The agenda for Tuesday was to travel to P-Town (Provincetown to the uninitiated) to do some shopping and top notch people watching. P-Town is a Mecca for the LGBT community and draws all sorts of artists, writers, poets, entertainers, and people who just don't give a shit about what people think of them anymore, as well as their patrons and gawkers. It's a small seaside town, but packed to the gills with people.
But first, we had a family game morning at the kitchen table. My brother and his family like to play the board game Dixit. This is essentially a cross between Apples To Apples and Balderdash. Each player gets a turn to "tell a story," which could be a phrase, gesture, or sound. All players have a hand of cards with pictures on them and each puts in the best match for the story. Players can earn points by selecting the card the storyteller played or having other players select his/her offering. Each player has a game piece that marks the number of points earned until someone reaches the end and wins. The rules are simple enough that G-Bug and my nephews were all able to play. Although the oldest, I probably had the least mature story, as I went with "who farted?" The accompanying pictures from all the players made the story hilarious.
Around lunchtime we headed to P-Town. The day was one of the hottest of the trip with bright sun and blue sky. There was a long line of cars at the first turn off the highway into town so we traveled on to the next light. This took us by our usual parking lot we use when we visit, but the lot was already full. We headed toward the tower and circled the area until we lucked out and found a spot someone had just vacated. We were just two blocks away from the main drag (considering this was P-Town I feel obligated to say "no pun intended"). We met the rest of our group across the street from a Pilgrim memorial.
We did a little bit of window shopping as we made a slow progress down Commercial Street. The streets were jammed with people, bicyclists, and the occasional car or service van. A short time passed before we were starting to get hungry, so we made our way to a small food court nearby. Everyone had a different taste in mind for lunch, so each person went to his/her choice and we met on a deck overlooking the water. There was a bar on the deck and my brother, the Wifey, and I got a beer. I just had a bowl of clam chowder for lunch while others got chicken, burritos or hamburgers. We were able to get a table with an open umbrella to shade us and allow us to enjoy the view.
We did more active shopping after lunch. There were a couple boutique-style stores that G-Bug liked and she bought a shirt at one store. My brother bought her some perfume at this store as a birthday gift. Also at this store was an artist's portfolio which contained several drawings of men (one endowed with what looked like a fence post) in various stages of "relations." My oldest nephew flipped through a few pages with a look of shock on his face. I told him he should probably just close the book. Unlike most instruction, he followed this one immediately.
We only toured a small section of Commercial Street before the heat and humidity started to take their toil. We had to make one more stop at Cuffy's, the true indicator of a successful Cape Cod trip. On every trip to the Cape, my family had stopped at this store to get a sweatshirt or T-shirt. My closet holds 4 or 5 sweatshirts and my dresser is filled with twice as many T-shirts, but I opted for one more T-shirt this trip. I found a nice gray one for Cape League baseball. One of the best things about Cuffy's shirts is they are ready to wear soft right off the shelf. Most souvenir shop shirts feel scratchy to me and I have to wash them before wearing them. We stopped at Twisted Pizza and Ice Cream before heading home.
We had a couple hours to rest and freshen up before the couples headed out for a night of their own. The Tutus agreed to watch the kids while the parents had a chance to whoop it up. Our evening started at the Wicked Oyster, a fancy restaurant located in Wellfleet. We showed up a little early for our 7:30 reservations, but they were able to accommodate us. We had a round of drinks before dinner and another round during. Knowing we were going to close our Cape vacation with a lobster dinner, I stayed away from most of the seafood. I finally settled on the duck trio. It was very good, but too much food, and I had to leave some on my plate.
We were done with dinner in about an hour and weren't ready to draw our couples night to a close. We had seen some Xeroxed signs posted for a reggae band playing at the Beachcomber bar. The Wifey loves reggae music and she and my sister-in-law wanted to check it out. The bar wasn't on the main highway, so we had to take a winding, night time drive through the Cape wilderness to find it. Even the GPS on our phones seemed to say "we got you this far, you're on your own now." We take a right turn at a stop sign and we quickly realized this wasn't the way to the bar. We turned around and as we were heading back to the intersection, I could see some lights through the bracken below us. There was a dirt road across from the stop sign that we didn't see. We followed this down to the bar.
There was limited parking at the bar, but we were able to find a spot. The bouncer we met when we walked in said the band would be on in about an hour and there was a $25 cover charge to get in. We were having none of that, so we went to the patio bar to have some drinks. I knew if we stayed long enough and racked up a large enough bar tab, we could probably get a pass on the cover charge. We found a place at the bar and I ordered a Dark & Stormy that was more dark than stormy. It didn't take long for me to start feeling the effects of the rum.
