This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Bob Levine: I've had a full share since 1984 and I actually haven't left since. I've had some wonderful times here. I've had horrible times here. I think the best of times was having the camaraderie of hanging out with a bunch of people I didn't know at the beginning, developing those relationships into long-term friendships, going out and having dinners with them, dancing with them at all hours of the night. Those were probably the best times. I think the worst of times were losing a lot of those friends. I had a group of let's say 25 guys and there are four of us left. All of them passed away and it got to a point where I couldn't go to any more funerals. I felt bad about it but you had to take care of yourself at that time. Why was I spared? I have no idea. I partied like them. I did my drugs and I did all that back in the day. I'm still here and I'm healthy and all of them are gone.

[1:19] Jess Rothschild: Welcome to Finding Fire Island. I'm your host Jess and this is Episode 7, Men Die and Women Buy. In this episode, we'll explore how the AIDS crisis was felt on Fire Island. We'll detail how the timing coincided with women finally earning more money and how this ultimately changed the demographics of Cherry Grove forever. On July 3rd, 1981, the New York Times published an article titled Rare Cancer Seen in Homosexuals, citing 41 cases of a mystery illness found only in gay men. The cause of the outbreak was unknown and there still was no evidence of contagion. The doctors who made the diagnosis were mostly in New York and San Francisco. The Times article led to the coining of the term gay cancer.

As this news started making waves in New York City and San Francisco, life in Cherry Grove and the Pines was pretty much status quo. The monster in the Ice Palace ruled nightlife in Cherry Grove and the pavilion was thriving over in the Pines until suddenly it wasn't. Pansy and Bob Levine recall the news spreading from the village into Cherry Grove.

[2:31] Pansy: I was very active in the village in a lot of groups including the gay bowling league and you know I was Miss Socialite. I did everything everywhere so I was really involved in it and it started in the city and I was coming to the Grove. Nobody knew about it but everybody in the village knew about it. We saw it. We saw it happen right under our nose. We had the restaurants like the Monster and the Sea Shack and they were packed before '81. There were lines to get in, people from Ocean Beach, from Seville. You couldn't get into the Monster, a two-week reservation on a Saturday. You had to call if you get there at 9:30, squeeze in, but it was packed and they had a piano bar and it was just a place to be and to go to.

So everybody from all over the island including the day trippers would come over and take the last boat across. In '81 we saw the crowds stopped. There were no lines. There were no crowds. That's how it started. It was a complete change from the early days and then the party stopped. Cherry Grove was forever changed during the AIDS epidemic. While men became very reluctant to go to a mostly gay male community, women didn't have the same fear around AIDS. The timing of AIDS in the early '80s also coincided with the second wave of feminism, mostly characterized by the women's liberation movement. Women made enormous gains in personal freedom, more women were working and for higher salaries. There was also a greater emphasis placed on women's health issues and reproductive rights.

More women than ever began putting down roots in the Grove. The Grove changed dramatically because of AIDS. That really colored the community for the future. Women were just coming into their own, you know, fighting for the rights and equal rights and equal pay. So women were becoming more affluent and so the women were buying as the guys were leaving. All our friends were dying, sick. They owned houses. They didn't come out anymore. Family sold their houses. So many people were afraid and they left Fire Island and went home to their families. So there was a lot of changeover and it became more populated by lesbians than it had been. So it became a very mixed community. There were many, many women and the women at that time were part of the group.

Liz Smith, who was a reporter, she was there at that time with her girlfriend who was a big agent. So they were all sophisticated women with big jobs. They weren't just going there for the beach. They lived there and they were part of the gay community and they fit in because there was no prejudice there of who you are. It was just terrific.

[5:42] Pansy: I was curious about a phrase that started to be kicked around Cherry Grove. Men die and women buy. There was a change and they say when the men started to die the women started to buy. Of course the women, they were making more money then and yes we had a lot of women come in but those women that came in were part of our, still part of the community. I don't know if you'll be able to use this but I'll say it anyway. The real phrase is fags die, dykes buy.

