Fire Island Summer

Billions of humans have died over the course of our existence on Earth. The vast majority of mankind have been contracted for a single appearance on this mortal coil. Reincarnation has been reserved for Tibetan lamas, spiritualists, and the Son of God, for whom Christians have been waiting since his disappearance in 33AD. The religious prayed for his Second Coming. Prophets predicted the 2nd Advent on many occasions. The faithful had been disappointed each time.

In 1972 my friends John Gilmour, Tommy Jordan, and Mark McLaughlin, and I celebrated a psychedelic 4th of July in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

We were 18 and the Rolling Stones’ BROWN SUGAR was #1 on the AM radio. Our tabs of Orange Sunshine peaked on the banks of Saco River. The mountain stream rushing over glacial rocks speaking a primordial language. Our teenage ears listened to its teachings and we submerged our naked bodies in the rushing water. Tuckerman’s Ravine was still covered with snow. We were immune to the frigid winter melt.

A young boy emerged from the forest and asked why we were sitting in the water.

“To hear it speak.” Tommie answered without hesitation. The high school hockey star was the most spiritual of us. On ice his skating was almost holy.

“I don’t hear nothing but the water.” The 11 year-old stuck a finger in the river.

We cocked our ears to the current. He was right and we stood up shivering with goose-bumped skin.

“It’s Jesus.” John whispered with his retina opened wide. The South Shore native was devoted the Zeppelin’s House of the Holies. He thought playing it loud made him religious.

“Jesus.”

I might have been a non-believer, but I flashed on the youthful Messiah in the Temple. The boy was about his age. He had to have all the answer, but before we could pose the right questions, a teenage girl in a tube top hurried from the underbrush. She was skinny in her hot pants. Our prophet attempted to escape her clutches, but she seized him by the ear. Our ‘Jesus’ squealed in defeat.

“Don’t be talking to weirdos.”

She was about 17. Her eyes saw us for what we were and our trip flattened out for a half-hour. We stumbled over the rocks. The sun was hot. The river resumed its music. Its song were never played on the radio. We sang along with its lyrics until our throats were parched dry as the summer grass. Drinking the river was a sacrament and we crashed out under the pine trees. The moon was our star. It had been a good trip.

I didn’t witness any more visitations by a god, prophet, or reincarnation until visiting Fire Island in the early 90s. My cousin, Sherri, had flown in from LA to perform at ShowWorld in Times Square. She had been invited to weekend at a beachhouse owned by Robyn Byrd, Cable TV’s famed XXX cable TV spokesperson. Both of us could use a break from a stultifying heat wave and we rode an ACed train from Penn Central to Patchogue. A taxi brought us to the ferry. The ride across the bay to the sandy barrier island was a pleasant excursion.

Fire island is unlike any other beach community on Long Island and Cherry Grove was synonymous with the decadent gay lifestyle of the 70s and 80s. Anonymous sex in the pine groves. Fisting in the hotels. Orgies in the beach houses. The seaside Sodom was crushed by the AIDS epidemic and dying homosexuals sold their beloved shacks to friends, family, and strangers. The dynamics of the summer community changed considerably, however the beach life remained free and open. There are no cars. Wooden walkways connect the various communities. For longer trips residents hire a water taxi. The island is devoid of 7/11s and fast food. Most people cooked at home.

Robin’s cottage was on the beach. She had bought the house from a gay dying of AIDS. It had an ocean view. I figured it for $1.5 million. The retired stripper owed Sherri money from her TV ads. Her husband was cooking the books. Sherri told me to play nice, as we walked to the house.

"I'll get the money one way or the other."

The front door was open and we entered the house, which had been designed in the 70s for the now-extinct gay party-goers of Cherry Grove. Weathered wood and gleaming mirrors were a memorial to that Era of Errors. Robyn greeted us naked with two yapping dogs nipping at her heels.

“I never wear clothes at the beach.” The squat 40 year-old was 30 pounds over her prime. She bearhugged Sharon, who had several S&M promos running on her cable station. She hadn’t been paid for any. "I'm so glad you could come."

"The city is hell." Sharon dropped her bag on the floor and stripped off her tee-shirt and shorts. Her trim body was a result of endless hours at the gym. She posed for Robyn. "I still got it."

