Everyone thinks it would be heaven to live on the Cape but as a trans woman you meet a lot of people who never seen a trans woman before, some of the encounters bad but most are good.
You have to realize that many of the summer workers are from eastern Europe, Asians, or the Caribbean and like most people they have never encountered a trans person. A couple of weeks ago at the hardware store as I was checking out the clerk who looked and sounded like he is from eastern Europe called me sir, I didn’t say anything until customers and his boss was not around and then I quietly told him the correct honorific is ma’am or miss. The next time I went there and when I walked into the store he said “How can I help you ma’am.
Then there is the clerk at the local seafood restaurant he has the nicest smile, Jamaican accent, and is always cheerful.
Then there is the pizza restaurant.
When I order on the phone I usually just give my last name because over time I have realized that I don’t want to get in an argument on the phone with why I don’t sound like “Diana.” So when I ordered a pizza I went to pick it up the entire staff had to come out from the kitchen to see me. The waitress was busting a gut to keep from laughing, one by one the kitchen staff came out to do something in the dinning area. I could hear laughter coming out from the kitchen. I wrote a negative review and it turned out that many others commented about the rude staff. The pizzeria went out of business.
Oh and the staff were all local teenagers. I now drive down to Eastham to a pizza place there that a lesbian friend recommended and the pizza is better.
The other day at the only grocery store in 20 miles in P’town is always a trip in more ways than one and it is a great place to people watch (You do not want to go shopping on the weekend because it is “switch day” when all the week long rentals end and the next week’s vacationers arrive.). It is full with people who have no idea where to find stuff and they just wandering around… they are vacationers up for a week and trying to buy their groceries for the week. There are also the regulars who know their way around the store, many of them a lesbians and gays. Yesterday while I was loading the car with groceries a gay couple saw my license plate and commented on the low number plate. We had a nice chat in the parking lot about the history of plate.*
This coming weekend on Sunday it will be the Pan Mass Challenge a 3 day bike race across Massachusetts and on Sunday it ends in Provincetown so there will be hundreds of bicyclist on Rt. 6 (I have no idea where they get thousand of traffic cones that line the road for the route). There are always "special events" going on somewhere on the Cape and of course P'town has there Carnival Week where the sleepy little town on the Cape gets packed with wall to wall people. On Thursday of Carnival Week there is the annual parade where the population swells from around 5,000 people to a whopping 100,000 people! Then the town where I live has their annual Oyster Festival in October the same weekend that Fantasia Fair begins. The streets become packed with tourists, it is heaven for the stores and restaurants but a nightmare for the locals.
I have lengthened my stay on the Cape, I used to come up for a week and go home but over time I now stay for 5 or 6 weeks at a time and have my mail transferred to a PO box on the Cape. I did that mainly because of the traffic, it is a nightmare getting on to the Cape because of the rotaries. Leaving the Cape isn’t bad because there are less rotaries.
The Cape is not a “Gay Heaven” but rather just like any other seaside community with it mix of full-time resident, vacationers… and traffic. Yes, there is an abundance of pride flags out on the tip of the Cape but as for trans people we are few and far between just like anywhere else.
No comments:
Post a Comment