As we go through another Pride Month, all of June is dedicated to the continuing struggle for equal rights and to remember the stories of the LGBT community in a fervent bout of nostalgia.
But nostalgia is for realists, for those with a firm grip on their lives, who have lived long enough to know what is worthy of remembering and what isn’t. At thirty-one living years of which I have been “out” for ten, there is very little to claim as nostalgic copyright. I dispelled with most of my religious affiliations, cultural misogyny and Facebook friends as a primer for my new homosexual member tag and so was hungrily taking in all the media and literature on LGBT history. I started reading the works of gay writers, watching documentaries and looked up all the references made on “Will and Grace.” On reading “Angels in America” and “The Normal Heart,” I decided that Central Park, the West Side Piers, and Fire Island were my geographic familiars, not even knowing where they were. Things are different now.
When asked to describe Fire Island, one goes on about all the parties, the revelry and the sex before calming the conversation down with “but it is also very peaceful and beautiful.” I’ve never spent more than a weekend there and seen most of it through high-unpainted picket fences and thickets of trees overlooking a patio. From the beach, which is usually the only egalitarian part of the place, I’ve watched yearningly as men in speedos stroll onto their front decks, perfectly poised in front of a lavish beach house. Most of them made up of outsized glass doors and windows that seem to prop them up, impossibly robust and withstanding the strong winds which are preventing me from standing straight. As the sea sprays over these men who seem like mirages from the 1970’s, they take another sip of their mimosas before retreating to their deck chair, ready for a day of sun atop their citadel. The rules for the stratification of the demographics are different here; the haves and have-nots are separated by those with a pool, or hot tub, with a view of the sea or six-pack abs.
The town itself is devoid of roads, the urban grid a network of boardwalks flanked by tall grass, fences and trees that form a green arcade from the boat-dock to the beach, limiting the seeing eye in a way that seems deliberate, conducive to the closeted lives that have fostered this mythical place. A place replete with the activities of men loving men has given rise to buffers I’ve never seen anywhere else. The buildings seem to witness too much that they cannot divulge and so the fences are higher, trees more opaque and the welcome signs more selective. This hides the architecture and results in discreet entrances whose only confidant is the beachfront. A majority of the houses are inland and are their own sanctuary. The scale of the boardwalk and the height of the human sans automobile increase the claustrophobic nature of the place.
In the film “A Single Man,” the character of George Falconer tells his younger boyfriend “We aren’t ready to live in glass houses,” to which the young boyfriend replies, “Don’t you know, we are invisible.” The houses on Fire Island open up unabashedly to nature and use nature and the dunes to hide behind. Living and loving freely is a luxury that perhaps comes with these curtains, willingly or hesitantly drawn over these underrated pieces of art and architecture?
Starting in the 1950’s, architects like Harry Bates, Michael Kinlaw and Horace Gifford worked on transforming the fragile landscape of the island into a summer village for their wealthy clients. Documented beautifully by architect Christopher Rawlins on the website https://www.pinesmodern.org/, the creations of men, most of whom were lost to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s, are stunning examples of composition and geometry. There have been a few books about these houses and more recently a renewed interest in their restoration. Not to be caught out of context and devoid of taste, a lot of the construction that followed the 70’s and 80’s has followed the vocabulary of the place with similar usage of wood and glass, some painted surfaces but never more vivid than a light beige.
More recent additions like the Pines Pavilion by Hollwich Kushner Architects takes on the wooden truss and renders it to the scale of the building, betraying only through reflected pulsating light, the frenzy of the cavernous dance floor it envelops. It is the very texture of the boardwalks of the Pines that renders the design into such a seamless addition to the town.
This time of the year evokes the ghosts of many a lost talent who seem to rise up from forgotten bars, crumbling piers and unrecognizable landscapes, envisioning glass houses of the future with nothing to hide. They walk alongside us, whether in a parade or through a green canopy of trees that has a bright golden beach and clear sea at its end. Perhaps their peace depends on the acknowledgement, preservation and appreciation of their legacies. Maybe misplaced nostalgia does just that; establish a kinship with a family we are not related to, and eventually make sure that our history is not just another castle on the sand.