On July 16, at the Blue Whale, as part of a series of Boardwalk Talks, sponsored by Chopin Vodka, New York Times writer Patrick Healy moderated a conversation with Larry Kramer, the often controversial author of the novel “Faggots” and Tony Award-winning play “The Normal Heart,” and co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) and ACT-UP. Sometimes it seemed as if the passage of time had mellowed Kramer. At other times, the frank anger one associates with him burned through with the expected white heat.

Kramer spoke to a large crowd that included rainbow flag creator Gilbert Baker, the inimitable Robin Byrd, Pines Archivist Robert Bonanno, custom leatherwear designer David Samuel Menkes, reporters from Fire Island News and Tide, and many other individuals from Fire Island Pines and from Cherry Grove.

“I spent the last 25 years writing and researching [about] the American people. We as a people—homosexuals—have been here since the beginning of this country and we have been treated terribly since the beginning of the country—we have to know that and we have to know what a special people we are … we are a people and we are wonderful: extraordinary people, talented people and wonderful people,” Kramer began. He also cited Hannah Arendt, who maintained that the Jewish people were complicit in the Holocaust by not organizing into an army and fighting back, saying that we were complicit in our own Holocaust of HIV/AIDS. In the 1980s, he said, “There were thousands who were scared shitless. Activism requires fear as well as anger,” and looking at those who joined ACT-UP, he observed, “This could be an army and we needed an army.” “Fifty medications are out there” to fight AIDS “because of ACT-UP,” Kramer declared proudly.

What inspired Kramer to write his novel “Faggots”—a work which angered many, who branded him as “self-loathing,” a description he rejects, saying also that ire from the community “was very unexpected”? “I wanted desperately to fall in love and it didn’t work. I wanted to explore the gay world in a book in the way it hadn’t been written about … how difficult it was to fall in love when there was so much to distract from it—having so much sex makes it hard to fall in love,” he explained. “I learned early on that you don’t get more with honey than with vinegar. You just don’t.” He went on, “These things had to be said. I loved writing ‘Faggots.’ I loved playing with language. No-one ever says that it’s a very funny book.”

Asked to describe the Pines in 1978, the year that “Faggots” was published, Kramer recalled, “Everyone was gorgeous. Everyone had a body …. Everyone fucked all the time. It was one big party and it was an experience, too.” He quipped, “Someone said I should make an honorary visit to the Meat Rack tonight,” and continued, “I came here for several years and pursued my investigation into love, love of one particular person.”

“The criticisms I made of the Pines then”—in “Faggots”—“were the same criticisms that were necessary in the age of what came to be known as HIV.” He remembered that, during the earliest years of the AIDS crisis, he and a handful of others, from what would become GMHC, attempted to solicit money in Pines Harbor to fight what was then called “the gay cancer,” as the Ice Palace would not allow them to solicit funds there, nor would the late John Whyte let them solicit at his Pines businesses. Those familiar with “The Normal Heart,” and matters dramatized in it, will recall that the organization he helped to found would eventually expel him. He noted, philosophically, “Writers tell the truth. If you tell the truth, they throw you out of GMHC,” but, he added, “I’ve always been a loner. We only have ourselves to believe in.”

Concerning “The Normal Heart,” which opened at the Public Theater in 1985 and did not reach Broadway until 25 years later, Kramer “never thought it would make it to Broadway. My boyfriend said, ‘Now you’re going to have to be nice.’” He went on, “For years, I wanted to be taken seriously as a writer. When you’re an activist, they don’t take you seriously as a writer. Great American writers have never been activists.”

Kramer grew up, he told us, in a contentious household, which may have led to the confrontational style he is known for, but here he reserved his anger for the government and the President. When Healey asked, “Did you ever think you’d see gay marriage?” Kramer’s response was, “I don’t think we have gay marriage in New York. I think we have gay feel good marriage … which is not marriage at all.” He opined, “The only marriage that makes any sense is Federal marriage … I don’t know why the fancy lawyers and everybody [else are] not acting up.” About Barack Obama, Kramer charged, “He says all the right things and then he doesn’t do them … There’s always more to do. You should never be satisfied.” Before turning to questions from the audience, Kramer wound up his talk, saying, “I don’t have any regrets for anything I’ve ever done … If every gay person in America fought like everyone in ACT-UP, we would have our world. Our enemies are out there, hating us every minute of every day, and we do not fight back!”