Granted I was in P-Town for an entire week and the week flew by soooo quickly, but did I really need to drink EVERY single day? I guess the answer to that is bloody obvious…. Of course I did. Would it really be P-Town any other way?
It’s been said over and over again – P-Town really is a different animal…. In P-Town you will do things you just wouldn’t do anywhere else… like get into a stranger’s car or ask a taxi driver if you can pay them tomorrow once you have actually located your money. It’s just different.
The first night I handed my car keys to a gay man I had just met and let him drive off in my brand new car with my very drunk ex-girlfriend as I continued my own personal search for “alternative” entertainment. The following morning I did have a mini-freak out as it dawned on me he could have been a serial killer masquerading as a very effeminate, loud, brash, mildly entertaining faggot. Subsequently, I filed my “Almost Missing” Persons report at the Provincetown police station….
It’s amazing what you can’t remember about someone you have known for fifteen years.
“Ma’am, can you give me a description of this missing person”
“Um, well… she might not be missing”
“Maam, a description?”
“Um, She’s 5’10” with blonde hair, blue eyes and she’s kinda boyish”
“What was she wearing?”
“God, um… I don’t know but I looked cute!”
“Maam?”
“Sorry Officer, I’m just nervous. She must have been wearing jeans… she always wears jeans. Oh, and flip flops… she always wears flip flops and probably a white t-shirt with a button down”
“IS that what she was wearing or are you assuming”
“Um, um, I honestly don’t remember, but she always wears that kind of thing”
(Heavy Sigh from the Desk Officer)
“Any distinguishing features”
“Oh Yes! She’s very charming and has a slight southern drawl, she’s from Kentucky”
“Maam”
“I’m not helping, am I?”
“Not really”
“Maybe I should just call you back”
“What time did you last see her?”
“It was late”
“Do you have an aprox time?”
“I think it could have been after the bars closed but I’m not one hundred percent sure”
Silence on the other end of the phone
“Officer?”
“I really think I should just call you back, if she doesn’t show up”
She eventually turned up safe and sound. However, I quickly learnt that our new found faggoty friend had indeed acquired his driver’s license from the bottom of a crackerjack box…. My shiny new vehicle now had a variety of damage. The inside looked like the residue of a Beach Rave. Sand, empty liquor bottles, towels, driftwood and empty packs of cigarettes. Apparently in the attempts to find bathing suit attire, my neatly packed luggage had been turned upside down and ransacked. The worst of the damage was the sideswipe that they both still plead complete and total ignorance of.
Imagine with me for one second… You’re stuck in Quicksand next to a large oak tree and in order to save yourself you have to quickly shift from drive to reverse creating a rocking momentum with the vehicle in order to catapult yourself out to safety…. Yup, I think that about covers the dents and scratches I still proudly bear on my daily commute.
My ex survived the experience with just one small dog bite to the nose…I have to say, It was a better outcome than hearing that her body parts had been donated to feeding the homeless in Sheridan Square, Manhattan. (“I think” it was a better outcome). I was so happy to see her alive that I enthusiastically accepted the product of my own irresponsibility and dismissed any notion of investigating the internal or external damage to my new trusted steed and I even offered to pick up the liquor bill for the day ahead of us.
I’ve always been a consecutive skipper of T-Dance. This year I broke new ground. I committed to the T-Dance experience and I have to say, I don’t like it, not one bit… but like the trooper I am – If I say I’m gonna do something, I like to see it through. I suffered the experience daily in the hopes it would get better.
It’s weird to go drink, dance and meet chicks starting at 4 O’clock in the afternoon - knowing full well you are on this train until at least 3am. It’s not the event itself; it’s more of a schedule thing. I’ve never been (and never will be) a daytime napper. Once the party starts I like continuity – you can’t go fucking with my wave… I’m riding that shit all the way to shore or else I’m calling the coast guard with a drowning complaint.
Ready to go at 4pm, I’ve got my groove rocking… 5.30pm, I am completely invested in the Scotch supply at the Boatslip. 7pm rolls around and like “lemmings to the sea”, lesbians are following lesbians to nap, eat and chill out … Meanwhile, I’m on the crest of the wave headed straight for the Pied. Which, in case you ever wondered, is deserted at that hour and I got another 8 hours to go… It’s truly exhausting being this committed.
