The weather is getting warmer here in Amesbury and, whenever it does, I think about Provincetown on Cape Cod. Is that because I’m gay? Yeah, I’d have to say that’s a large part of it. At one time, the GLBT community was not as mainstreamed as it is now and P-town (as we affectionately call it) was our town. We were in large numbers there and could feel safe and calm being ourselves. And, in my younger days, it was an unbelievable party town and that’s what really mattered.

I spent a lot of time in P-town with my friends George, Joe and Steve, but I remember one trip in particular when we took the boat instead of driving. That meant we could get a jump on drinking by starting on the boat, like about 9:00 a.m. By the time  we docked, we could barely walk, let alone negotiate a trip to the place where we were staying. I remember that we all kind of fell on top of each other as we got off the boat. We were laughing so hard it took us forever to get up. To top it off, we were staying at the White Dory Inn, which was quite a walk from where the boat docked. Luckily, we managed to hitch a ride on the back of some guy’s pickup truck.

And that didn’t stop us. No sir. We immediately got a bottle of wine and headed for the beach. Yours truly here, of course, fell asleep in the sun and ended up spending the night in bed while everyone else went out and partied. I did, however, make up for lost time the next evening.I have a ton of memories from these times, like Tea Dances at the Boatslip, the female impersonators at the Crown & Anchor, and partying at the Pied Piper or the A-House.

Much later in my life, after we had all gone our separate ways and I met Beth and settled down, P-town became a refuge for my little family. One summer Beth, Thalia and I spent two weeks there. It was just awesome. We took Miss T to the beach every day and then we’d go into town and hang out with her. She met a lot of characters when she was young, and this was where she developed her open mind. In fact, Beth took this great photo of “Cher” when Thalia was about eight months old. We were there for the P-Town version of the PRIDE parade that year, and it was great because Thalia’s window opened right out onto the street. It was like a mini-Mardi Gras.

If I ever have the opportunity to ’summer’ somewhere, screw Florida. I’m going to P-Town where men can be women, and women can be anything they damned well want.