Cape Crack

I'm on Cape Cod but don't go robbing my house as there ain't a thing in there but dirty dishes and a plus size wardrobe in three sizes. I took a bus down here on Friday night with various grads and dads and single middle aged women in new age jewellery going to a Martha's Vineyard "How to Reclaim Your Womb" retreat. Who wants it back, I asks ya?

The Cape is another country in that the vegetation grows differently in the sandy soil and the air is clearer somehow as the land juts out between the Nantucket Sound and the Ocean, and the culture is at times tourista central, often kitsch, and in many instances quaint and slow paced. I met a couple from Croatia at the tiny Falmouth bus station who are staying here for the summer and working at a local B&B to improve their English, and, I'm sure, slightly martyr themselves in the wake of snobby tourists and juicy honeymooners who's sheet leavings they will have to deal with, but hey, when I spoke to them, their faces aglow, I was freezing my nuts off in my light summer dress which was perfect for the slow build of Boston humidity seeping in through the midwest, but quite inadequate on the Cape where the weather is perenially 20 degrees cooler. I asked the Croatian boy to turn round while I pulled on my pajama bottoms so he wouldn't be blinded by unsightly thigh flab. They skipped off happily, hand in hand, as I wished fervantly for some socks.

On the bus there were a couple of guys who'd graduated from Harvard the day before. When they first got on, I thought I'd be treated to some Beavis and Butthead like conversation about boobs and booze, but they had a thoughtful and lively conversation about working in the public sector, how much they appreciated their parents, and how they wished they could express more emotion like their girlfriends were able to. They also discussed Carmen Electra's relative hotness, but by that time, as I shamelessly eavesdropped, I was ready to forgive them anything.

I'm staying at a friend's parents condo. We stayed here last year, too, and the nosy neighbor informed my friend's parents that "a black girl" had been in their house. I am currently devising some overtly stereotypically colored ways to behave--maybe I'll case her house--so that her belief system will remain intact. Later I plan to put on my bathing suit, break out the boombox and play and dance to some early Parliament Funkadelic, specifically the tracks that are designed to scare the Ignays.

Oooga Boooga, fashizzle my nizzles.

And so, you can see, I'm in an optimistic and un-cynical frame of mind. It seems to take several days to unwind from the tight muscles and brain busy-ness of the city, the frantic pace of the people stomping up escalators and running for trains, the banality of concrete and body odor, that slightly uncomfortable feeling of melding into a mass and becoming formless like a wheel of brie on a hot beach.

ooooooo. beach....