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Authors: Fay Jacobs

Fried & True

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Bywater Books

Copyright © 2007 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

Fried & True: Tales from Rehoboth Beach

was originally published by

A&M Books, Rehoboth, DE in 2007

Cover designer: TreeHouse Studio

Bywater Books

PO Box 3671

Ann Arbor MI 48106-3671

www.bywaterbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-61294-074-8 (ebook)

To Anyda & Muriel and the people on the porch.

Winter 2007

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people helped me with
Fried & True
. Thanks to Steve Elkins and Murray Archibald, who keep letting me have my say in
Letters
. They are my heroes for what they continue to give to the community of Rehoboth Beach and the selflessness with which they give it. Thanks to them as well for the enormous help they have given me in this, and so many other projects. My appreciation also goes to my-son-the-actor, playwright and diversity consultant Eric Peterson, who, in addition to everything else is now my-son-the-editor for his perspective and his lovely words. Much credit to my wonderful draft readers and editors Kathy Galloway, Tom Jones, Pam Kozey, Jennifer Rubenstein, Betsy Schmidt and my partner Bonnie, who were willing, at the risk of personal safety, to give me honest critiques. I love you for that. Extra thanks to Lee Mills, who used his brilliant mind to think about what this book could say and suggested that I say it. Credit too, to Kathy Weir, expert proofreader and reality checker. And of course, thanks once again to my father Mort, who taught me that even the worst event is not so awful if you can eventually tell a story about it. Special gratitude to my
Letters
readers for still being there even after all this time.

A heartfelt hug to you all.

Foreword

BY ERIC C. PETERSON

Fay Jacobs is many things to me.

She's a dear friend, a sage giver of advice, a surrogate mother, a confidante, and someone who knows every line of
Funny Girl
backwards and forwards…as do I (it's a curse).

In addition to this, I know Fay Jacobs is a writer.

And by writer, I don't mean that she writes things down; a lot of people do that. Writing isn't something that Fay
does
; it's something that she is. Being a writer the way Fay Jacobs is a writer doesn't just happen when she sits down in front of her computer and begins to type; it follows her everywhere she goes.

She began her enormously popular column in
Letters from CAMP Rehoboth
, a magazine for the gay, lesbian, and straight communities of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware back in 1996. But she was a writer long before that. She's a writer down to her bones. She responds to a well-turned phrase the way a musician might respond to a particularly beautiful tune or an artist might be struck by a particularly stunning canvas.

And all of Fay's friends have said at one point or another, “Um…that's not going to end up in one of your columns, is it?” And the answer, quite frankly, is almost always yes. She can't help it; she's a
writer
. And yet, even when I've cringed at the thought of my antics ending up in print somewhere, I'm the first to laugh loud and long when I see them through Fay's eyes. And even when she knows something won't end up in print, she's been known to write it down anyway, just to get it out of her system.

Fried & True
is not only a collection of Fay Jacobs' writings—although her latest columns are all here—it's also about her life as a writer. Among other things, it's about the way her life changed when she and her partner, Bonnie, met Anyda (pronounced like Anita, but with a “d') Marchant and Muriel
Crawford. The two couples were very different. They belonged to different generations and lived through very different times. But Fay and Anyda were both writers, in the true sense of the word. They were both lesbian writers, which made them even more rare, and their resulting friendship even more special. Anyda was, in fact, one of the most important writers in the history of lesbian fiction, and Muriel was her muse. Because of Anyda and Muriel, Fay's first book,
As I Lay Frying
, was published in 2004. Bonnie and Fay's lives changed the day they met these extraordinary women. And Fay's writing changed, too.

Few people who read this anthology will know Fay as I do. For that, I am truly sorry. However, everyone who reads this collection will know Fay's writing—and you know what? That's almost as good as the real thing.

Onward.

prologue

I BECAME A WRITER IN 11TH GRADE

To be sure, I answered essay questions and scribbled things before that, but they were mostly dreary “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” chronicles.

But in 11th grade English class, taught by a gentleman who looked like a walrus and whose name I have regretfully forgotten, I think I became a writer.

The teacher asked the class to write a thousand words about something that had occurred in the past week.

Lots of things happened that fall of 1964 but none of it included me. The Beatles sang “She Loves You,” two teenage girls were arrested for scaling the wall of the hotel next to my building where they thought Ringo was holed up, Robert Kennedy chased mobsters, the Yankees were in the World Series again and
Bewitched
was on the tube.

But for me, it was a dull week. All I did was argue with my best friend over a yellow linen button-down shirt she'd borrowed, took forever to return, and when it did come back it was a mess. Not exactly fodder for
Camille
.

It was so dull that I started messing around, getting pretty silly. (“She took longer to iron that shirt than the Yankees needed to lose to the Cardinals….”) and using preposterous metaphors (“The drip dry garment looked like she had scrubbed it raw on a rock in the Amazon.”).

Certain that my prior pop quiz successes and mid-term grade would mitigate a D-minus for this particular assignment I handed the paper in with all its obnoxiousness intact.

The walrus loved it. On the top of my paper, circled in red ink, were the words “fetching detail.”

Heretofore the only time I had heard the word fetching it involved squeaky toys.

But I looked it up and was surprised to find it synonymous with “eye-catching,” “smart,” “enticing,” and the obtuse “natty.”

And so it began. I did very well in English that year, but less well the following as my teacher was humor challenged. She thought me a wise-ass.

But the deal was sealed and I went off to college, became a newspaper editor (keeping a lid on the fetching detail) and then a freelance writer where I could fetch all I wanted.

Then my mate and I started visiting Rehoboth Beach—a gem of a resort town on the Delaware coast, where gays had been vacationing since the early 20th century—albeit very quietly. But by those ACT-UP! 80s, Rehoboth started to attract a more visible gay and lesbian crowd. Out, proud and losing friends by the hundreds to the plague, people came to Rehoboth to eat, drink, soak up the sun and make as merry as possible. As in gay strongholds nationwide, people bonded in newly organized and compassionate communities to fight AIDS and its accompanying homophobia.

By the mid 90s Bonnie and I were loyal Rehoboth weekenders. And I was invited to write a column for a popular local publication
Letters from CAMP Rehoboth
. I wrote about the beach, drag volleyball and boating adventures. Ironically, week after week, the column was pretty much “What I Did on my Gay Summer Vacation.” What comes around, comes around again.

BOOK: Fried & True
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