Lionel Shriver imagines a believable and terrifying near-future when America's credit has been so depleted that "T-Bond" is slang for douchebag. You'll laugh at the trials of a four-generation family that includes an aunt clearly based on the author and who should be played in a movie version by Geraldine Chaplin. What is it that makes conservatives so much funnier than liberals anyway? Trump world is the good old days compared to this dystopia.
Put this in your pipe and smoke it, cancel culture!
I remember that the bar, that night, was more than ordinarily crowded and noisy. All of the habitués were there and many strangers, some looking, some just staring. There were three or four very chic Parisian ladies sitting at a table with their gigolos or their lovers or perhaps simply their country cousins, God knows; the ladies seemed extremely animated, their males seemed rather stiff; the ladies seemed to be doing most of the drinking. There were the usual paunchy, bespectacled gentlemen with avid, sometimes despairing eyes, the usual knife-blade lean, tight-trousered boys. One could never be sure, as concerns these latter, whether they were after money or blood or love. They moved about the bar incessantly, cadging cigarettes and drinks, with something behind their eyes at once terribly vulnerable and terribly hard. There were, of course, les folles, always dressed in the most improbable combinations, screaming like parrots the details of their latest love affairs--their love affairs always seemed to be hilarious. Occasionally one would swoop in, quite late in the evening, to convey the news that he--but they always called each other 'she'--had just spent time with a celebrated movie star, or boxer. Then all of the others closed in on the newcomer and they looked like a peacock garden and sounded like a barnyard. I always found it difficult to believe that they ever went to bed with anybody, for a man who wanted a woman would certainly have rather had a real one and a man who wanted a man would certainly not want one of them. Perhaps, indeed, that was why they screamed so loud. There was the boy who worked all day, it was said, in the post office, who came out at night wearing makeup and earrings and with his heavy blond hair piled high. Sometimes he actually wore a skirt and high heels. He usually stood alone unless Guillaume walked over to tease him. People said that he was very nice, but I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy; perhaps in the same way that the sight of monkeys eating their own excrement turns some people's stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did no--so grotesquely--resemble human beings.
David, James Baldwin's white, sexually conflicted protagonist, acidly captures the atmosphere of a Fifties gay bar where self-loathing flowed more freely than alcohol, and one that lingered well into my generation. Sure the plot is a more than a little overwrought for modern readers--death by guillotine, for example!--but Baldwin understands well how life in the closet led to melodrama. Although Gore Vidal, the first American novelist to write explicitly about homosexuality in the City and the Pillar (1948) romanticized the forbidden love between two men nearly a decade earlier, Baldwin considers its collateral damage, too.
"Well," said Hella [who has just confirmed that David, her fiancé, is gay] "I'm going home. I wish I'd never left it. "If I stay here much longer," she said, later that morning, as she packed her bag, "I'll forget what it's like to be a woman." She was extremely cold, she was very bitterly handsome. "I'm not sure any woman can forget that," I said. "There are women who have forgotten that to be a woman doesn't simply mean humiliation, doesn't simply mean bitterness. I haven't forgotten it yet," she added, "in spite of you. I'm not going to forget it. I'm getting out of this house, away from you, just as fast as taxis, trains and boats will carry me."
If ever a novel was custom made for a book club discussion, this is it!
Not even a pandemic could keep us away. I'd be lying, though, if I didn't admit that we tried to postpone our arrival for as long as possible. And due to international travel restrictions, we probably won't see Chris at all this summer.
Our first weekend was a doozy, even aside from that bird. Take for example, the mostly empty harbor and boardwalks on Saturday at 8 p.m., the rush hour of the Pines social scene. Typically dozens of people gather for the sunset.
More people partied on a docked boat (not this yacht) than at tea.
Wearing a mask on the boardwalk is de rigeur for the OK Boomer crowd. Less so for the Millennial Speedo parade.
I took the beach route to the Grove. Never have I ever seen a dead porpoise. So sad.
A Grove house made clever use of old license plates.
The Belvedere never looked prettier. Said one day tripping husband to his wife: "What IS that?" "Their church," she replied.
Boulders have been imported to keep climate change from swallowing bay front homes. If it's good enough for The Breakers in Palm Beach, I guess it's good enough for the Grove!
Our Pines bubble includes Victor and Tommy who hung a protest banner from their home. It retools an AIDS activist message from the 80s.
Still, this sign struck a nerve. What was certainly true for my first 30 seasons in the Pines isn't anymore. I counted 12 African Americans among less than a hundred people on the entire length of the beach one afternoon during the week when day trippers aren't as likely. Unscientific to be sure, but that's approximately the same percentage as is found in the general population. Just sayin'.
