SUMMERS ARE FOR LOVERS byRolandWise

During the Summer 2003, I was invited to stay at a house share in Provincetown, Mass. It was my friend David’s idea actually; he called while I was out one day and left a message reporting that some of the boys had cancelled their part of the week at the house on Whorf's Court, and there was plenty of room if I wanted to join him, Liam, and Elliott.

David went on in his phone message reminding me how I needed to begin the arduous healing process from a rather exhausting break-up the month earlier. He knew all too well the details of this melt down, being a fellow Southerner as well as psychiatrist, he knew all too well that the last thing I needed was to be alone in a big empty house in Boston with a head full of depressing thoughts during my birthday week.
He ended the call by saying “come on down, take a summer lover” teasing of course. Now granted, meeting a summer lover and having a fling while vacationing on Cape Cod is as American and Gay as Chevy trucks and Apple Pie, but I was reluctant to partake because of the loss I was feeling and the vulnerability I knew would would be required of me if I were to put myself out there and get close to someone new. But David’s phone message somehow grew on me, eventually twisting my arm with promises of fun, frolic and more gay men on the tip of any landmass, than anywhere else in the world. So late that afternoon, the day before turning 38, I began the 123-mile semi circular drive South from Boston.

While crawling along the super two-lane (freeway) segment of US highway 6, just before the round about in Orleans where the roadway beyond dwindles into a thread of traffic succumbing to driveways, surface streets, traffic lights, a Southerner's nightmare amidst Yankee drivers darting in and out and in front and from all sides. I felt for the first time I was doing my part to create the very well known bumper-to-bumper homosexual gridlock, a Cape Cod phenomenon consisting of car after car after car of happiness, each full of gays and lesbians and all that entails, inching their way toward the promise land.

This is exactly why Michael and I always took the fast ferry from Boston. No traffic. Except for that time our boat snared a Lobster pot near Plymouth, and reduced the Fast Ferry to such an embarrassingly low speed they gave us free return coupons because of the late arrival. Speaking of arrivals, there has been a rival between Plymouth and Provincetown for years over the first landing spot of the Pilgrims. Did they arrive in Provincetown first or Plymouth, that is the question? Well the community minded leaders of Provincetown, in response to this silly “rock”, has built a rather mocking symbol to state the obvious answer. They erected a granite tower to memorialize the “first” landing of the Pilgrims, and its phallic structure is so tall and penis like, and you can climb the interior of this shaft and vein your way to an observation deck that allows you to see the sweeping shape of the Cape, all the way back around toward Plymouth. This view clearly suggest why the Pilgrims likely landed in P-town first, they would have been foolish to have traveled that far, and at the first sight of land, kept going to Plymouth. I personally have always thought of this tower as Provincetown giving Plymouth the finger from across the bay. So as the Pilgrims got settled and wanted to be nearer to Boston and the theater, they likely did live in Plymouth. But we know the truth about the first Thanksgiving now, how history was altered leaving out the part about the Pilgrims at Plymouth exchanging blankets dipped in Small Pox for the Indian’s Mazola corn goodness. Not even Martha would say that’s a very good thing, as mean as she might be herself, trying to get land from a native for the expansion of one of her estates. But Plymouth has their rock and they stand firm on the way they see history no matter what. Now I have to believe they carry a little resentment, perhaps even seething vengeance for the good people of Provincetown, now I don’t see them bringing blankets of ill will across the bay, but this may explain who puts all those Lobster pots in the shipping lanes, obstructing the P-town Fast Ferry traffic?

