Welcome to Provincetown · Rococo Punch + Room Tone

Bonus: Sonny and Qya Update

August 31, 2022·25 min·2 clips

Sonny explains why losing both parents as a child makes him afraid to let anyone get close enough to see his grief.

The episode opens with a letter-format voiceover from the host reflecting on her summer in Provincetown, including editing roughly 200 hours of tape, briefly dating a woman she met there, and reconnecting with friends in New York. She frames the update as an enclosed tape for a long-distance pen pal. The host returns to Provincetown in December for a winter check-in. Sonny has moved out of Casa de Maxinista into a cheap winter rental called Bunter House, named after its landlords' dog and covered in both dog portraits and explicit local art he describes fondly. He has just turned 30 and had a weekend celebration where friends from Boston, his brother and girlfriend, and his entire P-Town community all came together. He describes a peak moment at a club called A-House when a specific song dropped and he felt a level of joy he hadn't experienced in a long time — he is emphatic it was unprompted by substances. The host plays him a clip from the original summer recordings in which he expressed reluctance to let people see his grief. Sonny elaborates: losing both parents as a child left him feeling like a literal burden when his aunts and uncles had a meeting to decide who would take him and his sibling. He watched the family home, his mother's art, and everything familiar get packed up and sold. He developed a coping mechanism of deflecting attention to charismatic friends, but the host has shifted her view of this behavior, seeing it now as genuine care. He is still working shifts at the brewery and another restaurant. He talks about his dream of opening Sonny Side Up, a small breakfast cafe, but student loan debt makes it feel unrealistic. He worries that turning his passion for breakfast into work would destroy it. The host catches up with Kaya, who is perpetually busy — performing on almost every stage in town and working a day job simultaneously. Approaching 30, Kaya is reflective, having wanted to travel to Europe and 'Eat Pray Love' her way through a country in her 20s. Her definition of success is a sold-out one-woman show on the road with a piano, bass, and drums. The host plays her a clip in which she expressed wanting more than gay club bookings. Kaya says she has largely stopped describing herself as a drag queen, preferring to call herself a performer. She describes drag as having merged into her daily identity rather than being a performance-only persona. She discusses anxiety about marketing to straight audiences — specifically what happens when they discover the person behind the character. She also reveals she spent two years secretly living in her studio, getting a gym membership to shower, and is now on the move again. Her current regular show is Queen of the Night at the Crown and Anchor every Wednesday.

As heard by us

A tender, loose-eyed piece about grief, friendship, and care that stays honest without forcing a speech.

It opens with karaoke, a summer that seems to end too soon, and the uneasy sense that some post-pandemic life never quite settles into place. From there, it moves into grief, family rupture, and the ways people protect one another without saying everything outright.

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Why you'd press play

For a summer check-in that slips from gay fun into grief.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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