[6:18] Parker Sargent: The reasoning for that phrase comes from several different things. In the '80s as many men were dying quickly their houses were now available. Primarily because their families inherited these houses but who wanted to go to ground zero of the AIDS epidemic so they sold them quickly. They didn't even want to go over to those houses and a lot of these people were ashamed of their queer family members who owned these houses in Cherry Grove anyway. Up until the '80s when the AIDS epidemic struck who could afford to buy a house? Not a single woman. Also living in a world where pay equality is absurd. As the AIDS epidemic hit what you also had was just the societal uptick of equality for women. So women were finding more pay, they were also staying in longer relationships.

So now you do have a two-spouse income in your home. Now people who were angry about that and that's primarily going to be gay men were vicious with that phrase fags die, dykes buy. Or as people will say it nicer men die, women buy. I think unfortunately people were probably really angry about a lot of things with the AIDS epidemic and there weren't a lot of people you could blame. There wasn't a lot of people you could rage against. We eventually turned our rage toward the government but I think as a small community the gay men that were probably upset had this hateful phrase that they were using to express their hurt and doing it toward a new population in town.

[8:27] Diane Romano: I hate that phrase you know men die women buy because there was never a woman that said oh you know Sam is gonna die I'm gonna buy his house. I mean it's just a disgusting phrase inflammatory phrase made to put a wedge between men and women. So I think that's what that was a product of. It was a product of gay men who were scared and angry and didn't understand this new community coming into Cherry Grove, women. The irony was it was the women who were there to take care of their sick male friends. We took care of our men. That's what we did. They were our friends. You get there you go check on your friends how is he doing. You were in the hospital you were holding their hand you were making them soup.

You were crying along with them. These women were community members who kept our community queer. That in and of itself is important but the most important thing was they helped those men. They took them to their appointments. They made sure they had food. The idea that we could reduce them to such a disgusting phrase. I don't think that we but I want to always talk about it though. I want that to always for us to say this got said but here's the reality of it. And a lot of the women run all the organization. They're smart Diane Romano, Joan Van Ness and Lorraine are on every board. Those people made a mark in the community and they were important in Cherry Grove. It wasn't just the men. It was a horrible horrible time but when men died there were houses available. So now you have women who have been living there, renting, who have better jobs and now there's real estate available. Do you want to buy a house?

[10:40] Diane Romano: I spoke with Diane about how Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna were among the first public figures to stand up and encourage society not to ostracize men who are HIV positive. Dan also made the astute comparison to the fear around COVID. People were you know don't shake their hands. Don't touch them. It was scary. It was scary. I mean just like the beginning of COVID was scary because we didn't know if everybody was going to die. I mean the first year of COVID nobody knew anything. Right. You had people who couldn't bury their people who died. These were horrible horrible times because we didn't know. AIDS was a horrible horrible time because we didn't know. And it was killing a lot of people. When something kills a lot of people that's pretty scary.

[11:36] Bob Levine: I was among the first people on Fire Island to raise money for AIDS. He was actually friendly with former Pines owner John White and suggested they put on a show as a fundraiser. Bob still has the posters for these events in his Cherry Grove house aptly named Roseland. In 1986 we decided let's do a show to raise money. So I was friendly with John White in the Pines. He owned the botel. So I went over to John White. I said John you know what we should do a fundraiser for God's Love We Deliver. That was our first one. So in 1986 that night we raised three thousand dollars and they never got so much money at one time. Throughout the late '80s the Grove and the Pines continued to hold fundraisers in the form of costume parties for GMHC, HRC, SAGE and other AIDS organizations. We briefly mentioned the mourning party back in Episode 4 which ran from 1983 to 1990 as a benefit for GMHC, Gay Men's Health Crisis.

[12:48] Paul Rudnick: Screenwriter Paul Rudnick really paints a picture of what this annual day beach party was like. With the mourning party it also became a lot of it was in reaction to the AIDS crisis because it was a huge fundraiser for GMHC and I think for other organizations as well. So and that it was held in the morning which was you know this is not a crowd that enjoys sunlight. You know they enjoy it for tanning and cruising but there's still a certain no no no we sleep till four. But so this was a big deal that it was held on the beach. There would be an enormous stage erected and you know mountains of sound equipment and lighting equipment and often great dance artists you know C.C.

