Read more
It has to be the most exclusive gay resort on the planet-Fire Island Pines. Abbey and I were just a couple of your regular New York City gay guys looking for an escape from Manhattan's oppressive summer heat. But once we sampled the Pines and her butch men, we were hooked. We needed a full share in a comfortable beach house with a pool. Cute considerate housemates would be nice. That first season we did well. After late dinners, we'd all go disco dancing together, shirtless with our brothers in the Pines Pavilion, followed by some midnight action in the Meat Rack. In the full moonlight it was most beautiful. The houses we rented covered the whole spectrum, from a Japanese villa to an overgrown beach bungalow famous for its S&M leather parties. Eventually, Abbey and I bought our dream two-bedroom duplex unit in the Pines Co-ops. Halloween always marked the end of the season. They drained the pipes and we headed back to stingy Manhattan, reminiscing over summer's gorgeous lovers that got away. Winter was reserved for a final reckoning, and AIDS would soon have its say.
About the author
Miles Cigolle grew up in a classic adobe house near Albuquerque's historic Old Town with his parents and three siblings. His mother Terry was a ceramicist and a fine arts painter. His father Edward was a local grocer catering equally to the local Native Americans, Hispanics and Anglos with his two brothers. Miles studied architecture at Cornell University and went on to practice architecture for twenty-five years with distinguished New York City firms including Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and Richard Meier & Partners. He met his future husband Abbey on Memorial Day in 1982 in a leather bar in New York's Meat Packing District. Abbey was a Stonewall baby. The couple returned to quiet Ithaca, New York in 2000. Miles worked on local higher education projects while Abbey joined the Finger Lakes Land Trust. They retired to New Mexico in 2016. Miles's first memoir, Miles's World, was published by Secord Books in 2021. Three subsequent memoirs, Reckoning, Upon Arrival, and Places and Faces were published by Sunstone Press.
