3, which is everyone else - a loose collection of sociable gays summoned to the water as if by gravitational pull, neon pool noodles pointing skyward. It’s like circle time at gay summer camp. Look, gays are assimilating at a faster pace than ever before. They’re having weddings (and not Wiccan commitment ceremonies, but actual weddings, with orchestras and tuxedos and Chateaubriand), adopting kids, buying in the ’burbs and driving SUVs. Their vacations range far beyond Key West and Provincetown. They lead companies, run for office, pose with their partners in family portraits. We’ve come a long way in a relatively short period of time. When a gay couple moves into the house next door, the neighborhood … shrugs.īut boys will be boys, and this will never change: At certain times, the tribe wants to cavort in its own playpen. Which brings us back to the Pool, which is ground zero for heat-stricken gay men in Philadelphia and surrounding counties who lack access to a beach house. And if only for the afternoon, I’m now one of them. RECALL, IF YOU WILL, Jersey Shore’s cringe-worthy, beach-tee-ubiquitous “GTL” (translation: “Gym, Tan, Laundry”) motto for Shore-goers.
While everyone else spends winter hibernating with Ben & Jerry’s and Netflix, we spend it working the gym circuit with our trainers, getting creative with kale recipes and force-feeding our bodies protein so as to be pool-ready when we hit the doorstep on Memorial Day. And those who don’t (typically men of, ahem, “a certain age”) have anchored their pockets with enough cash to spoil those who have - the young guys who, whether they blew their allowance on chia seeds or view their muscles as one giant bar investment, are pretty much broke.
The same social dynamic that has existed for centuries among wealthy older men and nubile young women plays out every weekend here, a vainglorious one-gender play. The “daddies” soak up the young studs and open their hefty wallets to buy them cocktails (and on occasion, it’s rumored, their company, wink wink). The “twinks,” as they’re called - young, smooth, slender, all variations of Justin Bieber - treat the rim of the pool as a runway, laughing at all the old-guy attention but accepting each and every drink. New Hope is the perfect playground in which to indulge in this sort of idolatry.