In an interesting turn of events, we ran into a woman who works with my brother in Boston who was at the Beachcomber with a date/boyfriend/husband - I didn't catch the nature of the relationship. My brother chatted with them and the Wifey and my sister-in-law talked about family. Me and my introverted nature just took in the scene. At one point, the subject of Aaron Hernandez (the Patriots tight end who was arrested for murder) came up and my brother's co-worker told me I should represent him. I told her I didn't have a law degree and that's when she realized I wasn't my brother. I suppose we do look a lot alike and my grey beard probably wasn't as obvious in the lighting.
The patio was starting to pack up as the band was getting ready to play. We took our drinks and headed into the main bar. As expected, we weren't asked to pay the $25 cover charge. I don't think our bar tab had any bearing on this, but we did consume $130 in drinks before tip. The reggae band wasn't worth the money we didn't pay to hear them. They sang a couple classic Bob Marley tunes and one or two others I didn't recognize, but it didn't sound good. It may have been an equipment issue because at one point the lead singer's mic had gone out. He glared at his equipment man, but I wanted to turn around a thank him. With no music to hear, people started to give up and wonder away. The four of us decided to walk down the steep sandy path to the beach.
The moon was full that night and a steady warm wind came off the water. We kicked off our footwear to wade into the waves. At some point, someone suggested we should take a swim (the Wifey). I had my camera with me and although the moon was bright, I could only make out vague outlines of figures. I took some pictures in the general area and got some blurry pictures off the Wifey, my brother and his wife frolicking in the waves. One person had stripped down to bra and panties. Even that clue doesn't rule anyone out.
I had tucked my phone and camera into my shoe and was about to walk further into the waves when I saw a young man standing next to me. He also came from the bar and decided to walk down to the beach. We chatted a little, and I decided then I wasn't going to leave my stuff unguarded. A few minutes later the others had joined me and we headed back up to the car to go home. I helped the Wifey up the slope to the parking lot and into the car. There were a few hangers-on, but the lot was busy with other people leaving.
When we were back at the cottage, I realized I couldn't find my phone. I had my camera, but my phone was missing. I worried it must have fallen out of my shoe when I picked up my stuff and might still be on the beach. I tried to think how far up the beach I was and where the waves were to figure out if it was in danger of being taken out with the tides. I held out some hope that maybe I left it in the bar or the bathroom or someone might have found it on the beach. Using my work celly, I sent out this pitiful text:
"Anyone who gets this text, please let me know where you found my personal phone. I will meet you."
Yes, I was drunk.
I could only get a few hours sleep as I was worried about my phone. I laid in bed wide awake deciding what I should do and trying to convince myself it was a fool's errand to go back and look for it. I knew I wasn't going to get back to sleep, so I grabbed my brother's car keys and a bottle of water and headed back to the Beachcomber at a quarter to six. To be honest, the quiet, solitary journey in the early morning was one of the better experiences of the trip. The morning was cool and gray and there was almost no traffic on the road. I didn't even turn on the radio, just relishing the silence.
I had no trouble finding the bar again. I have a pretty good innate sense of direction and once I've been to a place, I can usually find it again. The bar was absolutely deserted except for a large fox in the parking lot who was gnawing on something it found in a Dumpster. I looked around the area where we parked before walking down to the beach. I remembered seeing a lifeguard stand to our left the night before and searched that area first. My heart sunk as I saw indications of the tide reaching this far up the beach. For about 45 minutes I searched the area on both sides of the lifeguard stand, thinking the waves could have pushed my phone up and across the beach. I saw signs of bonfires and wondered if someone would have thrown my phone into one.
As I scanned the beach, I saw something bob in the waves. It wasn't my phone as it was too large and was light in color. I thought it could have been a piece of drift wood. It surfaced again and I thought it might have been a dorsal fin, but it seemed rounded. I wondered if it was a shark or dolphin that was swimming close to shore. The shape turned, and I could see the unmistakable outline of a snout and realized it was a seal, and a pretty large one. It ducked under the waves again and was gone.
Although I didn't find my phone, I was at peace as I made the effort to check the one place I could have lost it. When I reached the parking lot, I made one last circuit, just in case, then headed back to the car. I had checked the back of it the night before in the dark, so with the help of the misty daylight, I looked in the back again. I was going to reach under both seats and do a complete check of the car. I didn't need to. There it was, on the floor, face down among a couple toys. The trip could have been viewed as a waste, but I thought it was very worthwhile.
Next: The Final Days
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