If you’re familiar with New England, you likely already know this: Driving to Cape Cop sucks. And driving to Provincetown, all the way at the tip of The Cape, sucks even more.
But that’s exactly what my wife and I did last weekend, leaving on Friday at noon for my uncle Billy’s wedding, where on Saturday he would tie the knot with his boyfriend, Noah, on the beach at dusk.
And while this might make me seem unhip, it was the first gay wedding that I’ve ever attended, and I am almost 50 years old.
Or maybe it’s not that I’m unhip, rather maybe it is due to my age.
Without launching into a screed on the oppression of the gay community in this country, these are just the facts: Gay marriages have only been legalized on a federal level since 2015, and while Massachusetts was the first state to legalize it in 2003, you can do the math. Relatively speaking, gay marriages have not been a recognized union for very long in the United States; for almost half of my life, they weren’t acknowledged at all.
After battling traffic on Route 6, my wife and I arrived in Provincetown with enough time to meet up with my cousins and their spouses for some cocktails before the rehearsal dinner, which was being held at the opulent residence of friends of the grooms, a house on a hill that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean.
Somehow, my wife and I managed to get lost looking for my cousins’s hotel on Commercial Street—although our own hotel was also on Commercial Street—but we found them in time to grab a round of drinks before the six of us hoofed it to the rehearsal dinner.
When we arrived at the house on the hill, there was a row of small bottles on a table by the door and a sign encouraging everyone to help themselves. The concoctions, apparently, prevented hangovers. While naturally dubious, I slugged one down anyway and pocketed a second one for the next day. Then I decided to imbibe heavily—I wasn’t driving anywhere—and let the cards fall where they may.
Sure enough, the next morning I woke without a trace of hangover. “This could be dangerous,” I said to my wife, who was also bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
We had the afternoon before we had to get dressed for the ceremony to walk around and check out the town. In my wife’s case, this meant shopping.
I, however, opted to hit The Old Colony Tap, a historic dive bar, dimly-lit with slanted wooden floors and the sour scent of stale draft beer. It had a low ceiling and a leather shop upstairs from it, pounding sounds coming from the ceiling in erratic spurts. It was a place where Norman Mailer used to drink whiskey.
My reason for going there, however, was to saddle up in a bar stool and knock back a few Pabst Blue Ribbons off the tap and remember my friend Bill, who passed away from cancer in 2022. We called Bill “The Captain,” and it was the first time that I’d been to Provincetown since he died.
My uncle Billy owns a house in Provincetown, and he generously lends it to the family during the months when he’s away on business. Each year, The Captain and I would take our own families for a couple of days—The Captain was married to another one of my cousins—and The Old Colony was where Bill and I went to hide from them.
So I held a quiet vigil in the near-empty bar in the afternoon, draining a few brews—after taking another bottle of the magic elixir—and waiting for my wife to finish shopping.
Then it was time for the main event. I had always wondered how gay weddings might differ from straight ones. And you know what? They don’t.
Two men stood in front of their family and friends on the beach in Provincetown with another friend officiating, and they took their vows—my wife was using my necktie as a tissue to wipe her eyes—as they promised to love and to honor and to respect each other until death do them part.
These two people had found that special person who makes them feel loved and seen every single day of their lives, and I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone with a heart and a mind would object to this union. How could someone become so wrapped in their own rigid thinking and dogma that they would deny another person that type of love?
And for the seven-millionth time since I learned about it, I shivered then dry-heaved at the thought of Project 2025 becoming a reality.
You might imagine how the reception played out with people feeling impervious to the next morning’s attendant effects of the overconsumption of alcohol. Let’s leave it at this: It was a good time.
But if there’s one thing that sucks more than driving Cape Cod, it is driving home from Cape Cod.
Congratulations, Billy and Noah. May you live long, happy lives together.
You can reach Nathan Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com
