By the Sea, By the Sea...

So we ran away, for just a little while...

Meanwhile, in the Garden...

It's now official:  I've been home long enough to want nothing more on earth than to be back in Provincetown, land of twee garden corners just ripe for the snapping.  I'm not sure what I found more dispiriting today: the sandstorm, the Ramadan driving, or the sheer backload of drudgery that builds up in one's absence.  In my mind, I'm still there, off Commercial Street, taking portraits of lawn geese...



Souvenirs, Etc.

So, where were we?  Oh, right, travel.  Well, we're still on the road, Mr. Muscato and me, albeit it now not entirely of our own design. 

Before we dive in, behold our haul for the trip.  Joining the aforementioned Solar Queen and accompanying corgi (who it appears are on offer not only in chic PTown gifteries, but also, if our dear Jason is to be believed, in at least one Gulf Coast emporium) are a fetching Cunard bear (we couldn't resist the sweater, and bears are Mr. M.'s weakness.  In more ways than one.).  Joining them is as our latest 11-1/2 inch temptress, who looks like a striking combo of Lynda Carter, Rita Hayworth, and a chopstick (she's from Mattel's new especially body-dysmorphic "Fashionista" line).  We call her Desirée.  We always get travel toys, but this strikes me as an especially fine haul.  Yes, they're posed against a tee-shirt.  It was the best I could think of at the time, and I firmly deny that any Boatslip planter's punch was involved. Firmly.

So Provincetown continued to be a great joy.  We saw shows (Randy Roberts says hi, Bill and Ed!) and can confirm that Miss Coco Peru is, hard as this may be to believe, even better, by a longshot, in person than she is in Trick.  Her show, There Comes a Time, is more a Lily Tomlin-style monologue than a scattershot drag or standup act, and its funny, affecting, and, wherever needed, sharp as glass.  Miss Coco even sports a daring new look, which replaces her signature flip with a worldly little bob that's half punk, half executive secretary.  It works, and so does she.

We met up with friends, we went out, we stayed in, enjoying long afternoons on the deck and lovely lazy mornings.  And sadly, all too soon, it was time to go.  We bundled the bags and the Queen and the corgi and Desirée into the rented motor and headed for Boston and a couple of restful days chez ma soeur, who lives in lesbo-Brahmin splendor therein.

And I got sick.

And I ignored it.

Which, it seems, was a mistake.

We were scheduled to spend the final week of this year's voyage in glamorous Wasington, DC, at the home office of Golden Handcuffs Consulting Amalgamated, which pays the bills, meeting people and generally trying to act official and convince the Powers What Am that we do strategically imperative and dynamically innovative and generally buzzword-worthy things out there in the Sandlands.

Which I did, for a couple of days, after a mildly fraught trip south in which I did my best not to admit that I was Increasingly Unwell.  Mr. Muscato is smarter than me, so he knew it, so it all got rather difficult ("I'm fine, dammit.  Really I am..." [gasp, collapse] "....just fine!").

In brief:  trip to the hospital (my first-ever on my own behalf to an American ER.  Fascinating.), multiple late-night tests, stern warning not to travel for the moment. 

And now the fun begins, because apparently the follow-ups I need aren't immediately available ("It's July," office after office explains, as if people were either foolish or actively selfish to consider taking up invalidism after Memorial Day).  Fortunately, the good people at Golden Handcuffs have wasta (as we say out East - meaning influence), and so rather than sitting very still and hoping for the best until, say, the last week of August, a good doctor has agreed to look in greater detail at my heart early next week.  We shall see.

Mr. Muscato can't help but contrast this with the system back in Egypt, where, if you have the wherewithal, you can see any doctor in the country within something like 18 hours, unless you want to pony up a little, in which case they'll come to your house right now.  Previously, he thought I was making it up when I described how American health care works.  Now he knows better.

To add insult to injury, today we have to move hotels, going from impractical office-sponsored semi-luxe to one of those free-breakfast/kitchenetted business-traveler suite places.  Me, who came over on the Queen!  Well, it's sensible, and it actually will be nice to have a fridge.  We may be here for a few days - or we may be here a lot longer.

As I lay on the gurney two nights ago, overhearing an older lady being talked into a semi-voluntary commitment ("No, Mrs. Cooney, it's for your own good.  And besides, the gamma rays can't get you in here.  You remember that Dr. Sinclair told you that, don't you?  You'll be safer here, really..."), I thought about a lot of things.  How lucky I was to have Mr. Muscato waiting outside, how much I miss the dogs, and how very much I dislike needles (one of which was currently firmly in place in one arm), mostly, but also how quickly things change.

