Alone on the Cape

I'm writing this from the quiet, leafy paradise that is Conway, Massachusetts, but more on that in a later post. First, an update on my solo trip to Cape Cod last week.

After my stay in Boston I had a few days to spare before I was due back in New York to help my friend KC move out of her apartment and home to Conway. I was keen to go somewhere I'd never been, so I got on a ferry in Boston and sailed across the bay to Provincetown, where I stayed for two days in the town's only hostel. Then I took three buses and another ferry to the island of Martha's Vineyard.

I had a very pleasant time on Martha's Vineyard, and consequently I have less to say about it. The hostel was clean and airy, and provided free pancakes every morning; I met some friendly people, visited some pretty places, and ate some nice food. Provincetown was a different story, but ultimately that was a positive thing - it provided me with food for thought and plenty of fodder for a blog post.

I'll say right now that I am probably one of the only people on the planet not to have enjoyed themselves in Provincetown. It is bursting at the seams with people enjoying themselves. Perhaps I'm old before my time, but that is precisely why I didn't enjoy it.

P-town, as it is affectionately known, is a small, picturesque seaside resort at the northern tip of Cape Cod, the long, thin peninsula that juts out of southern Massachusetts and curls north towards Boston. It is crowded with seafood restaurants and artists' studios; its main street follows the shoreline and a goodly number of its many bars and restaurants look out over the ocean.

Provincetown harbour

At this time of year, it is populated almost entirely by holidaymakers and seasonal workers - in fact, Wikipedia informs me that it has a measly year-round population of 3,000, which can increase to as many as 60,000 in the height of summer. It is bold and brash, exuberant and colourful, and it prides itself on making a mockery of polite, suburban values. It is a town where you can buy sex toys at any time of day or night, where half-naked-picture-posting clubs distribute their publicity in coffee shops (see below) and where drag queens dressed as mermaids are occasionally driven around in rickshaws. Its geographical location is strangely, symbolically appropriate: if Cape Cod looks like a clenched bicep, Provincetown is the fist.

Heheh.

Provincetown is quirky and unique and wonderful in many ways. But no one goes there alone. As soon as I got off the ferry I felt conspicuous in my solitude, and as I walked through streets thronged with couples, families and groups of friends, I felt lonelier than I have ever felt before. It was immediately apparent that P-town is a place people go to eat and swim and dance and be merry, not to sit alone in coffee shops reading or sit alone in parks reading or to take long walks alone in order to find more deserted spots in which to sit alone reading. A wonderful town it may be, but it is no place for the solitary.

For the first time on this trip I began to question my own ability to be by myself. I love being with people, but I also like to think I do solitude rather well. I wouldn't be travelling alone if I didn't. And yet here I was, barely a hundred miles from my friends and three days away from rejoining them, and I was homesick and miserable. This was only a baby solo trip, ostensibly a taste of things to come in the weeks and months that I will be spending in new territory, where I know no one. It didn't bode well. Maybe this whole trip had been a mistake.

But then I realised that the problem was not so much being alone as being alone in my aloneness. It was being alone among people who were there precisely in order to be together. People who travel solo rely to one degree or another on the friendliness and openness of strangers, but holidaymakers need no one but each other. They are socially provided for; they do not need to meet people for the sake of their own peace of mind. That was why I didn't enjoy Provincetown: because I was the only person there who needed strangers.

A couple of days later I was leafing through Paul Theroux's The Tao of Travel in a bookshop on Martha's Vineyard (the travel section of any bookshop has mysteriously become the most interesting to me), and I happened upon a quote, borrowed from another travel writer, Jonathan Raban. It was this:

You are simply not lonely enough when you travel with companions. Spells of acute loneliness are an essential part of travel. Loneliness makes things happen.

After mentally thanking Paul Theroux for such timely words of comfort and wisdom, I gave this idea some thought. And maybe it's true. My loneliness in Provincetown did make some things happen: it was a catalyst for many hours of reflection and writing, and it provided plenty of material for a blog post, and then some. Most of all, my being alone allowed for fleeting but valuable connections with some of the people I encountered, most of whom I will never see again, but all of whom were important to me in the moment.

If I'd been with a companion, I probably wouldn't have met Ben, a barista working in Provincetown for the summer, who told me stories about South America and gave me a tiny rubber manatee to take with me as a mascot, or Ernie, the proprietor of a cafe on Martha's Vineyard who let me have free coffee ('if you would like a little coffee on me, my dear, you go right ahead'), or Richard the GP from Brooklyn, who gave me his number 'because you never know when you might need a doctor', or Chris the receptionist, who works at a different hostel every summer and travels for the rest of the year and wants to cross Africa by land. I probably wouldn't have conversed for so long with the retired ladies on the ferry who borrowed my sunscreen and were effusively grateful about it, or my hostel roommates whose names I never learned, or the numerous people who asked what I thought about Prince George. I might have talked to them a little, but I'm sure I learned more about and from them by being alone. When you are alone, human contact is thrown into relief and becomes more precious for it; fleeting interactions make a deeper impression. My loneliness was punctuated by moments of genuine warmth and happy surprise at the consistent kindness of human beings.

So I was wrong in my first blog post, when I said a solo traveller need never be lonely. Loneliness is probably inevitable, and if Paul Theroux and Jonathan Raban are to be believed, it is also necessary. It is an experience, and experiences are valuable. It is part of what differentiates travelling from simply going on holiday.

That said, I am glad, for the moment, to be back among friends.