For Frying Out Loud Read online

  Bywater Books

  Copyright © 2010 and 2016 Fay Jacobs

  All rights reserved.

  By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Bywater Books.

  Bywater Books First Edition: May 2016

  For Frying Out Loud: Rehoboth Beach Diaries was originally published by A&M Books, Rehoboth, DE in 2010

  Cover designer: TreeHouse Studio

  Bywater Books

  PO Box 3671

  Ann Arbor MI 48106-3671

  www.bywaterbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61294-076-2 (ebook)

  To BJQ and the Usual Suspects

  Foreword

  BY ERIC C. PETERSON

  The last couple of years have not been kind to Fay Jacobs.

  She moved to the seashore only to be buried under a foot of snow (which is not … supposed … to happen!), she’s been bossed and chastised by a synthetic voice on the dashboard who apparently never heard of the Verrazano bridge, she’s been threatened by bats in a literal backyard belfry and many other disconcerting adventures…

  But who are we kidding? The last couple of years haven’t been kind to any of us. The planet is getting hotter, our bank accounts are getting smaller, and all of those little gadgets we were told would make our lives so much simpler have only made them more complicated than ever before.

  It’s a good thing for us that Fay Jacobs has a sense of humor. Fay learned early on in life that while tragedies certainly do happen, most of them can later be turned into funny stories that can be shared with friends. And the laughs can make all the heartburn worth it. Well, some stories are more worth it than others, but you know what I’m saying. It’s a philosophy that helps Fay get through the tough times. It’s a philosophy that Fay has passed on to me during our seventeen years of friendship, and it really does work. Of course, the difference between Fay and I is that she has a lot more friends than I do.

  And I’m no wallflower, either. Hey, I’ve got people. But Fay has a readership, built from years of writing a regular column in her hometown’s newsletter for the gay, lesbian, and allied straight communities of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware (Letters from CAMP Rehoboth) and from two collections of essays and reflections (As I Lay Frying, Fried & True), both published by A&M Books.

  This readership isn’t just a group of fans. They’re a group of friends. They’ve known Fay at her best and her worst, and she’s made them laugh both times. Only a friend can do that.

  So I guess I should amend that first statement. The last couple of years have been awfully good to Fay Jacobs. Okay, stuff happens – but when you’re Fay, most of that, um…“stuff”…can be turned into a funny story, and hundreds of people can soon have a good laugh about it. And if you knew Fay like I know Fay (and since you’re reading this, I’m guessing you soon will), it doesn’t get much better than that.

  Eric C. Peterson

  Table of Contents

  2007

  Big Apple to Big Scrapple

  Going to Extremes

  A Whirlwind Friendship

  Moon Over the Military

  You Can Go Home Again

  Film, Finally, at 11

  An Age-Old Ritual

  Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay

  A Whole Lotta Ugly from a Whole Bunch of Stupid

  I Should Live So Long

  The Terrorists Have Won, Part Two

  Attention Melting Pot: Gay Is a Culture

  Tune in for the Fry Babies

  Where are the Dykes on Bikes?

  2008

  Oh Come All Ye Fruitcakes

  Anchors Aweigh, It’s Gay

  Shredding Some Light

  Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay

  Falling In Love Again

  The Handwriting Is on the Wall

  Is It Real or Is It “Memoir”?

  Apocalypse in 2012?

  Adding Insult to Injury

  I Will Not Be Erased

  Too Darn Hot

  Don’t Hassle Me, I’m Local

  I’m Here, I’m Queer, I’m Talking About It

  Winds of Change

  Only as Old as You Feel???

  The Bitch on the Dashboard

  2009

  I (sort of) Witnessed History

  Crying Wii, Wii, Wii all the Way Home

  Schnauzerhaven Under Siege

  Floundering on the High Seas

  Going Bats

  The Gayest Week Ever

  I’m All Atwitter

  Mermaids and Satyrs Unite!