I’m totally open to the social experimentation of putting a couple of hundred lesbians in one room – feeding them unlimited amounts of alcohol and playing really loud dance music in the hopes they will stop averting their eyes and take a stab at making some human contact! Urika!! This shit actually works!!! There was bumping and grinding, there was actual conversation about politics and the downfalls of home ownership in this economy and then…. there was ‘PAT’.
Pat introduced herself to me
“Hi, I think I owe you an apology”
“You do?”
“You probably (hopefully) don’t remember me”
“I’m sorry, I’m drawing a blank”
With that kind of an opening statement – why wouldn’t you just leave it there? I obviously had no recollection of the meeting and if it really was apology worthy… why bring up old wounds? Sigh, Lesbians… just gotta purge their guilt.
“I was really obnoxious the first time you met me”
“Ah! Oh, honey people think I’m obnoxious all the time. If I don’t remember, it really can’t have been that bad”
“I’m friends with Karen Duke”
Long pause. We stare each other down. The penny starts to slowly drop. Pat… Hmmmm…. Pat?
“Pat?”
She nods
“You’re Pat? THAT Pat?”
“Yes, I’m so sorry. I know I followed you into the bathroom… but I don’t usually…”
“THE BATHROOM??? Do you remember pulling up my shirt and pushing me into a corner of the bar?”
“Um, I don’t think… I, um… not really”
“My friends had to save me from you – for real… REAL”
“I was drunk and I’m horrified...”
“You grabbed my boobs and tried to unzip…”
“K..K…K!! SShhhh! Stop! I remember following you into the bathroom and trying to kiss you …”
Now I’m laughing because the bathroom was the least of her worries. Pat, pretty much accosted me in full view of all the patrons at our local watering hole. ‘The girls’ were truly violated! The good news is I actually got laid out of the deal and not by Pat.
The girl that saved me from Pat, my rescuer, claimed me as her girlfriend for protection purposes and physically implanted herself between me and the onslaught of angry octopus hands. That in of itself deserved a few cocktails and an offer to spend the night, right?
Pat did not want to hear the grizzly details and she DEFINTELY did not want the girl she was with to bear witness to the retelling of events. Come on, you know that was virtually impossible, right? Alcohol and the opportunity to rag all over a complete stranger was too rich an opportunity to ignore. She was a good sport and since I have my own share of bad behavior horror stories I ragged on her a little and let her buy me drink, minus the boob grab.
Don’t get me wrong, T-Dance was a lot of fun. I spent one day just hanging out in the bathroom asking everyone how they met … that was worth the experience right there. Civilizations may have risen and fallen with men on battlefields… but women never stopped going to the bathroom to “talk privately”.
A mere personal observation and small piece of advice that you can take or leave… DON’T converse “privately” stall to stall. If you wanna talk to your buddy about the girl that showed up that you kinda like but not as much as she likes you… have a look-out, check the line, put a honing device on her baseball cap that sends you a text message when she’s within 12 feet of you… something!!
Yeah, that was awkward… I beat a hasty exit from my bathroom survey.
Spiritus, after the Pied closes, is my favorite place. I really enjoyed watching the girls play the waiting game to see if you were drunk enough to hook up and go home with them. It’s also the place where myspace meets the street.
“I know you! You friended me on myspace!”
“Well, you were worth 1.5 million on that buy your friends’ application; I wanted to see what all the fuss was about”
“Omg! I read your blogs. Did you really pee on someone?”
One woman asked me out at least seven times, she phrased it differently each time maybe hoping it would confuse me. My answer was the same negatory reaction each of the seven times. She finally advised me that I didn’t have to answer right then, I could sleep on it and let her know tomorrow. I thought that was a sweet gesture. Who doesn’t appreciate been given the time to think things over?
If we were playing “What do you think she does for a living” game… my guess would have been some kind of trial attorney. Of course you can’t really play that game in P-Town… I mean really what are your choices… Social Worker? Security Guard? Gym Teacher? Live in my parents’ basement, eat their Ring Dings and drive them nuts for a living?
The four categories are quite distinct and you easily tell them apart by the way they dance.
(social workers move slowly because of their heavy pot usage, security guards never dance with their back to the door, gym teachers make dancing to techno without breaking a sweat look like a walk in the park (and always wear whitey white ankle socks) and the basement dwellers… those girls are at the bar trying to get you to buy them a drink, saying they’ll dance IF a good song comes on next).
Trust the Theory! (At least try it and let me know).