Still crawling along what’s left of the once grand [transcontinental US highway] 6, I was trying to remember where the Dunkin Donuts was located, I was near Wellfleet and feared I had missed it with all the vigilance required to drive this road. I was also wondering if the Department of Transportation realizes the irony of this highway’s numerology, how the number 6 used for this portion of roadway not only follows the same sweeping six-like curve of the Cape toward its terminus at the traffic circle near Herring Cove, it is also the number of man, according to the Bible. When Michael and I would arrive by boat, we would rent our bikes and pedal to the traffic circle at Herring Cove first thing. It’s one of the first places a tourist goes because it’s the best spot to judge the tides. In P-town tides are everything for the gay beachcomber, in fact they determine the beachgoers schedules, in that to get to the gay beach one must traverse through a mile of savannah grass to reach the ocean. This savannah, during high tide, becomes a bay again, and while you may arrive in the morning and stroll to the beach on dry land, you might be up to your balls in seawater on the way back. Literally. Usually Michael and I would keep riding our bikes awhile and spend the day rolling along the forest paths, beaching ourselves in the afternoon before going back into town and getting a cheap room somewhere, usually at the Flagship Inn. At night we would go out dancing and get crazy jealous of one another’s wondering eyes. And before all was said and done we would be arguing in the streets on the way back to our room, always a little too drunk to be having these discussions, and looking back we were sort of embarrassingly dramatic, but that was our trademark and we knew it. I used to say to friends that being with Michael (because he is Italian) was like being stuck in an episode loop of “Everybody Loves Raymond” me being Debra of course, the smart one. His come backs always had something to do with Southerners and Northerners and the supposed loss of a war or something, but before he could even finish his rant, my ancestral urge would correct him saying “you mean Yankee honey.” The many, many arguments led to many make-ups, so we would jokingly rename the placed we had frequent drama miles accumulating. The Flagship Inn became known as the “Battleship Inn,” and our favorite Chinese restaurant in Cleveland Circle became known as “The Boston Fight Club.” After the naming, we would sit down to eat Chinese and to christen the fact we were there and not fighting, I would laugh and say something sort of mean about his mother trying to egg him on. He would pretend to be mad, although his eyes smiled at my most of the time with such love, when I looked straight into him like that we would almost always smile and then laugh. Moments like that are hard to let go never having again, being totally vulnerable to one another, feeling one another’s others love and presence. There was an out of the way place we found, the wheelchair ramp leading down to the inbound Cleveland Circle “D” train station. No one ever used it, so it had become like an arboretum, the path winding its way through and beneath the canopy of some shade trees from a neighboring yard. There was also bamboo sticking out just so, here and there, as if the transit authority had hired a florist to arrange the place, telling them to make it look like the centerpiece on an entry table in the lobby of a Zen center. It was a misty day when we found the place, and while waiting for the train Michael asked where my favorite place was that I had lived. I told him Seattle, that this spot we were standing in reminded me of Seattle, very cool and misty and Zen like atmosphere, so we named that spot Seattle. That always stuck with him, even today, he and the new partner live in Seattle, Washington. What’s funny to me is that if I were to ever get a message from Michael saying “meet me in Seattle” I believe the first place I’d look is Cleveland Circle.

If Michael’s honest love for me and mine for him, and our endurance through many moments both good and bad, taught me anything at all, it taught staying power; and how I could love someone deeply no matter what, even well past their leaving I could love them with no obstruction, in that the love you carry for another is that love for yourself. It’s always there, and if you damn it, you damn yourself. I know the quirky moment-by-moment truth of it all sounds awful at times, all the arguments and mishaps, but life is messy and there is no bitterness over that, only the spirit of ownership that I promised myself I would go find within the day he left. Michael knew I would have to heal and that my way would be through writing and that I would honor the truth someday, and that it would be funny, and emotional, and heartbreaking, and wonderful; giving a well-rounded glimpse of our time together which in turn would be my queue that all is well within this soul. So by the time I reached the township of Truro, the traffic was moving again fast again, but now I was in tears because I was trying to figure out what in this world I was going to do without him? How can I go through this again, meeting people, always having it end. I began laughing at how Michael’s such a nerd, how he got me hooked into “The Lord of the Rings” craze, eventually dubbing me as his personal version of “Sam Wise” because of my last name. He was my “Froto” and now he would likely see the third and final film with his new love, and the thought of that made my heart pound with hurt, jealousy, and feelings of abandonment. How does it all come down to this? That those things we think to be rather odd at first are the very things we miss the most at the end.

