PTOWN MOMENT

The view from one of my windows on my Provincetown wharf has been particularly stunning this summer. As I sit here typing, the water encroaches into the great coil of the harbor – always a different color, depending on the time of day, the tide and the weather. In front of me is a patch of reclaimed beach, an up-turned kayak in the dune grass, Poor Richard’s Landing – another old wharf building – behind it. And in the middle, a patch of bare sand that has become an impromptu wedding place. I’ve witnessed three weddings there in four weeks – all between two women, some with kids, some formal, some New Agey. It seems quite routine now, but it was only ten years ago that I sat down on this very beach to figure out “Virtually Normal” and came to the conclusion that civil marriage was the lodestar of homosexual equality. Now it happens when I’m not looking, or when I’m napping, or walking the beagle. And life goes on. And the tide comes in again.