VOTED OFF THE ISLAND...OR NEVER LET ON

I recognize my dismay this week at seeing Fire Island celebrants forgoing social distancing and face masks goes beyond a health concern. In any other year, similar pics would still ruffle me. Oh, the frivolity! The shallowness!

And, yes, in any other year, they could snap back, “Envious much? Looks like someone doesn’t know how to have a good time.”

If the retort stings a little, it’s because there’s some truth to it.

No one has ever thought of me as one of the fun gays. And never ever has a gay stranger asked to have his picture taken with me—And here I am with a hottie. A real sweetie, too!—in an attempt to boost his likes on Instagram.

Of course, I’m way past Fire Island prime. My Best Before date would have been somewhere around 1992. A few spritzes of Carolina Herrera cologne might have masked any sour milk stench until 1995.

It wouldn’t matter how much tinkling I did with a time machine. At no time have I fit the Fire Island brand. I’m more of an Island of the Misfit Toys kind of guy. (If you think I’m putting myself down, read this, my second most-read post ever...after the one about Ricky Martin, coincidentally a quintessential Fire Islander candidate.)

I’m pretty sure if I’d ever shown up in my twenties or thirties to board the ferry to Fire Island, they’d have refused my money and kindly suggested I spend my day at the Long Island Aquarium instead. A different kind of otters. Penguins, too! Let the overload of cuteness assuage the pain of It Gay denial.

Yes, even in my prime, I’d have been better suited for a spot on my very own Arctic ice floe than standing poolside in a Fire Island crowd, asking the frenemy beside me, “Do you think if I chew this ice cube it will make my abs look less defined?”

Abs. As if.

It’s a little too convenient for me as an “ancient” fifty-something to roll my eyes at the waxed and buffed thong strutters and say the party boys have their priorities out of whack.

Morning selfie, stepping into the shower. Low-fat smoothie. Work.

Another smoothie. Tweets about the Kardashian du jour. Work.

Tanning appointment. Gym. Post-gym selfie. High-protein, low-carb

dinner. “Real Housewives of...Salt Lake City”?? Resting-in-bed selfie.

Nighty night.

God, even without Trump and the coronavirus, 2020 seems like a mess.

Still, back in the day, my life wasn’t all that different. Sure, we had “The Real World” instead of “Real Housewives” and photos had to get taken to the drugstore or little drive-thru huts to get developed. (If anyone pointed a camera toward themselves and pressed the button, they would have looked utterly ridiculous and, dare I say, vain.)

There was no shortage of gym divas who madly tanned and toned between circuit party weekends. I attempted some form of parallel play, showing up without fail to Sports Connection for step classes, a weekly ab-cruncher session and extended weight workouts. My abs stayed absent and my butt never bubbled. For all my curls, I never managed to coax a bicep to come out, come out wherever it was. My impressive leg press load failed to add definition to my chicken legs. It was all pain, no gain.

If I couldn’t muscle up, I figured I could at least lose my love handles. The quest caused me to have a falling out with Ben. And Jerry. (I might not have turned my back had I known that they’d one day discontinue Coffee Heath Bar Crunch.) My fridge was full of nonfat products and six-packs of Tab. For a while, I think I was personally responsible for a resurgence of celery in Southern California produce sections. Num-num.

Alas, the love handles loved me too much.

If weights, twelve hundred sit-ups a day and nonfat cottage cheese had done what they were supposed to do, I might have become a different kind of gay. I would never have fully crossed over—always a geek and never a pill popper (rarely even Tylenol for a migraine)—but I might not have stood out for all the wrong reasons when I was It Gay-adjacent. I might have gotten a little recognition for all the time I’d put in and all the sacrifices I’d made in pursuit of the body beautiful.

I realize how sad that sounds. Pathetic even. I’d come off as so much more evolved if I claimed I’d always focused on what’s inside and if I’d easily accepted my body, flaws and all, never tearing up as Christina Aguilera sang “Beautiful,” never once calling Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” My Song. But I’m committed to being honest on this blog, even when it exposes the ugly parts of me (and, here, I’m talking about what’s inside). Truth is, I wanted to look good. I wanted to be looked at. My goal was always to find love but I thought, if I looked hot, I’d have options instead of defaults and booby prizes.

My friends crammed in extra sessions at the gym in the weeks leading up to the annual White Party in Palm Springs. I silently marveled at how their extra sets added the right kind of bulk while my body stuck to status quo. As they headed for the desert, I stayed home, sticking to my line that I couldn’t handle the heat.

Peripherally, I knew gays who showed up at Halloween balls dressed as shirtless firemen one year and gold body-painted Adonises the next. My most memorable gay Halloween party costume was as a Crayola crayon. I rocked it in head-to-toe yellow felt.

Even on ordinary Saturday nights at Rage or Studio One in West Hollywood, there’d come a point when the It Gays would send each other stud signals and shed their shirts to show off firm pecs and washboard abs glistening in sweat. Yes, their sweat was sexy. The stares they got were just rewards for all the time they’d put in. I served as a harsh Wall Street lesson: not every investment pays dividends. I kept my shirt on. Always. Once my pit stains got big enough from decidedly unsexy sweat, I’d slip out and walk far too many blocks back to my car alone, trying to shake that pesky Janis Ian song from my head.

Who knows what may have happened if my body had ever become Fire Island-worthy or even Friday night Santa Monica Rooster Fish-worthy (a spot for the non-West Hollywood gays). I’d struggled with an eating disorder for a decade before moving to Los Angeles and coming out. The gay scene didn’t cause my condition but it certainly made things worse.

Sometimes I wished I could somehow magically wake up and be straight. Among other things, it would have meant feeling safer walking alone at night, having less fear about getting AIDS and not having to edit my mannerisms. More than that, it would have taken off so much of the pressure to look a certain way in order to be looked at in return. It would have meant Fire Island never being on my gaydar and maybe a few photos of me lying shirtless by some Club Med pool, downing another Budweiser with one hand, proudly patting a Buddha belly with the other.

Blech. No Club Med. And no Fire Island. At fifty-five, I’m still adjusting to my own little island. Sometimes it feels good knowing my supposed prime is in the past. For many of us, “It gets better” gets even better with age.