Let's take over P-town.

IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN TO PROVINCETOWN, MASS., AND YOU CALL yourself a homosexual (or others call you one), you really owe yourself a trip. It's the closest thing we have to a theme park, though I'm not exactly sure what the theme is.

Earlier this summer I was in Peetown (that's the logo they put on the souvenir diapers--I'm not kidding; straight tourists buy them) watching the British turn Hong Kong over to the Chinese. There was bonny Prince Charlie, expressing his deep affection for the colony his mother was about to lose. He was handing Hong Kong back to the people who, after all, really make the town tick. And all I could think was, When are they going to turn Provincetown over to the people who make it tick?

Provincetown's been gay at least since I was a child, when we were told not to bother the artists, which was code for stay away from any men wearing Capri pants and a scarf. The main drag (and there's plenty of it) is called Commercial Street, although in the old days it wasn't quite so commercial. It was quaint, which was code for rundown. Now, of course, the art galleries rub elbows with the key-chain shops and the straight tourists gape openly at the parade of tattooed, hand-holding, ass-grabbing, platform-heel-wearing gay tourists.

Naturally, we are up to the challenge. There are moments walking down Commercial Street when you feel like you're in Disneyland, wearing the Goofy costume. Just being there and looking however you want to look, you're part of the entertainment. Some of us like to play for the crowd, some of us would rather they didn't stare, and some of us just want them to go away as much as they want us to.

The town makes a big deal out of the diversity and mutual tolerance of its residents, but that tolerance turns out to have severe limits. Bars close at 1 a.m., just when things are getting going, and hundreds of descamisados--shirtless ones--empty into an area of Commercial Street in front of a pizza parlor. It's eerie to watch the nightly ritual. A few dozen gather first, perched on the steps like the birds waiting for Tippi Hedren. Then the bigger bars shutter, and it's Times Square on New Year's Eve, only everybody's polite. A tall blond drag queen on a motorized skateboard zips in and out of the crowd dispensing cheer. Lesbian couples, noticeable chiefly because they keep their shirts on, mingle with the gay men. Everybody is marking time. It's a long night until the sun comes up and you baste yourself like a Thanksgiving turkey on the chaise lounges of the boat slip.

Slowly a group breaks off and makes its way to the hallowed part of the harbor formerly known as the Dick Dock. This is a pier, under and around which lots of moonlit sexual activity used to take place. The new owners, apparently in collusion with the township, have hired guards and put in lights and more or less put an end to all this.

These days the playground is closed after hours, along with the rest of the town. This curfew costs Provincetown tens of thousands of dollars' worth of business, but, of course, it's only gay business, and the money would be made only by gay businesspeople.

The straight businesspeople, who run the tourist shops and sight-seeing trolleys don't stand to make any money late at night. So why should they change the rules? They're in the majority, especially in the winter, when the big decisions are made at town meetings attended only by the hardy year-rounders, descendants of the Portuguese fishermen who claimed their toehold in the New World on this nail of the claw of New England.

These are the same people who tell you that the season is short and they have to grab every dollar they can between Memorial and Labor days. (They'd prefer straight dollars, but they'll tolerate ours.) With that in mind, they've joined us in an uneasy truce, much as we've seen between the Chinese and the British in Hong Kong.

In a flip side to Hong Kong's tale, I think the people who originally colonized P-town should turn it over to the people who have recolonized it: us. You think we can't make this happen? Of course we can. We'd just have to move the elections to August--when you can open any door in town and hear a Bette Davis impression.