One minute you're dancing on an ocean liner racing across the dark Atlantic; the next you're eating lobster, staring out at Cape Cod Bay; but the next you're sitting in a backless gown (and not the fun kind) having people address you in the first person plural ("let's just lie down for moment, okay?") and leave you in a hallway.  There's a lesson there, although probably a trite one, but right now I'm too mad to learn it.

So wish us well, in this new and unexpected phase of our adventure.  We're off this morning to check into the Olde Gardene Courte Suitotel, after which we sit around until the next time Big Health Care deigns to look our way.  In the meantime, Mr. Muscato keeps trying to stop me from standing up, I'm plotting how to get to at least one museum, and back out there in the Sandlands, Mrs. Galapatty-da Silva is girding herself for a little while longer on her own with the hounds from hell.

AA Milne said it best:  Bother.

Compare and Contrast

Tea Dance, Queen's Room, Queen Mary 2, June 2012

Tea Dance, The Boatslip, Provincetown, July 2012

Who says travel doesn't broaden the mind?  Here we have two very different incarnations of a venerable institution.  One features the Queen's Room Orchestra playing delicately pizzicato arrangements of "Blame it on the Bossa Nova" and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"; the other has DJ MaryAlice (a venerable institution herself, really) pumping out "Turn the Beat Around" and "I'm Every Woman" (I'm waiting for the house arrangement of "Call Me Maybe" - it feels inevitable). 

The clientele may be rather different (and the scones are better on the boat - actually, scones could really raise the tone at the Boatslip), but the intent, really, is more or less the same - to enjoy a fine afternoon with a touch of people watching, a turn or two on the dance floor, and perhaps a sympathique moment or two with an unexpected partner.  On the Queen Mary, of course, that partner is liable to be one of the paid Dance Hosts (and for the very patient older gentleman, that's a gig to explore), while on the deck in Ptown, it's probably a window dresser from Brooklyn, but the similarities are undeniable...

A Happy Fourth

We had a great view for the fireworks last night.  Our deal with the Stately L's was that we could have their ground-floor for the holiday as long as we understood that they would co-opt the deck for their annual cookout for the neighborhod.  Well, you know how much we hate festive gatherings of amusing people cooking good meat, but we coped.  We ate, we drank, we dished about local celebrities past and present, and we laughed a lot.

Provincetown necessities we have so far, in just two days, ticked off our lists: lobster rolls; cupcakes from that most heavenly of bakeries, Relish; tchotchke buying (despite our days in London, our only Jubilee souvenir: a Solar Queen - accompanied by her Solar Corgi.  You know you want them); tea dance; irritation at the tourists.  This would appear to be either Circuit Week or High-Maintenance Queen Week here in Provinceown, and at tea yesterday, Mr. Muscato kept looking around and asking, in his handsome accent, "Who are these skeeny beetches?"  We had amusing visions of scooping a group of 20 or 30 of them up wholesale and depositing them, as is, back at a mall in the Sandlands; it would be fascinating to witness the local reaction to screaming tattooed muscle boys in painted-on short-shorts, high-end sandals, and not much else.  Bear Week starts tomorrow, and I think we will feel much more at home.

Up for today: actual lobster, attendance at at least one drag show.  The riches in town on the cabaret front are dizzying this year.  Tonight's biggest event is Patti Lupone, one night only (so hopelessly sold out that people giggle helplessly at me when I express hope for a last-minute miracle), but the competition is so fierce I almost don't mind:  we can still choose from Miss Coco Peru, Varla Jean Merman, Dina Martina, the divine Randy Roberts, and real girl Kate Clinton.

And, of course, more cupcakes.

Helluva Town

So we had a lovely couple of days in the old stomping grounds, seeing the sights (including the clash of Beaux Arts and Moderne seen here) and meeting up with old pals inexplicably grown grayer and more, well, mature's perhaps not quite the word, but goodness aren't we all grown up?

My dear cousin, the Serious Architect, took us to a lovely, a quite entirely NewYorky sort of dinner, at the kind of restaurant against the windows of which we once we pressed our noses.  It's nice to know that rich people's food still consists, as wise old Truman Capote once noted, of "little fresh born things, scarcely out of the earth. Little baby corns, little baby peas, little lambs that have been ripped out of their mothers’ wombs..." not to mention meats primarily from parts of the body not normally stocked in supermarkets.  Still, we did enjoy ourselves immoderately.  Cousin SA is just about the only non-sibling who's known me from day one (we are six weeks apart); together, now, we are a walking illustration of the fact that after a certain age, you choose your face or your figure.

