(Above: The Provincetown Library where I finished writing my second book, I Left It on the Mountain, sitting at a table on its second floor looking out that middle window toward the harbor.)
I arrived in Ptown yesterday to do an event tonight with designer Ken Fulk at his book signing here at the Mary Heaton Vorse House where I am staying. I will have a conversation with him in the garden for his invited guests, conversations being what I have cultivated in my own life where so much else has refused to grow. But I garden on. Ken’s new book is titled The Movie in My Mind. As I strolled around Ptown yesterday during the first few hours of my arrival my memories of the place played out like a movie in my own.
(Above: The Mary Heaton Vorse House where I am staying.)
The last two times I was here I had arrived to do interviews with Courtney Love & Todd Almond and then with Sally Field onstage at the Paramount. Since being back in Ptown brings with it so many mixed emotions for me - many of them quite painful - it has been good to return these now three times with a reason for these visits to focus on others. Last evening when I stopped in at one of my favorite places in town - Tim’s Books - I walked into one of its back rooms and saw myself finally staring back at me. There, on a table, was my second memoir, I Left It on the Mountain, which I finished writing in Ptown one winter sitting at another table on the second floor of the town’s library with a view of the bay. A book full of metaphors had just become one itself.
(Above: One of the back rooms at Tim’s Books where I spotted myself on a table)
It is hard to come back to this place because it is so hard to stare back at the person I was when I lived in Ptown for ten summers and two winters. I was tossed out the last summer I ever lived here - a bad oyster shucked of everything but shame - and yet it was the last place on earth that would take me in during those winters when, homeless and frightened, I turned toward it with such abject longing - an addict who no longer longed for addiction, a person in need of a port. I was broke. And I was broken. One can’t seek redemption until one has researched wretchedness. I did both here. Last night I found a kind of balance for those two things finally here in this deeply beautiful spot at the end of the world where light and darkness so artfully are at play, where desire can turn dangerous, where a monument was built to mark the end of the pilgrims journey and where my own pilgrimage of recovery began. Indeed, I am about to set out to live a pilgrim’s life for the next few years. I tell people who question such a choice that I am not seeking answers but searching for new questions. And yet I didn’t question my coming here at Ken’s invitation. I knew that this was the place where my latest pilgrimage needed to commence as I restart my restartable life once more.
Upon my arrival, I saw that Marilyn Maye was performing at the Art House as part of producer Mark Cortale’s summer season of shows there. Ken’s evening conflicted with her last show on Saturday but I had Friday night free so a friend texted Mark to see if the show were sold out. We hadn’t heard back when I decided to go ahead and stroll around town so I stopped by the box office on my walk. Yep: sold out. I was disappointed but continued on. Up the hill on Tremont Street where it veers off Commercial, I spotted a huge portrait of The Hat Sisters on the side of a house where I presumed they had lived together. (You can read about them here.). The late Ptown light danced with such joy about their faces in an act of service to their life as a couple that was itself built on joy and service. As I stopped to take a photo of it, I realized that it was also in this neighborhood where I had allowed myself to be injected with meth for the first time by a guy whose seduction of me in such a moment was based on his claiming to be a registered nurse. At that point, a handsome stranger walking his dog smiled at me, no doubt thinking I was having a tourist moment as I was taking the photo of a photo. He could not have known the conflicted emotions that were surfacing as I noticed his rather condescendingly judgmental but still lovely smile: the many times I saw The Hat Sisters make an entrance entranced by the feeling of joy they could engender in others if not all the time in me and the one time that marked for me - even medically - the beginning of my life as an addict. As the guy with the dog walked on by, I tried to steady myself in such a dizzying moment by remaining completely still. It was in that stillness during my stroll through such a life in such a town where a kind of emotional equilibrium came to rest in me about my history here. I no longer condescended to myself by judging myself. I saw my life here with a newfound clarity - the joy I felt to see joy in others, so many smiles from so many strangers, the fall into addiction, the road it gave me to recovery if I choose each day to stay on it, a road first illumined by the special light here that is an act of service in itself. It was in that stillness - my truest destination I know now for this trip to Ptown - where I ceased the navigation of my memories here and where they became instead the all-too-human harbor from which I am setting forth to navigate anew.
(Above: A portrait of The Hat Sisters on the side of a house where I presumed they had lived as a couple)
On the stroll back to the Vorse House, I stopped by the box office at the Art House once more to see if someone had returned a ticket to the Marilyn Maye show. No one had. Still no luck. So I turned to go. Behind me I heard a mixture of murmurs: “That’s Kevin, that’s Kevin Sessums, yes, that’s him.” I turned to look back over my shoulder toward it and was told that there was a comp ticket waiting for me at the box office. I hadn’t known there was and to ask for it - but fate once more had stepped in. A pixieish lesbian told me that Marilyn had started her opening medley but we could stand in the back and she’d usher me to the one remaining seat upfront during the applause when she ended it. I apologized to the the couple I stumbled over to get to the seat and, full of gratitude, settled in.
(Above: Marilyn Maye performing at The Art House.)
I have seen Maye many times. But last night she was imbued with a kind of divine magnificence. She is now 94, a miracle of moxie and musicianship. I am always moved by her continued navigation of life with such dignity and purpose. She is not only a star to me, she is a north one. It was the best set I’ve ever heard her perform. In the middle of it she told us how much she loves lyricist Johnny Mercer, especially the song he wrote she was about to sing because it speaks to her life. It certainly spoke to mine. These are the lyrics to its final verse that proves that it is not Maye’s final one, God bless her, and it is not mine:
Birds roostin' in a tree
Pick up and go, and the goin' proves
That's how it oughta be
I pick up too when the spirit moves me
Cross the river, 'round the bend
"Hello stranger!", "So long friend!"
There's a voice in the lonesome wind
That keeps whisp'ring, "Roam!"
I'm going where a welcome mat is
No matter where that is
'Cause any place I hang my hat is home.
But Maye last night sang “There’s a spirit in the lonesome night that keeps whispering, ‘Roam!’” Or maybe that’s just the way I remember it, proving memories are what we imprecisely conjure to help us more precisely navigate making new ones. As I sat at the Art House tearfully basking in Marilyn Maye’s artistry - its tenderness and its tenacity - I finally mourned the “myself” that hung my hat here in Ptown for so many years, the one who fucked up friendships because of my addiction and recovered others because of forgiveness. As she sang those Johnny Mercer lyrics I had a sense of letting go of the past and looking forward to the future and living in the moment all at once, her voice making the wind calling me to roam a lot less lonesome, a vibrato where the quest for questions lies.
I thought I only once loved this town. But I still do.
Onward.
Loved this, loved your vulnerability, loved your sincerity and love your writing. Thank you.
I trust, at the point of time that you return to the USA, after your sojourn in London and Spain and another destination I cannot recall, you’ll have satiated your searching and longing desire to find peace or nirvana. It is said that we are born with either old souls or young souls. I feel you have a combination of old souls who have lived many past lives. Find peace and yourself, and know that you are a good and loving human, Kevin. Imua. I look forward to reading what you eyes feel and what your heart sees.....