Fire Island is in Suffolk County, where Black residents make up less than 9 percent of the population. Next door is Cherry Grove, a smaller and more economically accessible area of the island that is known to have more women. There about 650 homes and about 300 residents year-round in the Pines, meaning an entire apartment building in New York City could house the community that lives there. A question kept rattling inside my head I’d never really considered before: If these places love Black people so much, why do none of us live here?įire Island isn’t a big place. As I was running down the wooden walkways of the Pines, I passed “Black Lives Matter” signs and began to feel the heat inside me grow. So, when the world turned upside down and everything seemed to no longer make sense, I escaped to Fire Island to hide. people not only because they are beautiful, but because there are so few places in the world where you can just let your hair down and be yourself. These places are regarded as aspirational for many L.G.B.T.Q. Then as I made more money and more friends, I graduated to renting in Palm Springs, then to Provincetown on the very tip of Cape Cod and finally to the most exclusive: Fire Island Pines, the out-of-the-way vacation spot on Long Island.
