One Awkward Mini-Moon

Guten tag, amigos! Summer is over and it’s suddenly 9,000 degrees. Perfect time to reminisce about our lil mini-moon.What is a mini-moon, you ask? Well it is when you take a short trip after your wedding (hence “mini”) and then take a long trip later and call the second one your honeymoon so you can justify taking multiple weeks off work and also extending the length of time you can drag attention outta your newlywed situation.

No shame in this game.

 

Look at us mini-mooning. We are so white. My sister commented that all I need is a big floppy hat and I’m basically starring in a Nancy Meyers movie. Later that night I wore white on white. I am taking to this waspy Liz Scott life REAL quick.

Anyway! In March over Brian’s school spring break and my personal spring break that I’m taking even though I have a major book coming out 2 days later (whoops?) (but it’s ok b/c it’s our HONEYMOOOON!), we’re going to do a big adventcha all around Southeast Asia: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam. I mean, we haven’t planned one second of it but in our imaginations it is quite the wild and perfect trip.

Any tips?

We knew we wouldn’t have the time or energy right after the wedding for our dream vacation, but did want to get away so we planned a little mid-week getaway the week after the wedding to our favorite local beach Fire Island which is the best place on earth because you don’t need a car to get there or to get around there. Everyone walks around pulling wagons or riding bikes, everything is casual and relaxed and low key. Fun Fact: Tina Fey has a vacation home in one of the towns there. We have yet to hang out but it should be any day now.

At any rate, Fire Island kind of has two parts – one which is more family oriented, where we’ve vacationed before with friends – and one that is known as more of a gay party scene. You may have seen this part portrayed in the opening minutes of that HBO movie The Normal Heart and it is AMAZING. Lots of beautiful, oiled up gay men men drinking and cavorting around the seaside. I stopped watching after 20 minutes because I heard it gets sad and (spoiler alert!) Tim Riggins gets AIDS and dies and I just don’t see myself coming back from that sort of trauma.

We found a cute little guest house to rent for a few days that had a private deck, a kitchenette and was just a block back from the beach that happened to be on the gay party side in the town of Cherry Grove. A few weeks before the ‘moon, we had drinks with a colleague of Brian’s, who frequents this side of the island and participates in the festivities and were telling him all about the cute place we rented – close to the beach, the general store and this beautiful wooded forest area.

“Oh yeah. You mean the meat rack!” he replied.

“The what now?!!!?”

Turns out, the “beautiful wooded forest” area just steps from our newlywed cottage connects Cherry Grove with The Pines, the other hot gay party spot and is known as quite the locale for revelers to go get some strange.

It is at this moment I was almost saddened by how open minded Brian and I are. What a dream comedy film this would be. A sheltered young couple goes off on a romantic honeymoon only to find themselves in the midst of a wild gay party week! She accidentally does ecstasy. He ends up covered in body glitter. Shenanigans ensue and they leave the trip a better, happier couple than arrived.

Instead it was just us, two jaded New Yorkers who thought they’d seen it all.

Bring on the Meat Rack!!!

I’ll go right ahead and ruin the anticipation by revealing that we did not see anyone getting bajiggity in the forest. We DID however, see about 800 dongs, 900 butts, 50,000 ladybushes and more boobies than a 12-year-old virgin could ever fathom seeing in his whole life. Turns out, Cherry Grove is a nude beach!

And by nude, oh we mean NUDE. There’s another nude spot on the other end of the island where we’d vacationed with friends in the past which is frankly, a little underwhelming. Nude bathers have these funny shield things, almost like a tent with no top (even their tents are topless, ho ho!) which still provides privacy despite their lack of apparel. We imagined we’d encounter the same sort of situation but oh no, friends, this was a whole new ball game. And by “ball,” I do mean of the male anatomy sort, of which we saw so many, they haunt our dreams.

Bathers in Cherry Grove don’t bother with modesty shades. They walk their dogs, stroll the coastline, swim, eat sandwiches, do pushups, hunt for sea shells, anything you might do on a regular beach vacation but naked as the day they were born.

It was…definitely something.

I don’t mean to be unkind, I’m sure these were all lovely people but, as with most situations where nudity is approved, none of the participants were people I’d actually want to see nude. NOW, I think all bodies are beautiful and everyone is special but we did not take the subway to the train to the other train to the ferry allll the way out to this sexy gay party island to see a bunch of normal people walking around in the buff. Enough with these reggos – where were all the toned, oiled up young men and porn star lesbians?!

I will ruin any other anticipation by revealing that we did not sunbathe starkers. We briefly considered it but chickened out. I did go topless, how Euro, for about 12 spicy minutes but just couldn’t get into the full monty.

Can ladies go full monty or is that just a man thing?

I don’t know, guys. I just don’t see the appeal of having a bronzed mons pubis, you know? Not to mention all that sand all up in everywhere. I hate to be so American about it but perhaps some parts should just stay covered.

As for the Meat Rack, we didn’t even end up entering. And by entering I mean like…walking into the woods, not anything dirty, pervs.

We actually confused the Meat Rack with another wooded plot of land, The Sunken Forest, which is nearly a mile walk from the heart of town, and even further from The Pines. As we trekked through sandy, mosquito filled dunes and wild sea brush in hopes of spotting the infamous Meat Rack I couldn’t hep thinking it just seemed like an awful lot of effort to go to for an anonymous BJ.

But, then again, I’m a straight prude who’s seen enough Lifetime movies to know you should never go into the forest with a stranger, no matter what fun activities he’s promising, so I might not be the Meat Rack’s target audience.

It turns out the Meat Rack and the Sunken Forest were entirely unrelated – the Sunken Forest is part of the National Parks service and is very well maintained and family friendly and you can learn about birds and foliage and stuff so that was slightly more my speed.

Here is us in the Sunken Forest…we’re so waspy we wear collared shirts even when hiking through national parks/possible illicit wooded sex dens.

Basically the Meat Rack had the opposite effect on us that it had on the imaginary Midwestern couple of my comedy film dreams. Instead of opening our minds (and legs!) we just kind of got bored with public nudity and went for a nature hike.

SEXYYY.

Andddd that was our mini moon! It actually was super fun. We just laid around and read and ate junk food and drank bloody marys and I got legit tan and I cried on the ferry home because I didn’t want it to end and also I am a drama queen. As for the freakydeaky stuff, there’s always next time! I’ve heard that Thailand has lots of ladyboys and sex tourism so maybe we can re-try the racy lifestyle on that visit. I mean, we’ll probably just end up like, touring a historical museum or something but you never know! Anything could happen.

How do you say Meat Rack in Thai?!

Off to Google Translate I go! While I am gone, here are some (clothed!) photos from our lil trip if you should so care to see…and why wouldn’t you? It is a proven fact that everyone adores looking at photos of someone else’s romantic getaway.

 

 

packed & ready to go!

#meatsweats

On the shared deck

Our guest house from the ocean side

people are weird

sunset selfie

umbrella & bloodies. We’re read to go.

shameless beach selfie

Lunch is served!

My Old Man and the Sea

I carried my portable Miz Hott wine glass from my bachelorette everywhere I went ❤

out to dinner!

Our lil house for the week

The Belvedere Guest House for Men – go to their website!! It is straight up NSFW!!!

so sad to leave

xoxoxoxoxo Mz Hott