As I Lay Frying Read online

  Synopsis

  Rehoboth Beach, Delaware has been called “The Nation's Summer Capital” ever since the families of U.S. Senators and Congressmen discovered its beauty and charm, spending summers in Rehoboth to escape the oppressive heat and humidity of Washington, DC. Later, Rehoboth became another kind of refuge, when the gay and lesbian communities of the Mid-Atlantic found a beach resort to call their own.

  In 1995, writer Fay Jacobs and her partner Bonnie literally cruised into town and discovered the unique charm of this seaside community. Almost immediately, Fay began chronicling her life as a Rehoboth weekender in a column that appeared in the magazine Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. In the years that followed, Fay's Rehoboth fans have followed her smart, witty columns as Fay & Bonnie made the transition from visitors to regulars to locals themselves. Fay's unique voice and her willingness to bare it all in print turned her fans into a sort of extended family. The collected essays of Fay Jacobs are published in two books. Together, they tell a story that is sometimes provocative, sometimes political, occasionally heartwarming, and always hilarious.

  “Fay Jacobs is the secret love child of Dorothy Parker and Jackie Mason. I can always count on her to make me laugh out loud.” -- Marc Acito, author, How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

  “Her columns... are laugh out loud funny and the best part is that Jacobs is sincere...those who enjoyed Jacobs’ first collection will not be disappointed and those reading her for the first time will understand why she's such a beloved columnist.” Jane van Ingen - Lambda Book Report

  The emotions portrayed in these stories run the gamut. Every tale is masterfully told—this memorable memoir is both pleasure and treasure. Anna Furtado -- JustAboutWrite!

  Fay’s a funny girl and a smarty pants, and something else: a generous writer. I love a lot of humor columnists, but there’s something different about Fay—you never get the sense that she sat down to write with the sole purpose of being funny. She’s also different from most memoirists, in that her tone never suggests self-importance or “Look at Me!”-ness. When’s the last time you read a memoir and thought of the writer as “generous” for letting you in on his or her life? -- Emily Lloyd, Lambda Book Report

  As I Lay Frying - A Rehoboth Beach Memoir

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  As I Lay Frying - A Rehoboth Beach Memoir

  by

  Fay Jacobs

  As I Lay Frying - A Rehoboth Beach Memoir

  © 2004-2009 By Fay Jacobs. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-175-0E

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  PO Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Bold Strokes Books eBook Edition: December 2009

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Production Design: Toni Whitaker

  Cover Photo: Murray Archibald

  Cover Design: Bold Strokes Books Graphics

  To BJQ, you made it all possible and Anyda & Muriel, an inspiration

  Spring 2004

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people helped me get this project off the computer and onto the page. Thanks to Anyda and Muriel for having faith in me, coaxing me, then pushing me, and finally making the book a reality. Thanks, too, to Steve Elkins and Murray Archibald, without whom I wouldn’t have written the first word in 1995, and without whom I wouldn’t have corrected the last punctuation errors when it went to press. And to Murray and Steve for what they give to the community of Rehoboth Beach and for the enormous help and inspiration they have given me. My deep appreciation goes to my-son-the-actor Eric Peterson for his insight, perspective, cleverness, and willingness to spend entire weekends sifting through piles of my rantings. Many thanks to proofreader and reality checker Kathy Weir, and my father, who taught me that even the worst event is not so awful if you can eventually tell a good story about it. And, special thanks to my Letters readers for being there.

  A heartfelt thanks to you all.

  Foreword

  AS I LAY FRYING: A REHOBOTH BEACH MEMOIR

  In the summer of 1996, I was adopted by a lesbian couple. That shouldn’t be an unusual story; gays and lesbians are raising children all over the country these days. But my story was a little different because…well…I was 25 years old at the time.

  At the time, I was making a living, pursuing an acting career on the side…and coming out of the closet. When I was ready to tell my friends Fay and Bonnie that I thought I might be a homosexual, they didn’t miss a beat. “What are you doing next weekend?” Fay asked.

  “I don’t have any plans,” I responded. “Yes, you do,” Bonnie said. “You are coming to Rehoboth with us.”

  If you’ve ever been to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware you know why Fay and Bonnie brought me here. They love it. In 1995, they brought their 27-foot boat to Rehoboth for an eight-week stint. And in a very real sense, they never left.

  Even before they eventually sold their boat, bought a condominium, and sold their Maryland residence to become year-round Rehoboth Beach residents, this place quickly became their home.

  “Everyone’s so nice,” they kept saying. Which was why it was so surprising when a homophobic miscreant began shouting obscenities at them at a hamburger joint just outside town one day. Fay immediately fired off a letter to Letters from CAMP Rehoboth, a magazine for Rehoboth’s large and diverse gay and lesbian community. The CAMP acronym stands for Create A More Positive Rehoboth, and that’s just what the newsletter and its founding organization CAMP Rehoboth succeeds in doing.

