Adult film star Ty Mitchell, who has appeared in scenes for Men.com and Cockyboys, has written a new essay for Buzzfeed titled: To Survive A Pandemic, We Need To Make Room For Pleasure. In the extensive write-up he recalls being out on Fire Island for the Fourth of July weekend, and briefly attending the infamous Meat Rack pandemic party, which sparked an outrage online:

As the crowd came into view, I felt the strange dissonance between warm familiarity and abject horror, between the thrill of nightlife as I remember it and the recognition that nightlife is now bound up with potentially deadly repercussions. I dragged myself through a sardine tin of sweaty, ecstatic bodies, people who had taken off their masks to kiss a boy and never put them back on. I hoped that a more dispersed scene might be on the other side. There wasn’t, rather just a membrane to the crowd where zombified partiers stumbled outward to vomit into bushes and try not to lose consciousness.

Mitchell reveals he left the party and ended up spending a quiet night on the beach, but it was later—while he "sipped on an Aperol spritz beside a heated pool"—that he thought about the ill-advised Meat Rack gathering, and how gay people seek each other out to "cope with anxieties and loneliness":

We wanted very badly to be with other gay people and to do gay things in a gay place. Nobody had sorted out the details of what safety could look like right now without dismissing those wants altogether. So people improvised.

Mitchell goes on to talk about the natural beauty of Fire Island and the queer vacation destination's history with the AIDS epidemic, but it's in the comments section where the author gets dragged for his essay:

"No, we all fuckin knew by the 4th not to gather like that, don’t rewrite this like y’all had no idea. And if that were true, if you believed it wasn’t that big of a deal, then what was with the bit about calculated risk? You don’t get to make calculated risks that could kill others because you need some leisure time," reads tricsiecat's comment.

"Pride was canceled all over the country bc we knew gatherings were unsafe. This event should have been no different," writes VictorianGhostChild.

Chrismakis, another commenter, said: “I have tried not to be angry while reading this. IN ANY OTHER circumstance, we live and let live in NY. But this was the year to cancel. Justifying these actions, because we all are dealing with the pandemic differently is bogus. I do not usually comment on articles on Buzzfeed. Do not marry the need for safe spaces and the need to party in the summer during the year PEOPLE ARE DYING going to the grocery store. TAKE THIS ARTICLE DOWN. THERE IS NO REASON TO PARTY THIS YEAR. Stop making excuses for shitty behavior.”

With tortillachips adding: "You can be gay at home. I do it every day. You can have fun in small groups and derive pleasure from socially distanced outings."

Head over to Buzzfeed to read Mitchell's essay, or just skip to the comment section to read some of the snarky comments calling him out, which can be summed up by commenter IslandMiss: "You’re still a selfish asshole🤷🏽‍♀️ Signed...A fellow New Yorker🗽"