What's the PLOT???

Okay, here’s the challenge:

Devise a plot that explains why someone would violate a primary directive of the public office they hold, when they are contemplating a run for the White House within the next eight years.

   Sound familiar? I’ve been mulling it over all day, ever since I watched the Sunday morning talking heads discussing the state of affairs in our nation’s capitol. I think I have finally been convinced that Hillary Clinton is lying about the email. This hurts. I was a huge Hilary Clinton fan and a huge supporter of Bill Clinton. It didn’t particularly bother me if Bill was having a dalliance with an intern. What business was it of mine? He’s not my husband. We all know he’s not the first President to play around. So what? What got me was he lied about it. That changed him in my eyes. It made him seem weak and a bit silly. However, it still doesn’t change the fact that I think he will be remembered as one of the great Presidents.

   But back to my challenge, which begs the question: Why? Why, Mrs. Clinton, would you chose to break one of the basic rules of your public office, and then decide to run for President? You are a Washington veteran. You must have known this would come out. You and your husband have been working on this White House thing since Yale. I want to know why it happened. If there’s a good explanation, let’s hear it.

   I’m angry at Hillary. I think she had a good chance of being elected and I thought she would make a good President, but she has disillusioned me by not being forthcoming, and she has given her opponents the ammunition they need to sink her campaign. I’m disappointed. I really wanted her to run. Part of me is certain that women should be running things in this country, and I was hoping we were about to get a good one to do it, but I’ll be amazed if she even gets the nomination, let alone gets elected.

    I’m pretty sure that if Joe Biden decides to run, I’ll be voting for him. 

AFTER THE PARADE-CARNIVAL 2015

   I don’t know about you, but I was a bit disappointed with the Carnival parade this year. It’s my favorite annual event, or it used to be. We’ve had some really great parades over the years. One year, we had an elephant! Her name was Ruthie, and she lived in Harwich. I think Ron Robin hired her for the parade, and it was a well-kept secret in a town not known for secrets well-kept or otherwise. We may think we have secrets, but really, everybody knows just about everything about everybody else here, don’t they? And an elephant is a big secret to keep well! But she came rumbling through town, amazing all, patiently plodding along Commercial Street in the Carnival Parade.

   Another year there were no motorized floats. Everybody was either on foot, skateboard, or bicycle, and it really brought out some fabulously creative parade-ers.

   I used to be in the parade. I did it for three or four years, when I worked at The Crown & Anchor. The year we did “PIRATES OF PENZANCE” in the Back Room, the whole cast was in the parade, riding on a flatbed truck with all the drag queens. The following year, they rented a vintage car for me and Michael Greer, who dressed as Max Headroom. It was lots of fun, but the only problem with being in the parade is you don’t get to see the parade. Also, it’s very long, as anyone who has waited west of Johnson Street can tell you. There were several years when B. and I used to go to Ray Peloquin’s party, ‘way down by the Coast Guard station. He’d lay down an oriental, position couches and cocktail tables all around, set up a grill and a bar, and we’d relax in comfort watching the shreds of the parade limp past. Maybe not the best way to do it, but certainly a fresh perspective. You notice things, like after a long, hot ride in the sun, makeup and wigs are the first to go. Then heels.

   Having managed an apartment building on the parade route, I am not a fan of the tradition of throwing candy, but I realize I’m in the minority on this. It’s not just the Carnival parade. All the parades do it, and it’s very hard to clean up. Given the theme of this year’s event, I can’t help imagining Commercial Street as something akin to flypaper right around now.

   Even if the floats were a bit ho-hum this year, it’s still a great feeling to see so many gay people in one place having such a good time. Every year I get all teary and proud as I watch the celebration, and so if one year isn’t quite as good as others have been, it’s still the same pride and joy and it’s so good to see and feel it.