  The Gayby Boom

  Climb Ev’ry Mountain…

  Eight is Enough

  What Comes Around

  Health Insurance Isn’t Insurance; It’s Pre-paid Healthcare

  March On!

  Expedia Dot Bomb

  How Rehoboth Lived Up to Its Biblical Name

  2010

  It’s a Small Ride After All

  The Snowpocalypse!

  Are Wii or Are Wii Not Fit?

  Home Improvement Porn

  Thanks for the Mammeries: Pre-Quake Sunday

  A Rolling Home Gathers No Moss

  Get Your Summer Read On!

  My Name Is Fay J, and I Am a Carboholic

  Who are the Real Boobs Here?

  What’s Up With Your Vuvuzela?

  Positively Stranger Than Fiction

  Better Him Than Me, But Still

  Mort Rubenstein, 91: Madison Avenue Ad Man

  I Have Questionable Content. Woo-Hoo!

  Fay and Bonnie’s Fabulous RV Adventure

  The Times They Are a Changin’…or Are They

  January 2007

  BIG APPLE TO BIG SCRAPPLE WHY I LOVE THE DELAWARE COAST

  I’m not a Delmarva native. Darn few of us here are. In fact, before I arrived I didn’t know that Delmarva meant the Delaware, Maryland and Virginia eastern shore. Delmarvalous. Frankly, to be considered an old-timer you have to have arrived with the Dutch or been born in a manger in a chicken coop. So I’m an interloper. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love lower, slower Delaware.

  Of course, when I first arrived, mid-1990s, everything was a culture shock for this New Yorker. Fresh off a daily one-hour commute, people here considered the one-mile ride from downtown Rehoboth to Route One going “all the way out on the highway.” At best, a New Yorker might carve a pumpkin, but would never consider making one a prize-winning projectile like they do here at the Pumpkin Chunkin’ Fest. Most tellingly, folks in Sussex mostly looked baffled when I mentioned Matzoh Ball soup.

  As a matter of course, I was suspicious of any event celebrating live chickens or dead Horseshoe Crabs. And no bonafide New Yorker would ever be caught ordering a flat breakfast meat called scrapple made of spare pork parts too peculiar for sausage.

  Sure, my real estate agent provided full disclosure that I was moving to Rehoboth Beach, but frankly it never occurred to me I’d be living in rural Delaware. The first time I ventured outside my comfort zone was to the DMV. At first I thought some patrons were civil war re-enactors but it turned out they were dressed for agribusiness. Who knew.

  And people were really, really friendly, which made me both nervous and suspicious. I’d lived in a New York City apartment building for three years and never said a single word to anyone in the elevator. It’s just not done.

  My second expedition took me across the Woodland Ferry outside Seaf
ord. I love a good ferry ride, like the one between Manhattan and Staten Island, crowded amid 30 vehicles and 4,440 passengers with, of course, nobody saying a word to each other. Twenty one million people ride it annually, racing five miles in 25 minutes, on the most reliable transit schedule in the U.S.

  The Woodland Ferry, on the other hand, takes six cars and a sprinkle of chicken catchers over a really narrow trickle of the Nanticoke River. The slower lower trip, lasting five minutes, is like an arcade ride, and I love it. And it might or might not be running Thursday mornings because it might or might not be down for maintenance.

  For sheer contrast with, say, Manhattan’s Bloomingdales, we’ve got Wilson’s General Store, and darn it, the shop was closed on the Sunday I first rode past. Their sign said Ammunition, Notary Public, Groceries, Meat, Hardware, Subs, and Coffee. You never know when you are going to need eggs and buckshot at the same time.

  I’m sure it surprises no one that prior to my first Apple-Scrapple Festival I was a scrapple virgin.

  There I was, chowing down on this legendary farm food, negotiating it nicely until I looked up and saw the 40-foot scrapple company sign listing the ingredients as pig’s snouts and lard.

