friend and I called homophobic slur at Wellfleet sluiceway
Saturday (the 4th), perhaps against my better judgment, I took my best friend to the sluiceway in Wellfleet to enjoy the beautiful day. It’s her first time on the Cape. I’ve been coming here every summer for most of my life, as I have several washashore relatives who have lived and worked here year-round since the 1970s. I haven’t been to this particular spot in ~10 years, but because this was my friend’s first time here and she was only around for the weekend, I really wanted to show her.
It’s a hike to get there since I don’t have an SUV that can comfortably drive back roads. On our way there, a group of three blonde girls who don’t seem from around here ask us for directions. They seemed lost and distraught from the heat and the walking, but we were happy to help point them in the direction of a parking lot when they asked. We told them that we hoped they found their friends and that they have fun.
We get there and it’s beautiful. Shortly after we sit down and are enjoying the unique experience of two ponds at once, the same girls we gave directions to arrive along with several male friends carrying a box of bud light. They all appeared to be teenagers, or were fairly young at least. They immediately start looking around in disgust and loudly complaining:
“This is f*cking ret*rded.”
“Where the f*ck are we?”
One of them even shouted dramatically “this is the worst f*cking day of my life!”
Mind you, there are families here with their young children. Famously, there are few places to sit at the sluiceway, so this group is just standing/walking around and continuing to complain. Whatever, we try to ignore it, hoping they will just turn around and leave.
Then, one of the teen’s parents arrives with a dog. At this point, I’m honestly annoyed at the situation and the lack of self awareness being demonstrated. To my knowledge, dogs are not allowed at the ponds for environmental reasons, so I say, “just so you know, you’re not allowed to have dogs here.”
The dad turns to me and goes, “it’s fine, he’s really friendly, I’ll keep him away from you.” I reply and say, “you’re just not supposed to bring dogs here.” He goes, “he’s my service dog.” I say, oh, okay. Then he says “yeah, he’s my fake service dog for my fake epilepsy.” Cool, this guy is just as much of a childish asshole as the group of kids he’s with, go figure.
He walks away for a bit then comes back with the dog, and goes, “There are like ten other dogs here. I’ve been coming here for ten years and have never had an issue.” I once again say, okay, they’re not allowed though. Then his daughter chimes in and scolds “okay, well you don’t have to be such an asshole about it, loosen up a little.”
This group starts loudly talking crap about us and ridiculing us directly in front of us, (one of the teenage guys is whining about how I said it was gross that he said the R word immediately upon arriving), so I start complaining to my friend about how obnoxious this whole situation is, and at this point she wants to leave. I say, let’s try to stay and see if things calm down a bit (obviously a mistake on my part, my friend’s gut feeling was correct). However, the situation clearly isn’t improving, and at this point we’re getting glared at and stared down by the entire group, so we start packing up to leave. As we’re turning around, the girl who called me an asshole goes, “thanks for giving us your spot!” We ignore this rude comment, as we’ve attempted to ignore almost everything else. We turn, we’re walking away down the path, and then one of the girls loudly and with vitriol yells at us, “faggot!”
Both myself and my friend are lesbians, neither of us are “butch” although I guess we’re still clockable as gay. My friend immediately turns around and goes “what’s wrong with you,” and I start yelling something along the lines of “what the fuck did you just say to me? Do you know where you are right now?” I mean, we’re literally two towns over from Provincetown for Christ’s sake. I have NEVER had something like this happen to me here, EVER. I start taking a video of the girl and she’s smiling and asking who I’m going to send it to. Really pathetic and sad.
We finally turn to get out of there and start walking down the narrow wooded path, and run into some of the guy friends from that group. I angrily say “you should really tell your friends not to call people faggot, it’s really rude.” And the guy goes “I think you’ll be alright.” Then, when he thinks he’s out of earshot behind us, he goes “it’s always a fucking Subaru driver.” I was wearing a Subaru hat, common lesbian stereotype. My friend starts crying as we walk away.
While we are walking down the path to gtfo of there, a car pulls up to us. It’s a gay couple and their friend who witnessed the whole thing, were horrified, and also left. They asked if we are okay and apologized, and we commiserated together briefly about how bizarre the whole incident was. If you guys are reading this, we really appreciate you, happy pride, you gave us hope after a really scary and stressful encounter.
I’m not sure why I wanted to share this here but I was just so in shock that people could be so casually cruel. I know crowds are different around the 4th, I typically come in May/June/Aug/Sept to avoid flies, but this was just really weird and surreal to experience on the Cape of all places.