THE INVASION OF THE PINES  July 2001
copyright Michael Safdiah 2001
all rights reserved, Mary

Pull up a chair, sweetie, this story is all about a drag queen’s revenge and how it became a Fire Island legend. I’m writing this as the sounds from the harbor drift over to where I am sitting.   Music, applause, the roar of over three thousand male voices... and laughter.  They are celebrating the annual July 4 invasion by Cherry Grove of the Pines.

It was a stifling summer day in July at The Pines, 26 years ago.  The scene is the Crews Quarters, a cowboy style leather bar tucked out of the way upstairs and around the corner from the harbor. Standard seventies gay bar stuff.  The pool table has the usual few cohorts, the perpetually bored bartender is wearing his cowboy plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled way up to reveal his delts and biceps. The even in daytime dark bar is filled with bunkhouse stuff on the walls, to remind us that we are all MEN here. It is the only bar open at this time of the day.

Then it happens: A very colorful drag queen glides in perches daintily on a stool, sets up a cigarette holder, and takes a deep drag,  "Hello, I’d like a Planters Punch please"  The sweltering day had already begun to cause her make up to start to run, and any human being would have done the compassionate thing and served the thirsty creature a drink.  Lord knows she deserved it.  Well the bartender, unsure of himself, draws himself up and tells the lady, "Look at how you’re dressed. I can’t serve you here."  That did it.  Another deep draw on the holder: Throws her head back, eye lids lowered, smoke blows upward:  "Baby, you have GOT to be joking" she says.  Stupid cowboy bartender holds his ground.

The drag protests but to no avail, and leaves in a huff.  She goes back to Cherry Grove, the next town over, returns in two hours in a water taxi loaded with 8 maybe 9 drag queens - all in High Drag.  (You didn’t think that was gonna be the end of it, did you?? Just remember this was a few years after Stonewall, and guess who threw the first high heel at the cop that night.) How they did it in such a short time is a credit to the way those Grove girls can do things. Every house there has at least one closet with at least two decent outfits, or at least they did then.  The ride to the Pines in that boat took 20 minutes and I heard they were madly putting the finishing touches to their ensembles while enroute.  Consider the way a water taxi slaps on the waves, lipstick would have been impossible, to say nothing of getting a wig adjusted right.  I wish I was there.  Anyway, their little water taxi enters the Pines Harbor, horn tooting.  The ladies debark, and in full battle regalia, head upstairs to the bar demanding to be served.  Poor bartender, now wrecked, broken up with laughter, gallantly does his duty by treating the ladies, who hold a small party and stay smashed for hours.

It must have been a dry day for stories, but that one spread through both communities like wildfire.  Okay so here’s what’s beautiful:  It’s become an annual tradition that links the two gay towns in one happy and fun filled event.  It speaks to the success of how two gay towns, who have for years been at odds when there was never any need to do so, can coexist with humor and love.

Too bad it doesn’t happen more.  The competition was always there.  Silly fools first visiting the island would ask the sixty-four dollar question, "Which is better The Pines or The Grove?"  The owners of bars and restaurants, wanting to expand their already monopolistic share of the market sought to further the competition by forbidding Dee-jays from playing in the other community. In fact, there has never been any reason for the communities to ever be at odds. We have so much more to be gained by working together.

That drag lovingly and with humor, showed the cowboy, with his narrow vision, that we all have a right to be here and all have the responsibility to love one another and to celebrate our differences. The lesson we learn every year we celebrate that invasion, where individuality is honored, group think is eschewed.

I’ve been ranting, but my point is that the community owners have a responsibility to the community to maintain unity and strength among us all, the better to have good relations with elected officials and government agencies.   By keeping their focus on their particular small fiefdom, they ultimately lose.