For the sake of making Catching Marbles more accessible this is the first blog entry which I am trying to post a reading of the entry to listen to. So, if you are so inclined enjoy, otherwise feel free to read it yourself and look at all the pretty pictures! Much love! ~Theo

Provincetown has been on my bucket list for a number of years, but I didn’t really know what to expect. All I knew was that it was a long drive and whomever I brought with me had to be really cool with a whole lot of shit. No prudes, no relatives, just merciless sarcasm and innuendo, like an episode of Hazbin Hotel! (which if you haven’t seen it yet it’s on Amazon Prime. Go watch it. Right now.)

ANYWAY, why would I want to visit New England’s queerest corner? Why wouldn’t I?! I figured it must be a neurodivergent heaven! I mean 1 out of every 6 normal people define themselves as gay but if you only poll autistic people…. literally over 70% of us identify as various flavors of the rainbow. Basically, it’s a giant blinking bug zapper to people like me.

Be this as it may I did not know anyone in my circle wanted to go and was more than happy to take some hostages on this venture. So, with BF and BFF in tow we made our way to Commercial Street, which I am going to say now IS NOT MADE FOR CARS. Do not drive down it! You will be MOBBED with pedestrians and only able to go at max 2 miles an hour until you find a parking lot. The parking lot I found was $15 and came with an attitude. Was I just learning how to drive? No sir, your instructions just suck and it’s making me nervous you’re standing directly in front of my car while I park. I suspect the $20 parking just down the road came with less guff. And a hanging sculpture of a Great White at the entrance….

Now that that was settled we all got out of the car and started our ambling. This was going to be another adventure in ADHD. We were immediately distracted by gargoyles. Fucking GARGOYLES. So, we walked away from Commercial Street to figure out why on earth there was a tower full of gargoyles overlooking the town. As it turns out this was the Pilgrim Monument. For a cool $20 you could take an elevator to the top. Or you could pay nothing and just read the pretty plaques probably stating that the pilgrims first landed in P-town not Plymouth. They merely wandered off and settled in Plymouth.

From here we decided to go back to Commercial Street which was FULL of summer tourists and pride flags of all persuasions. Some of them even flew out of the eaves of Seamen’s Bank which made us all giggle like twelve-year-olds. To be honest everything here seemed to be written with a wink and a nod. Never have I seen an oyster bar so thirsty. “Real men eat it raw.” (I’m really starting to wonder how I am going to contain the rest of this entry within the PG range for the angry and decidedly prudish AdSense gods.) Especially since the first thing we saw was this alleyway covered in…. I’m going to say erotic art. And baby doll heads in cages. My kinda weird.

It wasn’t all adult oriented. We started off within the normal area of family friendly activities stopping by a candy shop and checking off another bucket list item – trying saltwater taffy. It was soft! And sweet… and… I don’t have much of a sweet tooth but I’m glad I tried it anyway. The orange flavored ones were the best. From here we wandered into a little hippie shop with T-shirts and hippie clothing, funny bumper stickers and the usual touristy shit, and a forbidden staircase to the above 18 crowd. Wait, what? You can’t just dangle a forbidden staircase; curiosity will kill the cat (but satisfaction will bring him back.) So, what was up there? A weird convenience store of dildos and hookahs and bongs and pipes and more adult toys… just an overwhelming blizzard of rainbow colors… and textures… and why does this dildo look like it’s made for a platypus? (If you know, you know…and if you don’t you probably shouldn’t google what’s up with platypus bits.)

ANYWAY. We came across a lot that afternoon. Much of it was perfectly tame like a T-shirt shop for funny T-shirts that “can be printed in 9 seconds! Just pick a design!” As well as galleries, so many galleries with such a range of topics. There was even one that was just hyper detailed photos of your eyes. Or someone else’s eyes, but I’m pretty sure the point was to make it your own. And there was an AIDS monument we accidentally found as well as another monument with a ship on it that I would have read if I weren’t also trying to run and catch up with my crew. Lollygagger.

The whole street seemed to be places to eat, dispensaries, adult stores, galleries, tourist traps, billboards for drag shows (dammit, I want to see Hedwig live now!) and a smattering of bookstores. One such bookstore I’m pretty sure was a fairy trap. My companions, also twelve at heart, said damn straight it is a fairy trap. It was down a long alley that was completely covered in vines. How is that not some sort of fae attempt at luring unsuspecting humans?! We’re all idiots because we walked right into it. And it was sweet! A little quiet used bookstore with some really interesting titles… granted a large selection for the LGBT+ community. I enjoyed it.

