Provincetown Lore - niizh manitoag

In the summer of 1620 my antecedent, John Howland, crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower. Mid-voyage a storm washed passenger the indentured servant was overboard. He sank under the waves about twelve feet (4 m), but a crew member threw a rope, which Howland managed to grab, and he was safely hauled back onboard. The pilgrims landed after the prevailing winds prevented their sailing south to Virginia. The settlers left the peninsula, which the Nauset people called Meeshaun or 'going by boat'. Seemed the Puritans were upset by native gays or niizh manitoag” (two spirits) the Algonquin term for transgender or homosexual genders. None of the Nauset was sad to see the back of the grim saganash or white men. We queers like our freedom offered by such dead end communities such as P-Town, Fire Island or Key West.

According to https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/ Tennessee Williams later described the four groups who made up Provincetown’s residents. He belonged to the first two: The flamboyant gay summer visitors and the elite artists and writers who came to write, paint, dance or act. Third, gay wash-ashores who came as visitors and stayed year-round to work or run businesses. Finally, the Yankee, Portuguese and mixed-race native gays.

The playwright Tennessee Williams, then 29, arrived in the summer of 1940. He joined a group “dominated by a platinum blonde Hollywood belle named Doug and a bull-dike named Wanda who [was] a well-known writer under a male pen name.” P-town, he wrote, was “screaming with creatures not all of whom are seagulls.”

It remains a safe haven for sailors and other wanderers to this day.

My first trip there was in 1971 with Bruce and Paul. Friends from the 1270 Club in Boston. Bruce and I drank at the Shipwreck and fucked complete strangers from the Meat Rack. Paul was in love with me and watched from the shadows.

Please read Cape Queer? A Case Study of Provincetown, Massachusetts and Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort by Karen Christel Krahulik,for a better grasp of P-town's his/her/themtory.

ps John Howland fathered eleven children in a long life in the Bay Colony.

Glatt Thanksgiving

The Brownist English Dissenters fled their homeland in the 16th and 17th Century to escape religious persecution by the Church of England, which worsened with the return of the Catholic Stuarts' return to the throne. Leyden in Holland welcomed the refugees, but the Puritans led a precarious economic existence in the Netherlands, whose people were deemed to be libertines by the strict Separatist adherents. The leaders furthered endangered the exiled community with Scottish intrigue and the English ambassador demanded the arrest of the Church elders.

The dilemma was resolved by contracts establishing of a Puritan colony in the New World. It was a good deal for both parties. The Crown was happy to be rid of the malcontents in Holland and the Pilgrims were glad to be free of the immorality of the Old World.

In July of 1620 two ships attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean. My relative John Howland was washed overboard, but grabbed a topsail halyard and was hauled back aboard. Upon landing on the new shores the Pilgrim set up the puritanical Plymouth Colony, which dominated the Massachusetts Bay for decades to come.

They were never known for their good times and the other day I was walking through Brooklyn's Hassidistan with a New England friend, who commented, "You know the Hassidic men dress like your Pilgrim ancestors. Weird black hats, beards, and short trousers."

"I hadn't thought of that, but you're right."

The Hassidim's attire dated back to noble fashion of 16th Century Poland.

"Maybe the Pilgrims were a lost tribe of Israel."

"I don't think so. The Puritans' prejudice against the Jews had been criticized by John Adams, the second president of the United States."

"Maybe, but the Pilgrims and Hassidim do look alike."

"In dress only."

"The Pilgrims were fundamentalist too."

"Okay, we're Jews. The secret is out. Plymouth was the first Jewish Colony in the New World."

"No reason to get all hot about it."

"You're right. That was a long time ago."

I didn't mention that one of our people had been hang by the English for his religious beliefs, mostly because I have none and it's Thanksgiving, when all the Pilgrims thanked the Native Tribes for saving them that next winter of 1621.

And Turkey is always Glatt Kosher, but rabbits never, because they don't have split hooves.