I was born in the summer of 2004, to two gay parents, a gay Irishman and a lesbian New Yorker, who had me out of a cup. They met in Provincetown, Massachusetts the previous summer, and I’ve been going to Ptown every summer since. 

This place is the reason I exist. Every year, I mark my growth when I get there. It’s unlike any other place on earth. It’s a little New England tourist town full of rainbows, live music, and the most interesting people you’ll ever meet. It’s this magnetic safe haven for queers, nomads, families, and hard workers that is stumbled upon and never forgotten. 

In a love letter to Provincetown, which continues to raise me, along with all of the people it has given me, you’ll hear a handful of my misfits tell you what they think is special about it, and the sounds they associate with it.

If you’d like to listen to the songs and sounds of this playlist, use this link :

Transcript

 Ashley: It was a queer haven, a land for the misfits back then.

Liv: It was a great place to just be gay, be yourself, hang out with your friends, dance, uh, feeling safe there.

Susan: Um, the feeling of community and the, and the space to, you know, for exploration.

Veronica: Provincetown, Massachusetts is the reason that I exist, which sounds a little dramatic, but it’s true. I mark calendar year and how much I’ve grown and changed every summer when I get to P-Town. Take this as my love letter to the gay Mecca, party town, artist colony of Provincetown. Through the voices of various people that all let me be me, I’m gonna tell you about the summer town that I consider to be a part of my soul.

My mom has been going there every summer since the late nineties. She’d skip town with her friends in late May, and drive five long hours from Albany, New York to the tip of Cape Cod to work, housekeeping or bartending. You can feel the salt hit your face as you roll down the windows about a mile before you see that white sign that says, “Welcome to Provincetown.”

She’d make the summer there last as long as she could. The summer of 2003, she brought my big cousins with her on vacation for a week, and Thomas the oldest boy, around nine years old, met my dad, Liam, on Commercial Street when my mom was a podium barker for the Crown & Anchor Restaurant and Inn. All three of them are the kind of people that just can’t help but say hello when someone smiles at them.

With his Dublin accent and open heart, my mom always jokes that my dad was like the P-town Pied Piper in a sense. My dad did the same kind of hardworking jobs as my mother. That involved charming people, a skill that I hope is genetically passed down. Thomas would be riding his bike down Commercial Street and my father would just yell out “hello” to him.

Eventually, my mom’s friend, Cindi, also a bartender, introduced them properly. My mom and dad sat on a bench with coffee and got to know each other a little bit better. He called my mom once she had gotten back to Albany in the fall, to which of course she answered “Who is this?” But luckily she remembered.

I was conceived with a small cup and a CVS syringe in Boston. First try.

To everyone I’ve ever met, my mom introduces me by saying, “This is my Veronica. I had her out of a cup.” Unlike other lesbians at that time, having kids with sperm donors, my mom didn’t wanna shaft him out of my life. She wanted him to be a figure for me and so he is.

Cindi: Veronica. Hello, it’s Cindi Webb. So I believe I introduced your mom and dad. I lived there full-time as well as part-time for 22 years, and I associate Last Dance by Donna Summer as my Song of P-Town. It closes out tea dance every day and it’s a great classic.

Kate: Hi Veronica. This is Kate Murray, your mother, and I love Provincetown because it let me be me, and because of that it gave me you.

One of my favorite sounds of Provincetown is hearing the bicycle bells flying down commercial street, and you turn around and you never know who’s gonna be on that bike. Maybe a townie trying to get to work, maybe a beautiful drag queen, or maybe you.

Liam: My name is Liam O’Reilly. 17 years I’ve been going to P-Town. My favorite memory of P-Town would be coming in on the ferry. It’s just a breath of fresh air. ‘Cause you know what’s gonna be coming and you know how free and easy and fun it’s going to be. And it’s just a magical place, a place to be with yourself, to be with friends, whichever you choose.

Veronica: Since I was born, my mom and I go with her two good friends, Meredith and Babette and their twin sons, Aubrey and Dele. They’re like my rambunctious little brothers. They’re only three months younger than me, but it still counts. Our moms’ friends in town would call us the baby brigade every time they saw them walking us down the street in our strollers.

Eventually we graduated from strollers to bicycles. And our first experience of autonomy was riding into town alone. We stay on the east end at the Cape Codder, the simplest inn in P-Town with brass headboards, box fans, white cotton blankets, a seashell driveway, and a garden of dahlias to match the gray cedar shake siding.

A classic Cape Cod house with the most beautiful deck on the water right across the street. The thing about P-Town is that the only way you can really get around easily is by bike, skateboard, roller skates, or by foot of course. Having a bicycle in P-Town as a summer worker or a vacationer is kind of like having a car.

The town is basically one long, narrow main street, Commercial Street. You start in Truro near these little cottages on the water on the east end. Then you go through all the art galleries. You then hit the busiest part of town, which starts with a few coffee shops and Essentials, Laura’s corner store.

Then you pass a few drag queens, probably Miss Richfield on her scooter. You pass town hall’s poets, balloon artists, and buskers, and then you smell the sweetness of The Nut Shop near the cinema. You go into Marine Specialties, of course, and you buy something ridiculous. Then you pass Cafe Heaven with my favorite pancakes, and Bubala’s by the Bay. Then it starts to get quiet, once you pass The Boatslip, which you can always hear disco music playing. You take a left at Shakespeare’s head, a bust in a window, and then you ride all the way down to the end of the earth on the west end to the Provincetown Pool.