In a fit of nostalgia de la boue the following night we hied down to the West Village, where everyone seemed about 17, but where the cheap Chinese is still divine.  Am I the only one who remembers the way Westside low-end Chinese places used to offer free white wine from vast gallon jugs?  Sadly, that seems to have gone the way of Five Oaks and all the other other vanished destinations.  Still, we had cold sesame noodles (unobtainable in the Sandlands) and enjoyed the contrast with the previous evening's foams and artisanal parsleys...

Now we've wended out way up the East Coast a ways and are enjoying this holiday in dear old Sodom on the Sea, staring out at the bay in Provincetown.  We're occupying the ground-floor flat (always a good idea for a pair of portly types in an old wooden house) chez our friends the Stately Lesbians.  I write looking out at the water, as Mr. Muscato prepares one of his trademark elaborate salads, the Stately L's three dogs of various ages nap here and there, and the divine Dalida sings her heart out in the background.  Not the most traditional of Fourths of July, I suppose, but deeply, deeply pleasant.

A Happy Fourth, then, to those celebrating; a lovely Wednesday, to the rest of you.  I'm not normally the most outwardly patriotic of persons, but this morning, listening to NPR's annual recitation of the Declaration of Independence, I felt very grateful for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...

Jifts of the Season

One of the great joys of a summer in Xanadu-on-Sea is the opportunity to catch up on what's been going on in the Great Wide World of Drag. On any given night, there are upwards of a dozen choices, ranging from almost embalmed traditional evenings of more-or-less straightforward impersonation* to performances that take makeup and heels as a springboard for something much, much more ambitious/transcendant/surreal.

Of these, I don't think there can be anything better than the creature pictured above, the incredible Dina Martina. It's actually rather hard to describe an evening in her presence, except that it is raucous, mindbending, and, most surprisingly, startingly cosy. She reminds me of one of my favorite Susan Sontag lines: "Camp is a tender feeling."

Who else could make an audience vie fiercely for the privilege of winning what are billed as "the world's largest underpants" (emblazoned, live on stage, with the star's own makeup faceprint)? Who could create a mash-up on "Fever" and "No Scrubs"? Most of all, who else could take an act made up of just about equal parts malapropisms, mispronunciations (g frequently becoming j -Ms. M. is very pleased with her "jifts"), hoary jokes, show-biz lore, and a healthy dose of the very difficult art of singing just badly enough (it really is tough, kids - just ask Jo Stafford)? I can think of no one but Dina.

Each of the acts we've seen these past few weeks have been pretty fab - the tight, Vegas-style evening of cabaret with Cher-extraordinaire Randy Roberts (whose own character, a diva poised somewhere between Ann Margret and Rita Hayworth, is even better than his star takes), the trip into Varla Jean Merman's glamorously demented song-stylings, nights with Miss Richfield and Miss Burlington and more, and of course the truly awe-inspiring trainwrecks that are each week's edition of the town's legendary "talent" contest/revue Show Girls. Still, it's Dina I'll take away as someone I'd not only like to see again, but maybe have a cocktail with, in character or out. I know nothing about the man behind the legend, but it must take a fascinating brain to go so far out and still feel so very much at home.

* Although no one, alas, seems to be doing Bette Davis this year. I have a hunch that you can guess who this year's sensation is, done in tributes ranging from respectful to disembowelling. If you were to guess that her initials are L.G., you wouldn't be far off (and no, it's not Linda Gray).

(Re)Born on the Fourth of July

Well. So where were we? What? What do you mean, "where have you been?" Oh, very well, if you insist on explanations, here's the deal, or at least as much of it as I can cope with at the moment.

First things first: we're all well - Mr. Muscato, Koko, and me. It's been something of a wild ride over the last few months, a whirlwind of surprises, difficult decisions, unexpected opportunities, enormous annoyances, horrid misbehavior from startling corners, the occasional complete nervous collapse, a shade too many doctors and lawyers, endings, and, now, beginnings. It all required a good long rest, which I have to say we've been enjoying tremendously.

Now that I'm catching up, at last, I can't tell you how much all the interest, concern, and nagging from friends and Gentle Readers over recent months has meant; I only wish I'd had the energy not simply to disappear for a while, and I hope, very much, that forgiveness will reign for the long and enigmatic silence.

So, here's what's up, more or less, in no particular order.