Then we ended up walking by yet another sex shop but this one had signs in the windows none of us could ignore. One was the shop’s name, “Toys of Eros: More toys than the devil has sinners!” One point for the Greek mythology reference, another for the blasphemy, can we make it any better? Oh yes, they can also have a sign on the door that says they won’t sell to bigots except with MUCH more colorful language. I want to post a photo I took of it on FaceBook but I’d have to censor 30% of the words. SIGH. And beside all that there were promises of a sex museum! Fine… we’ll follow the free candy sign into the big black van just this once. The sex museum was more of an entryway full of terrifying cake mixer looking vibrators. Did you know that the electric vibrator predates electrical outlets? They had to be plugged into light bulb fixtures! So, I guess you can diddle or have light but you can’t have both. They also had a merkin. Looked like a dead rat. And some other things. Of course, by this time we’re in the shop. Clever ploy sex nerds, clever ploy.

First, we saw the case of glass twat ticklers. Slightly terrifying but I’m sure they were phantasma-orgasmic. I was then distracted by a rack of leather puppy masks, which are just… so… perfect…. for wearing when you go back in time just to scare the hell out of people. Hey, no one said it had to be a sexual thing. Sometimes, intrusive thoughts need love too. You could totally be a cryptid. I believe in you. ANYWAY, back to the task at hand – there was a wall of whips and switches and floggers with which to fondle all under a flying mannikin descending from the ceiling on a sex swing. Speaking of uses against manufacturer’s instructions I knew someone once who hoisted her rottweiler into a tree with one of those so she could spray her bath-hating pup down with a garden hose. Try getting that image out of your head.

I think the store clerk was bored because at this point she approached us and started showing us a whole rack of pocket pussies. You may wonder why a gay man and a woman would entertain such a thing but I wasn’t going to walk away without poking at it and HOLY SHIT this feels more real than my own flesh and blood bits! Whaaaaat is going on here?! This is where morbid curiosity gets you. Pondering what decisions in life brought you to this exact moment. They also had some that were less hyper realistic and more demure – and by that I mean hidden in what looked like a coffee thermos. I’m just saying, if I opened up my thermos one day and the death of Adam stared back at me from with it… Well, it’d just make the whole rest of the day weird, you know. Awkward weird. Naked Lunch weird.

It’s OK though because past the trans-friendly corner there was a delightful selection of vibrating muff marauders. Again, the clerk made sure to turn on every one and hand them to me and my companions. So many speeds, and vibration patterns, textures, and sizes. Cute little ones and ones that looked like they were made by Black and Decker complete with attachments. Purple ones, pink ones, black ones, shiny ones. Ones that thrust as well as vibrated! Hell, there was even one that sucked. Quite literally. It was a suction device for lady beans. That one was called the Womanizer. Of course, hearing that I tried to goad the clerk into telling me what was the most offensively named product in the store but she shied away from my cheerful trolling. Shame. I would have enjoyed that list.

As we left the clerk let it slip she was from NH and I had to ask where exactly. This resulted in her asking where I was and when I told her she had the same not great opinion of my town. Said the only good thing about it was the Walmart and the people were miserable. Guys, I’ve been saying this for years, and everyone always says all small towns suck but low! I’ve never felt so validated in my life to meet a complete stranger who sees the unique shittiness of my hometown. BIG SIGH!

It’d been a long but fun day. We’d found food and places to poke at and were really just heading back to the car when we saw a young woman across the street sitting at a typewriter with a sign reading something like, “I’ll write a poem for you.” This intrigued all of us to varying degrees and we went to see what that was all about. In short order we found ourselves talking to her and telling her about our day to which she took a notecard out, placed it in her typewriter, and in the matter of a minute managed to concisely summarize our day with some pretty words. It warmed my Beatnik heart and provided a beautiful souvenir. We decided to give her $20 for her efforts. And you can follow her on Instagram! @sticky6wordbandit

It was getting late and we were heading back to the car but that’s always perfect for yet more distractions. This time we’d be playing with a bunch of dead bugs. There was a whole shop for them! Just… butterflies in frames… and weird creepy crawly keychains… Made my inner bug loving twelve-year-old very happy. And finally we wandered into a well-lit and empty gallery because we’d seen one of the paintings from the street that looked decidedly like an all-male orgy melted like candles into each other in some sort of acid induced hallucination. The other art ranged from beautiful and serene to more erotic scenes. Then there was a little sign pointing to a dark streetside staircase reading, “there’s more in the basement!” Another fairy trap. I wasn’t about to but after reading the sign aloud my companion said we should go down and a disembodied voice from the underworld yelled, “YEAH! YOU SHOULD!” You guys, no, this is definitely a fairy trap. We’re gonna be disappeared. But alas the basement was just a TINY room barely big enough for the three of us and the disembodied voice was the artist who swooped by and up the stairs with all the deftness of… well, I guess a fairy.

I really liked some of the really close up paintings of blueberries and fruit. Sadly, I didn’t have 2 or 3K on me. But none the less I wished him good luck as I popped out of his gallery and into the night. We all agreed that as fun as today was we’d still like to come back and see more. And so that’s how our day ended… with sweet beautiful whimsy and more than a little innuendo. Totally worth it.