Augustitus

  

    No, it’s not the name of some hero of Greek mythology you’ve forgotten you ever heard of. It’s the annual affliction many of us suffer from and it isn’t pretty. It’s that time of year, when Memorial Day is a memory and Labor Day seems years ahead. Tempers are short, temperatures are high, leisure time is non-existent and 18 hour days are getting very old. Remember the anticipation, the hope of April and May? The snow was gone, (almost), and we had nothing to look forward to but sunny days and good pay. We basked in golden thoughts of paying all the bills that had piled up over the long, work-less winter. We relished the thought of cook-outs, dove into dreams of sitting poolside, even burned for the days we could spend lying in the sun. Well, those days have arrived and the only ones I see lying in the sun are leaving by ten on Saturday morning. If we are lucky enough to have a day off, we spend it not by the pool, but usually by a washing machine somewhere, doing a week’s worth of dirty laundry. As for cook-outs, we barely have time to wolf down a sandwich in the 15 minutes between jobs. So, if we’re a little grouchy, well, look at the calendar!

   Augustitus is a lot like the hiccups in that everybody has a cure. Some say take a walk in the dunes at dawn. The town is certainly a different place at 6am. Even downtown is quiet and sedate, if you can ignore the occasional tattered butterfly doing the walk of shame. Many people tell me they conquered the affliction by insisting on a full day off, but that’s chancy. Over the summer people leave employment, and you could be stuck doing doubles in mid-August, never a good thing. Getting enough sleep is crucial to fighting this condition. Even if you don’t have time for anything else, GET SOME SLEEP!  For many years I tried to cure it with drink, but that never worked and doing a shift behind the bar with a hangover is hell.

   So, what to do? Tough it out, Baby, tough it out. You’re not alone. We’re all in the same boat, and while it might feel like it’s sinking into the litter of Carnival right now, Labor Day is coming. This is the last big push. It’s all good from here. Just get through the next week. Pep talk over.

   Another stop on the Great Bars I’ve Known tour would have to be The Pilgrim Club. It was across the street from Wuthering Heights, out on Shankpainter Road. These days it’s a private residence, but back then it was my second home for a whole winter, from opening at noon to closing at 1am. That winter I was, like so many of my friends, collecting unemployment, so I had a lot of free time. We all did that in those days. It was an integral part of Provincetown economy. You worked, usually at two jobs, seven days a week all summer, (“We only have 100 days!” I remember being told.), and then in the fall we’d all sign up for unemployment until we went back to work in the spring. Of course, it was a lot cheaper to live here in the seventies, and we all took care of each other, something which, thankfully, hasn’t changed.

   The Pilgrim Club was owned by Reggie Cabral, who also owned the A-house on Masonic Place, downtown. I don’t think he was the original owner, but he owned it while I was a patron. Reggie’s wife, Myra, didn’t like me, so he used to push me out the back door whenever she arrived. However,  I spent every second I could there for one reason and one reason only: pool. You know that song from MUSIC MAN, “Trouble, Right Here In River City”? That was me. I was totally seduced by the game. My instructors were George McGraw, Digger O’Dell and Bobby Cardinal, and they taught me well. And I practiced. And practiced. And practiced some more. Sometimes, if the smelts were running, someone would come in with a big batch and fry them up in the kitchen. Deep-fried smelts with Tabasco sauce and lemon are fantastic, if you ever have the chance. I can’t remember now what I was drinking, but it must have been beer, which was fifty cents a schooner. I’m sure I couldn’t afford anything else.

   We were all different people then, and Provincetown was a very different place. Back then I didn’t even know Bobby Cardinal was an artist, and I’m pretty sure nobody knew I was a singer. I have no idea what happened to Digger or George, but whenever I shoot a game of eight ball, they are right there with me. I can’t eat fried foods anymore, so smelts are out, and beer is also off the menu, and I don’t shoot nearly as much pool as I used to, but then nothing is forever, is it? We all thought the Pilgrim Club would last forever, and the Fo’castle, too, but then we thought we’d be young forever, too. Oh, well