Chapter Six #2
Dave leaps past me and opens a sliding screen door that leads to the back deck. Dina sweeps past him, jerking her head at
me to follow.
There are more people out on the deck. Sharon is cracking open a beer, sunglasses pushed up on her forehead, talking to an
Asian woman with graying hair pulled into a ponytail and at least ten silver earrings in each ear. Another woman with spiky
white hair is digging around in a cooler, and a man who’s just as buff and broad as Dave, but with buzzed blond hair and a
mustache instead of a beard, is pushing back the lid of a big grill.
“Come meet everybody.” Dina sets the grocery bag down on an outdoor patio table and waves a hand at me.
“You already know Sharon. This is Yan”—she gestures to the Asian woman—“and Yan’s wife, Meryl.
” The woman with spiky white hair looks up from the cooler and waves.
“And this is Bill, husband of Dave.” Dina points to the man with the blond mustache, who turns around from the grill.
“Oh, is this your mysterious renter?” he says. His voice is much softer than Dave’s, and very deep. “Hello, lovely to meet
you.”
“Yes, yes, this is Harlowe,” Dina says. “He’s renting the little house for the summer.”
“And what do you think of it?” This from Meryl, with the spiky white hair. She straightens up, holding a can of seltzer. She
looks to be the oldest of the group, maybe pushing seventy, a collection of liver spots on her pale, bony hands. “You know,
Dina’s barely even let us see inside.”
“Why do you need to see inside?” Dina frowns at her. “It’s not your house.”
“We asked you if we could rent it,” Yan says mildly. “You said no.”
Dina purses her lips, looking vaguely annoyed. “You always stay with Dave and Bill! You don’t need my place.”
“Well, Dave and Bill’s house is lovely.” Meryl pats Bill’s arm, as if to reassure him. “But the stairs are a bitch.”
“We can get a chair lift,” Bill tells her, with the patience of a man who has had this conversation a number of times before.
“Like I’ve said, darling, we’ve had it measured. There’s room.”
Meryl shakes her head defiantly. “I am not using a chair lift. Chair lifts are for old people.”
“You’re seventy-one,” Bill says.
“Which is the new sixty-one.” Meryl turns to her wife, holding out the can. “Yan, dear, can you get this seltzer open?”
Bill sighs, shaking his head, and turns to me. “So, is this your first time on the Cape?”
I swallow a sip of seltzer quickly, bubbles fizzing up my nose. “It is, yeah. I got here a week ago.”
“What brings you out here for the summer?” booms Dave, coming up beside Bill and throwing an arm casually around his shoulders.
“Vacation?”
“No, I’m working. Or . . . I have a remote job. I just needed a change of scenery.”
I feel Dina watching me from the corners of her eyes. It’s exactly what I told her when I first contacted her about renting
the cottage. I need a change of scenery. I did not tell her I was going through a breakup.
“Well, it’s an excellent change of scenery,” Dave says with a wide smile. “That’s why we come out for the summer.”
“Oh.” I glance between Dave and Bill in surprise. “You don’t live out here?”
“No, no. Dina and Sharon are the only full-time residents in our group. We have a little house in Provincetown, but we live
in western Massachusetts the rest of the year.”
“I teach high school,” Bill says. “So we come out for summer vacation.”
“And we’re out whenever Yan takes time off,” Meryl says, as Yan hands over the opened can of seltzer. “Staying in their guest
room.”
Distantly, the doorbell lets out a muted bing-bong. “That’ll be John and Cathy,” Dina says, turning around in a billow of bananas.
“John and Cathy are Dina’s lovely straight neighbors,” Bill says for my benefit, with an amused smile.
“Oh.” I nod, glancing around, suddenly wondering what Dina’s told everyone about me. I said I was trans in my first message
to her, since she mentioned she was a trans woman in the rental listing, and it was a big reason I decided to go for the cottage.
I’m a trans man looking for a change of scenery and a break from the city. A few quick words to say I see who you are; it’s who I am too.
It’s not something I think about all that often anymore. I go through most of my life with a certain amount of invisibility—at
most, if I was with Jackson, people would look at me and see a rather small, slim gay man. Square shoulders and slightly knobbly
knees and elbows. Freckles on my arms and auburn hair that curls at the ends but hasn’t started thinning like my dad’s, at
least not yet.
I hadn’t thought about who Dina’s friends might be when she invited me to her cookout. I was too busy eating olives and trying
to ignore the uninvited roommates. But it’s hitting me, with a faint twinge, that I’m not sure I’ve ever been around this
many queer people and been the youngest by so many decades.
