Jesse Monteagudo: Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer who has been writing book reviews since 1977. He receives e-mail messages at jessemonteagudo@aol.com online. This article was originally published in Gay Today (Vol. VII, Issue 78). It is reprinted with permission from www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com online.
A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay, first published by Faber in 1997, owes its Proustian title to the layout of houses on Fire Island Pines, the gay resort where Picano lived for much of the 1970's. Here we read about Picano's emergence as an author, and the publication of his first novel, Smart as the Devil, in 1975. Though Picano's literary exploits are interesting enough, they pale in comparison with the author's adventures on Fire Island, as part of a gay elite that flourished in this golden decade between Stonewall and AIDS. Picano's description of the “Gay Two Thousand” is by itself worth the price of this book, and deserves to be quoted at length:
”[T]his large group of gay men were all more or less professional, all more or less successful, and ranged in age in 1975 from about twenty-five to thirty-five years old. They used recreational drugs to one degree or another, loved going out dancing all night to good music about which they were knowledgeable, were extremely physically healthy and often worked out their bodies to look even better, generally possessed high self-esteem, and were sexually liberated and believed that one should share one's self-esteem, worked-out body, and handsome face with as many other handsome faces and worked-out bodies as possible, whether in a couple, trio, or larger gathering. While romances, summer-long affairs, and even long-term “marriages” were much approved of - indeed the ideal - and “golden couples” . . . the examples everyone wished to emulate, shorter-term relationships, including one-nighters, orgies, public sex in the bushes or on the beach, were also considered okay, so long as they were done with some style.”
Picano's recollections of his Fire Island youth ignores the fact that his “Gay 2000” was an exclusive club that left most of our community out in the cold. But Picano is entitled to glorify his past, especially since 98% of the 2000 later died from AIDS complications. Picano, one of the survivors, is right to immortalize this bygone age and the bygone men who populated it. A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay is a fitting memorial.
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