Alas, the Villa Muscato is no more. One of the first signs, in fact, that the universe - ours, at least - was falling out of alignment was the unwelcome news that our longsuffering landlord had at last awakened to the fact that he was being woefully underpaid and was exercising his option to retake his little slice of heaven, ostensibly for a family member.

In discussing domestic options, it became clear that my betters at VeryDull International Consulting (a wholly owned subsidiary of Gilded Cage Career Choices, LLC) were not encouraging about the prospect of a new long lease. "I wouldn't," said my Fearless Leader in the Home Office, "count on more than six months, really..."

At that point, much becomes mercifully unclear even in such recent memory.

Lights up, then, on a sunny morning some six weeks later, in which after much backing-and-forthing, suggestions, proposals, and just the slightest hint of threats in several directions, our way forward became clear(er). In short order, we were dealing, badly, with the appalling prospect of packing, closing accounts, zeroing out obligations business, fiduciary, and social, and generally steeling ourselves to entirely unendurable levels of activity, change, and general stress and strain.

The first wrench was saying adieu to Ermilia, our stalwart domestiche, who is now brightening the lives of a charming expat family who have taken on the formidable bureaucracy currently required to secure the presence in one's life of what Grandmother Muscato referred to as Good Help. Even the temporary attentions of her silent and eccentric chum, the ever-reliable Flordeliza, were only a pale substitute for our lamented factotum.

But then, at last and with a curious mix of relief and melancholy, Mr. Muscato and I bade farewell to the peculiar little Sultanate in which we'd made our lives for the past six years. I suppose I will have more thoughts as time passes on the place we've called home, but for the moment, suffice it to say that we don't miss the driving, and it's wonderful not to feel guilty wearing shorts.

And ever since we've been recuperating, most recently for an extended stay in one of America's loveliest, most relaxing, and most invigorating (a seeming contradiction, I know; but it's not) seaside villages, one that will I suspect be familiar to at least a few of you from the snap above. We've slept, we've luxuriated in the sun and sea, we've gorged on lobster in all forms, we've regaled friends and family with tales of our injustices and triumphs, we've shopped furiously for perfectly useless bibelots, we've made our way through a fair amount of Champagne, and now...

We're preparing, with a certain amount of mixed trepidation and excitement (and a great deal of procrastination and inertia), for the next Great Changes.

Soon, therefore, we will once again be expatriates. We've found ourselves, long distance, yet another commodious-looking villa not too far from the sea. We will shortly be reunited with our beloved Koko, who has spent his long summer leave in the devoted care of friends and who has been sorely missed. We will be facing all sorts of new hurdles and opportunities, from securing basic services in a place almost as noted for bureaucracy as the dear Sultanate to securing a (pale, but with luck adequate) Ermilia-replacement to finding a decently amusing place to spend a Thursday evening.

It all raises the question, I have to say, of what to do with the Café. The name, of course, will no longer be entirely accurate, nor, for that matter, will my own nom de blog. We shall have to see, as things go along, and I hope you will be as patient with me as I figure these things out as you all have been while I went, for a while, underground.

In the meantime, a lovely Independence Day to all of you who care for such things; we'll be celebrating in our own quiet way, before shortly setting off for our own New World. I hope you're all as well, or at least as content, as, in the end, it's turned we have managed to be.

Gardens and Goodbyes

I've been feeling rather bucolic this week, sweeties, what with spending the long cloudy mornings sitting on a porch and looking at a lovely cottage garden the likes of which we simply don't have on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

Mr. Muscato and I have moved on from Provincetown, with another bout of travel imminent, but we take away some nice memories and some uncharacteristically sweet-natured garden shots:

I don't know - I've just gone all kind of Wallace Nutting over these flowers.

Hydrangeas are certainly the Flower of the Moment, turning up in all sorts of sizes and colors. When I was child, I seem to remember they were considered rather dowdy, the sort of thing that the unfashionable people at the wrong end of the block still had tarting up their yards.

They do add color.

During our Farewell Luncheon at the Lobster Pot (Mr. M. became as addicted to their lobster roll as he did to tea-dance), Mr. Muscato and I spotted this lady, who seemed a perfect combination of Hyacinth Bucket, Marie Barone, and the late Queen Mother.

She was perfectly turned out, her bright yellow cardigan over her shoulders, her hair a perfect fluffy cloud of a twice-weekly wash-and-set, and her makeup a splendid example of how a Lady of a Certain Age used to paint. She even, with that wonderful poise once so common at Your Better Restaurants, brought out a compact and thoughtfully corrected her bright-red lippie in between each course.

We only wished her companions made her happier and briefly considered kidnapping her. Sadly, we have other plans, more of which anon.