The Pines has never been as diverse as it is now. Whether or not it is diverse ENOUGH is another question, particularly when it comes to home ownership.
Pandemic or not, some aspects of the Pines remain unchanged. Like the beauty of the newly replenished beach. Let's hope that freshly planted dune grass takes root.
And the meals. Keep in mind, these are the leftovers.
All too soon, it was time to go home again.
Randy isn't kidding around. He had to take the LIRR back to the city.
Ya gotta love the Flamingos of the Pines. They're always up for a theme and usually it's for a community cause. This year, all but one is wearing a mask. A sign (you can't see it in this photo) advises "Don't Be That Bird!"
Of course I didn't know this when I boarded the ferry for our first, slightly nervous visit since the pandemic. Mostly, I wanted to document the oddity of people on the upper deck wearing masks to cross the Great South Bay. I asked Varick to take this selfie because he and Thom were sitting in the first row. Note the man in the red mask coming up the stairs, just to the left of my peace sign.
He took the seat next to me even though the boat was mostly empty. Thom had waited in line for a couple of hours to make sure we could sit in the first few rows. I didn't notice he had removed his mask until he began coughing. The other photo bombers complied with ferry policy.
Yep, Robert Feldman is THAT bird.
"I don't mean to be an asshole, but if you're going to cough, please put your mask back on." "It's a smoker's cough." "I don't care, please put it back on if you're going to sit here."
He refused.
"OK then, I'm going to report you."
"Do you know who I am?"
I proved I did by identifying him as the attorney who lost what he called a "gay pride trial" in the Bronx.
Probably not the best tactic for de-escalating our conflict but his arrogance really pissed me off. Downstairs, I complained to the young woman who was shepherding the 50% capacity crowd onto the boat. She asked where the man was sitting. I pointed to the bow.
"Was he wearing a red mask?" "Yes." "Oh, he's a homeowner." "You mean he's caused problems before? "Not for me personally but we know him. I'll say something after everyone boards."
By the time I returned to my seat, Feldman had put his mask back on and moved into the row behind me. If Sayville Ferry acted on my complaint, I didn't see it.
But Feldman continued to lean forward and make hostile, bizarre comments.
"If you know so much about me, you probably know about my porn site."
Varick put an end to his harassment by standing up, all 6'4" of him.
"Move back," he commanded. "Move away from him."
Welcome back to the Pines. Where homeownership, apparently, has its privileges.
Thom and I popped our quarantine bubble with Christine, a fellow snowbird who had returned to DC for unresolved dental issues just before the pandemic hit. She hosted us in her garden when we dropped off her Mini Cooper.
Pat and Bill invited us to dinner at their freshly repainted home in the People's Republic of Takoma Park.
Social distancing was the order of the day, of course, in the backyard that Pat has beautifully landscaped.
Bill cooked a delicious and colorful dinner: pork in mole sauce, sweet potato fries, guacamole, a tossed salad, and an out-of-this-world lemon poundcake.
In less than an afternoon's time, Thom and I had three times as many social contacts as we'd had during three months of isolation at the Folly.
The city, named for the wife of King George III, has been around longer than America and Virginia's history cannot be separated from our nation's original sin. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both owned slaves, and James Monroe proposed sending freed slaves back to Africa.
Even grandiflora magnolia can't camouflage the past or present.
The nearby Sprint Pavilion won't be seeing audiences anytime soon. Virginia, led by a Democratic governor and physician who somehow managed to hold onto his job after a blackface scandal, is still under pandemic lockdown.
The Paramount theater cracks a pretty good pandemic joke.
Historic buildings, mostly turned into stores, line the downtown mall.
Have you ever seen a smaller carousel?
A public blackboard gives visitors an impotent way to embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.
Will national protests finally bring down this memorial to Robert E. Lee, just a few blocks away? The city council voted to remove the statue three years ago, but romanticizers of the Confederacy took court action to keep honoring slavery and their Lost Cause.
No wonder some activists want to do more than write the names of murdered African Americans on a wall.
The Haven, founded by an UVA alum and a Hollywood director best known for movies starring Jim Carrey, provides a day shelter for the homeless.
Let's hope good eatin' and drinkin' returns to this college town soon. Students, too.
Waterbird sells canned cocktails made with American-grown, potato vodka.
I asked this man if I could take his picture to add to my collection of bicycle photos. He nodded, but didn't seem happy about it.
I probably should have just stuck with these.
We took a quick look at the University of Virginia campus. That's Thomas Jefferson in front of the rotunda. Covid 19 shut down Monticello so we couldn't tour the home where one of America's Founding Fathers impregnated Sally Hemmings, a woman he owned.
