penultimate pines

It’s autumn already — at least in the mind of my BF. On Friday he said, "Can you see how the light has changed?" meaning that the season doesn't look like summer anymore, even though I'm not sure I agree with him.

I will say I found the nights cooler on Fire Island this weekend than they were when we were out for Pines Party two weeks back. This was the fourth of our five weekends in the share on Shore Walk, and there was much talk of lasts, with a quiet understanding that our next scheduled visit in late September could very well be too cold for beach or pool time. The mood in the house felt somehow more morose, partly due to the notable absence of one housemate who couldn't make it out, and the unexpected presence of several additional guests, swelling our house's normal six to 10.

Saturday evening a gracious friend invited us over for a dinner party, the kind of meal that soon becomes legend thanks to its food and company. Ages at the table ranged from early 20s to middle 50s, all gay men. There was a discussion of lifespans, how American life expectancy seems to be decreasing due to obesity, and how studies imply that even with the best of all possible conditions the human organism can't hold together for more than 120 years. Later, the host brought up the film Longtime Companion, and mentioned that the lion’s share of the guys he knew on the island in the late 1980s are now deceased. Sitting among this crowd of sharply dressed, successful gay men, it was tough to imagine us as the generation that missed the plague, but just barely.

I left dinner thinking about the end of a summer and the way we process the past. There's a troubling sense that I didn't accomplish quite what I'd hoped with our island outings this year, though I can't say exactly what those goals would have been in the first place.
Sitting by the pool today, waiting for our 5:55 p.m. ferry, the BF said that he was glad of one thing: "At least it felt like we had a summer this year." He was referring to the particularly dull summer of 2004, our first in New York, when we sorely missed the pool parties and overall splendor of summers in Atlanta. More nostalgia, yes, but on this point, we agree.