Muscle T's and Nuthuggers

Ah, summer. I have no idea who the model is, I lifted this shot off some commercial site that sells muscle t's. It's fairly obvious who the target audience is.

And speaking of Muscle T's and Nuthuggers, my friend, whom we'll call "Beautiful Bill" because (a) I know him from a 12-Step group and I have to preserve his anonymity and (b) he is beautiful, has invited me to come spend a weekend this summer in his house on Fire Island. Bill is a big pooh-bah with a big designer label and, prior to getting sober and dumping his boyfriend of 13 years, would spend summers out in the Hamptons with a bunch of people nobody can stand, including each other.

Now that he's single again, and sober enough to face it, he decided to head back to every gay man's east coast Mecca, Fire Island (either the Pines for the upscale crowd or Cherry Grove for the trashier queens and/or lesbian contingent).

In all my years in New York I only ever made it to FI once, exactly 20 years ago this summer. My then boyfriend dragged me out there one Saturday and I decided it was such an ordeal to get there that only wild horses could drag me back. Now that I'm sober, of course, I realize that the real ordeal was being with him all day and that that may have somewhat colored the entire experience for me.

A weekend on FI all starts with a Friday train trip from Penn Station. Call in sick and be there at 7:00 a.m. After several hours of train travel and/or heavy-duty cruising, hundreds of raving queens make a mad dash for the 10 taxis that await them in the sleepy bayside town of East Sasquatch. The taxis drive you, oh, 40 or 50 feet, overcharge you, and dump you at the fairy landing, er, ferry landing. I should add that, due to the fact that a can of tuna will set you back a hundred bucks on FI (everything comes from the mainland via boat, at a premium), everyone arrives for the weekend bringing TONS of food that they've prepared at home. Consequently, the 100's of queens jostling for places in lines are loaded down with billions of pounds of tuna casseroles and potato chips, which is served for breakfast, lunch AND dinner all weekend long.

Once aboard the ferry (really more like a WWII D-Day landing craft than an actual "boat") you chug along through the bay out to the island where, upon landing, you cast about for a child's little red wagon to deposit all your crap into. This is the major mode of transport on the island. There are 4' wide boardwalks about a foot off the sand (less chance of seriously damaging yourself when you fall off in a drunken stupor that way) that connect all the houses, bars and restaurants on the island. And if you're schlepping (translation: "toting or lugging along behind") baggage and/or food, you really need the wagon.

Finally arriving at your weekend abode at the crack of 4:00 p.m., you're ready to unpack all your crap and head on out for an evening of FUN, FUN and more drunken FUN. Or for a really long nap. I'd opt for the nap. Until Saturday morning.

(to be continued)