Once settled in P-town, lifting from my Debbie Downer drive and having one night of uneventful dancing under my belt, I got up the following morning around 6 AM and filled a bright purple beach bag with suntan lotion, blankets, a towel, snacks and water, and headed out for my birthday [day] at the beach. While pedaling through the streets which appeared to be as foggy in spots as my emotions, I naturally made my way toward the traffic circle at Herring Cove to check the tides; and like highway 6 and her rather grand ending, I was trying to find a suitable terminus for the pain I was feeling over the loss of Michael. Once making visual contact with the tides, securing that it was low enough, I pedaled toward the trailhead wondering what the first day of 38 could possibly bring. Once parked, I chained the bike to the split rail fence and made the long journey across the completely dry tidal Savannah toward the beach. Once up and over the dunes, I began to remember how narrow this strand of paradise actually was. I remembered reading once how the Cape [being so far out on a limb and in the Atlantic] was accustomed to such strong currents and that those same forces delivered to her beaches: cords of driftwood, mounds of seashells, and flat stones, every single moment of every single day. Looking at the skeletal remains of the forestlands of the Eastern Seaboard littering the beach in both directions, I’d have to agree with the pamphlet I read. They lay about in the sand everywhere completely naked and striped of any sense that they were once clothed in bark. They were all sun drenched, and there was every shape and size and type you could imagine present there that day. In several hours, I thought, hundreds of gay men will come here to play and lay about these sticks and stones, resting in a place where words cannot hurt them. Gay men [and Lesbian Women] are modern day Pilgrims, and after drifting all year in the vastness of American life, they know where to go in order to land themselves first and foremost, free of the backward thinking found abroad in this free land of ours. It has always interested me how the many straight people I have chatted with unnaturally assume that Gay resort towns are dens of sin and iniquity where homosexuals go wild and do whatever they please. I assure you, anything that has ever happened in P-town has happened in Omaha, Nebraska, and in most every other cowpoke town from sea to shining sea. The reason gay resort towns exist is largely to do with boundaries. It’s sort of like when the Smith family has a reunion and the Jones are not invited. It does not mean we are up to no good, but we are having a mother fucking good time, enjoying what little civil rights we do have in this country. You know how when you’re on vacation, when you’re with your peeps and you don’t want to have to think too much, or watch what you say, or be vigilant about whether or not to show affection to a partner. These are merely the things that free American heterosexuals with civil rights take for granted, their forgetfulness of this being the primary reason for their ignorance about gay resorts. Now we don’t all you crackers coming down here being all PC trying to make up for the misunderstanding, just buy us all gift cards at Banana Republic, and we’ll call it even. Oh yeah, don’t forget to vote in away that assures civil rights for ALL humans living on this planet.

Wandering along the beach feeling like a piece of driftwood myself, I began noticing the crescent shaped shoreline and six like shape waning toward the lighthouse like a cancer moon reflecting the crisp Atlantic Ocean that was crashing in from outer space to my right, while the dunes were stacked so neatly to the left. So much so that one might think that the National Park Service employs the “Gap” to straighten this portion of the continental shelf each evening after the long day of homosexual shopping. But it was just the wind, faithful like a course attendant raking sand traps, making the place have a look of sameness. While maneuvering further and further along the narrow confines of the early morning beach and the loneliness typical to such walks, I was getting lonelier and lonelier with each step of thirty-eight. While looking down at my feet I noticed them sinking into the sand.
When I looked back I noticed only one set of footprints in the sand, which immediately made me think of the campy “footprints in the sand [Jesus] poster” I saw several years earlier hanging in the hallway of my cousin’s Baptist church in Florida. As luck would have it, I was still going to church with my family when I would visit, partly of out of mere obligation as well as the hope of having Sonny’s Barbecue afterwards. I was visiting the same day they had an interim preacher there substituting. He got up from the velvet-covered purple throne reserved for preachers, just left and behind the pulpit, making his way gracefully [Bible in hand] toward the magical spot where he would get the thrill of charging us with his newfound wisdom and words, tasting once again the sweet power that be. He was a rather round looking fellow, and according to the introductions, brand new at this preaching thing, fresh meat from seminary. He wore a cheap clip on tie and inexpensive suit, all of which was likely purchased by someone in his home church who felt sorry for him. The presentation of such a wardrobe would have kindly concealed the truth of the matter, allowing the young preacher man to feel that it had been an answer to his prayer rather than the pity of some wealthy widow. He proceeded to deliver a very disrespectful sermon against the evils of homosexuality, which surprised me at first, making me wonder if this was a set up by my family, and now lunch at Sonny’s would be preempted by a sexual preference intervention, that was until my cousin Clayton (the Youth Minister at the church) looked over at me with an apologetic grim look on his face. The crest of the sermon was the misuse of humor. The preacher got the church howling by mocking a man carrying a purse. He was using his closed bible down by his side, swinging it back and forth, flaunting his body flimsy and sissy like, and the crowd went wild, except for our pew (all of which knew there was a homo in the house). He went on to warn the sheep how the gays are after their children and especially after the young men who are “struggling” with these sorts of issues. How does he know this, I wondered?

