so i just finished my spring wedding season
and have a nice chunk of time off before my fall wedding season
planning on spending two whole weeks in provincetown with la cubana
ah provincetown
a haven for artists and writers
a place to be out as gay
out as weird
out as wild
p-town is the birth of american theatre in the form of the Eugene O’Neill
also a big part of Tennessee Williams’s past
not to mention all the great artists that found inspiration there
Robert motherwell is at the top of my list here
but aside from the great cultural icons
there are also the
shall we say
cult-u-ral icons
like Divine who worked in town
and John Waters who also tended shop
Mr. Waters can still be found bicycling down commercial street with his little david niven moustache
norman mailer owns the only brick house in a long row of wooden commercial street homes
there's a ton of culture in provincetown
there are also
thousands of gay men in leather
some of whom
parade up and down commercial st
wearing little more than chaps
there are dykes from french canada
who come to town to drink as much beer as humanly possible
and get rowdyyyyyy
there are dykes from the rural mid-west
who are just so damn happy to be out in public holding their girlfriend's hand
that they never let her hand go
not even during dinner
there are the rich boston gay boys
the glamorous NYC lesbianos
and boat-loads (literally) of senior citizens who float into town on tours
oddly they never seem to have been told about the gay thing
they stare at the drag queens with wide be speckled eyes
but they keep coming back
they says its for the great whale watching
but i know its really for the drag queen sightings
you must not see a lot of 7 foot chers in connecticut
in the last several years
due to an influx of wealthy out-of-towners driving prices up
summer rents have gotten so high
that no struggling artist or writer can really afford p-town anymore
oh they try
they rent a 200 sq foot bungalow for 6,000 bucks for the summer season
share it with another peer who just sees their home as a place to sleep and shower
they’ll work 3 jobs to pay the rent
wash dishes at the fried fish place, wait tables at the café, dole out pizza at spiritus the rock&roll pizza hangout..they may have oh two or three hours off in which to find a lover
and then its back to work
money and greed
is causing provincetown to lose its luster
its becoming a quaint
boston suburb
its really only in the winter and fall that one can see the true blood of this town
the painters on the beach
the writers in the dunes
the bad boys in the bars
the baby dykes fresh out of college
falling in love with each other
I miss the ptown I met 12 years ago, when I lived in a tiny bungalow behind the grocery store, when I plugged in a small electric type-writer and started to write seriously for the first time, when the small but wonderful
"Provincetown Magazine" published my column and I snipped them out and mailed them to my mother who was so proud, so very proud, when I learned what it was like to be called sexy by lots of people who meant it and i felt sexy, truly sexy for the first time in my life
When I fell into infatuation, fell out of infatuation and lived to write about it.
When my neighbors were sculptors, quilt-artists, poets, singers, actors and we all adopted lost kittens…yes, I miss that p-town
i'll be spending two weeks in july
with la cubana
floating in the ocean
shopping
eating
walking along the bay
finding our souls
and searching for whats left of the soul of provincetown
i hope its still there
i hate to see butterflies
stamped out by greed
