Fire Island

This weekend Cat, Beth and I decided to go to fire Island. It had been that or Woodstock. I had thought the weather might not be that good and so had suggested Woodstock, but as it turned out it was beautiful. The trip was ill planned and we had nothing to put into my GPS so I entered the name of the town Beth had said the ferry left from and found a bar address to put into my GPS. When we arrived at a ferry stop we had the choice of going to 'The Pines', 'Cherry Hill', or 'Sailors Haven'. We asked for some advice on this from a guy who immediately suggested we might enjoy Cherry Hill, on closer questioning it became clear that this was the Lesbian beach; The Pines was gay and Sailors Haven was a nature reserve with no bars and restaurants (definitely not for us). The Pines it was. I like watching gay men and we certainly weren't off to the beach on any kind of man hunting mission. The ferry ride was lovely (and very gay - there was no doubt where we were heading). I was distracted by a sex conversation, between two cute French men, behind me when I was trying/ pretending to read my people magazine. When we arrived we decided to stop for lunch and a few glasses of wine. We talked about our plans for summer and life, men, the usual things a group of girlfriends discuss over wine. Here are Beth and I waiting for the food to arrive:
Then we grabbed some ice creams and walked down a typical little boardwalk path to the ocean side of the Island: A few years ago, Cat and I had done a house in Kismet. The Pines is much more well kept than Kismet. All of the gardens are impeccably manicured: and the boardwalk all neatly repaired - yes we were definitely in Gay town. The beach was lovely - clean, breezy, crashing waves. I had two swims, Cat came in once and Beth was too much of a baby to get in. The water was cold but I don't mind that when you can get out and warm up in the sun. I like the ocean here, lots of waves to play in. I had a good afternoon snooze before cat decided to spray my stomach with sunblock. Then tragedy hit. In a moment of madness I decided to try some of Beth's neutrogena sunblock on my face rather than my own baby sunblock. Yes the nasty neutrogena got in my eyes, onto my contact lenses, burned my skin around my eyes. The pain just got worse and worse. Beth wanted to go to the bathroom so I went and washed my face and took my lenses out/ replaced them, bought some visene etc. We then went back to the beach where I took the lenses out for 20 mins. My eyes felt better but I am blind with out contacts so I had to put them in again. It was OK for a while. Long enough for me to document the parade of guys walking along the Ocean front. Let me tell you gay guys certainly look after their bodies!!


I also took some vid of the waves crashing - one of my favorite sounds in the whole world (I also like the sound of scuba tanks clanking together when dive boats get loaded up in the morning, and rain on car roofs and tents):

The walk back to the dock was painful. We found a restaurant and I had to take out my lenses all together and sit blindly and in a fair amount of pain. I hate to be a wet blanket but imagine putting fingers in your eyes after cutting chillie peppers - they were burning! A (straight) couple on the next table were having a very vicious row which made everyone feel on edge. We moved seats and managed to get back to a nice conversation, despite the pain in my little eyes. I had Pizza and white wine. It was very nice and then we headed back to the ferry. The disco scene was just heating up as we left. This is probably a fun town to party in if you have some gay friends. Jerry is too old for this I figured so I have no one. I am generally good at staying awake in cars because I dont like it when passengers fall asleep if I have to drive BUT on this occasion I decided sleep was the only way my eyes were going to stop hurting. Today (Sunday), I am happy to report my eyes feel almost back to normal. Lessons learned 1. Only use baby sunblock on face; 2. bring spare contact lenses to the beach.