  The letter was printed, and after a subsequent conversation with Letters editor Steve Elkins, Fay began work on an essay about boating to Rehoboth. Steve and his readers liked the article, and Fay’s been writing for Letters ever since.

  What began so inauspiciously on that summer day in 1995 has become nothing short of a Rehoboth tradition. For years, Fay’s been sharing her personal stories with the residents of Rehoboth Beach—she’s been nearly run over by a cargo ship, hunted down by the AARP, and known to shuttle stray animals across state lines. She lived through a frightening (and serious) family medical crisis in 2000 and eloped to Canada in 2003… and of course, she and her partner “adopted” a 25-year old gay son (look for me in “What I Did on my Summer Vacation”).

  I’m so pleased that Fay asked me to prepare a forword for this, her first collection of columns. I can’t pass up this opportunity to thank Fay and Bonnie for everything they’ve ever done for me—while my family of origin has turned out to be wonderfully supportive of me, I still owe Fay and Bonnie an emotional debt that I’ll never be able to repay.

  At the same time, on behalf of all of Fay’s readers, I feel that I must extend my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to the idiot homophobe at that long-forgotten hamburger place, who inadvertently prompted her to put pen to paper, thus beginning a career that the faithful readers of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth (myself included) are richer for having experienced.

  Finally, enjoy the book. I know that in its pages, Fay’s longtime readers will find themselves reliving the events and literary adventures of their old friends, and tho
se who are discovering them for the first time will grow to love my lesbian moms almost as much as I do. Onward.

  Eric C. Peterson, March 17, 2004

  August 1995

  CRUISING TO REHOBOTH

  “I wish we could buy a place in Rehoboth,” I whined last winter, knowing full well that every cent of our disposable income was tied up in that hole in the water into which we’d been throwing money—our 27-foot cruiser “Bay Pride.” That’s Bay, with a “B” and a wink, for folks who see us cruising the Chesapeake Bay and waving our rainbow flag.

  “Why don’t we just move our place to Rehoboth?” the captain adventurously suggested.

  And so it began.

  On Friday June 30 our four-woman crew left Annapolis and headed up the Bay, past Annapolis and Baltimore to the C&D Canal. By Saturday we’d crossed through the canal alongside huge tankers, ventured out into Delaware Bay and took refuge from a tremendous thunderstorm in the Cohannsey River on the Jersey shore.

  Best we can figure, the Cohannsey is noted only for swarms of green head flies. Until we could anchor and retreat below deck, our crew looked like Bogart and Hepburn in the pestilence scene from African Queen.

  As we waited out the thunder and lightning, we relaxed in our air-conditioned quarters, cooking shrimp in the microwave and chatting by cellular phone with friends in Rehoboth. Ah, camping.

  On Sunday we headed to Cape May, where, to the amazement of an assortment of deep-sea fishermen, our all-gal gang executed perfect docking techniques. Leaving on Monday morning July 3, macho captains all around patronizingly patted their wives heads, saying, “See honey, you can learn to drive the boat.”

  Fortunately, we were out of their earshot as we crossed the wide-open bay towards Cape Henlopen and admitted being humbled and yes, a little frightened by the incredible expanse of BIG water. When the Jersey shore disappeared into the mist behind us and we couldn’t yet see Lower Slower Delaware, heebie-jeebies set in.

  “Maybe we’ve strayed into the ocean.”

  “Maybe we’re heading for Portugal.”

  “Is that a Russian periscope or a sea gull?”

  Before too long we spied a black and white speck ahead, which, as we gained on it, turned out to be the Cape May-Lewes

  Ferry. Our captain’s compass heading had been perfect. We, ahem, knew that.

  At the entrance to the canal in Lewes, DE, we phoned our Rehoboth buddies. “We’re here!” I said into the phone to alert the folks who promised to watch us arrive under the Rehoboth Avenue Bridge. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” echoed all hands on deck.

  As we cruised toward the bridge I got my binoculars out. “I think there are three people. No, four. Wait a minute, I think there are more.” At least 10 Rehoboth campers waved at us, blowing noisemakers, waving streamers and taking pictures. We felt like passengers on the QE II.

  Unfortunately, a few minutes later it seemed like we were on the QE II—the entrance to Rehoboth Bay got very, very shallow. Only skillful maneuvering by the captain kept us from being skewered by the submerged rocks along the entrance.

  By the time we got to the Rehoboth Bay Marina in Dewey, our welcoming committee had arrived, too. Bay Pride, with its rainbow flag flapping in the breeze, its all-woman crew, and its jubilant welcoming committee, caused quite a stir.

  Since our arrival July 4th we’ve spent as much time as possible living on our floating condo, enjoying everything about Rehoboth and returning to Maryland “for just a few days” each week.

  This past Sunday evening, just as the captain and I zipped up the canvas preparing to “lock-up the house,” a set of grandparents arrived on the pier to watch their nuclear family members on rental jet boats.

  Gramps, watching us batten the hatches said, “You girls do all the work and your husbands get to drive the boat!”

