By Jewelle Gomez–
I never make New Year’s resolutions because I’ve always found them to be discouraging rather than inspiring. Why should I vow to lose weight in the depths of winter? That’s just when I need weight the most. In my new play, Unpacking in P’town, opening March 1 at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, the characters make their annual resolutions at the beginning of the summer season. They do so because, as one character says: “We tend to be more realistic when we’re half naked and holding an umbrella drink.”
The play is about a group of retired Vaudeville performers in 1959 and their annual visit to their vacation cottages in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The situation, though not the story itself, is based on my (straight) grandmother, Lydia, who was a singer and dancer and the gay community she was a part of each summer when they all hung up their tap shoes.
They were immensely entertaining to the public and each other but were never famous. Some became dance teachers, cab drivers, sales clerks, elevator operators; taking whatever paying jobs were available to middle-aged hoofers and crooners. They were each from different kinds of families and communities. My long-legged, Bostonian grandmother was part Wampanoag and African American; her close friend, Scottie, was from Scotland and sang in a glorious tenor. They formed the core of this family of friends who endured for decades.
Spending summers in a small beach town famous since the 1930s for its progressiveness had its advantages—especially a town that had been home to celebrated artists like Robert Motherwell and Eugene O’Neill. That’s not to say it was a totally smooth ride, but gay people felt they were entwined with the prosperity of the village and so were not easily dismissed. Besides, no town fathers wanted Tennessee Williams to talk bad about them.
When I visited for a weekend each summer, it was where I saw queer adults who were not hiding or defensive; they were literally half naked and holding cocktails. And I got to hear their many stories like the terror of getting lost in a Canadian town’s thick fog, uncertain if it was even safe to ask for directions—and hear the songs they sang aloud to dispel their fear while they inched through the night to find their rooming house.
The long-term advantage for me was that my grandmother’s ease with her gay friends made me comfortable with myself as a young lesbian. Her circle of pals included those who were white, Black, Latinx, bi-racial and multi-ethnic; an American mix that understood the dangers the outside the world posed. They’d survived traveling around the country being refused hotel rooms, being confined to certain railway cars, and denied restaurant service. But each glorious New England summer was theirs and they refused to let the bitter reality of the “square” world hold sway over them once they slipped into their swimsuits. Their stories and their music made me feel comfortable about being a multi-ethnic lesbian who wanted to tell stories.
Each generation hopes they can make the world easier for the next and this group of mostly queer entertainers whom I got to call uncles and aunts definitely did that for me. My grandmother, Lydia, used to toast her friends with: “Birds of a feather flock together.” And, in some ways, that implied that the group of birds were all the same.
But the more I worked on my play and remembered who they were, I realized they were not the same at all. No matter what ethnicity, whether queer or not, the feathers they shared were their powerful love of music, dance, and theatre; and a belief that their art could help heal us. So, pretend it’s summer, huddle up in a flock, grab an umbrella drink, and think about how you can make this next year better.
Unpacking in P’town
March 1–31 at the New Conservatory Theatre Center
https://nctcsf.org/event/unpacking-in-ptown/
Jewelle Gomez is a lesbian/feminist activist, novelist, poet, and playwright. She’s written for “The Advocate,” “Ms. Magazine,” “Black Scholar,” “The San Francisco Chronicle,” “The New York Times,” and “The Village Voice.” Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @VampyreVamp
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Published on January 11, 2024
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