Greetings Letters readers, Robby from Brooklyn here, wishing all of you a Happy Spring. Finally. I think…is it Spring yet? I know I have waxed poetic and gone on and on about my favorite season – Libra season!!! Now I must swing the pendulum the other way and lament about one of my least favorite seasons – FAKE SPRING! (I am quite certain fake spring didn’t exist in my 20s or 30s lol I am really telling my age writing a column about the weather. 50 and fab! YEAR OF 50, back on!)

Fake Spring are those weeks at the end of March, beginning of April, where for a few days in the Northeast it’s sunny and gorgeous. The highs are in the 60s and 70s. Gays break out the tank tops and short shorts, bars open their windows, and restaurants put some seats/tables out front. The streets are busy, people are smiling. 

You go and walk the West Side Highway and check out Little Island. We got to lounge at The Gansevoort Peninsula in Hudson River Park. Opening in 2023 its Manhattan’s first public beach with 1,200 tons of sand, beach umbrellas, Adirondack chairs, a sandy shore and a salt marsh. LOVE IT! After three months of bitter cold, snow and dark days it truly is glorious. BUT Mother Nature giveth – she also taketh away…

Because as quick as that mercury hit 70 degrees, the very next week we are thrust back in bitter cold. And to add serious insult to injury it just feels colder and darker because we had those glorious days of sun. Gays with small apartments and closets don’t switch out your winter jackets and sweaters for the tanks and shorts just yet!

Fake Spring hit harder this year just because everything seems harder this year. By all accounts for most of us it was a ROUGH winter. (Winter was so rough I missed the last deadline for this magazine if you wondered why my column wasn’t in the last issue, no worries readers I am back!) Throw in this batshit crazy Administration in charge and a convicted felon for a POTUS who loves claiming things are Fake, although weirdly we never once discussed Fake Spring, and we have a perfect storm of shit. A shitstorm.

Here is a list of all the things DJT has claimed has been fake in the 10 years he took the elevator down announcing his candidacy – the 2020 election results, the Russia investigation, the Mueller Probe, Mainstream media outlets, the Jeffrey Epstein hoax, the “Border Wall” completion claim,

9/11 Celebration rumors. According to Google AI, “analysts have noted that many of these claims involve the use of large, inaccurate numbers such as claiming to have ended eight wars or that 29,000 Chinese migrants entered in three weeks.”

Funny how we never heard anything about fake elections till the man named in the Epstein Files over a million times lost an election in 2020. Funny how we never heard the term fake news until a twice-impeached POTUS tried to convince his cult like followers that every news story that paints him in a bad light is false. How has this man hijacked 10 years of our lives??

He won’t highack anymore of my column because by the time you are reading this I will be on a big gay cruise sailing throughout Mexico! At the end of April I along with a few other thousands gays will be boarding the newest Virgin ship, the Brilliant Lady. The ship arrived at the Port of Los Angeles on April 6th, marking the first Virgin Voyage cruise season operating from California. 

We are sailing with Atlantis Events – the world’s largest gay travel company.  My friend Mike and I will be hitting the following Mexican ports – Ensenada, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. Mike and I have been friends since back in the day when we worked together on Fire Island. Staying in touch even after Mike moved to West Hollywood years ago, we participated in multiple AIDS LIFECYCLES together. A week onboard a nonstop floating gay celebration is exactly what this homo needs to get his groove back – just call me Stella onboard the ship.

By the time you read this I will be celebrating Spring in Los Angeles – a place where Fake Spring doesn’t exist! By the time you read this I will have completed the epic unique hike in LA called the “Bridge to Nowhere.” According to Mike, “Its an iconic hike where you hike up along a river to a giant bridge that goes nowhere…it was built for a highway that was never finished and now people bungee jump off of it.” SIGN ME UP. What can you do, when you are in LA you go on a hike – you can’t fight city hall! 

By the time you read this I will be drinking at the Abbey scoping Bravo reality ‘stars!’ By the time you read this I will be sunning myself poolside at a rooftop bar somewhere in WeHo – You can’t fight city hall.

We needed this! And by we I mean me lol. Just as much as we needed “Heated Rivarly” and the Artemis II astronauts we needed a week in LA and a week on a gay cruise. We needed this for Jane Don’t  – robbed of the Drag Race crown! 

By the time you read this it will be Spring, real Spring, nomore fake Spring readers!!!!! Bon Voyage, Bitches!

(this column was originally published in the May edition of “Letters from Camp Rehoboth.”)