Pages from... Fried & True Tales from Rehoboth Beach Letters from CAMP, July 2005 The costumes, the scenery, the bug spray, the props…   I knew my foray into golf had gotten out of hand when somebody called me a jock. Quick, phone the New York Times. It had nothing to do with my actual golf skill, but that my golfing buddies didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. We’re on the course and it starts to drizzle, then rain, then pour. I expected CNN’s Anderson Cooper to arrive to broadcast while being blown horizontal. Several players gave up at drizzle and almost everybody was in the bar by rain. It was considerably into pour by the time I could drag my soggy butt off the course. That’s what I get for playing with three serious golfers. Meanwhile, this reporter cannot reveal her anonymous source despite the threat of jail, but I can divulge that the lounge conversation went like this: Bonnie: “Oh my God, she’s going to kill me.” League Member: “Why?” Bonnie: “I told her to leave her raincoat in the car.”  Another League Member: “You mean Fay Jacobs is still out there?” Third league Member: “I know she is. Her tee shot bounced off the roof of our cart as we drove by.” For the record, I was aiming in the other direction. But it did serve them right for rushing back to the clubhouse at drizzle. So I drip into the bar, wringing wet, and somebody says, “I can’t believe you stayed out there so long. What a jock!” I may not be getting better at golf, but I’m having my Outward Bound. Along with precipitation, golf offers intimacy with pestilence. Last week I was attacked by a swarm of horse flies the size of Sea Biscuit. My teammates sprang into action and spritzed me with Skin-so-Soft and a shot of Deep Woods Off. Now there’s a nice fragrance. On the next hole I was informed that the previous week somebody had spied an electrical line wrapped around an adjacent tree. Wisely, they drove me past the site before revealing that the utility cable turned out to be a reptile. Oy, I was on an aversion therapy tour. Next week I’m expecting a plague of frogs. At least I’m doing well in the accessory department. My fuzzy Schnauzer club head covers arrived. Call me if you ever need doggy hand puppets. And I have to say, the costumes are cool. Imagine my surprise on my maiden golf outing when I was given a glove monogrammed with a giant FJ. “You shouldn’t have…” They didn’t. Turns out that FootJoy manufactures golf stuff and everything I wear can have my initials on it. Cool. I now have FJ shoes, sox, and a ball marker. I’m looking for an FJ fly swatter. Today, I came home and found a visor with a big FJ on the front hanging on my doorknob with a little note: “Got this for you. Has your name written all over it.” Okay, eventually I have to tell you how I’m doing at the actual game of golf. Here’s a clue. One week my quartet included a woman actively undergoing chemotherapy, a woman with arthritis who has had at least 18 joints replaced, and a woman with a prosthetic leg. They all played better than me. Okay, to be fair, all three gals are experienced, superior players despite their challenges, but it does make one consider the point of continuing in the sport. Although, golf is great exercise—especially for me. If four of us tee off, three golfers then jump in the carts to ride a hundred yards or more to their golf balls. Me, I trudge the fifty feet to my ball and whack at it again. I rarely hit it far enough to even use the cart (my first off-road vehicle) and generally wind up walking most of the course. Yes, the exercise is going well indeed. So I forge on. One day my companion sank a putt and I congratulated her on her birdie. “Hey, you’re getting the terms down!” she said. “Language I get, it’s sports where I suck.” At my next lesson, my mentor made me change my stance, my grip, my swing, everything but my underpants. This was necessary because, how shall I delicately put this? My tits were in the way. We gals with large bingo bongos need to stand further from the ball so we don’t interrupt our swing by whacking ourselves in the hooters. I made the adjustment, stood further from the ball, took a good swing, missed my boobs, and sent the ball far enough to lose it in the wheat field next to the course. I’d need a hay baler and combine to find it. But they tell me the shot was good, despite it costing me a stroke. Better to cost one than have one, I say. In fact, this whole sports thing may have the desired effect of relieving my stress and giving me a hobby. I could turn into a jock yet. Stop snickering. Do you know any lipstick lezzies who would spurn White Diamonds or Chanel in favor of Deep Woods Off? Me, neither.   Pages from ..... As I Lay Frying -  a  Rehoboth Beach Memoir June 2003 : Smile, you’re on digital camera.     I’m in a love-hate relationship with my digital camera.    I’ve been through Instamatics, Flash Cubes, strobes, 35 millimeter, single-lens reflex, Polaroid, and point and shoot. Taking pictures was simple. You plopped film in the Kodak, took pictures and left them at the drug store, waiting expectantly, sometimes for a week, to see if the photos “came out.”    Well, since those days, almost everyone I know has come out but that doesn’t help the evolving state of photography. Going digital seems like a good idea, but so did Phen-Fen.    