CB: Do you remember where?
NM: Yeah, we stayed in one of the rooming houses on Standish
Street. We found a room not even one block from the railroad
station. There was something easy about it. Naturally, as kids, we
were worried whether we would be taken for husband and wife,
but it was obvious the landlady couldn���t have cared less. That was
the first time I���d ever run into that, because things were pretty
starchy in those days. They didn���t look lightly on young men and
young women who weren���t married who passed themselves off as
married.
CB: Even in Provincetown in that period?
NM: Provincetown has always been ahead of the rest of the
nation. One of the things I love about this town and which I
always tell people who haven���t been here, is that this is the freest
town in America. People can argue. But it���s free now, with the
gay population, and it was free long ago when the artists came
here. One of the reasons they came was they loved the freedom
of the life here. You could live with whomever you wanted and in
any combination you wanted. To have sexual freedom has always
been terribly important to artists.
CB: What I noticed, growing up here, is the way families and
their kids are integrated into that freedom. You went to these
wonderful parties and there would be young children there!
NM: I think there just wasn���t money for a babysitter. Or, the best
friend, the babysitter, was going to the party also.
HYLAND
4