In large, preachers in the South are basically inexperienced, weak, fearful, powerless men. And to be down right crude about it, they preach like they must fuck, and I would imagine they typically cum too fast to arouse any deep longing in their parishioners. Now the sad part is that most parishioner folks are used to this sort of pattern in their lives. So when their preacher is nothing more than a wack off, speaking premature ejaculations, they don’t understand the damage being done to them or him, or those little ears hearing these things. I could never understand why anyone in a church in that position of power would make fun of another group like that, using stereotypes and planting the seeds of hate in the weak minds of followers? Fear drives all this, and the sheep buy into it and then naturally defend their Shepard to the hilt less they explore and deal with the entirety of their failing structure. I can say all this because of experience. Not too many years before, I was once claiming to be called by god and like this young preacher prick I was preaching against the evils homosexuality as well, the ones within myself that I could not get a grip on and hold back from expressing no matter how hard I tried. My secret eventually blossomed into a shameful burdensome path, at which point I confessed to a seminary counselor about the gay encounter I had the evening of my first sermon, at which point he went and got the dean. Within 30 minutes, I was handed a cashiers check for all expenses (tuition, books, housing) and asked to leave. Now days you can sue folks [like Criswell Bible College in Dallas] for shit like that, but back then, homos like me carried so much shame on board, we’d just suck it up, tuck our tails between our legs, and go away like they told us to do. I wondered if this young preacher was like me, if he were hiding behind the sermon, and where he might be headed after church to get a blowjob? I never really knew how to thank my cousin for inviting me to church that day without completely offending his beliefs. I remember feeling like I had never really dealt with the shame of being expelled from seminary, and the shame of that sermon was touching in that special place. Things like that were beginning to bother me for the first time in a good way. I am sure my cousin doesn’t know this, but I have never gone to church since that Sunday. Sure I have gone to straight weddings in that gay wedding are not legal, and that’s really all you can attend for now, but I have never again subjected myself to worshiping another man’s version of god. Many have written me off as an atheist, and I agree with those folks that it’s safer for them to think that, than to face the truth. In that the truth of the matter (which is called Deism) would cause those few to have heart palpitations. While still walking along the beach leaving footprints in the sand without any assistance from the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought about the poster and the church and all the growth since then, thinking that if I were forced to be narrow, I would certainly not be some independent Baptist narrow in the rigid sense of preachy small mindedness and unforgiving fear, I would narrow like this strand of beachfront and take on any fucking thing the tides of life want to bring. It was then I noticed how faggy the purple beach bag looked as it swung along my side, just as the young preacher had warned.

