Equality Is Changing Provincetown’s LGBTQ Scene

It was our special refuge, a private stretch of gorgeousness that straight people ignored: Provincetown’s lesbian beach, and then another few hundred yards to the south, its gay men’s beach. You found it only if someone told you about it, or more likely, brought you there. And once you did, you kept going—or at least I did—year after year after a friend first brought me in the 1980s, buying Herring Cove T-shirts as a little wink-wink that signaled when we said we were going to the “Cape” for vacation we really meant P-town. That was back when we had to be subtle, back when we didn’t want to incur the wince of “hets” (as we sometimes called straight people) who hadn’t yet guessed that our short hair and long stride meant we were… that way.