Written by:
Marissa Pareles
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 15#2
Do these days of dyadic bliss (or its distant relative, same-sex marriage activism) foreclose other possibilities? I’m not talking about polyamory or communal living. I want to know just how alive is the multigenerational vacation — the kind where girlfriends meet new babies, teenage nephews blanch in horror at aunts’ low-cut bathing suits and Grandpa’s ghost seems to be taking the waters too? At the far northern tip of Georgia’s super-deluxe sea archipelago (Cumberland, Jekyll, St Simon’s and so forth) is a lesser-known island just offshore from the South’s weirdest and most beautiful city, Savannah. This August, my own close-knit alternative dynasty — my mom, first cousin, her children, my girlfriend and I— all piled into an apartment rental in pristine Tybee Island to find out for ourselves whether traveling with the family is still a good idea when you’re way past 18.
We flew in to Georgia after a squall, in the midst of a summer beset with murderous storms. The island seemed empty, the Beachside Colony’s pool scattered with leaves and palm fronds. We checked into what turned out to be a luxury apartment rental. On our last group vacation — a sunny, sometimes hellish, graduation bash featuring more complicated figures of our clan — we crowded into two basic hotel rooms off a San Diego freeway. The Tybee accommodations were very different. This place was lush — the sort reserved for travel writers and the non-struggling middle class — with a sea-view balcony, whirlpool bath, three bedrooms, full kitchen, washer and dryer and more. No one wanted to leave the room.
Make the Kids Happy
Was there any doubt that my girlfriend would wow the critics? There shouldn’t have been.
She and I took my cousins —ages 17 and 7 — out for a swim at 11 p.m. The sky was pitch-black and starless due to heavy cloud cover. The waves slapped hard against the shore. In the saltwater Jacuzzi, our skin stung. My youngest cousin (also my baby godsister) scrambled out of the hot tub and into the kiddie pool.
Earlier, after the initial hugs, Frankie (said baby god-sister, Jewish like the rest of us, but also Irish and Creek) made a beeline for the dirty blond, rosy-faced Amazon (i.e. my girlfriend Nicole) who looks like her and has an endless patience for kid games. In comparison with insta-bond between my girlfriend and my god-sister, my own interactions with the kid seemed to center on coy negotiation:
“Can we ride bikes?”
“Maybe later. Want to go to the pool?”
“After we ride bikes?”
“Wanna go now?”
Frankie (the little fish) and I almost always agree on the pool (if not bikes or cuisine). But Frankie’s enamoration with Nicole made it impossible for me to get in any quality kid time. Finally, the little fish and I got our moment alone: the Tybee Island Marine Science Center’s Saturday Beach Discovery Walk. (Since then, Hurricane Jeanne has caused significant erosion on the Atlantic beaches but at press time, it was safe to swim carefully.)
Tybee Island and its beaches — although you probably haven’t heard of them — are famous for the abundant marine life that shuns Tybee’s glitzier, noisier Southern neighbors. The Marine Science Center’s Tybee Island Sea Turtle Project monitors the endangered loggerhead turtles driven to nest here. Uninhabited Little Tybee, a satellite island, contains vast marshlands. All this in spite of the lost H-bomb for which Pentagon and National Labs scientists are cruising nearby waters. The nuke has been MIA for nearly half a century, but everyone believes it is nearby. It would have been a shame not to learn about these waters, these fish, even though the walk was less than totally fascinating.
“What does bi mean?” asked the chirpy college-age guide without irony or even a smirk. One of the critters in question was bi-something. Trailing behind the group, dipping our feet in the water and running on the sand, we missed most of the tour. We did overhear the guide describe invertebrate reproduction: “Slippers are all males when they’re born. And they just stack on top of each other.”
We also heard about the dangers to fragile habitats and the threat of those plastic six-pack rounds often found around necks of aquatic wildlife. My little fish’s interest was kindled, and she ended up adopting a loggerhead turtle. Weary and full of beneficent turtlephilia, Frankie and I managed to connect as we hadn’t since the San Diego fiasco.
