Coming of Age, Coming Out, Candy, and Kids in Provincetown

Since I was a child, once a year my family traveled to Provincetown, Massachusetts, a small seaside town at the craggy crooked tip of Cape Cod known for its seafood, arts, and eccentricities.  P-Town is a quaint old fishing village with as many bars as restaurants, as many drag queens as shops.  People who summer on all points of the Cape, the Eastern seaboard, and beyond flock to this haven by the sea to stroll down Commercial Street while dodging bikes, eating penny candy or ice cream, and catching previews of the night’s entertainment from queens in sequined gowns hawking evening shows. 

Over the years, my perception of P-Town has changed, and so have the memories.  It is the one place I have traveled to that has both evolved as I have grown older as well as remained a permanent fixture of my childhood. 

As a child, my family vacationed on the Cape every summer.  When I think back on these times with my mother and sister, I remember three things—the warm, worn, sun-baked feeling of playing on the beach all day, crumpled white bags of penny candy picked with a smooth metal scooper from scratched plastic bins, and the town itself -- Provincetown. 

Vacation as a kid was the time to let loose—run and swim all day then flop into a rented bed barely wider than my body, sand-crusted feet amid a flurry of penny candy wrappers my mother would pick from my hair in the morning.  In one day on vacation, I could eat more, play more, see more than in the whole of the previous year, and there was nowhere better than P-Town.  Walking down Commercial Street was like being sucked into a swarm of worker bees--loud, busy, fast.  All the people!  I remember the smells—the sea, the wind, the wet street, and above all the sickening-sweet smell of warm taffy both nauseating and intoxicating.  Faces pressed to the candy store window, we drooled over the thick globular hunks of taffy being pulling on machines until they resembled sinewy strings of sticky sweetness.  We ate clam chowder, thick with clams from a sodden paper cup while dangling our feet off MacMillan Pier.  I remember my grandmother catching her breath on the benches outside Town Hall surrounded by men, arms slung over one another.  I remember street musicians playing backstreet horns and homemade drums and the kid—a year or two older than me—flipping cards tricks on the sidewalk for a quarter. 

As a child, P-Town was a mythical place for me, a place of magic and wonder that was loud and fast and messy and as far away to me and my child life as a foreign country.  It was a place to be different, see different.  At the end of the night, I cried when it was time to leave, dragging my feet down Commercial Street as my mother pulled us toward the pier parking lot.  I sat in the back seat of the car, staring out the back window as we drove out of town, watching the lights of P-Town fade into black.

In my early twenties, vacations in P-Town evolved.  I was young, out, and in love with everything and everyone.  Clubs, dancing, drinking then binging on Spiritus pizza as we stumbled back to the hotel I had to waitress a whole summer to afford and still shared with six other girls -- sleeping on the floor or crashing three to a twin bed.  Sharing showers and skinny-dipping in the pool.  Strapping cut band-aids to our breasts on Herring Cove beach to conceal those rebellious little nipples.  Packing six girls into a beat down Subaru, hoping we have enough gas money left for the trip back to campus.    

In my late twenties and early thirties I had enough money to spend and not enough bills or responsibilities to care about blowing a month’s paycheck in a single week.  I had a car that I knew could get me to P-Town and back without falling apart along the way.  And I was in love.  It was the best of both worlds—equal parts debauchery and romance.  I stayed in a much nicer and cleaner hotel (with parking and AC!) with a woman that loved me and a bed that held us both.  Sleeping late, champagne brunch then lounging on the beach until sunset.  Shower and dinner then clubs and shows and drinks oh my!  Bottles of cold Chardonnay, lobster.  Dune walks, boat cruises, sultry shows spent huddled in the back of a darkened club, hands under the table.  Piano bar.  At the end of our week, we would pack the car then say one last lunch, one last drink, one last dance—until we found ourselves at a one-night hotel, or once, sleeping in the car in a campground slot waiting for the sun and the long drive home. 

Now, in my very late thirties, I come with my family—the woman that loved me now my wife, our first, then second sons, now 8 and 2.  There is no sleeping late.  Champagne brunch at noon is now a long stroller walk to the town playground at six in the morning armed with free hotel coffee.  That extravagant late lunch of Chardonnay and lobster is chips and sandwiches by the pool with a shared thermos of Chardonnay.  We can give up the white linen table cloths and ocean view, but do not ask us to give up the wine.  Dinner cruises and sunset walks are runs across the jetty to Long Point Beach then chugging back across the bay on the water taxi.  Three hours sipping cocktails is now a three-hour whale watch, clutching a squirming two year old (and life vest) to my chest. 

Sandcastles and shells and hermit crabs oh my!  It is sand everywhere—in the sheets, shower, in the sandwiches.  Dinner is slices of pizza while wielding a stroller through town, sipping from that beloved thermos of Chardonnay as we chase the kids down Commercial Street.  It is frustrating and exhausting and expensive.  But as we dodge the bikes and sip shared Chardonnay, that familiar smell hits me.  The kids run to the window and there we are—all of us—faces pressed to the glass watching that gooey hunk of taffy being pulled into sweet, stringy deliciousness.  I start to remember the P-Town of my childhood—the smells, the sights, the sounds—and I know in the morning as we pack up the car to go home, we will debate staying for that one last brunch, one last drink, one last dance with the kids on the beach, that one final ocean swim of the summer. 

As an adult, P-Town remains that mythical, magical haven of my childhood, a home away from home to return to every year.  At night, as we drive out of town, I sit just as I did as a kid, turned around in my seat, looking back between the sleeping heads of our children as the lights of P-Town—again for another year—fade into black.