By Doug Miller
"Everyone here keeps to themselves," said Rodney Denny, a Long Beach resident. "There are lots of couples here, but nobody communicates."
At the center of town you'll see at least one parked hatchback with a rainbow bumper sticker. But glance through the Long Beach Guide or at the bulletin board at Waldbaum's and you will find no gay and lesbian clubs or organizations. As far as anyone knows, there are no beaches where gay people gather, and no gay bars or clubs.
Gay people live here for the same reasons everyone else does: the easy commute to Manhattan, the serene life and, of course, the beach. But they do not come here for the community, for the pride events or the parades. Everyone knows that's what Huntington is for, or Manhattan.
Whether or not that will ever change is a subject of debate. "That type of organization is best left to the young," said Debbie Novak, a musician who moved with her companion to Lido after several years in Long Beach.
Perhaps so. Denny and some friends are trying to set up an Internet registry, so there can at least be a cyber-community in Long Beach until a real one hatches. Anyone interested can drop a line to
rainbowlongbeachny-subscribe@yahoogroups .com.
For Denny, Long Beach works, for now. He is single, 35, has a good job and is looking for companionship for the first time in his life. His story is not typical -- in virtually any way.
He is a second-generation American, his parents having come here from Trinidad. He said he grew up with the double stigma of being different as well as, well, different. "The West Indian male persona is if you aren't married with a couple of kids, you're an outcast," Denny said. "So I played the part for many years, with girlfriends and such, until I got the courage to live my life."
Denny met Antonio on the Long Island Rail Road when he was 25, and came out in that relationship. The two settled down and moved to Montclair, N.J., the very heart of suburbia. There wasn't much of a gay community there, either, but they had each other.
Life was perfect, and then it wasn't. Antonio contracted Hodgkin's disease. They moved back to Long Beach to be closer to his doctors at Long Island Jewish, but Antonio died last August.
So now Denny is walking on fresh snow. "I'm trying to re-establish who I am," he said. "I came out with him. He was my first relationship. I've never been a single gay man before. This is a whole new world for me."
He is hoping the cyber life will help him make connections, and suspects that Long Beach isn't the worst place in the world to be gay. The city may just need a little push.
"As it stands, there is no spot on the beach to find people," Denny said. He knows of two other people from his Long Beach High School class of 1987 who are gay. One lives in Long Beach, he said, and one lives in New York. They are friendly, he said, but not really social. "Most of my friends out here will go out east or into New York to socialize," he said. "There is no place to socialize here."
Is Long Beach ready for a gay community? "It's conservative but tolerant," Denny said. "It depends on the people, and the people here are very professional. We don't have flaming queens that walk around in drag. If you draw attention to yourself like that you're going to get attention. But it's very tolerant. That's why I love Long Beach. I love it, love it here."
Debbie Novak says she is at peace with the community, more or less, as it is. She and her spouse, Amy, lived on East Walnut Street for 14 years before moving to Lido Beach this month. And as Denny contemplates his future after Antonio, Novak, who is 49, is looking forward to a smooth transition into golden-agery with Amy by her side. She said the lack of a community in the area is conspicuous, but that doesn't ruin the experience of living here. "Long Beach is very lovely," she said. "It's a mall-less town."
Novak speaks her mind and is an engaging debater. "Not as such" is a favorite response. It's the people who don't approve of her, who don't agree with her, who are wrong. "[Being gay is] the final taboo," she said. "It is no longer socially or politically correct to say terrible things about black people. People will look at you like you have two heads. It's repulsive. It's disgusting. Well, that certainly took a long time. But it's still perfectly OK to gay-bash."
But she said that even someone as outgoing as she is can't start up an entire community on her own. "You'd have to be a social person. You'd have to be a young, social person," she said. "If we were 23, we'd be going out a lot, socializing more and talking about it more. We're not in our rockers, but Amy gets home at 8:30 p.m. Weekends are spent with friends, exciting stuff, like going to the movies. But with Brooklyn friends, not Long Beach friends."
Does she feel isolated? "Not as such, but we're not the best people to ask," she said. "It would be nice if our friends were closer, and if there were something local that we knew was gay-related."
Novak did recall one occasion where she and Amy fell in with the right crowd. "Every summer they have this carnival-type thing by the Long Beach City Hall," she said. "Amy and I went to check it out, and we ran into four or five lesbians. How did we do that? I'm not sure - I think Amy started chatting with them. And they all hang out in Long Beach, but they all have places in the city. But they come out - you should pardon the expression - to Long Beach for the same reasons most people do: In the summer it's a nice place to be.
"But it's all pretty underground."
If a gay community were to emerge in Long Beach, it would probably revolve more around people like Denny than Novak. But to get off the ground, it will need lots of people like Devin Escobar.
Escobar, 19, is a recent graduate of Long Beach High School and a student at Nassau Community College. He also works for the Long Island Crisis Center and Pride For Youth, an advocacy group recently profiled in the Herald.
Escobar brings a young man's energy and worldview to the conversation. He doesn't believe in labels; he didn't come out as gay, he says, but as a human being. He attends war protests in his free time and complains that Long Beach isn't liberal enough.
He also cups the phone and spells out words when his mother comes within earshot. She knows who he is, he said, but some things are just not discussed in front of Salvadoran mothers.
With his co-workers at the crisis center, Escobar goes out into the region's tougher neighborhoods looking for homeless teens, offering them whatever help they're willing to accept. He dreams of becoming a social worker, and says he works too hard to have time for a boyfriend.
Long Beach High School wasn't awful, he said, thanks entirely to the teachers. He recommends that young gay or questioning students come to trust the staff there. A bully disrespected him twice in one day, he said, so he beat the guy up. The staff was firm in meting out punishment, but understanding. It was a better deal than he would get in most places, he suspects.
At NCC, Escobar says, he tried to get a gay and lesbian club started, but didn't find many takers. "Not too many people were comfortable," he said. "It's difficult."
He said it would be possible to do something in Long Beach, but it would take a lot of work. And with Manhattan so near, there isn't much motivation.
But Manhattan doesn't have a beach. "The beach would work [as a community center], since everyone knows where it is," Escobar said. "But what wouldn't work is the traffic, the distractions. People are not comfortable here in public."
Comments about this story? DMiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