  “There are no husbands on this boat. Women do the work and women get to drive,” I said.

  Granny gave us a “thumbs up.” We love it here.

  February 1996

  JUST THE FAX, MA’AM

  “Supreme Court okays editor’s suggestion.”

  Sounds like a landmark freedom of the press case, right? It was closer to home. Last summer, Letters editor Steve Elkins wrote a little editor’s note after my story about arriving in Rehoboth by boat. He knew we’d spent weekends last summer on Rehoboth Bay, and suggested that we continue to weekend here after boating season, too. Well, the spirit was certainly willing, but the devil was in the details.

  Last August, when it was time to think about putting the boat into dry dock, we started looking for a condo. After all, we’d had a taste of Rehoboth life, and it was tough to think of weekends anywhere else. Between boating on the bay, soaking up rays at the women’s beach at Gordon’s Pond, and getting involved, for the very first time, in an out and proud gay community, the idea of leaving town for a long, cold winter was unthinkable.

  When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping for real estate.

  First stop, a squatter-inhabited bargain basement. Management assured us the place would fumigate just fine. We’d been inside five minutes, stepping over crushed beer cans, pizza boxes, and laundry, when one of the piles of clothes sat up, groaned like Frankenstein and fell back down. We fled.

  Next we saw a perfectly fabulous apartment on the perfect block. Only it was a third floor walk-up; a two-bedroom Stairmaster. We imagined dragging up there with luggage. We envisioned planting sod on the balcony for the dog. We worried about the stamina of pizza deliverers. We came to our senses.

  Schlepping around town, we saw a handyperson’s special affectionately referred to thereafter as the Amityville Horror House. Next up, a place with a basement so wet ducks swam in it. Then came palaces way beyond our means.

  “I have one more to show you,” said the agent. It was the one. Three doors from the boardwalk on a quiet block, this old house converted to four contemporary condos was perfect. We could be three-season weekenders in town, and in the summer, move aboard our boat while renters paid our annual condo mortgage. “Write the contract,” we squealed.

  At first, things seemed normal. When we learned the condo was owned by a bank we figured someone else’s loss was our gain. And we didn’t flinch when told the contract could only become ratified after Oct. 5, 1995 at the expiration of some kind of litigation. That’s what settlement attorneys are for. Don’t worry; be happy. You live and learn.

  We learned that the builder, having lost the property at a Sheriff’s sale, fought the simple foreclosure all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Talk about making a federal case out of something.

  So Fay and Bonnie had to wait until the first Monday in October, thank you, to hear whether Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Supremes would let us buy our beach place. Eventually, they did.

  But then the mortgage company got wind of the story and wanted to know the whole gory litigation history. The mortgage man needed to talk to the bank who needed to talk to the lawyers, who needed to talk to the investors, who had to check the documents, so they could call the courthouse so that ultimately we could live in the house that jerk built. Silly me, I thought Slower Lower Delaware was just a clever t-shirt logo.

  If I made one phone call a day to hustle up the facts, I made ten. As the clock ticked on my loan commitment and Nov. 28 settlement date, we played telephone tag. Finally, after I harassed three quarters of the lawyers in Sussex County, somebody hollered “uncle” and my fax machine started to grind out a 23 page opus detailing the condo’s pathetic legal history.

  Hold the victory lap. Was there a lawyer left in town who’d never represented or been sued by the foreclosee? Hardly. One newbie attorney surfaced and I called his office two weeks before settlement to give the firm a heads up on the legal mess.

  His administrative assistant told me not to worry; they were working on settlements for the next day and they’d work on the Nov. 28 settlement on or about Nov. 27. I tried to warn them.

  On
Nov. 18, the day I was leaving for a Thanksgiving trip to Palm Springs, I got a call from a genuinely surprised assistant to the settlement attorney. “This is a difficult case to research,” she said. “Did you know it was a foreclosure?” “AUUUUGGGGGG!!!!!....”

  I was still feeding War and Peace into the fax machine for the title insurance company when it came time to leave for the airport. I spent the better part of my vacation wrestling information about condo documents, parking easements, and insurance out of any number of lawyers and funneling it to unsuspecting title company flunkies.

  Jet-lagged and harried, we made it to settlement on Nov. 28, with the last legal hurdle having been leapt mere minutes before. As we signed the deed and promised to love, honor and obey the mortgage company until the year 2025, we realized that for once, nobody even batted an eye over our non-traditional union. We knew we liked Rehoboth. They may be slower in lower Delaware, but they made us feel very welcome.

  Two weeks later, we drove to town in a blinding snowstorm only to discover the outlets closed, the gas stations closed, the 7/11 closed. But our Cloud 9 Restaurant was open. Gay people are nothing if not spunky.

  So now that the weather is finally breaking, our victory before the high court of the land seems most worthwhile. If the Supreme Court would only do as well on upcoming discrimination and sodomy cases, we’d really be home free.