1. Nantucket

Walking down the street, I am overcome. Whatever goals I have, are superseded by the memories of what lead me down this street decades before. It’s no trouble when I have no plans; when I only aim to explore. But getting home, drunk, and tired, and confused: memories are walls that must be climbed; they are doors that must be knocked down. I’m trying to walk back to the Jared Coffin House. I’m trying to get to bed. But first I have to get the cab to take this girl home by giving him directions to Force Five: I think it’s a bait and tackle shop. He knows exactly where it is. Exactly. He takes so many side streets, the term “side streets” loses all meaning. These are all side streets. This whole island is a side street.

I knew I would get lonely. I’m here alone, to walk in my eight year old footsteps. But those steps are small and never got very far. I covered almost all of them in my first afternoon. So I worked: for hours. And then I had a drink. And then the bartender introduced me to this girl. And the girl invited me out to play pool with these other girls. They’re all dykes. Which is great. Such fun. But we ended up on some sort of dyke mission. Some mission to discover some dyke treasure deep in the heart of Nantucket. We didn’t find it, I don’t think.

But this was my first night out in Nantucket as an adult. There were countless nights as a child. There was one night as a boy. Then there’s this night as a grownup; this night of Bulgarians and Lesbians and Tequila and Pool. 

And finally, I am just trying to get home. And I walk by the chintzy boutique that used to be the five and dime. I can’t get past it without stopping to remember. It’s all too complicated to explain. There were so many wants, and hads, and losts, all caught up in that store that I can’t even begin to explain.  And I’m stuck trying to get home from my grownup evening, but held in place, cemented to the cobblestone by memories of the boy I was thirty years ago. Thirty. Maybe twenty-eight. But that’s thirty, right?

I stayed away for years and years out of fear for what had changed. But the things that were mine, the things of children, have been left, preserved for decades. It’s only the grownup things that changed: new restaurants, new shops and cars and clothes. But the playgrounds and beaches and streets are all the same. All the candy is still here. All of it.