Saugatuck: Michigan's secret treasure.

When I was a 15-year old boy, vacationing in Saugatuck. Mich., held many secret treasures. I was forbidden to walk beyond a certain point on Oval Beach where my parents had warned me that "sexual deviants" were known to parade around in the nude. I snuck out of my family's rented cottage one hot August night and wandered until I happened upon a scene lit by flickering tiki torches and glowing citronella sticks. I gazed upon a wild paradise of men, some half-clothed, others fully undressed, moving to the synthesized pulse of '70s disco. Donna Summer was singing "Love to Love You Baby," and her libidinal coos braided with the breaking surf and the gritty, breeze coming in off the lake. It was a liberating vision of what I hoped my future could be. Me too. I want to join the dance too.

Within a three hours' drive from Chicago, the sister southwestern Michigan towns of Saugatuck and Douglas, with a combined population of fewer than 2,000 residents, are wedged between the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and the northern crook of the Kalamazoo River. Once a thriving lumber area, Saugatuck-Douglas became a popular tourist destination in the early 1900s. In 1910, when associates of the Chicago Art Institute established the Summer School of Art on the Ox-Bow Lagoon, a gay presence flourished.

I have made routine treks back to this safe haven, affectionately dubbed "the Fire Island of the Midwest," year after year in order to join the dance. I'd take weekend jaunts to the gay-friendly Dunes Resort in Douglas, where my friends and I would rent a cottage. At night we'd take in a Mr. Leather contest in the bistro or dog-paddle naked under the Michigan stars. Morning was traditionally reserved for a chain-driven ferry ride across the Kalamazoo, followed by a stroll along the plank piers. Then it was back to Saugatuck to visit the swanky downtown art galleries and antique bonanzas housed in restored turn-of-the-century buildings in the Butler Street district. Like Provincetown, Mass., Saugatuck-Douglas is home to plenty of bed-and-breakfasts, some gay-owned (like the Victorian-style Kirby House), and most gay-friendly. Rainbow flags proliferate in the storefronts of restaurants and gift shops, and there is a perfect balance between the chic opulence of art glass offered at Czarina's and the touristy kitsch you might covet at Maisie and Me, which features a nylon-and-plastic flamingo petting farm.

Last August I climbed the steep wooden stairs of Mount Baldhead, the hill that mounds the horizon just before Oval Beach, and made a pilgrimage to the far side of the dune cliffs. I threw down my knapsack and towel and let the leafy overhang of a scrubby birch tree shade my face. From below I could hear waves crashing and a mix of techno-dance music filtering up to where I was reclining. I watched two men running into the foamy surf on the beach, playfully splashing one another. For a moment I thought I could have been in Provincetown or Sitges, Spain. But I didn't need to travel all that distance. Later that night I knew I would dance with my companion until twilight, would kiss him under the canopy of a downtown Saugatuck cafe, and much later would wander the dunes with him, hand in hand, with a shared pulse for the limitless night sky and each other.

Wozek is a published poet who has written extensively about Saugatuck.