Provincetown: Vacationing with the communists, homosexuals and artists.

At the end of a week’s vacation in Provincetown and about to come back to New York City for Tisha B’Av and then back to the life of a working copywriter. My first time here and I love it. Staying down in the East End, which is more straight than gay we discover that the house next door, 592 Commercial Street (at right in the photo next to our rental condo) was, in 1916, where John Reed (author of Ten Days That Shook The World) and Louise Bryant (of whom Emma Goldman said: She was never a Communist, she just slept with one) were staying with Eugene O’Neill. In a very unhappy threesome. And then Reed’s old flame Mabel Dodge appeared, complicating the relationships even more. Can’t throw a rock in this town without hitting something in the artistic and political history of the country — starting with the first landing spot of the Pilgrims. They probably moved on to Plymouth sensing that their fundamentalist ways would not be welcome here. The women, both Dodge and Bryant, had lesbian affairs in their history as well. As for Reed, no one’s telling. Even Warren Beatty.