The Royal Omaha Ballet Company

One summer I was on my annual excursion to Provincetown, Massachusetts, a quaint old England fishing town and one of the major gay getaways on the East Coast. It’s easy to meet people there – even Bostonians, traditionally an aloof crowd, let their hair down. You make eye contact, you smile, you say hi. It’s that easy.

The town’s merchants always pray for cloudy or rainy days, as people go shopping instead of to the beach. On such a cloudy day I was in town shopping with some friends, and I kept bumping into a very friendly guy from New York. We quickly struck up a conversation. I’ve blocked his name from my memory, as you’ll soon see why. 

A few days later I was headed to the beach and ran into him. He asked what I was doing that evening, and I told him I was cooking dinner for my housemates. I spontaneously invited him to join us. 

Sand dunes overlooking Provincetown (Garrett Peck)

A completely different person showed up that evening. I mean, it was the same person, only he seemed to be tweaking on something. He was combative, hyperactive and loud. He went to the bathroom every five minutes, I suspect to snort who knows what up his nose. 

While I was making dinner, he came into the kitchen and told me that none of my friends liked him. I didn’t deny it, but responded that that’s because he was arguing with everyone. He laughed way too loud, an eighty-decibel cackle that made you cover your ears. One of my friends, who never complains about anything, approached me privately to ask, What were you thinking?! I don’t know, I responded; he seemed nice before he got here, but now he’s stoned out of his mind.

My dinner guest was also a pathological liar whose tales stretched beyond belief. He claimed he was a fashion consultant and had danced for the Royal Omaha Ballet Company, which raised disbelieving eyebrows around the dinner table. He said he had walked into my friend Scott’s clothing studio in P-Town and offered advice on how to better display his wares. Scott supposedly paid him on the spot for his services. I checked with him the next day. He shook his head, explaining that he had no idea who this obnoxious person was who came in and rearranged his clothes. Scott moved all the clothes back as soon as he left. So you didn’t pay him? Hell no, Scott answered.

As the evening wore on, and as he came down from his high, the person who emerged was angry, bitter and quite toxic. He sat fuming to my left, while to my right was another guest, an 18-year old young man whose two moms were taking him off to college. He was sweet and full of optimism – every path was open to him, and the world was still a place of wonder. I thought, what a contrast between these two. It’s no wonder why we enjoy being around young people. Young people make us feel young. 

The next day I was at the beach with another friend, David. We had just laid our towels out on the sand when we suddenly heard a loud, obnoxious cackle from the sand dunes just fifty feet away. It was my dinner guest from the night before. He was with another man, and they were tumbling from the sand dunes naked and running to the water. I looked at David and asked if he minded that we move. We shifted down the beach several hundred feet. I was glad never to see that dancer from the Royal Omaha Ballet Company again. He was hands down the worst date ever. 

Garrett Peck

www.garrettpeck.com