Fire Island Adonis
What the most beautiful man I'd ever seen taught me about insecurity
“I really wanted to get on your table,” he said, “but I wasn’t sure if you would want to touch me.”
I looked at him—impeccably coiffed hair, a smile straight out of central casting, muscles I didn’t know existed—and I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying.
That encounter happened after the Underwear Party on Fire Island, where I had spent the night giving massages to a sea of sweaty, beautiful men. But to explain why his words hit me so hard, I have to go back to the beginning.
In 2017, I began working for a massage studio in NYC that was popular with the boys. In the summers, the studio owner rented a house in Fire Island Pines with a concealed outdoor area to host clients. The house was perched high above the boardwalk, with a massage grotto nestled below—a stream running down its side, hanging bamboo shoots, and the sound of ocean waves in the distance. It was a beautiful place to make money. But being a Black, Brooklyn queer person on the island primarily to work—amidst mostly white, Hell’s Kitchen-esque gay men who were primarily there to enjoy themselves—I often felt like I was watching someone else’s life from the outside.
Island outcalls meant wheeling a massage table to each client’s home, and I would feel a twinge of something every time I passed a house party or a group of boys headed to the beach. Envy, maybe. Or just the particular loneliness of being in paradise on someone else’s terms. It made me feel like the help. It made me wish I were there with a group of friends. It made me excited for the end of my shift.
That’s not to say I wasn’t grateful. What a lovely way to make money. What a lovely place to make it. When I didn’t have a client, Fire Island, in all its beauty and magnificence, was still my backdrop. And the outcalls gave me a lovely tour of homes—sea shacks and mansions alike, with hot and friendly clients who made work feel less like work. Still, I wondered what it would be like to have a week there without having to earn it.