Memorial Day

Returning to the Pines as quarter shares this season, after we thought 2018 would be our last, is a little like an unexpected pregnancy late in marriage.  It offers a joyous, if slightly dull familiarity.  Fine weather didn't hurt.

Beach erosion remains a huge problem, although damage to the primary dune has shifted west.

This Cherry Grove homeowner has erected a rock barrier to stop the encroaching bay.

All in all, the Grove is looking better than ever.   A house on the eastern most walk aspires to Pines grandeur.

New signage, too.

Bicycles are everywhere.  If only all were riderless, like this "art" project.

Despite the recent takedown in the Times, aperol spritzes remain a Pines staple.

The Jones Beach Air Show peppered the sunny skies.

Central Park Spring

Flowers in Central Park enjoyed the cool, damp spring more than I did.

Blossom mass.

Hesitant trees.

Quiet contemplation of the park's beauty.

Tooting and tanning.

Different weather, different angles.

I can't recall the Sheep Meadow ever being as crowded.

The angel silhouetted at Bethesda Fountain.

Vita: Beautiful Bitch (2005 - 2019)

When Vita came into Thom’s life, he was still in his forties.

He and Joe adopted her from the North Shore Animal League.

They thought she was a beagle, like Bugsy, their previous pooch.  Thom never had a dog before Bugsy.  He insisted he didn’t like them.

Vita grew long and tall, like a German short-haired pointer crossed with Lucille Ball.  And just as rambunctious.  On an early visit to the Pines, she chewed up Steven’s designer glasses.  “They looked tasty,” said her haughty expression.

No dog ever begged more insistently than Vita.  But blame Thom for that.  He fed her chips constantly.

No dog ever tugged harder on her leash than Vita.  She gave your upper body a workout whenever you walked her.  Florian quickly figured out that a long run on the beach was the only way to tame her.

No dog ever escaped confinement more cleverly than Vita.  When Audrey and I left for a walk on the beach, she used the bulkhead to get around the fence and came galloping after us.

Vita introduced “mushy face” into our Pines house lexicon.  It made her look just like a Games of Thrones dragon and meant “Get the fuck away from me.  Now.”

Vita did NOT frequent dog parks or encourage canine drop-bys.    Like Downtown Abbey, we observed an “Upstairs/Downstairs” policy when it came to other housemates’ dogs, although she grudgingly tolerated Arko in her dotage.

Vita had no trouble making herself at home.

Vita always rode shotgun in Thom’s luxury convertibles.  He loved how people stared at them.  She didn’t give a shit which made her even beautiful.

So beautiful that strangers took her picture.  You see millions of dogs on Instagram, but how many people post shots of strangers’ dogs?

Vita made a BIG impression.   Just ask anybody who rode the ferry with her.

Thom clutched her for as long as he could.  Literally.  She was his life raft.

May she rest in peace.  In a place eternally stocked with chips.

Deja Vu

"Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50," an exhibit at the New York Public Library, documents the dawn of gay pride.

Societal attitudes about homosexuality have progressed almost as far as gay graphics. 

Now that the internet has saturated the world with instantly accessible porn, these early erotic materials seem quaint--and much more conducive to fantasy.

In 1974, shortly after my junior year at Columbia, an employee of Butler Library who was a dead ringer for Cat Stevens, invited me back to his place near campus on Manhattan's Upper West Side.  He said he wanted to show me an interview with William Burroughs in Gay Sunshine.  I stopped trying to repress my sexual orientation that night.

Clubs like the Mineshaft and the Anvil frightened me at a time when random fucking was a political act.  That fear may have saved my life.

An Italian artist I met in Central Park introduced me to Les Mouches, a private club near the old West Side Highway.  Like everyone else in sleeveless t-shirts and tight, button-fly jeans on the smoky, sweaty dance floor, Al favored the "clone" look which emphasized masculinity.  The thrilling night left me deeply conflicted.   I wanted a boyfriend, which seemed completely out of synch with the era's hedonism.

A brief section on "love" notes there aren't many contemporary images to choose from because most gay couples kept their lives very private.  

If only a photographer had been on hand the night David, my live-in boyfriend, and I crashed a black and white masked ball at the Library, where I worked from 1978 to 1983. We danced with beards and I don't mean facial hair.

But by then, AIDS already had begun stalking the Library's  marble halls, claiming one of its first victims.  Nobody knew what to call Spencer's illness until the New York Times published an article about gay cancer in July 1981.  He was dead within six months.

David survived a decade longer.