Transgressions in Transubstantiation: The Mantras of Jameson Bayles

Provincetown is right on the tip of Cape Cod. Off season on the Cape is a second home to me. Vacant beaches, no tourists, and being surrounded by rude New Englanders just seems to appeal to me. In May, the Great White Sharks migrate north to go after the seals. There are warning signs on every beach to be careful in the water. The sharks will get really close to the shoreline, a matter of a few feet actually. If the sharks don’t kill you, the rip tides can and will. Unless you are an expert swimmer and know how to navigate yourself in those waters, if you get caught in a rip tide, you’ll get pulled right out to sea.

If the Great Whites don’t get you, the rip tides don’t get you, then the damn tourists will. I wasn’t born on the Cape, so I know I’ll never be fully accepted there, but I do everything I can to not act like a tourist when I’m on Cape Cod. But when the season begins, the tourists pour in, traffic backs up, the beaches get crowded, even the locals hate it, but it brings the money in.

Outside of Pride Month, it’s very common to see pride flags everywhere in Provincetown. Rainbows are all over the place. It’s been my experience that it’s also very common at house shows in Provincetown that there is a drastic concern over the use of pronouns. “Which pronouns do you prefer to be referred to?”. While I respect anyone’s decision to be referred to by the pronoun of their choosing, for me, if it comes down to it, and I’m being forced to pick a pronoun, I would rather be referred to by the acronym of one of the mental health diagnoses that I’ve had over the past 50 years. The choices are: PTSD, GAD, MDD, or NREM-related parasomnia. Before the reading, I was pressed to pick a pronoun, I gave the options available, and someone in the audience had an issue with this, raised a ruckus and was escorted out of the house show.

Someone else had an issue with the title of Dana Cheung’s book “Known Pronouns“. This person raised more ruckus than the previous person and was escorted out.

These two guests were tourists, from Illinois if I remember right.

Hell of a way to start an evening.

Dana was upset and fired up so we decided that since Dana had the most energy of the night, the line up would be myself, Dan Altimus, and Dana closed the show.

To add more kindling to the drama fire, The Soulfly Tangerines individual members only refer to each other by his/her/their pronouns. Not the Christian names given at birth. It’s not a joke and is the preference of the individual members of the group.

After the reading, I spent a lot of time contemplating exactly how many Great Whites were roaming in the dark of the coast of Cape Cod. That might have contributed to the NREM-related parasomnia event I had later on in the evening but who knows.

Maybe the rip tides know.