I did spend one long night in my car with someone who I truly adore. We unfortunately have seemingly had a string of misfire dates that just never go well. It began at women’s week with bad case of getting to know you questions.
“Don’t lie, you love the attention”
“Not really, well I do… but I really just like to have a good time”
“You don’t let anyone see the real you, you just look like some good time girl”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think you let people see who you really are”
“And who is that?”
“I don’t know, I feel like I don’t know anything about you”
“Whaddya wanna know?”
“I dunno, tell me about your childhood…”
Sccccrreeeeching halt
“Trust me. You, don’t want to know about my childhood”
“Yes I do, tell me”
Upon later review with one of my closest friends… I ask her how she would have responded if a potential male date had said such a thing to her…
She about turned, stuck her ass up in the air and started to spank herself like a pony
“My childhood? Come on then big boy… let’s re-enact it… “Spank me like my Daddy did” Giddy-up”
At which point we both dissolved into tear streaming hysterics, our twisted humor is the reason we are friends.
The most charming encounter and offer I had was at the Pied itself. It went along the lines of…
“Come home and fuck me or I will pick someone else up and fuck them”
I know what you’re thinking… I know… Believe me, it was very hard to turn down.
I followed a similar path most days and for the entirety of W’s weeks, didn’t step inside Vixen once. Not because I don’t like Vixen, it just seemed to be too far to walk in heels. Yet at 4am, I walked the length of P-Town 3 fold in the same ‘kill me now’ shoes because drunk, it seemed like a good fucking idea. Except for one night when the historical walking tour to my bed just seemed like too far to go.
I had managed, yet again, to wander off losing my drunk-ass companions and found myself some lively entertainment outside Spiritus with a group of girls who wanted to buy me pizza and drive me home. Sounds like a nice, friendly group… right? I’m sure they were just lovely. I, however (being oppositional defiant) don’t like to accept rides home from strangers who are offering to take good care of me. No, I much prefer to pick out my own stranger and let them know that they ARE going to take care of me.
In the hub-bub of trying to get me to agree to go with them, I make eye contact with the driver of a Chester, Leicester child molester van, that was curb crawling the pizza crowd. (You know the kind, the van with the windows, curtains, carpet on the roof etc…). Eye contact made and apparently I had a plan.
This story had to be re-told to me as I have very vague recollections of how I ended up in the van… I don’t dispute the fact that I did indeed walk over there open the door and ask all the girls in the van to get out. Amid their confusion, I apparently informed them that the driver was now going to be driving me around town.
My Irish angel turned to her friends and told them to get out. It all happened really fast, kinda like a Chinese fire drill. They were out – I was in – and we were off!
As it turns out it was one of the best drunken decisions I ever made.
The driver and I drank the same scotch, smoked the same cigarettes were both 1st generation immigrants from over the pond… though when she tried to kiss me I really pissed her off by asking “What, are you 12?” to which she retorted that she was in fact 13 and asked if I was bi-sexual.
It was another screeching halted moment.
If you knew me, it’s a sore subject. I’ve been gay since I hit puberty but apparently I don’t look gay “enough”.
A smart cookie…my Irish princess. Somehow she knew the exact buttons to push to declare war. What she didn’t know was that she had in fact driven me to someone else’s house so I could curl up and dream sweet next to them, not her.
Score 1. for me
I exited the van none to gracefully or gratefully. The next morning I discovered I had lost my gold shiny purse. It’s contents included my car keys, wallet, favorite lipstick and slew of random phone numbers. FUCK!
I retraced my steps. It was nowhere to be found. I was advised to (again) call the Provincetown police and put in a lost and found request.
“Um, Hello officer….”
My car was now illegally parked in the middle of town. Less than a week old, thankfully, I had a spare key inside the console. I called AAA and made my way to the vehicle which had the cutest petal display across the windshield & a note under the wiper with a phone number and a request to get together sometime – when we could drink scotch and smoke cigarettes without yelling at each other.
Nothing like a slamming the door exit only to go back and say… ‘Um, I forgot my keys”
It was that kind of experience. I called and left her a voicemail in the sweetest voice I could muster. “Thank you for last night, you were very kind… sorry I yelled at you and Oh, by the way … did you happen to find a shiny gold purse in your van?”
