I started this blog post on PTown with a description of how I ended up there and what happened to me while I was there. Halfway through I realised that’s not really what I want to write about. That’s not as important as the women I met while I was there. They are what made PTown special for me. If I’d gone there with a group, I probably wouldn’t have met so many wonderful people. If I’d gone there as socially anxious and closed off as I’ve been over the last few months, I’d never have opened up and gotten the opportunity to discover women again. Warm, friendly, genuine women who took me under their wings and in doing so, taught me to fly again.
I’ve been hiding out for months, physically as well as emotionally. I’ve taken the actions of a few people and distilled it into a distrust of humans and the outside world. Animals, especially my Clio, were pure unconditional love, safe. I read in a beautiful book on dog training that for those people who hide away from others out of fear of being hurt and who can unconditionally love dogs, they need to remember that if dogs can feel love for humans, then humans must be worth loving.
Ever since I opened up in a blog post and received kindness, I’ve been determined to be grateful for all the positives that are in my life. Which have multiplied since then. So this blog post about my trip to PTown is all about gratitude (apart from the bus and ferry-induced motion sickness which I have discovered I suffer from. I cannot find anything to be grateful for in that).
I’m so glad I decided to ignore the effects of the 17-hour journey on my first night in PTown and head into town after checking in at the hotel. I met six women that night who became friends.
That first night I met Michelle and Nancy, two women who have been friends for a long time, Lauren and Tina, a couple from Texas. They stayed all week so I got a chance to hang out with them and get up to mischief. Though with Tina’s parents also with them (and at the bar and at shows during the week), we were all pretty well behaved. Apart from one night, which involved extreme whistling and the 2 a.m. throwing of plastic ducks onto high window ledges in Essentials, a little store with a difference.
Unfortunately, the other couple, Jen and Lea, were leaving the next day (Tuesday), but we ended up talking and playing pool for the rest of Monday night and I spent part of Tuesday standing on a deck looking out at the ocean, eating and talking and laughing for hours with two kindred spirits who are as crazy about animals as I am. And because of them, I may return to being vegetarian. Not because they preached anything about being vegan, but because I watched them live their beliefs and it felt right, unlike that vaguely hypocritical feeling I’ve experienced being an animal-lover and eating them. (As I typed that last sentence, my Polish housemate handed me a bowl of soup with sausage in it.)
My novels on display in Womenscraft
I went to Womenscraft with Jen and Lea and had the thrill of seeing my books on display beside the books of much more established authors. I picked up the leaflets I’d prepared and shipped ahead, hoping I would have the guts to hand them out on the street.
The leaflets I was supposed to be distributing
That evening, I got in to a cab on its way to the Community Dinner. There were two other women already in it and I heard a familiar accent and called on my newly found social skills to pipe up and ask them where they were from. Lucy turned out to be from Northern Ireland and Fran from England. I didn’t get to spend much time with them that evening, but met up again for the week as they joined the motley crew we were becoming. I can blame Fran and Lucy for leading me astray and into the wrong Meet and Greet on Thursday, thus missing the scheduled one at Womenscraft. (That’s my excuse anyway, plus I had just been through an introvert’s nightmare and an author’s marketing dream, more about that later).
At the Community Dinner (where I got my first introduction to the performers that attend Women’s week), I was seated beside a lovely couple from Delaware, Gladys and Anne, who, on hearing I was moving to a little hotel/inn very near the centre of town the next day and I was there all alone, offered me the spare room in their condo. Not wanting my gallivanting to disturb them, I stayed at the hotel/inn place, but met up with them as well for the rest of the week. Later in the week, Gladys and Anne were kind enough to ask at the Provincetown Women’s Week Ticket Office whether it was not a crime that I was single and were there any suitable available singles. I’m looking forward to being in my 70s just so I can do the same for someone else.
Fran, Tina, Lucy, Lauren, Michelle, Nancy
By now, I had made 10 friends and it was only Tuesday. I was a bit shell-shocked at the connection I felt to all of them. And I hadn’t even met all the FB friends and authors yet. True to my promise to myself, I went out Tuesday night after the Community Dinner and ended up meeting some lovely local women and wandering with them from venue to venue as PTown hadn’t started to come alive yet and most places were quiet.
On Wednesday, I got my first glimpse of the performers ‘leafleting’ on the street outside the Crown and Anchor and the Post Office Cabaret. Their high-energy interaction with passers-by was fascinating to watch. There are regular comedy shows every day at a set hour for each performer, and with so many events going on for Women’s Week, the comediennes spend the hour or so before their show persuading people on the street to go to their show, or to the show of a fellow performer. I envied the confidence, the chutzpah, these performers had. Something I wanted to have, for a moment, to be someone other than the shy reserved author who works alone to bare her soul for the entertainment of others. I could never do what they did, I thought. To put themselves out there, to ask strangers for their attention. And most of them disguised it well, the vulnerability under the laughs. Only one couldn’t hide it from her eyes and it occurred to me that she wasn’t any different from me in not wanting to have to beg strangers to connect, she was just a hell of a lot braver than I could ever be. My leaflets still lay hidden in my rucksack.
By the Wednesday morning, I had been introduced to parts of three other subcultures of PTown, the women from all over who came to absorb PTown, the performers who gave so much energy to make the week special, and the locals who watched the shenanigans every year.