Last week, I pitched a proposal at Town Hall to have a crosswalk painted in front of my building. Three days later, it was already there; and this weekend I watched myself make the pitch because all the Town Hall proceedings are recorded and broadcast several times on the local TV station. My New York showed; I waved my hands around in the air like my old Italian Thompson Street neighbors.

I live in Provincetown now, in the apartment of my dreams with thirty-four houseplants, a great view, and a dishwasher. I have a garden where I grow more tomatoes than I can possibly eat and I’m a registered voter, but the townies still refer to me as a wash ashore. It fits; I’ve met people who can trace their family back to the Mayflower or Nauset tribe, but while the majority of the year-rounders come from the Portuguese who have fished here long before the artists and gays arrived, most of my friends in town lived in Manhattan at some point.

There have been a number of jobs, in galleries mainly, but the one that has stuck is at a bath and skincare shop. Who knew selling soap was my true calling? I’ve also taken six months of French, I totally suck, but I did manage to learn to tango. It’s completely out of my comfort zone but when I lost my ride to class, some 50 miles away, I was devastated. One would think I could find a tango partner among all the theater people here, but it is not happening.

I put it all in the book, Argentine tango, as well as the French. There’s always the book; wash ashore or not, I can do readings from it at the library. I can walk from one end of Bradford to the other in under an hour, or watch the sun set every day from the harbor. This is it, this is my new life; my crosswalk proposal got five inches in The Banner.