MaineStreet in winter

Ogunquit in February is a town with its shutters mostly closed. I drove in around nine at night, parked on the street (you can park anywhere in February), and walked toward the only place with light coming out of it.

MaineStreet has been there longer than I have been alive. In summer it is a destination. In winter it is something else: an open door on a closed street, a sign you can see from two blocks away, and inside, about fourteen people, all of whom seemed to know each other.

Small queer spaces in small towns in winter are a particular and underwritten thing. They are not the loud bars of the cities. They are the rooms where the regulars become the staff, the staff become the regulars, and the few visitors get folded in for the night without ceremony. I have been to bigger and louder places that mattered less.

I drove out the next morning thinking about how thin the margins are for places like this to keep their doors open through a winter, and how grateful I am that this one does.