[13:28] Paul Rudnick: The Peniston family Houston people would be brought in to sing whatever the song of that season was and the place would be packed. That was one of those occasions where people came from all over the world and built their yearly schedule around that party. And also, there was a lot of wardrobe going on; there was a lot of, you know, wonderfully excessive jewelry. But it still was such a especially gay and such an especially Fire Island response to the health crisis which was decimating the island. I mean, the amount of people who were lost who were Fire Island regulars is just incalculable. But it seemed so appropriate that you would have this event that was also a celebration of gay lives that was raising money to fund the medicine and the research that was not coming from anywhere else, you know, because the rest of the world was aggressively ignoring the health crisis.

[14:20] Paul Rudnick: Paul explained how Fire Island was actually one of the very first places where the GMHC founders had boots on the ground actually warning men about the spread of HIV because it was still being ignored by mainstream news in the early 80s. The dock and harbor where the ferry comes in was one of the first places where the guys who eventually created GMHC were handing out flyers early in the AIDS crisis saying, "Guys, we have to be careful." And there was a lot of ignorance back then; a lot of people were throwing those flyers away and were very scared of it, which is also completely understandable. But they knew if you wanted to reach the gay community and you wanted to teach people about safer sex, you had to do it at Fire Island because that was where it was happening. So, yeah, there are moments when Fire Island has become so crucial to gay culture both in terms of pleasure and in terms of political awareness.

[15:26] Margaret Cho: I have been steeped in gay culture my entire life as my parents owned a queer bookstore, Paperback Traffic, in San Francisco. My Korean immigrant parents were inspired to create a gathering space for writers, artists, and activists, so one might say I was born into the gay community. Well, they bought the bookstore in 1977; it was a big gay bookstore. My dad always wanted to have a bookstore like City Lights because he wanted a bookstore that was like a community hub that would be sort of a political center in a neighborhood. That bookstore happened to be for sale, and it was where a lot of political things were happening in the Castro. He bought it, and we all worked there. I spent most of my time just sitting in the aisles just reading all the time, and then I ended up getting, you know, old enough to work there.

[16:14] Margaret Cho: It was so funny because we would have like these rolling racks or these like spinning racks of like gay romance novels like Cobalt and like Rouge of these novels with like drawings of young men on the cover, like a tank top and cut-off jeans by a lake, you know? It was like so beautiful. And then we had all those magazines like Drummer magazine and Honcho and Blue Boy magazine, all of that stuff. It's like pretty incredible all the stuff we had. And then we had like Skin too and like all those like fetish magazines, and then we also had like quite a lot of trans magazines. I remember like lots of different varieties of gay and lesbian periodicals. Like, I just remember like that huge variety and then also a lot of tattoo stuff. So there was a lot of different kinds of like sort of alternative publications coming out of my dad's store. So that's how I learned about all of this different kinds of culture that was happening, which is great.

[17:27] Paul Rudnick: And I assume that's how you made your first gay friends and trans friends?

[17:32] Margaret Cho: Yeah, they were working there for my dad. They were having all sorts of different life complications, having different kinds of relationships, polyamorous relationships, having lots and lots of different dramas, you know? And there was a comedy club upstairs, so that's where I just started doing my first performances.

[17:50] Margaret Cho: Fag hags are the backbone of the gay community. Without us, you're nothing. We have been there all through history, guiding your sorry ass through the underground railroad. Come on, girl, you need to hurry. Come on, we went to the prom with you.

[18:42] Margaret Cho: I had a front row seat to the AIDS crisis back in San Francisco and was able to shed more light on the sexism both ways that existed more intensely within our own community. The enormity of the death can never be overstated; nothing comes close to what was verifiably an apocalypse for us. It's just impossible to even imagine surviving it, which we did, which I think speaks to the resilience of the queer community. And also, before the AIDS crisis, the men and the women did not hang out. It was AIDS that brought the gay community and the lesbian community together because the lesbians realized, "Oh, our brothers are dying, and we have to do something." So I think that was the one thing that brought unity. I think it was because it was so much of a catastrophe that lesbians finally realized they got rid of their own misandry.