Once I had finally stopped along the beach to set up camp and ceased the metaphoric religious ranting and raving about Jesus and his people, I looked down the beach toward the Lighthouse and there was a man who appeared to be walking toward me. Christ almighty, I thought, the closer this hunk got; for he was very good looking and only getting better looking the closer he came. Now because of his handsome well defined chiseled looks, I began to brace myself for his brisk passing, assuming he was likely one of those Boston boys with attitude, the ones who almost always opted out of giving me the time of day. As difficult as my relationship with Michael was, thank God for it, because most of the time while living in Boston I never really had to explore why the gay men there handled their initial meetings with potential mates like an abortion clinic handles unwanted pregnancies. When he walked up and introduced himself, I was taken by surprised, and after loitering a few minutes, asking me all sorts of questions, he asked to sit down. We talked about everything. I told him all about how Michael had broken my heart and that I was a single man again. He told me that he had just began a new relationship with a man and that that they lived in Seattle and were in the process of buying a house together, and that he was there in P-town [alone] for his first art opening at a local gallery. He not being single sort of hit me like a ton of bricks and bothered me at first because I felt like we were connecting in ways that would never be able to play out fully based on his lack of availability. What would it mean if we had a great day, and at some point we had to abort all these notions and go our separate ways; back to our lives, him to his partner in the Northwest, me to an empty house in Boston? It didn’t take long for this situation to bring up all the negative feelings surrounding the way it had ended with Michael. And then it occurred to me that this endearing conversation I was having on the beach with this beautiful man was the same beginning Michael and his new lover had created for themselves months earlier. As the day went on, there was such a strong vibration building between us, and it seemed to gain momentum on all levels with every single word spoken, and then I finally understood what Michael had been trying to explain about his affair during the time it was ending between us. He told of an evolution between he and his new love that was undeniable, growing more and more while overshadowing his love for me. He told of them meeting for coffee while studying for exams and that they were just friends at first and that it grew very slowly into something more. I guess I felt unsure about this happening to me on the beach that day, so I contradicted my lesser desires and began asking in detail about his new boyfriend back in the Northwest. I wondered if my ex’s new love had ever asked about me or if he even cared that he was calling one man away from another? I guess I thought that by putting a face and a story to this man’s partner that we all [three] could get through this day without becoming that man I felt I always attracted into my life.

We lounged around the rest of the day under the lean to I eventually built to escape the sun, and under much lighter pretenses while chatting about life and romances, I was making roadways in the sand while he was making tiny little hang ten feet out of flat beach stones. At some point in the afternoon, once all the nudity at the beach was in full swing, in a rather mindless moment we decided to remove all our clothes and go for a swim. Now conversing with this man throughout the day was one thing; it had given me a sense of his strength on a mental, artistic and spiritual level; and then, there he stood naked, thus beginning the physical level I had tried to imagine all day long. Seeing one another undress has perhaps got to be one of the finest moments shared between two human beings. After surveying one another’s bodies for a moment or three, we then busted out laughing at how weak we really were in relation to our attraction to one another, but on the other hand, we were also laughing at our lack of availability to actually having an affair, as it seemed like far too much work for just an evening of sex, and a month of guilt afterwards (for him mostly, since I was single), and a long distance version of this? Forget that too. God what trouble we bring ourselves, what choices in life we call in to our shores to shape our beaches just so, I thought. Beginning to chill from the cold Atlantic breeze, we suddenly ran like schoolgirls into the cold water, playfully hiding from ourselves until a few swimming moments had passed. Then my summer lover paddled over toward me with such an honest look on his face. We were vulnerable to something in us that he knew would die the moment we breathed life into it. My new friend then informed me that we were going to hug and that was it and that although our blood would betray us and rush toward our towers, we embraced and fit together perfectly, melting into one another while we floated like ice cubes in a glass of tea. We knew the 6 minutes spent holding one another was our terminus of old patterns, and not ever to be misconstrued as the beginning of a romance or an affair. But that this spot of the beach was a point of honor and the landing of something big, beginning of a new vibration, that would forever be resetting our frequencies making the highways and byways of the future (in terms of old energies) roads less and less traveled.

Once dry again and warmly dressed, the day’s dimming was signaling the tides and all the gay men to make there way through the savannah, knee deep in seawater, trying to arrive back in town for T-dance. With each wading step we took across the basin, these unrecognizable footprints brought quiet and sadness as we slowly found ourselves becoming strangers once again. It was like reaching down for a relational gearshift and putting the desire we had for one another in reverse, backing out of all that we felt, all that we had said, all that we had wanted, all that we had began to dream about. And once standing together in tears in the middle of the traffic circle where US 6 says so long to her transcontinental gallivanting. Our individual lives, as I predicted earlier that day in my mind, would begin again. There were no exchanges made that day. No names. No fluids. No contact information. Only some fleeting thoughts about human nature and ex boyfriends, and how the steadfast nature of a summer lover in their most perfect form, are Christ like arriving in our lives at just the right moment so as to walk with us along the beach as we heal that which needs healing, and see that which needs seeing to, and touch that which needs to be touched.

Copyright 2005 Roland Wise Bottomline Magazine