Truthfully, I like taking digital photos. I shoot multiple shots until I get one with everybody’s eyes open.  But the real negative is the fact that there are no negatives. A hundred years from now historians won’t have a clue. Most people take digital pictures, send them to friends over the Internet, store the pictures on their hard drive and never even print them. What happens when the Dell detonates? Will a whole nation wander around in a daze like tornado survivors, having lost their wedding pictures? Yeah, yeah, we’re supposed to be backing things up. But you know how THAT goes.....      And the cost is staggering. Know why printers are absurdly cheap now? Because they practically give you the hardware and software, but make you pay through the nose for the wetware – ink. After just two or three 5x7s and right in the middle of cropping somebody’s thighs out of a family portrait, my computer starts flashing “cartridge almost out of ink.” And if you’ve ever stood in the aisle at Staples trying to figure out which cartridge goes with your printer then you know the fresh hell I’m talking about. Between paper, ink and the time it takes to print the pictures, I could go on vacation again.    So for me, the answer was to bring my camera to the nice folks at the photo shop for digital printing. The machine had a slot that accepted Memory Sticks, Magic Memory Cards, digi-chips, cow chips, and pop tarts, but it didn’t take the memory chip from my hot-shot camera...... October 2000 : Pork Snouts in Sussex                While you know how thrilled we were to move to cosmopolitan Rehoboth Beach, it took us a while to realize that we’d actually moved to the state of Delaware. Things I’d never even imagined in my other life go on here. We just went to the Annual Bridgeville Apple Scrapple Festival. Apples I've had, but scrapple is a horse of another color. In fact, I hope it’s not horse.  I'm sure it surprises no one that prior to Saturday I was a scrapple virgin. Yes, I've heard Bonnie's tales of farmer Granny frying scrapple, but thus far I'd avoided having to sample any myself. Frankly, you know something's up when you ask normally glib people what scrapple is and they stutter. "Um, I can’t really say. Pig mush, maybe?" So there I was, along with the 40,000 people descending on little Bridgeville, Delaware, standing in line for a scrapple sandwich. Well, it wasn't the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted. Bonnie insisted it should have been crispier. I was negotiating it nicely until I looked up and saw the 40-foot scrapple company sign listing the ingredients as pig's snouts and lard. At about the same time, the Hog Calling Contest began and grown men and women started wailing Suuu-eeeee, Suuu-eeeee, which was roughly the same sound I was making trying to spit out my pig snout sandwich. Wisely, Bonnie grabbed my arm and steered me toward a vendor hawking kosher hot dogs (which, if dissected, are probably the Hebrew National version of snouts and lard)..... August 2003 :Get me to the insurance office on time      I was absolutely not going to write about gay marriage. Everybody else has been yammering about it for weeks. But a confluence of events left me no choice.      First, I got a call from the News Journal asking me what I thought about the whole gay marriage debate. I said something very bland about wanting equal legal rights but not caring whether it was called marriage or not. They quoted me verbatim. Only they added “said Fay Jacobs, gay activist.”      Yipes! When did that happen? I don’t consider myself a gay activist. I’m a columnist who happens to be gay. And I write about my life and things that are important to me.      So am I a gay activist? If so, I’m also a theatre activist and a Schnauzer activist (Paw Power!). Actually, I’m less a Gay activist than a Fay activist. I speak for me. I mean what’s gay about ranting and raving about TV commercials, yoga class or rescuing cats? Okay, the cat thing might be borderline.      Half-smarting and half-proud of the pigeon holing, I went about my business, which happened to be planning an Alaska vacation. Owing to my vast ignorance of geography (If you get a blue question at Trivial Pursuit, don’t look at me) it was weeks into vacation research before I realized our departure city was not Vancouver, USA. I’m going to Canada? Lots of the current vituperation over gay marriage in this country has been stoked by our progressive Northern neighbor. Hmmmmmm.  “Hey Bonnie, want to end our 22 year engagement  and get married in Vancouver before we leave for the cruise?”   “Sure. I’d love to.....    ....As for tradition, we’ll be taking SOMETHING OLD: Us!!! SOMETHING NEW: the latest copy of Letters to pose with it at our wedding; SOMETHING BORROWED: yeah, like the whole trip from MasterCard; and SOMETHING BLUE: hmmm…My varicose veins? The Planter’s Peanuts bag from the flight? Me, when I think that I have to leave my own country in order to celebrate something so important and joyous.  We’ll report more when we return. In the meantime, I am not an activist. I’m a bride. Or is that Bonnie? ********************************* These are just the tip of the Rehoboth ice-berg..... read more about Fay J's Rehoboth Beach by purchasing the book!    Click Here.....you need a good laugh!!!!!