[19:38] Margaret Cho: So what was this undercurrent of tension between gay men and women about pre-AIDS? I think it had to do with a lot of the traditional things between men and women. It's sexism; it's that men hold more power in the world. They have more financial power; they have more social power, and women are catching up. And so it was sort of like classic. Still, sexism exists no matter if you're straight or gay, you know that's going to be there. But I think because of AIDS, that really brought us together politically, that we found more power fighting together, and so we could resolve our differences. Yes, we're the fighters and the instigators and also the follow-through. So I think that's really important to acknowledge, and I think that the gay male community really understands that too. I think the way that we continue to work together to root out our own biases within our community, it's really so amazing.

[20:41] Ben Rimalower: Sarah Schulman has written a lot about this. I mean, her big book that she recently wrote about ACT UP, Sarah Schulman, the writer and AIDS historian, who puts women and people of color back at the heart of the story in her oral history of AIDS and ACT UP titled "Let the Record Show." In her book, Sarah Schulman highlights how the works that have achieved the most widespread recognition, notably "Angels in America," "Philadelphia," "The Normal Heart," and "How to Survive a Plague," have been created by and largely centered around white men. You know, the role of lesbians and how it's like, I think that to some extent, lesbians had to sort of be the ugly red-headed stepsister of both the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s and of the gay liberation because it was run by men, mostly white gay men, you know, in the 70s and stuff. You know, and I think it really bit men in the ass when, you know, when they needed those lesbians to take care of them and be there for them and to be a movement with them in the 80s and 90s.

[21:43] Ben Rimalower: And I think what part of the story that Sarah is telling in her book is about how important those lesbians were to picking up the slack. And then because even though gay men are queer and second-class citizens as men, they were still a class higher in terms of earning power than lesbians were. And so the void left by the gay men, I think, that died opened up opportunities. And I think it's a beautiful thing that Cherry Grove was a pioneering place where the women actually really developed a stronghold. You know, I've seen how some of my younger male friends around 30 are befriending the generation two steps above them, 30-year-olds bonding with men in their 50s or older.

[22:28] Margaret Cho: Well, that's definitely what I have felt. There is a missing rung in the ladder. Also, there's the people that survived AIDS have so much unresolved trauma that it's hard for them to look at the younger generation and feel a sense of like wanting to parent because they're just missing that part of their lives too. But yes, like the millennial gay guys don't necessarily have that sort of direct older sibling father figure because of the way that our lineage has collapsed in that one 80s to 90s era.

[23:07] Paul Rudnick: Two years after their initial article, The New York Times finally published its first front-page article on AIDS in 1983. Two years later, in 1985, "The Normal Heart," a play about the early days of the crisis by Larry Kramer, opens off-Broadway. Rock Hudson, a legendary actor from the golden age of Hollywood and frequent visitor of the Pines, whose homosexuality was an open secret in the industry, announces he has AIDS. Media coverage of AIDS increases dramatically in the following months. Rock Hudson dies later that year. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan finally addresses AIDS in a speech to the nation. In 1991, basketball player Magic Johnson announces that he has tested positive for HIV and will retire immediately.

He doesn't elaborate on how he contracted the virus but later acknowledges that he had had unprotected sex with many women over the course of his career. Later that year, legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury dies just one day after announcing that he has AIDS. In 1994, "Real World: San Francisco" cast member Pedro Zamora dies. The 22-year-old broke many barriers on reality TV, living with AIDS with his housemates and dispelling many misconceptions.

[24:28] Paul Rudnick: Back in 1989, the film "Longtime Companion" was the first wide-release theatrical film to deal with the subject of AIDS. The film co-stars Mary Louise Parker and Dermot Moroni and was filmed in the Fire Island Pines. Current Fire Island drag artist Pixie Aventura remembers her first visit to the island not long after she had first seen "Longtime Companion" when she was 19 years old.