  Just then the Hog Calling Contest began with people wailing “Suuu-eeeee, Suuueeeee,” which was roughly the same sound I was making spitting out my pig snout sandwich. Wisely my mate grabbed my arm and steered me toward a vendor hawking kosher hot dogs, which, if dissected, are probably the Hebrew National equivalent of snouts and lard.

  Here’s another of my favorite Sussex traditions – business cards by cash registers. Back in the Big Apple or its kissin’ cousin downtown Rehoboth, business cards by the register represent realtors, day spas and concierge services. A mere mile outside town, there are cards for gun cleaning, taxidermy, and deer-cutting. So near and yet so far.

  Hey, just last week I saw a wild turkey by the side of the road, recognizing it as such from my previous experience with a whiskey bottle. This turkey had an under-chin wattle just crying out for a good plastic surgeon. I was sure it was my find of the day until I passed the front yard with the camels in it. I imagine every day, not just Wednesday, is hump day in that household.

  Then there’s the infamous Delaware State Fair Duck Drop? Officials literally drop a duck (albeit gently) onto a numbered grid where people have plunked down money to wager which grid gets the first duck poop. You can’t make things like this up.

  We also have the prehistoric-looking horseshoe crab. They say it’s more closely related to spiders, ticks, and scorpions than to crabs and I believe them. New York has its crustaceans, mostly on menus, but I can’t remember ever seeing a horsehoe crab wash up on Fire Island. Here, in the name of eco-tourism, they throw the damn things a festival.

  So my love affair with the coast and its rural neighbors continues. Not that I haven’t shared my culture with the locals. Lots of long-time Delmarvans can be found singing karaoke with me to Liza’s “New York, New York,” spearing matzoh balls at my Passover Seder, or razzing me for my allegiance to the Bronx Bombers. Don’t tell anyone, but lately I’ve been rooting for the Shorebirds, our local farm team.

  But I do have to be careful. Last time I went to New York I inadvertently started chatting with people in an elevator and almost got myself arrested. I’m an honorary Delmarvan now. Except for the Scrapple. Some traditions are just too hard to swallow.

  January 2007

  GOING TO EXTREMES

  The terrorists have won. They’ve turned the once exhilarating adventure of airline travel into an excruciating ordeal. Between terrorists and Big Business, air travel is now an extreme sport.

  I recently attended a conference in Seattle (and Bonnie came along, not realizing travel was no longer fun) and I have never, ever, had a worse travel experience, including the time my ass fell asleep on a 25-mile bike trip. (I know, what was I thinking?)

  But the very act of getting from Philadelphia to Seattle without going insane was as extreme as it gets.

  From the Al Qaida security handbook:

  1. Liquids, gels and aerosols must be in three-ounce or smaller containers. Rolled up toothpaste tubes are forbidden. Is a terrorist likely to commandeer a plane by strapping himself with Crest Whitening gel?

  2. Liquids must be placed in a single, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag. I can’t seal ziplocks correctly with leftovers in them, so you can imagine how well I do trying to zippity do dah in front of armed guards.

  3. Each traveler must place their plastic, zip-top bag in a bin for screening. My shampoo gets an MRI and I get to toss my shoes, wallet, keys and phone into a bin and watch it get sucked into a black hole – while I step through the metal detector and get felt up by a security worker and her explosive detection device.

  Those people have a tough job. If they’re looking for sweaty, suspicious-acting terrorists, we’re all sweaty and suspicious, praying we’ll get our valuables back before somebody else does.

  All this happens barefoot of course, ever since that goofy-looking schmuck tried to blow up a plane with dynamite in his shoes. Now we have to remember to spray Dr. Scholl’s foot powder in the morning so we can get barefoot without causing a concourse evacuation.

  I was relieved to read you can carry breast milk onto the plane. I’ve got to assume they mean outside the body. And all of a sudden tweezers are okay again. The Homeland Security police must have been confronted by an angry mob of menopausal woman threatening to grow goatees on long flights.

  Yet, you’ll be pleased to know that while a whole list of things are banned from carry-on luggage, it’s perfectly alright to carry spear guns, meat cleavers and ice axes in checked luggage. Look around when you get your bags off the carousel; you could be standing next to a psychopath wielding a meat cleaver.