“Speaking of John and Cathy . . .” Meryl leans close to Dave and Bill, her voice slightly conspiratorial. “Did you see that
for sale sign on Old Pilgrim? Must be pretty close to them. We should ask them how much it’s going for.”
Bill groans. “Oh, I don’t want to know.”
Yan shakes her head, earrings clinking. “Can you imagine how much Dina would get for this place if she sold it?”
“She’d never sell,” Meryl says, waving a hand. “She and George lucked out. She knows it.”
“I think you mean George lucked out,” Bill says pointedly.
“Oh, all right,” Meryl concedes. “But Dina lucked out keeping the place.”
“Is it true about Queer Punx, though?” Dave turns to Sharon, the deep lines in his forehead wrinkled in concern. “Dina said
something about the rent going up, but I thought George locked down a twenty-year lease.”
That catches my attention. I have no idea who George is, but I’ve at least been inside Queer Punx.
“He did,” Sharon says. “And it’s been more than twenty years.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t seen the exact numbers. Dina won’t show them to me. But business isn’t what it used to be, and hasn’t been for a while, so we must be in trouble. Honestly, sometimes I think we should just close.”
Around me, everyone’s eyebrows go up.
“Close Queer Punx?” Yan sounds shocked. “That place is an institution.”
“And George’s idea to begin with,” Bill adds quietly.
Sharon only shakes her head again. “George was a long time ago.”
“Let’s not talk about that,” Meryl says firmly. “Anybody been to a drag show at Queen of the Bay yet?”
And with that, they’re off talking about a bunch of places I’ve never heard of, discussing the good gay bars and the ones
“that are all bachelorette parties,” whatever that means, so I excuse myself and head for the house to find the bathroom.
Dina is just opening the sliding screen door when I reach it, with two more people behind her—John and Cathy, the neighbors.
They look very straight and very mild. All three of them are carrying covered casserole dishes.
“Harlowe,” Dina says as she passes me, “would you mind putting on a record? Meant to do that earlier and now I’ve got my hands
full.”
“Sure.” I glance into the living room. “Any requests?”
“Surprise me!” she says, drifting away after John and Cathy, who are setting down their casserole dishes on the patio table
and greeting everyone else with air kisses and hugs.
I step back into the living room, closing the sliding door behind me. The turntable sits on the sideboard, surrounded by a
cluster of small photographs, all informal shots of people laughing, talking, smiling. Judging by the hair and the clothes
and the faintly fuzzy quality, I’m guessing these pictures are from the eighties or maybe the nineties. Lots of dad jeans.
Oversize button-downs. Frizzy perms.
I crouch down, opening the lid on the turntable, and my eyes catch on a picture of Dina.
She’s much younger, her wild hair a deep, rich brown instead of gray, dressed in a T-shirt and high-waisted jeans instead of a caftan.
She has an arm around the waist of a pale, lanky man who’s even taller than she is.
He’s wearing a pair of tan shorts that reveal long, thin legs, the sleeves of a denim jacket rolled to his elbows.
His face is lean and his dark hair comes to a widow’s peak on his forehead, a pair of oversize glasses perched on his nose.
He’s leaning back against an old truck, one arm around Dina’s shoulders, the other elbow resting against the side mirror.
“Motown’s always a good bet, if you need ideas.”
I glance up. Nathan is standing in the middle of the living room, holding a grocery bag—the real Nathan, the older one I saw
in the coffee shop.
“Oh. Thanks.” I straighten up. “Dina asked me to put something on; I just got distracted.” I wave a finger at the collection
of photographs.
The corner of Nathan’s mouth turns up—a quarter of a smile. “Did you find the one of Dave’s old beard?”
I blink. “No. Was it different from his current beard?”
Nathan sets the grocery bag down on the coffee table, leaning closer to the collection of photographs. He smells like coffee
mixed with cinnamon and sunscreen and the faintest hint of cigarette smoke. “Let’s see . . . there it is.” He reaches out
and taps one of the photographs.
I lean closer. “Oh. Wow.”
“Yeah.” His grin widens. “Impressive, right?”
It’s Dave, all right, along with Bill—both of them younger but only slightly less broad than they are now. Bill’s hair forms
a frizzy yellow halo around his head. Dave’s head is still bald. But his beard is so wide I can barely see his chest and long
enough to graze his belt buckle.
“He looks like a gay punk Santa Claus,” I say.
“Apparently he won a prize for it at Bear Week,” Nathan says. “He still has the certificate framed at their house.”