One of the great things about being on Fire Island is that it has very patchy cellular service and that, combined with the fact that to get there you must go on a ferry for half an hour and once you arrive there are no cars, makes for a real feeling of escaping from the rat race and being in a sort of bucolic queer culture bubble. I like it.
My show on Friday at the Whyte Hall was really fun. Thanks to everyone who came along and sorry to those who couldn't get in. This first picture on the right is of us rehearsing and working out the running order! I did a new song for the first time: Jerry Herman's I won't Send Roses from the musical Mack and Mabel. I sang it because Jerry Herman had donated the piano that Lance Horne played onstage with me, and also some of my happiest times on Fire Island happened in my late dear friend Beau Clarke's house, which had been previously owned by Jerry Herman. There was a loo that still had Jerry's zebra skin wallpaper and a framed award on the wall that he must have forgotten to take with him when he left.
Saturday was a blur of seeing friends and swimming and having a massage and eating delicious food looking at the ocean. I know, exhausting, right? Last night was the huge Pines Party on the beach. It's an annual big dance party which benefits the Fire Island Pines Property Owners' Associaton Charitable Foundation and the the Stonewall Foundation. So all in a good cause, and every year it is a real event. This year's theme was Poseidon, and there was a whole compund on the beach built to resemble the Lost City of Atlantis.
There were little tents where you could be covered in glitter, masseurs, dancing water nymphs in cages, and lots of dancing people having a good old laugh. Right now I still have glittery nail varnish on and in the morning I am back to playing Eli Gold in The Good Wife. Wouldn't it be funny if Eli was a secret raver?