It’s not surprising that Lucas Entertainment has taken Fire Island as the base for a series of pornographic videos. The island has long loomed as a mythical sexual Xanadu in the gay imagination.
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By KEVIN SPENCE
Friday, June 13, 2003
On Monday, June 9, the New School hosted a panel, the first of a series aimed
at gay men and lesbians, that discused how Fire Island has impacted on gay culture
and the gay imagination.
At “Desire in the Dunes: Fire Island and the LGBT Imagination,”
five panelists — noted authors and researchers of Fire Island, moderated
by former Out magazine’s president and editorial director, Henry E. Scott
— dissected how poets, novelists, journalist and photographers have claimed
the island as both a paradise and a place of the lost since initial media attention
it received in the 1930s.
While no lesbians formally served on the panel, author Esther Newton, whose
history of Cherry Grove is considered a standard text, spoke authoritatively
about that town’s contributions.
Poet and author David Groff said the oasis was, for some, “Our Pinesburg,
Ohio,” or “a cruise-fest on a strip of land, the closest thing we
got to a small town.”
The symposium began with a brief discussion of how Fire Island was different
than other gay seasonal colonies, like Provincetown, Russian River or Rehoboth
Beach.
Noted author Felice Picano, a founder of the Violet Quill, a loose-knit group
of early gay-liberation writers and journalists, had written his own statement
about the Pines, “A House on the Ocean, House on the Bay.” Picano
believes the island was unique, especially in the 1970s, because it was “something
hidden and off color.”
Dave Nimmons, former president of the Center and author of “South Beneath
the Skin,” an examination of gay men’s lives, has been studying
cultural change among gay men through a Revson fellowship at Columbia University.
The predominately gay summer communities of the Pine and Grove were unique and
prosperous because of proximity to the “largest gay, metropolitan population,
post World War II,” Nimmons said.
Tom Hansen knows Fire Island history, and he is island’s history. As
Pansy, Hansen instigated the July 4 Invasion of the Pines from Cherry Grove,
after he was denied service at a bar dressed in drag. The annual event is now
the biggest celebration in both communities.
“P-Town, what’s so gay about that?” he asked. “I don’t
like going to a gay community with a CVS.”
He pointed out that Johnny Carson first associated “Fire Island”
with homosexuality on his television show. Contrary to popular myth, said Hansen,
the male population on Cherry Grove is and was always greater than that of the
female inhabitants.
Tom Morgan, a former New York Times writer and GMHC board member, recently
purchased a house on Fire Island with his partner. He brought forth his initial
false perception of it as a racist community.
“I was worried I would become too old to go out there,” Morgan
said. Today, however, he said, the younger members of the community have their
own unique contribution to make. Many of the older men are supportive of each
other, he added.
Fire Island has endured police repression, AIDS, hurricanes, and even a rapist
in 1979. Picano said it was the “first time we locked our doors.”
Talking about exclusion, Groff mentioned that the “A-list exists in the
mind of the B-list,” causing many in the audience to laugh.
“Fire Island Pines was exclusionary,” Hansen countered. “There
was an absolute fight to keep us out.”
Hansen added that Cherry Grove, a community of 273 homes, is limited by land
that prevents its growth, unlike its larger neighbor, Fire Island Pines. “We
have beach houses, we don’t have the freedom to build Lincoln Centers,”
Hansen said of the mega-mansions that have arisen in the Pines since the early
1980s.
Of the social life in Fire Island Pines, Groff likened the Pavilion, the dedicated
nightclub there, to “subway at rush hour, except more crowded and less
friendly.”
So what, Scott asked, likes in the future for the Pines? What about reports
that the Pines has been skewing older and older in recent years. “It’s
a place for the young,” Morgan said.
He hoped it would remain that way, despite the high cost of living there, because
of the excitement which emanates from young people. “The Isle of Lost
Boys,” was a term Picano thought appropriate to depict Fire Island.
Groff raised the issue of nature and erosion. To him, “The Pines was
meant to erode and disappear, as we are.”
One audience member raised the topic of drug use, education and death. Most
of the panelists agreed that drug use was integral to the Fire Island experience.
On most occasions, drugs could not be separated from encounters on the summer
sanctuary, they said.
Despite the prevalence of mind-altering substances, however, norms fell into
place about when and where to use them, according to Picano. A practice of harm-reduction
guided users, said Nimmons.
Picano emphasized that Fire Island ers did not ignore or exacerbate the problem
of living or dealing with AIDS. In fact, he said, “had it happened to
another minority, it would still be continuing.”
Morgan added that when he was sick, over one summer, he was pleasantly surprised
by the empathetic and generous nature of those on the island.
Henry Scott, who serves on the New School’s junior board of trustees,
says he hopes to bring in more such discussions. Upcoming symposiums include
“Advertising Stereotypes: Are Gays Cutting Edge of Just Cut Down”
and “Life and Death: Whose Rights? Whose Decisions?”
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