[24:52] Pixie Aventura: My first visit to the island not long after I had first seen "Longtime Companion" became special because a week prior to that, I had just watched the movie "Longtime Companion," which obviously was one of the first, if not the first movie that dealt with HIV/AIDS, and it was in Manhattan and Fire Island. So I had just seen what the houses looked like, and then seeing it in person, I was like, "Oh my God, it's still like this." And I remember we were wasted; we ended up skinny dipping. And as we're walking back from the beach at night, I just started bawling, but like not bawling because I was tired or exhausted or whatever. I was bawling because I just got emotional because I just remembered seeing that movie, and I'm seeing these houses in person right now. And it just was like, "Wow, this is a really special place," and I never knew it existed. It was me just in that moment just kind of feeling like there's so much history here.

[25:51] Parker Sargent: Parker Sargent's film in the Meat Rack documents the larger cultural significance of the famed cruising spot. This space of trees between these two communities known as the Meat Rack became a meeting place for these closeted men to meet more out queer men and have sex in some capacity. And so it became famously known, the Meat Rack, all over the world, and it's been in literature; it's been in movies as this gay space for sex. So that leads us to the conversation of, well, how does that play into the AIDS epidemic? Because here is this space that is just sex; it is just casual sex. So of course, when you think about this space of anonymous sex and that Fire Island was ground zero for the AIDS epidemic, you kind of have to think, well, what place does the Meat Rack play in the spread of that disease? I am certainly not the person to pontificate.

[27:28] Pansy: Queer men could come and learn who they were sexually. I always say, we're not taught to be queer. We're taught to be straight. Everyone is raised to be straight. So when we finally get the chance to hold hands or to have sex with each other, even just to talk to each other, there's a learning curve as queer people. That space provided freedom for so many men, especially in decades that were very repressed, to find themselves and to live a life that they loved. So when they were dying of AIDS, they still loved that space and they asked that their ashes be spread in this space because to them it was sacred. Now, of course, the spreading of those ashes makes that space sacred for other people who haven't passed.

For those of us who are left behind, who think the ashes are everywhere mixed into this sand, nothing goes away. It never goes away. Everything's recycled. A friend of mine who first arrived in the Grove in 1985 told me how when you would walk through the meat rack, you would just see piles of ashes everywhere with roses on them. There were also ceremonies at the beach to honor those who were lost with roses placed in the ocean. So whether I'm walking through to go to the pines for a function, or whether I'm enjoying nature, those spirits are there and so it is a sacred space.

[29:17] Pansy: Well, let me just say in my household, I lived in a place called Strawberry Hill. Four bedroom house is really lovely. Nine of our roommates died of AIDS. Nine in one household over those years. Pansy reflected on his Grove clique as well as his friends in the Village Bowling League during this time. So I don't know what else I can say. That's just, we were just one home. There are 283 homes. So, you know, multiply that by the residents. We were living it. We were living it and we weren't the only ones. That was going on throughout the Grove. There were a lot of women led by a woman named Amelia Migliaccio, who happened to be the sister of the man I fell in love with in 1969. Small world, isn't it?

Anyway, Amelia started a group and they used to bring food to the guys who were sick and living out there and help take care of them. So it very much brought the men and women together. That's where the community really got tighter and we were all getting over our angst and growing up in a community. So many people just left. I mean, it just changed. I mean, people left out of fear. You know, I don't want to catch it. So I don't think I'm going to come here anymore. I mean, nine people in, I don't know, eight years is a lot. And on our bowling team, we lost another seven. Now we were very social people. We were all sexually active. We were all active in drugs. So we were the prime community for it.

[31:10] Bobby Bonanno: As the 90s began and the health of many were still declining, gay men were very motivated to appear healthy. And AIDS did perpetuate the use of steroids, mostly because they didn't want to have wasting syndrome or look sick. Many doctors even started prescribing steroids. This transformed the look of men in the pines. Highly muscled physiques replaced the natural body types as bodybuilding became the norm. Yeah, I think the whole idea of weakness is what AIDS was about. It was a very bitter pill to swallow, literally, to watch people's bodies disintegrate. This is pines historian Bobby Bonanno. And I think some of the response to that was, you know, getting buff and having gay men, you know, look better than they ever looked.

And the whole physicality of a gay man went from that very natural physique, which has really made the comeback now to this, you know, hulk of a he-man with the short shorts and the baggy socks and that whole look of the 90s of gay men. And I think it was that answer to show people that I'm healthy and strong.

