Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown - By Michael Cunningham Page 0,34

the Universalist church, Town Hall, Antro, and the Crown and Anchor. The acts vary from season to season, but you can rely, every summer, on seeing men perform not only as Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, et cetera, but as divas less often seen on the drag circuit, women like Joni Mitchell and Billie Holiday. They generally do their own singing—drag acts have, I’m glad to report, evolved beyond lip-sync. Some, of course, are better than others. I am especially fond of Pearline, who can only be described as a Sherman tank in a wig; Varla Jean Merman, who does a truly filthy rendition of “My Favorite Things” and another number that involves singing while consuming considerable quantities of cheese; and Randy Roberts. Randy is the only one of these people I know personally. Out of drag (or rather in his male drag—as RuPaul once said, “We’re born naked, and everything after that is drag”) he is a kind, intelligent, unassuming man who lives in Key West in the winters and Provincetown in the summers. In drag he is most visible as Cher, riding up and down Commercial Street to promote his show on a motorized scooter. He is easy to talk to as Randy, somewhat more difficult to talk to as Cher, and I would have to say that I am friendly with one and only acquainted with the other.

Among these artists, but in a category of his own, is Ryan Landry.

RYAN

Ryan has been a local celebrity for over ten years, which, as such things are reckoned there, might as well be a century. He is in his mid-thirties, a tall, dark-haired man with a handsome, equine face and an aspect of sly, wised-up innocence. I want to call him puckish, but he’s more substantial than that. Think of the circus performer played by Richard Basehart in Fellini’s La Strada.

Each summer he produces a show. At first he put on his own versions of Charles Ludlam’s versions of Medea and Camille; then he began writing his own, which have included his takes on Johnny Guitar, Dracula, Rosemary’s Baby, and Joan of Arc. He is always the star, as he should be. His sensibility falls somewhere between Ionesco and Lucy Ricardo.

He has also, over the years, put on a series of—what to call them?—revues, I suppose. For me, the greatest is Space Pussy, which appears and disappears depending on the summer and is seldom held twice in the same bar or club.

SPACE PUSSY

Space Pussy is presided over by Ryan and the Space Pussy band, which includes a straight man, a gay man, a lesbian, and a transsexual on drums. Anyone who wants to—anyone who gets in touch with Ryan sometime during the week before and agrees to come to one rehearsal—can do a number, but it has to be rock ‘n’ roll, you have to do your own singing, and you have to wear some sort of drag.

These events are hugely popular, and I try never to miss one when I’m in town. It’s wonderful, to me, to witness hoots and applause bestowed lavishly by large crowds on anyone who has the courage to get into costume and mangle “Little Red Corvette” or “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” or “White Rabbit” in public. And there is always the possibility of transcendence.

Occasionally someone who has never performed before and cannot, technically, sing at all breaks through to the sublime. The sheer, heady strangeness of it—here I am, in strange clothes, with a good band behind me, delivering a song to an eager audience—can inspire performances of which the person in question is not in any real way capable. I have seen a large, ungainly man, not young, deliver Patti Smith’s cover of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” with such force, it rattled the ice in my drink. I have heard a woman in girl drag (wigs, gowns, and makeup are, of course, every bit as much drag for some women as they are for men) sing “Ruby Tuesday” with a depth of wrenching melancholy Mick Jagger can only imagine.

NIGHT SONG FOR A BOY

Lock up the church,

I feel as unasleep

as a dead cat: regards

are what I want,

regards, regards, regards.

A priest after boy’s ass

feels better than I

do: When I walk around

ladies on the stoops

think I am death: If I

had steel plates on my heels

Oh they would know it.

I should rape a saint

and she could save me

from the dangers of life.

ALAN DUGAN

The East End

AS YOU CONTINUE east, away from the center of town, you’ll notice that your