Lulu and the moon; and the talks with God (yes, really). My petty desires pale in the unbearable beauty of nature, of deserted beaches and of skies which caress me every waking moment. Here, I need nothing - I have it all. I wonder why I would ever want to leave this and return to the city.

I stand in a crowd, and smile, yet I feel alone, and I walk to the beach, and thoughts of lovers and friends lost to HIV come to me, and I cry alone. Pound the sand and take my rage out on no one in particular. Ask the sky why this beauty - all of it, is there for me and not my friends, who I so deeply miss. By my age I am a man, yet I feel like an unconscious child. I want to love, and to be loved. Sexually I find nothing unless am loving the person, even if that love is temporary. I recall something I heard once, that each time two men meet, and fall in love, a clock starts ticking backwards, towards an inevitable end. I keep trying to disprove that.

If the rumors you have heard about my island give you pause and make you hesitate to come here and see for yourself, please come anyway. If it's a party weekend you have in mind come, party! Live a lot or a little. We party the best out here. But please take the time to get to know the special spirit of my island, it will seduce you, you have my word.