A House of the Ocean, A House on the Bay - a memoir by Felice Picano

Hardcover book.  270 pages.  Book in very good condition.

"(Picano's writing) can be run the length of experience from the lyrical to the lewd without missing a beat."  L.A. Herald Examiner

From Felice Picano, the doyen of the American gay scene, comes the latest, much-awaited volume of his critically acclaimed memoirs.  Here he recalls the days of his feisty, lusty young adulthood when he was beginning to come into his own as a writer and the cruising, partying gay culture of Fire Island Pines in the days just before AIDS awareness.

A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay spans the heyday of Picano's life in the Pines and Manhattan during the 1960s and the 1970s.  He chronicles his love affairs and the tortuous intricacies of a longtime love triangle, his hilarious misadventures as a bookstore employee (arranging a book party hosted by Jackie Onassis, lunchtime rendezvouz in secret tunnels below Grand Central Station, getting framed for embezzlement!), and the thrills and agonies involved in the writing and publishing of his first novels, including Smart as the Devil and Eyes.

Picano also regales us with stories about the legendary "Class of 1975," the "Gay 2000" - hip, political, talented, beautiful young men who formed and molded gay culture as it exists today.  AIDS eventually spread through the Pines like wildfire and about 98 percent of the "Gay 2000" are now dead, but Felice Picano has lived through it all, and he gives voice to those times with humor, candor, and wistfulness.