  Once harried travelers emerge from the strip-search it’s time to run to the gate. If you stop to gaze at the departure screen, don’t take your hand off your luggage. Like the eternally looping announcement says, airport police can swoop in and detonate your unattended suitcase.

  Hell, I am now forbidden from packing anything important anyway – just a magazine, my three ounces of toiletries and extra panties in case my checked luggage winds up some place other than I do. I can see them blowing up my carry-on and having to duck and cover from exploding underpants.

  So we get onto the plane and immediately everybody heaves their carry-on up into the over-heads. Of course, the man ahead of us clogs the whole boarding process by trying to stuff a bag the size of a cello over my head. Hey, Pablo, check the damn thing.

  Then we notice that despite paying $44 each to purchase five extra inches of leg room we’re still crammed in like sardines. Umm, we actually are flying united.

  Then we get to savor this experience longer than scheduled: the plane’s A/C goes up and until they fix it we’re stuck enjoying the five extra inches (is this sounding smarmy to you, too?) for 45 extra minutes, packed in a stifling aluminum tube.

  Finally we are airborne and listening to the flight attendant’s instructions for grabbing our seat cushion to use as a flotation device should the plane ditch in the water. Hell, bending my arm to reach under my butt would shatter my right elbow on the window and my left on Bonnie’s jaw. I’d have to float as I’d never be able to swim.

  More survivable might be an emergency landing on terra firma. But Bonnie turns to me and says “How can we get into the crash position? On the way to putting our heads between our knees we’ll knock ourselves unconscious on the seat in front of us.”

  Actually, it might be easier to put our heads between each others…um, I’ll stop now….

  Then the flight attendant comes by with the beverage cart, but we’re packed so tightly neither one of us can get to our wallets without breaking a rib. We settle for free Diet Coke. As I raise the four ounce cup of liquid to my lips the guy in front of me tilts his seat back slamming me in the tits with the tray table and shooting the soft drink up my sinuses. Now that’s snort
ing coke.

  Did I mention we had middle and window seats with (what else?) a Sumo wrestler on the aisle? But you knew that.

  Finally, we land some place in America’s heartland, 45 minutes late for a connecting flight where the layover was supposed to be 55 minutes.

  We go running down the concourse, tickets, I.D.s and chins flapping, gasping for air, screaming from shin splints, racing to the gate. Mercifully that flight was delayed by, I don’t know, sunshine? We made it by a whisker. Thank God I had the tweezers.

  The second flight was, if possible, more painful than the first, since we hadn’t sprung for extra leg room. By way of contrast, Bonnie and I exited Seattle on a scenic train heading for Vancouver BC. It left and arrived on time, had roomy, comfortable seats and a dining car serving a full breakfast. The friendly porters had a delightfully quaint manner and provided a startling level of service. We might have been on the Orient Express.

  Sadly, we didn’t have a week for Amtrak to take us home. Fro pretty much mirrored To. Only instead of a cello, a fellow passenger tried to stow what looked like a John Deere tractor in the overheads.

  When I got home I happened upon the Extreme Sports Channel where they mentioned “a bunch of hardened riders busting their asses.” I don’t know what sport they were talking about but it could have been the 747 fuselage team.

  Actually, I looked it up. An extreme sport is defined as any sport with a very high level of danger, often involving speed, altitude and a heightened level of physical exertion. Such activities induce an adrenaline rush and the outcome of a mismanaged incident may be death.

  Now I realize that statistics say flying is far safer than driving. That may be true, but these days, the extreme sport of air travel is less likely to induce an adrenalin rush and more likely to induce a persistent vegetative state. Fortunately, the outcome of a mismanaged cabin incident may only be Diet Coke-covered clothing and inadvertent snuggling with strangers. But it sure ain’t no fun anymore.

  Next, I’m off to New Orleans for a publishing convention. Let the extreme games begin….