[32:29] Christopher Rawlins: I'm trained as an architect. So I originally started out writing a book about architecture. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that Horace Gifford was really a kind of cultural portal into this lost generation. Christopher Rollins authored Fire Island Modernist and provided a detailed look at architecture of pines homes in episode three. And Horace Gifford himself died of AIDS. And we really didn't know a whole lot about him until I wrote the book, because probably his biographer back in the 80s or something died as well. And that's something that others have spoken about eloquently, that we didn't only lose a lot of great artists to AIDS, but we lost their audience.

[33:24] Pansy: Finally, I couldn't help but wonder how the invasion was impacted by the health crisis. For this, I obviously turned to its leader, Pansy. Well, people more toward the later 80s wanted me to cancel the invasion because of AIDS. Some people felt we were spreading it. Some people felt, you know, it's mean to do to people who are sick, that they can't come. I mean, I heard everything. And my answer was F you. The invasion is a day of celebration for everybody, period. It doesn't matter what's going on. This is a day we forget the world and we just go celebrate. For me, I mean, of course, coordinating it and seeing everybody, it was almost spiritual. I don't think I've ever put that word to it. But, you know, back then before the cocktail, people would get sick and they would just get worse.

And back then it was physically worse. You know, with Kaposi sarcoma, you'd have sores and you would lose weight, you'd turn yellow. So if you had HIV, it would progress physically. You could see it, you know, and it wasn't until in the 90s when the cocktail came that things improved. So the boys would come and you would know who you could tell. You could tell some of them who were victims of this and they were having the time of their lives, which made me feel like I made the right decision because it's celebratory. It's inclusive. You know, people are afraid to be near AIDS patients. And I remember one queen came on in particular and she had Kaposi sarcoma. Kaposi sarcoma is one of the many types of cancer to affect people with HIV.

It presents lesions in those affected. Get it really bad. I don't know if you know, but, you know, I remember one friend had a lesion right here between the thumb and the forefinger and you could put your finger through it. I mean, that's how bad those sores were. And some people I remember you could even see into their cheek. Well, this queen had Kaposi all over her face and her arms and she put on her lipstick and her makeup and at the time of her life. And to me, that is, you know, really what the invasion, the spirit of the invasion was. We don't think of that anymore. I mean, you know, but at the time I was so glad I made that decision not to listen to the naysayers because it really was special.

It also became a time several people had their ashes spread on the invasion. One of the I don't want to call them funerals, but it was one of the ceremonies that happened on the invasion. There were several in one of the ceremonies, you know, the queens gathered at the back of the boat or no, I think they were at the front of the boat. And that was the problem. They weren't very smart and they said their words and they threw the ashes in. And of course, you're in the front of the boat. So the ashes blew back into everyone's face. They all went on the invasion and the ashes were all of their makeup and stuff. It was to me, it was funny. They were like probably mortified. But yeah. So their friend came on the invasion that year. Just one of those things you don't forget. It was a very special moment.

[36:31] Margaret Cho: Margaret Cho echoed Parker Sargent's earlier feeling that as painful as it is, we do still need to memorialize the past in order to keep our own biases in line. So phrases like men die and women buy aren't kicked up again in other forms. So I think in a sense, those communities really represent that like the resilience of Fire Island and the resilience of San Francisco and the resilience of Provincetown that we actually have been able to survive. All of this is amazing. I think it's really also like creating art about the space and like really memorializing the history. Also, there are so many stories to tell from the island still. And when we talk about it as this legendary queer mecca, it really still is.

[37:46] Jess Rothschild: Thanks for listening to Finding Fire Island. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen today so you don't miss any episodes. Check out findingfireisland.com for all the tea and definitely follow me on Instagram at JessXNYC. In our final episode, we'll hear stories from those who stay on through the winter. We'll hear stories of living through fires and hurricanes, plus spending Halloween and Christmas on the island. A lot of houses on the oceanfront were swept out to sea, or certainly their swimming pools were. And you'd see these huge fiberglass swimming pools floating out into the ocean. See you next time on Finding Fire Island.