Evocative Images

So we come strolling up the street to the house today - a rather gray, rainy sort of July day in Provincetown - and see Gracie the Upstairs Corgi hanging out in one of her upstairs windows.



I know a photo-op when I see one, and grab a shot. Later, I sit staring at the picture, and think to myself: "Why does this remind me of something? What is it?"

And then I realize. Gracie, unknowingly - I presume - has taken on one of the iconic images of the 1970s: The Duchess of Windsor, in the first stages of the dementia that would eventually claim her entirely, watching the funeral procession of her husband from a window in St. James Palace.


And then I thought: perhaps it's time to leave Provincetown. I am turning way too much of Teh Gay.

Garden View

So yesterday turned out to be more of a gelato than a buttercream day, but, Mr. Muscato and I being hardy souls, we coped.

Today it's grey and even showery, but since we live in a desert that gets maybe three rains a year (about twenty minutes apiece), it's actually rather a novelty.

We've spent the day startling the passing tourist trolley by sitting out on the porch despite the weather, reading our books and gazing at the lovely plantings of our extremely festive landlady.

Here's the view:

Fortunately, it's clearing, so that Mr. Muscato will not be cheated of his daily dose of tea-dance, to which he has taken like ... well, like a gay man of a certain age to cocktails al fresco and a dose of techno.

Weekend update

Sunday with the Glamour Lesbians: brunch on a porch with little dogs; endless conversation about how next year, really, they will look around for a better place (you wait too late to make your reservation, girls, you end up in an attic at the Ptown Inn; that's the way the world works).

After a while, Mr. Muscato and I escaped; we were Men with a Mission. We had to achieve a dream that has haunted us since last summer:

Cupcakes at Relish. Until you've had them, you simply do not know the heights to which a humble buttercream can climb, the nirvana that can be achieved with a deceptively simple white cake.

We would have had six, but we had dinner reservations with the Girls. We ate, and ate, and ate. And it was good.

Then, having run the gauntlet of the busking cabaret performers, all shilling for their acts out on Commercial Street, we ran into a familiar face: the remarkable Lea DeLaria, taking a break from her stint as "Madame Delphina" on One Life to Live (is just me or is life in general getting quite surreal?).

So we went to her show.

And it rocked. She is, of course, not only the most foul-mouthed woman to hit the stage since Wendy O. Williams, but also an increasingly interesting jazz singer.

The combo is amazing, if occasionally a little neck-snapping. It's certainly the only show I've seen recently that combined a hilariously graphic routine about fisting and an impassioned rendition of "You Don't Know What Love is." The show features a surprise entrance, a lot of truly funny material, and an incredibly tight trio backing her up.

So it was quite an evening, after quite a day.

As Monday dawns, the GLs have departed, the morning has proven gray and rainy, and Mr. M. and I trying to decide how we can we spend the day most lazily. I suspect that additional buttercream may well be involved.

Life is good.

On the Road Again, Happily

Yes, Mr. Muscato and I have finally fled Our Nation's Dreary Capital, for points north and far more festive.

We're not fifteen hours in Provincetown yet, and we've already had silly cocktails, seen the extraordinary Kate Clinton's act at the Crown & Anchor (courtesy of the crowd of Glamour Lesbians we have for various reasons fallen among), eaten enormous lobsters at the local institution above, caught the tail end of Bear Week, and even gotten a good night's sleep in our charming (read: tiny) lodgings.

All of our neighbors appear to have adorable, voluble dogs, which only remind us of our beloved, absent Koko, but, that aside, life is very, very good.

(image courtesy of the very talented e-pics)

No Cure Like Travel

Summer, in this part of the world, is fierce, and I don't mean in a RuPaul/Shakira sort of way. It is, therefore, accompanied by an annual exodus, of foreigners and nationals alike, to cooler climes.

Come July, you could throw a bowling ball down the center of the biggest mall here and only hit the cleaners (they don't get a summer break, but that's another story).

Even though Mr. Muscato and I hate to be such clichés, we, too are heading out, and about time, too. It's been a mad year, and this will be our first real break since last summer (glam mini-breaks excepted). So it's off to Cairo for us; then several weeks in the States (restaurant and going-out tips for Provincetown gladly accepted); then back via a final fling in Europe.

I am very much hoping the Gods of Technology are with us. Egypt, for example, in what should be a lesson to the region, offers relatively good dialup to anyone with a phone - and no censorship. Still, things may get a little quiet at the Café. I wouldn't worry, though; I'm sure it will be madness as usual over on Fabulon.