"I'll say," Robin ogled my cousin with desire and then eyed me suspiciously. “So this is your cousin?”

“Yeah, on her father’s side.” Sharon and I have been calling ourselves family for years into order to save time about how we met playing pinball at an East Village after-hour bar. Even we get bored of our old stories, mostly because we were trying to outrun our pasts.

“I can see family resemblance.” Robin squinted to examine my face more closely.

“Almost twins.” Sharon was straight out of Napoli and my face resembled either an Irish cop or Yankee sailor depending on the light.

Robin led us through the beach bungalow to our separate bedrooms. She showed us our rooms and asked, "Of course you could sleep in one bed, if you're kissing cousins, only I get to watch."

"Two bedrooms will be fine." I couldn't sleep with Sherri. Her snoring was world-class. I took the smaller room. I was the guest of a guest.

“Make yourselves a home.”

“When on Fire Island, do as the Fire Islanders do.” I thew my bag in the home and stripped off my clothes. I had been playing basketball 2-3 hours a day. The games at Tompkins Square Park fought off the toll of my evening beer-drinking. Neither woman surveyed my nakedness, as we went out to the beach. I swam in the ocean. The air was hot, but the Atlantic was cold. My body temperature dropped with every minute in the water.

Two hours in the sun torched my pale skin. I retreated for the shelter of the house. Sharon and Robyn followed a half-hour later. I was lying on the couch reading TRUE GRIT, a towel around my waist.

"Did you shower?" Robyn demanded with a harsh sharpness.

"Yes, with soap too."

"Just checking." The ex-stripper was making a concerted effort to hector me.

Her version of ‘mi casa es su casa’ was a mirage.

I could do no right. The sand on the floor came from me. Not her dogs. When I nearly shattered my kneecap on a glass table, she screamed that I was clumsy. Anytime I spoke with Sharon, she sat down with her arms folded across her flapjack breasts with her bulbous belly gracelessly shielding my eyes from seeing her loose-lipped virtues.

That night Sherri and I whispered in her bedroom. The thin walls of beach bungalows were not conducive to privacy.

"Robyn's not very nice."

“She's like a sleeping rattler. She doesn’t like men.”

“I got that from the little inquisition. I’ll tread lightly.”

I hid from her on the beach and exposed my naked body to the sun, thinking maybe Robyn hated people with tan lines. Sharon came looking for me. She danced along the shore without a stitch of clothing. Her body glowed LA golden. Mine had been baked a lobster red. We built a tent from driftwood and torn sails.

“So I think Robyn really likes me.”

"More love than like.” We had a good laugh. “Don’t worry about Bird. I’ll deal with
her.”

Sherri never received her royalties and for the three days of our stay Sherri miserablized Robyn’s life. My cousin was a top dominatrix and Robin a well-known bottom. Her husband was a cocaine fiend. I found his stash and cut it with crushed vitamins to hide my theft. Sherri and I hung out at the tent during the day.

Every noon a naked man in his 50s roamed the high tide mark. The bearded beachcomber carried a staff of driftwood. The tattoed bearded man’s body was covered with grey hair and his penis was enormous. Sherri named the tramp.

“It’s Schmoses.”

“And the staff of Schmoses.” I pointed at his unearthly shank of flesh. We later joked about Schmoses at the dinner table. Robyn saw no humor in our humor. “The man has a name.”

“You live here. What is it?” Sherri wasn’t taking any crap from the fatter woman.

“I don’t know.”

“Then his name stays.” She raised her wineglass. “Here’s to Schmoses.”

This joke became funnier the next afternoon, for Robin befriended Schmoses and we discovered the two of them in coitus by the pool. It was like watching a Neanderthal have sex with a walrus. I drank a bottle of Robyn’s best wine to obliterate the image.

We left the next day for New York. I never spoke to Robyn again. No great loss and I almost forgot about Schmoses until reading a BBC article how the Biblical Moses had received the 10 Commandments from Yahweh while high on psychedelic drugs, since the concoctions from bark of the acacia tree were an essential ingredient for religious rites in biblical times. Having spoken to Jesus in the White Mountains on LSD, I now understood the mysteries of Schmoses lay entirely on his staff.

His cock was really long and not only does Schmoses live, but his schlong grows longer with each telling of the tale.

Such is the miracle of reincarnation.