As kids, we’d weave through people on their bikes like it was a video game. We’d ring our bells and try not to crash into people constantly cutting it close, which in retrospect, we were little shits. But to us it was our first sense of ownership.

We owned Commercial Street.

We’d get annoyed when big cars tried to squeeze their way down the street, and slide down in the backseat when we had to drive in cars ourselves. Ashamed, like our pride belonged to being seasoned pedestrians.

We would buy these wolf pop firecrackers from Marine Specialties, simply just to scare innocent, unsuspecting tourists. We would snap them at people’s feet, but Meredith, my mom and Babs would sit on the deck while we would terrorize town.

Mere would work on her latest art piece, Babs would make jewelry, and my mom would read or play cards.

Meredith: Hi, my name is Meredith and I live in Averill Park. I’ve been going to Provincetown for about 22 years since I met my partner, Babette. Our children who are now 20, grew up going there every summer with our friends.

For me, P-Town is a dream. I imagine riding my bike there all year long. A place where you can love who you want and people won’t care. Walking down Commercial Street is a visual, auditory, and spiritual feast. I gobble it up and I feed on it for a long time.

Babette: My name is Babette. I’ve been friends with Veronica and her mom for over 20 years now.

I think Provincetown’s a special summer town because it’s very colorful and lively and you can find something fun for everyone there. I associate the sound of laughter with Provincetown, and believe me, we’ve had a lot of laughs there sometimes at the expense of each other, but it’s always in good fun.

Veronica: There’s so much to do there. It’s almost overwhelming. Simply walking down Commercial Street is enough stimulation to hold you over for a year.

If you spend longer than a week there alone, this feeling creeps up on you. It’s like a wistfulness or an annoyance that grows on you like lichens grow on trees.

But it’s never without this love and mysticality too. It’s kind of like a sibling or a roommate. It’s this weird feeling. The most visceral thing I’ve ever felt, and I hate to use the word because it feels like a gimmick, but it truly feels magical, like a magnetic power point on the earth. I once described it as like living in a lonely gay carnival.

Last summer I worked at the Luxurious Red Inn, which is right near the jetty and the P-Town Pool, where you’ll find plenty of Speedos, queer families, the loudest club music, the best pina coladas, and a very cold pool. Which we of course all choose to ignore how gross it probably is.

I worked housekeeping in the back of house with three mothers from Jamaica.

We still keep in touch via voice memos and video calls.

Sophie: I miss you girl. I miss you. I hope. I hope to see you in Jamaica. I’m going home in December.

Veronica: There were probably some of the funniest people I have ever met. Constantly asking me about my sexuality, and if I love Jesus, and making sure that I tried their food. They took care of me, they braided my hair and they danced with me. They kept me in line, and they taught me not just how to make beds and mop floors, but to be open to strangers and to work hard. They even traded their shifts with me when I wanted to catch a ferry to Boston for a dyke march one weekend. And if you’re wondering, yes, I have a connection for ferry tickets too.

My friends joke that I was like the nepo-baby micro-celebrity of P-Town.

Anna: Hi, my name is Anna Gunning. Favorite memory of P-Town. Ronny and I were sitting on a bench and um, lots of people were walking by and Ronny and I were just talking and then one of them yells across the street, “are you lesbians?”

But I was just excited that someone was asking if I was a lesbian in a way that didn’t feel like harassment, looking at me like I was an oddity, and it instead felt like a gay man being in solidarity. Yeah, it was really funny and I just yelled back, “Um, sure am!”

Alex: Hello, my name is Alex Francesconi. I’m one of Ronny’s good friends.

I have gone to P-Town once in my life and it was with them. My favorite memory of P-Town was the trip outside of the stretch and watching people on bikes go by and thinking about all the stories that Ron would tell about biking up and down that road in particular, throughout the majority of their life.

The sound, it’s really a song that I associate. A song that was playing at a bar the first time I went there, and that was Believe by Cher.

Veronica: It’s this old Portuguese fishing town, and it’s a grain of sand that’s been cultivated for years and years in the soft muscle of the world. It opens up every summer like a clam, to show those who pass through it, that it’s an unforgettable pearl.

This town has taught me the importance of being myself, and to see how spontaneous and unwavering love can be if you’re open to it. And, how important people are.

And, that sometimes all you need to heal or to grow is to hear a familiar voice and to float in the salt and the seaweed of the bay.

Dele: Hello, I’m Dele. I’ve known Veronica for all my 20 years. I live in Averill Park. I go to Provincetown every year with my moms. So, I think Provincetown is a special place in the summer because it’s near the ocean and I love it. At night, I like to go squidding. I like the sound of the squid, they sound really squishy!

Last Dance by Donna Summer

A huge thank you to my Thomas, who would’ve been 30 this May, thank you to all the Ptownies that embrace me every summer, to my unconventional family and my friends, and to Emily Wilson for her guidance and the opportunity to make this project.

Music used:

kemps by poem.

WiFi by poem.

No Spring is Born of Summer by poem.

Eddy by Lish Grooves.

Last Dance by Donna Summer.

Thank you to the voices of:

Kate Murray

Liam O’Reilly

Cindi Webb

Susan Nathan

Ashley Rebecca Jones

Olivia Doresy

Alex Francesconi

Anna Gunning

Dele Loucks-Best

Meredith Loucks-Best

Babette Loucks-Best