Bookstack posted my meditation on Felice Picano’s Fire Island memoir, A HOUSE ON THE OCEAN, A HOUSE ON THE BAY (Ocean/Bay). This important work has been reissued by The Library of Homosexual Congress, an Imprint of Rebel Satori Press, for Pride Month.
Picano also captures the texture of queer communication. He has a genius for dipping into the language of a “dish session,” or gossip, as it was known in the day. The tribe has other names for it today: spilling the tea, having a kiki. It’s a linguistic mode endemic to queer people who for most of their lives read vociferously, looking for clues about themselves. They had to observe the world carefully as a survival tool, and they had to take great care at how they expressed themselves. Safely among their tribe, their capacity for expression was unbound, and it would come out barbed, quick, and camp.”
Also quotable to commemorate this weekend: “Somewhere in this community split—mediated by the fecund soil of the Meat Rack—dwells the genius of Fire Island. The lore of the annual July 4th Invasion of the Pines is emblematic of this genius. A drag queen from the Grove was turned away at a bar in the Pines, so he went back to the Grove and rallied his friends. They returned in full force with everyone up in drags; the uptight floor manager of the bar couldn’t help but laugh and comped them. Contemporaneous with Picano’s sojourns, it has been commemorated every year since with an Invasion via ferry. I know I’d rather celebrate this act of gender rebellion than a jingoistic fracas drowning out broken promises. This is the narrative of refuge and resistance (even at times to our own impulses) that Ocean/Bay chronicles.”
Happy Invasion ⛴️💃🏽