Greg meets Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham and falls in love with East End Books P-Town

East End Books Ptown is my favorite spot in all of Provincetown where I recently returned from an 8-day vacation.

The bookstore is heaven. It is a place where my younger gay self would have felt so safe and just wanted to spend hours exploring and discovering. I could see just about every favorite book I ever read on the shelves – so thoughtfully curated and presented with love and care by owner Jeff G. Peters (pictured w/me in final photo) and his staff.

My favorite places growing up were the library and bookstores and I felt that old excitement, joy and interest each time I returned to East End Books during my trip. My first visit there, I bought Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham’s 2002 nonfiction book Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown and immediately started reading it.

My dear late friend, Cam Sanders, had loaned me his copy seven years ago before our trip out here – my first time in P-Town. Cam spent part of just about every summer of his life in nearby Cape Cod and absolutely loved P-Town. He wanted me to know about the magic of the place before I arrived. I wasn’t ready for the book then and barely read any of it. It seems I needed to absorb and experience some of the town first.

But now I was ready and read the book cover to cover last week during afternoons at Boatslip Resort. It turned out that author Cunningham (The Hours), a longtime resident of P-Town, was having a talk and book signing for his latest: Unsayable: A Life in Writing last Saturday. I quickly registered and on the evening, joined more than 100 people in the back garden of the bookstore for this rich experience. As Michael signed both my books after the Q&A, he absolutely loved hearing about how I had read Land’s End poolside at Boatslip.

Most impactful, for me, were his thoughts on the first time, as an adolescent, you find you deeply love someone (outside of your family)and how powerful that can be, how you never forget it, and how it shapes you. He told us of his person and he made me think of mine. He made me see the beauty in the memory of the experience and not just the eventual heartbreak of it. I thanked him for that in our few moments together. Priceless experience.