Since March, I’ve taken three regional trips—to Martha’s Vineyard; Rockport, Mass.; and Provincetown—and two trips to farther-afield destinations: El Salvador and Valdez, Alaska.
Needless to say, this flitting around has left me concerned about my finances, my disrupted sleep schedule, and my chances of contracting the fungal skin infection evidently poised to ruin my “Hot Gay Summer” (so far, so clear, on that front—though last week a chest pimple just about sent me over the edge).
As for souvenirs of the places I visited this spring and early summer: Not counting photos or ringworm (no, wait, the pimple popped, what a relief), I picked up mementos in three of the five destinations.
My husband, Frank, and I have decided to decorate a blank wall in our bathroom with images of iconic New England seaside structures. So in Rockport I bought an 8″ x 10″ illustration of Motif Number 1, the red fishing shack replica painted by many an aspiring watercolorist. And on Martha’s Vineyard I bought an 8″ x 10″ illustration of the historic Gay Head Lighthouse on the island’s westernmost tip.
I’ll leave you to make your own jokes about the name “Gay Head.”
I neglected to obtain a depiction of any noteworthy seaside structures in Provincetown. I suppose the obvious candidate would be the Pilgrim Monument, but I think I’d prefer a lithograph of the Dick Dock, the late-night hookup spot beneath the Boatslip Resort. Talk about GAY HEAD, am I right? (Sorry, I couldn’t leave you all the jokes.)
I didn’t buy a souvenir in Alaska, either. I was there for a conference so I wasn’t in a shopping mood.
From El Salvador I brought back a maraca with the Puerto Rican flag on it. I was in Central America for a wedding, and at some point during the reception, party-favor maracas materialized.
The groom is Puerto Rican. Hence the tiny Puerto Rican flag affixed to each shaker.
The story, by the way, of Boricuas’ love affair with their flag is a stirring one, involving a potent combo of cultural pride and resistance to colonial bull-caca. One of the most egregious examples of the latter would have to be the Gag Law, a measure passed by the island’s U.S.-appointed legislature in 1948 as part of an effort to crush the pro-independence movement. “Among many other restrictions,” according to Mother Jones, La Ley de la Mordaza “made displaying the flag punishable by up to 10 years in prison.”
I assume that means those bikinis with a P.R. flag on each tit would have earned the wearer a 20-year term—one decade per tit.
I would like to tell you that all my travels have given me an air of worldly sophistication, but I get the impression that I come across instead as vaguely confused at all times.
At the Anchorage airport, for instance, I was thrown off when the TSA agent checking my ID pretended not to know how to pronounce my last name—saying the start of “Thompson” with the “th” sound in “thanks” (what wit!). Then he barked something that sounded like “Bag check!”, which made me wonder whether I was going to have to undergo a more thorough screening from one of his colleagues, so I just kind of drifted around for a few seconds looking for this other official until I gave up and made for the conveyor belt while I blushed and cringed.
But before I got there, I overheard the ID-checking agent’s devastating and spot-on assessment of me, delivered to the next passenger in line.
“I’ve never seen someone with PreCheck look so lost,” he said.
Please find a way to work that line into my obit someday.
Indirect Objects 