Score 10. for her
I spent the rest of the day doing the stationary walk of shame. There’s nothing like hanging out in your club attire from the night before…on the busiest corner of Commercial Street. It was the longest I had actually been in one place all week. Waiting for AAA worked out fabulously. I saw people I hadn’t seen in years, most notably an old friend from New Jersey I had lost touch with. She berated me about losing my shit and we made plans to hang out that night. She nominated herself as the guardian of any and all of my belongings along whatever route our evening took us. Perfect!
Well it would have been perfect except that the last time I saw her and my 2nd purse I was heading to dance on the box at Pied. One cute little wave from the bar and my own display of showing an appreciate dance crowd my belly (another genius idea), she was gone! No-where to be found! This time I lost my phone, my spare car key, my second favorite lipstick and the rest of the cash I brought with me. Now I was truly fucked!
I’d been fairly composed about my first loss, but now my phone? My lifeline… Ok, it’s a CRACKBERRY. I was cut off, cruelly, in an instant from myspace, facebook, email and text messaging… I needed an emergency rehab pass. I broke… I did the only thing I knew to do.
I borrowed a phone and called my ex girlfriend, the Jewish Bloodhound. If anyone could figure out where our old friend had vanished in thin air to… it was her! As it turns out she was at a bar mitzvah in Georgia with my ex in-laws and yet, true to her nature, rose to the challenge anyway. It took her about four hours, she located the 2nd missing purse (apparently lodged under the head of our snoozing buddy now nursing a full blown P-Town hangover). Ahhhh, the sweet relief!
My crackberry and I were happily reunited over eggs, homefries and much black coffee. My voicemail was equivalent to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow only this rainbow ended with a shiny gold purse!!
WHAAAAT??? Oh yeah Baby!! My Irish Angel had left voicemail after voicemail. Upon her return to Boston she had discovered my belongings jammed between the passenger seat and door. Not only was she calling to tell me this but she was willing to drive back and hand over the goods!! Fucking, motherfucking FABULOUS!!
Weeks later when my purse delivering friend told me her van had been towed and she’d lost all HER shit in NYC, I did the right thing and drove to Boston to help her out with Mafioso Mike and the local law enforcement folks. One good turn begets another in my book. We are now somehow soul connected and she makes my world shine a little golder!
By far the most profoundly interesting person I met was Jim. A reclusive Vietnam Vet whose job was to teach jungle survival back in a time when men were dying for the most ridiculous reasons a government could invent. The lesson that stayed with me from that meeting was the first rule of survival.
I took a stab at it and failed… Take a moment and figure out what your response would be if some asked you:
“What is the first rule of survival?”
Right, so what’s your answer? (Please email me your first responses because I would love to know just how short I fell).
Ok – The first rule of survival is…. Drum roll please…
“KNOWING that your ass is on fire”
Right as this 65 year old guy, who I am pretty sure has saved countless lives, shared military jungle survival 101… I knew right in that moment… my ass WAS indeed on fire. It has been for a while. It’s not that I hadn’t known it – I had simply chosen to ignore it. It may still be smoldering… once I put it out once and for all, I’m pretty sure I’ll share that tale with you also.
So where did that leave me? Knowing my ass was on fire and I needed to go back to the house, pack up and head for a reality check. Somehow I still wasn’t ready to abandon dodge. We packed up the slightly dented car, headed to the Police Station – took care of the parking tickets from countless sets of missing keys and bad parking decisions. I called the taxi driver I owed money to and offered to pay him (he sweetly declined). So now what?
We had food, booze, movies and TA DA! The new car has a fucking DVD movie player!
FAMOUS LAST WORDS OF WOMENS WEEK… ”Let’s go to the beach and chill out. We can watch the waves, watch a movie and then drive home after the traffic subsides”.
Even now, it still sounds like a pretty good idea. Yeah, well it would have been except apparently the new car really needs to be running in order to watch a 2 hour movie or the damn battery drains!!!
I’d like the closing credits to roll up on Fox and I deciding to head home and the fucking car won’t start!!
Sigh, gotta love P-Town! Ok… now we gotta find someone with jumper cables…
“WHAT THE FUCK?”
Women’s Week Etiquette:Don’t ask someone you don’t know about their childhood unless you know for sure they weren’t kept in a cage and fed scraps.
Common Sense Tip:Take a Polaroid picture of everyone before they leave the house… you just never know when you’ll need it!
Shopping Tip:Yes Ladies, Fanny packs are ugly… but they could be worth their weight in shiny gold purses… Oh, and a set of jumper cables is a pretty good investment too.
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