My sluttiest-ever trip to Provincetown

I felt like a real rich bitch taking the fast ferry from Boston to Provincetown last summer.

For the uninitiated, the drive down from the city to the tip of Cape Cod is always a traffic-choked, miserable slog. The ferry, by contrast, is the choice of gays with means. After many years roughing it, I finally splurged on the zippy boat across the bay.

It was choppier than I expected, and I got uncharacteristically motion sick for a minute. I was buoyed (hah!) by the sight of two gays serving as de facto tour guides for the straight families on board; the idea of a couple of fags shaping the itinerary of a heterosexual family vacation made me giggle.

An hour and a half later, I stepped onto the docks and executed what I would consider a quite flawless arrival: Dropped my bags at the bed-and-breakfast in the heart of town, walked across the street to rent a bike, then rode down Commercial Street to grab a sandwich at Relish (iykyk) before pedaling on to the beach.

I locked my bike, hopped over the sand dunes and joined the pilgrimage of gays trudging through the marsh, like a line of ants marching toward their hill. When I made it to the fabled Boy Beach—a remote stretch of sand conducive to nude sunbathing and other adult activities—I immediately threw off my clothes.

This was not my first time on the Boy Beach.

My maiden voyage through the marsh took place nearly a decade earlier, during my first summer after college. I visited Ptown with a group of mostly-straight friends, who were good enough sports to humor me when I suggested we go be naked on a beach together.

After that, I was hooked, and every time I visited Ptown I felt a near-magnetic pull to the Boy Beach. I loved almost nothing more than letting it all hang out in the sun, or in the surf. I was well aware that there were other attractions behind the dunes, but I never investigated. I was content to have my naked, if chaste, days on the sand.

That is, until I wasn’t so content.

Many years after my first trip to the Boy Beach, I went to Ptown to celebrate an anniversary with my long-term boyfriend.

We had met soon after I graduated from college, and we constructed a life that often felt like domestic gay bliss.

He’d regularly come to my apartment toting some ingredients for his favorite dinner: Vegetable curry. From his bag, he’d fish out a potato or a carrot and some curry spice mix from the Indian grocery store, and get it all simmering in a stock pot. The simple meal, served over rice, often preceded an evening watching TV together, cuddled up on the couch. We became devoted fans of (what else?) RuPaul’s Drag Race, a show we’d both been watching on our own for years.

During the early days of the Covid pandemic, we moved in together, leaving each of our homes behind for a new, shared one: an idyllic brownstone apartment with enormous windows, intricate plaster moldings and wide-plank wood floors. A few days after moving in, we walked to our favorite pizzeria to pick up a pie and some gelato, and came home to eat it with a bottle of fizzy red wine. In my journal, I described this as one of “the nights I've been dreaming of.” The next day, we cooked a dinner of homemade gnocchi.

As those early days turned into years, we cut a figure of the ideal, modern gay couple. Despite small doubts that occasionally popped into my head, all signs pointed to this conclusion: We were deeply integrated into each other’s families, we lived together, we posted adorable anniversary photos on Instagram. Love wins, right?

I mostly embraced this image of us as a couple, even in the moments when I could feel it wasn’t totally right for me. As our sex life began to wane, some of these subdued doubts floated closer to the surface. I was struggling with what I wanted my future to look like: Whether I wanted to double down on this beautifully domestic life, or reach for something edgier that would scratch my lingering itch for sexual adventure.

I wrestled with this silently for a while, my internal struggle at a near fever-pitch when we departed to celebrate five years together, in Provincetown.

I knew my boyfriend was not interested in going to the Boy Beach, but I begged until he relented.

We plodded parallel down the shore, each holding a handle of our Trader Joe’s cooler bag, until we reached the still-small crowd of gays. We plopped down and I stripped off my clothes. My partner remained fully layered. I convinced him to come put his feet in the water with me. I went up to my calves, turned back to smile at him at the edge of the water. I peered down toward a gaggle of naked friends posing for cheeky group photos. After a few minutes, went back to our towels.

Slowly, more boys filtered onto the beach. To our left, a particularly attractive man was standing up with his hard dick, idly stroking. I kept craning my neck over to enjoy the show. Surely, all manner of more explicit behavior was happening behind us, in the dunes. I wanted nothing more than to go experience it for myself. I suggested to my partner that we go back there and play, just the two of us. Wouldn’t that be fun? He didn’t think so.

Instead, we got back to our hotel room in the afternoon and washed off before heading out for an anniversary dinner. Our reservation was early, and while we were headed back after the meal, most of the town was just beginning their night. Cliques of gays passed by, bedecked in glitter and wigs and all kinds of finery. Still more gaggles were packed onto lawns and decks. I felt a twinge of FOMO, wondering if I’d ever be part of those crowds. Instead I was walking against the tide, back out to the quieter part of town, where my boyfriend and I planned to pass the time sipping wine at our cottage hotel.

We didn’t make it to another anniversary.

About seven months after our Ptown trip, I summoned him out to the living room. I was ready to break up with the boy who had written songs about me, who never did anything to hurt me, who was ready to spend the rest of his days with me. 

I told him I wanted to talk about something when he had a minute, as if it wasn’t urgent at all. 

He sat down in the upholstered chair in the corner. My words came out tentatively. “I know we’ve been talking about our relationship a lot lately,” I began. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want. And I love you so much, but I just don’t think I can lie to myself anymore about what I need going forward.” Tears streamed out of my eyes, my voice cracking. He eyed me from across the coffee table. “Okay…” he allowed, the word dripping out slowly. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do this anymore,” I managed, hardly able to flick my eyes up off the floor to catch a glimpse of his reaction.

He maintained his position in the chair even as I unspooled the words that would blow up our life. I don’t think either of us said much more after it was done. I quickly retreated to our bedroom, closed the door behind me, and sat on the edge of the bed before I let out moaning sobs. I had never cried so loudly in my life. I buried my face in my hands, an absolute cliche of heartbreak. 

That afternoon, I was mostly a puddle. I lost all shame about wandering the streets of my city and sobbing in public: the only way I could think to call my friends that day with any semblance of privacy from my now-ex boyfriend. I cashed in years of IOUs from the people in my life who always promised they’d be there when I needed it.

I could barely believe I had really done it at first. I started to question myself: Wait, we definitely broke up, right? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. But when I returned to our apartment later that day to pack an overnight bag, what I saw erased all doubt. He was standing in the kitchen, his back leaned up against the counter, his arms crossed and hand clutching a tissue. He was a tearful mess. I told him where I was going—to spend the night at a friend’s place across town—and asked if he needed anything. “Well, what I want, I can’t have,” he squeaked out, delivering another blow to my already shattered heart.

When I returned to the Boy Beach this past summer, I arrived with a painfully-earned freedom to explore the mythical dunes at last.

For the first couple of hours, said dunes were nearly empty. I swam a bit, read my book and ate my lunch.

At around 2 p.m., I noticed a blowjob happening at the top of the dunes, and took that as my cue to explore. When I crossed over the hill, I found a couple cute boys and played with them for a while, sucking a few beautiful cocks; I was feeling quite generous with my services that afternoon.