The original Area 51.

Greetings from Provicetown, Mass.--The Original Area 51! What do they do there? And why aren't they telling us? It's the world's largest open-air gay mosh pit, where on a hot, muggy day in August the collective IQ level drops to low SPF levels and no one wears think-tank tops. Puffy white clouds dot the late afternoon horizon, nature's subtle signal that either it's tea-dance time, we've got a new pope, or it's time for the new fall season.

For me, the clouds signaled the end of my first annual self-imposed summer blockbuster girl-cott. I went to only those movies with subtitles (Gabbeh, Kolya) or British accents (Austin Powers: International Man of gystery, Brassed Off). None of those claustrophobia-inducing techno marvels of special effects for me. Not one more time with wooden man Harrison Ford on Air Farce One complaining bitterly about his seat and defecating on the drink cart. No Jodie Foster--the Doris Day of the '90s--doing her usual icky-may-may-may attempt to contact aliens, like Mel Gibson, who's now so scared straight and rehabilitated that he's doing vein-popping public service announcements for Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays: "Give me back my son!"

And it wasn't a completely successful girl-cott. I did cross picket lions erected by people denouncing Disney for depicting a dyke as a human being to take my niece and nephew to see The Lion King. And I did go to Face/Off, a bizarre "prequel" to Six Degrees of Andrew Cunanan, the summer's sad real-life blockbuster. In Face/Off, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage exchange faces. Those of Senate majority leader Trent Lott, dance man extraordinaire Michael Flatley (complete with surgically implanted quarter-inch grosgrain sweatband), and Camilla Parker Bowles were unavailable.

As gay people everywhere donned Patsy Cornwell deputy-detective drag, the manhunt made clear that there hasn't been a gay man in the FBI since J. Edgar Hoover. As a BOBOLINK (Big Older Babe on Lesbian Income, No Kids), I knew that Cunanan could have been standing next to me at a Fire Island fund-raiser and I would've been safe. If he'd asked me where to hide, I would have advised him to go wherever Hillary Clinton was hidden and made to sew name tags into Chelsea's back-to-school wardrobe. Or maybe Cunanan could have sought refuge in the lineup of witnesses for Sen. Fred Thompson's campaign-finance hearings or in dyke drag at a Women's National Basketball Association game.

Speaking of basketball, not since Rosie O'Donnell's slam-dunk talk-show debut in the rerun doldrums of 1996 has there been such summertime fun. It was the see-and-be-seen event, a Lilith Fair tour with basketballs. You had to be there, because Lord knows it was hell to watch on TV. Not since the coverage of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake have telecasts worked so hard to avoid showing gay people on camera: interminable shots of coach Cheryl Miller's hair weave; fathers with bored sons, hanging like limp boy boas on their shoulders, standing in a sea of short-haired women--any angle to avoid those square-bottomed high-fiving bevies of big butches. No long, loving pans of the celebrity section, lest someone be outed as--gasp!--a women's basketball fan.

The end of the all-too-brief WNBA season signaled the beginning of the fall TV season. This year, instead of my usual dim-sum-surf sampling, I have installed the new Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation GLBT chip that blocks out anything not related to ABC or Disney. Despite the network's new fall slogan--"Watch Us and Go to Hell!"--I'm not expecting a lot. No Ellen enlisting and falling for her drill sergeant, Anne Heche, But I can see it now: They get married and do alternative insemination (including hilarious Lucy-Ethel mix-up scenes at sperm bank). Paige throws baby shower. Ellen organizes demo for cheaperprotease for Peter. Ellen has baby, Sophie, and falls for child-care worker, played by Helen Mirren. Ellen's parents become PFLAG poster parents of the year. Audrey is bisexual. I have hired a designated taper for the season, and I have a bet in our local Ellen pool that there will be a big, long kiss by the third episode.

After years of complaining about Mouselini and the Disneyfication of the world, it does feel odd to support them. I wear my Minnie Mouse ears with a chador. But I have adopted a medium-size town in Virginia and have pledged to purchase as many Disney products as their usual per-Baptist consumption. And I have pledged to sponsor 50 Disney Air Kids scholarships for those who cannot afford them. I'm not going to Disney World. I'm renting French Twist for the 14th time.