Sunday morning, as we dragged our sleep- and sweat-weary bodies to the 9am ferry from Boston to Provincetown for a long day of beaching and biking, I tried to lighten the “hurry up and wait” mood.
“There’s not another ferry to P-town until 1pm,” I said, though we were in no danger of missing ours. “You’d think that ferries would simply be swarming around P-town. Ferries, ferries, hundreds of ferries!” Mr. P showed no sign of understanding my double entredre about P-town ferry/fairy, but I persisted. When we arrived to find a long line of people waiting to board, I whispered, “You’d think most of these guys could fly to P-town.”
My humor is really too bad to be offensive, is it not? The fact is, Provincetown has become one of our favorite summer destinations in New England. And the ferries are only one reason why.
To begin, P-town is one of those marvelous bike-friendly places where truly only the idiots drive. The downtown strip of Commercial Street is total locomotory anarchy, with pedestrians darting on the sidewalks and street in every direction. Bicyclists freely mingle among them, and the tiny, congested streets force automobiles to inch slowly down the street. That’s right, guy in the hulking SUV with the Connecticut license plates — everyone thinks you’re a douche.
And just outside of town there’s some great beaches that are easily accessible by a bike trail. In fact, one popular beach doesn’t even have a parking lot. (It’s no mistake that this non-minivan friendly beach is reportedly the friendliest beaches on the Cape, wink wink.)
While the paved bike trail that snakes through the sand dunes is (duh) hilly and sandy, it doesn’t matter if you get all sweaty, because you are just steps away from clear 64 degree ocean water. Yes, it’s cold, yes, it takes steely nerves to submerge your head, but there isn’t anything more refreshing to your entire being than Cape Cod’s ocean beaches. It’s like air conditioning for the soul.
I’ve spent time all over Cape Cod — Falmouth, Harwich, Chatham, Yarmouth, Nantucket, Dennis, Wellfleet — and have found that the tourist pandering is either completely honkytonk or utterly snobby. P-town is not immune to either of these extremes, but overriding everything is its funky, anything-goes vibe. No town can take itself too seriously when a troupe of amateur Dame Edna impersonators sashays down the street at 5:30pm. It’s like this bizarre rainbow-tainted alternate universe, where hawkers stand on the street trying to lure patrons into their restaurants, bars, cabarets, and even spas with drippy innuendo (“$10 gets you a 10 minute chair massage from a big boy! Get a big boy massage!”) or just bawdy bombast (“Come watch beautiful naked boys singing!” calls a young man dressed only in boxer shorts that are strategically cinched to give the appearance that he is wearing a tiny white bath towel). The atmosphere is fun and frolicky — not exactly Sodom, but not exactly Nantucket, either.
Gay men and lesbians coexist in P-town, peacefully, but with striking contrast. At 6pm, we gulped down raw oysters and clams in one waterfront restaurant, sitting next a party of nine women all with close-cropped hair, jeans, and baggy button-down shirts. They scrutinized the menu in silence, and then joylessly ordered lemonade and plates of fried shellfish. Compared that to a table of extremely stylish men in tight colorful clothes, all of whom seemed to be chattering simultaneously as they sipped mixed drinks and picked at salads and shrimp cocktail.
Waterfront Raw Bar
I always feel a twinge of guilt for intruding on Provincetown’s rainbow utopia as a straight outsider — and, even worse, I bring along my gay-licious husband who garners more than a few appreciative glances. Sorry boys — he’s not gay, he’s just European. He does help us blend in among the hordes of likewise skinny, well-dressed and well-groomed men. As he waited in line at a Bank of America ATM, the man in front of him grew impatient towards the guy who was holding up the line. “What’s he doing, opening a freaking Roth IRA?” he hissed in a supremely bitchy simper.
White Strip Sunglass Tan Line… Red Stripe
Gotta love the P-town ferries. Because after all the biking, the hot-sand baking and cold-water swimming, the Happy Hour cocktails and raw bars, who has the energy to stay in P-town and take in the homotourism nightlife? The Beyonce impersonator, or the lesbian comedian, or the multimedia presentation about gay primates, or Hedda Lettuce reenacting Mommie Dearest all sound just great, but by 8:30pm, all I want to do is climb on the ferry and conk out on my husband’s shoulder as we plow through the Cape Cod Bay and back to our somber Bostonian reality.
P-town Pier
The P stands for Phallic
