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Instead of a turn about the room with Caroline Bingley, it was a trip to the backroom at the underwear party with some muscle bottom named Todd. Instead of a dance at Netherfield, it was a pool party on Ocean Walk.
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Though we weren’t the only queer boys straddling the (incredibly skewed) Brooklyn poverty line, trying to live out a lavish vacation-fantasy on the cheap, I think part of me loved the oddity of our setup and the misplaced sense of moral superiority it brought me.Īll week, I couldn’t help but map Lizzy’s experiences navigating the limiting social conventions of her time onto the similarly tortured social conventions of gay male spaces. I felt lucky to be there, but it wasn’t hard to put myself in the shoes of Elizabeth Bennet, sharing a modest estate with her parents and four sisters - the farce of being “poor” in 19th-century England. Six-figured executive daddies and Ivy-League, startup proto-bros rubbing elbows and other body parts in hot tubs directly next door to my house, where 16 20-something gay freelancers, without salaries or inheritances, shared four bedrooms. Making my way through Pride and Prejudice on Fire Island felt especially apt at the time: there are few places where the economic divides within the gay community are so plainly seen. She couldn’t have known it at the time, but while writing about five middle-class sisters during the Regency period, she was also writing about my experience as a gay man in the 21st century. It was here, reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time on an island without cars, seemingly run entirely by surly Long Island teenagers, that I began to understand the heart of Jane Austen. Both versions are more or less correct depending on your perspective, but ultimately it is what you make it.
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But about a decade later, I’d pluck a copy of Pride and Prejudice off my shelf (purchased to display in my Brooklyn apartment to convince Grindr hook-ups that I could fuck and think), stick it in a tote, and head off for the first time to Fire Island.įor those of you not in the know, Fire Island is widely known throughout the gay community as one of two things: a Mecca-like summer destination full of gorgeous architecture and bronzed hard bodies, or a nightmarish summer stock production of all our worst impulses as modern gay men: racism, substance abuse, and depraved sexual activity. Nothing about the struggles of Jane Bennet and Elinor Dashwood particularly resonated with me at that moment in my life. I was freshly out of the closet, estranged from my family, and giving toothy blowjobs to Cold Stone Creamery employees in the back of Pontiac Sunfires.
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But upon arrival in young adulthood, it’s no longer intrinsically impressive to simply be able to read, and stepping up your game involves performative attempts at The Bell Jar or Sense and Sensibility in public spaces.Īt 16, Jane Austen didn’t really stick out as someone who was particularly for me.
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I had identified as a reader from a young age, back when reading any book could make you seem intelligent and worthy of attention (the only currency I understood as an adolescent). I didn’t attempt Austen until high school.