Plan for Girlfriend Time
After time with the family in Tybee, seeing the sights and sounds of Savannah was just for my girl and me. All Savannah discovered its own queerness — which cradles the city in secrets, fine parties, drag shows, design, camp and scandal — with the publication of the book over a decade ago. The book, according to our tour guide and fast friend Harriet, started it all: the comings-out, the new gay scene, the founding of PFLAG and most of all the crush of visitors looking for the beautiful, bizarre and nearly archaic city portrayed in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Savannah hasn’t been “spoiled” since; it’s just become increasingly proud and self-conscious. Most of the sites are well preserved, and some of the fictionalized real characters still live in the Historic District, which is walkable with a little effort. Of all Midnight’s associated sites, though, the most interesting is Bonaventure Cemetery, just outside of town. The city’s characteristic live oaks sweep across the sky, and the ornately macabre Christian section brings back the days — before planned urban parks made their first appearances — when strollers, necking couples, picnickers and other celebrants outnumbered visitors of the dead in many of the nation’s cemeteries. The famous Bird Girl grave statue is no longer in the cemetery, but can now be seen at Savannah’s Telfair Museum of Art.
The last stop is the gay-owned nine-bedroom Azalea Inn, just off Forsythe Park at the southern end of downtown. Savannah is the South’s queerest town, insist Azalea owners Jessie Balentine and John McAvoy (apparently Atlanta doesn’t count as Southern). Only it’s hard to tell where queer Southern camp meets troubling nostalgia, since the original owner was a member of the infamous Cotton Exchange and Robert E. Lee appears on the dining room’s mural. Is it apolitical luxury or ironic Southern quirkiness? That’s the city’s puzzle.
Behind the Azalea Inn are a swimming pool, fishpond, waterfall and garden. As we left in the sweltering August air, the clipper-wielding owner called out to us, “If you get bored and want to do some gardening, come back!”
Going Home
After Savannah we returned to Tybee Island; before we knew it, it was time to return home. On our last night on the island, we soaked in the Jacuzzi tub for hours and gossiped about an absent, philandering uncle. My mom got up on the last morning to drive us to the airport — we were too cheap to take a later flight — and ruined her last few hours of vacationing. Nothing’s perfect, not the beautifully eroding Tybee or wealth-segregated and nostalgic Savannah. Not our family. Those few days, though, were a time of tranquility, of female bonding, of closeness and of being surprised that there are more things on sea and land than I could have dreamed up on my own.
IF YOU GO TO TYBEE
Where to Sleep
Azalea Inn (http://www.azaleainn.com) and Beachside Colony (http://www.beachsidecolony.com) are must-dos on your trip.
Where to Eat
Grub all over the Southland is great, but these three spots will get your munching off to a good start:
• The Breakfast Club. http://tybeeisland.com/dining/brclub/Default.htm
• Fannie’s, http://www.fanniesonthebeach.com
• Savannah City Market, http://www.savannahcitymarket.com
Things to Do
• Bonaventure Cemetery and Savannah Historic District, 912-235-4227
• Lady Chablis at Club One, http://www.clubone-online.com
• Personalized Tours of Savannah, http://www.savannahsites.com
• Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, http://www.savannahcivilrightsmuseum.com
• Savannah Historic District, http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/geo-flor/1.htm
• Telfair Museum of Art, http://www.telfair.org
• Tybee Island Marine Science Center, http://www.tybeemsc.org
Need More Ideas?
For more ideas on things to see and places to stay, check out the Savannah Visitor and Convention Bureau at http://www.savcvb.com.
Marissa’s Four Big Tips for Traveling With the Family
1. Sleep in clothes. A no-brainer. That way if something small and wriggly crawls in next to you, you’ll be able to hug it. And if your mom walks in for breakfast requests you won’t have to avert your gaze the rest of the day.
2. Delve deep. It sounds shameless, but it’s your duty to use the trip to nail down previously nebulous aspects of family secrets. Which members of the family were unplanned? Does your mother ever fantasize about killing your brother? (And is it nearly as often as you do?)
3. Contribute wisely. Do the cooking, not the dishes. You’ll thank me later.
4. Be a little bit naughty. Sometimes your girlfriend feels totally sneaky and adolescent doing it when your family’s in the house. Encourage this.
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