Social Distancing By The Sea

I’m on vacation!! Although after months of having not worked during the quarantine, it doesn't feel as starkly different from my city life than when I would come here after months of 6-day work weeks.

I’ve been coming to Provincetown every summer for over 25 years. Ptown is an artsy, eccentric beach town on the tip of Cape Cod and also a gay Haven with a delightful mix of gays, lesbians, families, singles, drag queens and all. Every year at the end of our vacation, we travel through Boston and the contrast between the perfection of the gay guys we have just left and the blandness of the Bostonian men is quite jarring.

We always rent charming places with actual kitchens and outdoor space. Two things I sacrificed and greatly miss by living in Manhattan. Although I must say our current place has a rather sadistic mirror that I avoid at all costs.

I sometimes regret not traveling to other countries for our Summer vacation. Growing up in England, bopping over to other European cities was easy. But there is a lot to be said about returning again and again to the same place. Ptown is not only in my heart but has in a way become an extension of my psyche. The playground where my kids would play when they were little, the beaches where we and friends would join blankets, share snacks and occasionally hang out till Sunset; the narrow roads lined with glorious gardens filled with wildflowers. There are trees that I revisit; a garden with a genus of 6 foot tall sunflowers, a section of the beach on the bay where I lay one night with a past love, in awe of the vast open sky blanketed with thousands of stars.

And now I am back in Ptown, all of us in masks, all of us more apart then we want to be but know we have to be. I’m having new moments, new experiences, which will be saved in the hidden fabric of this town for me to rediscover the next time I visit.