#108: Fried on Fire Island
I’m tired
Death by Consumption
6/23/26 - 6/29/26
A warning: there is nothing of substance in this email. I have spent the last week on Fire Island cavorting with the gays, and therefore my brain is mush. I’m actively teaching myself how to write again as I type these words. But I hope you’ll forgive a short, worthless little email, because it’s a holiday week and honestly who even cares? Delete this without reading, I won’t be mad!
This week: I was subjected to an insane morning film choice, and I read an apt book about a psychotic group of gays.
Margaret (2011) — streamed from somewhere, who knows
Hungover one morning out here, our friend Erik threw on Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, which somehow ended up taking nearly 5 hours to finish. I’ve always wanted to watch this, but I was coming and going, so I only got bits and pieces. Did you know the core plot of this movie is, as follows: Anna Paquin (who plays Lisa, not Margaret, confusingly) wants to buy a cowboy hat, and sees Mark Ruffalo driving a bus while wearing a cowboy hat, so she waves to get his attention to ask where he got his hat, thereby distracting him so he hits and kills Allison Janney? Is this just like… a thing everyone knows about? Are people constantly walking around talking about how Mark Ruffalo kills Allison Janney because Anna Paquin wants to know where he got his hat in the movie Margaret? Anyway, the whole thing was worth it just to experience the moment when J. Smith-Cameron, who played Gerri on Succession, appeared on screen, immediately causing a room full of gays to all gasp in unison, “Gerri!”
The Silver Book, by Olivia Laing (2025) — library ebook
Unexpectedly a perfect little book to read on languid hot beach days, surrounded by nothing but gays. Set in Italy in 1975, it follows a young British man who’s escaping his traumatic London past and gets caught up in the gay dramatic world surrounding Fellini and his film crew. Partly based on a true story, but mostly fiction, it’s a quick little read, full of breezy, lovely sentences (cooking an elaborate meal is “a way of entering time through the back door”) that seem written specifically for lying on a beach, nursing a hangover while also working on the next day’s. Reading this sentence after 6 ragged days on Fire Island, in particular, felt extremely apt:
Everyone else might be unaffected, mysteriously immune, but the daily descent into hell is getting to Nicholas.