Last week, Michael and I went to Fire Island for the first time. Which was very…interesting. The whole place is sort of like those nature hikes I never wanted to go on as a little gay boy in Texas—with weeds and woods and chiggers. Except, with sex in the bushes. I mean, people (and by people, I mean gay guys) are actually having sex in the bushes! There are actual garbage bags slung from tree branches in order to encourage people to throw away their condoms and lube when they’re, hmm hmmm, finished. In fact, this is probably the signature act of the entire Island’s civic life.

Granted, I was born in 1979. I am, admittedly, a child of the Reagan era. I am aware that generations of gay men and women paved the way for me, making it possible for gay people to live bourgeois, middle-class lives. But speaking as a bourgeois, middle-class gay person, I would never, ever, ever want to have sex in a bush! What about Lymes Disease, was all I could think about! What about fleas and mosquitoes and sharp, pointy sticks! Why would anybody want to have sex anyplace without central air and heat! Much less indoor plumbing and, hopefully, room service. The whole thing is simply beyond my comprehension.

This aside, there is something deeply charming about FI. And dare I say it, innocent, in a way that’s difficult to reconcile with its well-deserved reputation for wildness. Fire Island is, in its own lascivious way, the enchanted forest. It feels worlds away from the huckster world of New York. There’s a summer egalitarianism about the place—a sort of hide-out democracy, straight out of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Or, more to the point, EM Forster’s Maurice.

The island functions as a sort of gay homeland, with its own right of return, and you don’t realize how at-risk you feel in the daily world (even in Manhattan!) until you arrive somewhere that feels so utterly safe. Somewhere that feels, moreover, as though it’s always been safe to the boys like you, who’ve always gone there. “Look,” our host said, “that’s where Auden lived! Over there, that’s where Jerry Herman wrote La Cage!”