Creepytown

The beach opens at noon

We had been looking at houses in a town near the beach seriously enough that we rented a B&B there for a week. It was summer, and we were looking forward to a vacation that doubled as house shopping.

We arrived on a Saturday, excited to finally slow down and really look around. Every other time we’d been there, we’d glanced at a few houses and gone home. This time we walked, grabbed lunch, met our realtor, looked at a few places, and checked in.

The town felt quaint. Quiet. Carefully kept. Charming in the way places are when someone is working very hard to keep them that way.

The B&B was a Victorian — gingerbread trim, pastel porch, all of it carefully preserved. In fact, everything there was preserved. No siding. Just exposed wood, everywhere. Beautiful, until you realize what that means.

When fires happen there, they’re bad.
Not a house — entire blocks at a time.

Sunday morning we got up and got dressed for the beach.

The B&B had a complimentary breakfast. Patrick loved that shit. I personally would rather not eat than sit with people I don’t know unless alcohol is involved, but fine — we ate.

When we were getting up to leave, Patrick asked the hostess for the beach badges that came with our stay.

She said sure — but added, casually, that we couldn’t go to the beach until after noon.

I stopped dead.

Why?

She said it was a town tradition. On Sunday mornings, the beach stays closed. People are expected to be in church.

I remember standing there thinking:
So what, they guard it?
If you don’t go to church, you don’t get the ocean either?

She didn’t argue. She didn’t explain. It was said the way rules are when the person saying them believes in them.

I dragged Patrick to the next town over.

Their beach was open. No moral timetable. No expectation attached. I bought my own effing beach badge.

You’re not the boss of me.
I don’t play that shit anymore.

I’d already learned what happens when rules are dressed up as virtue.

That should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t.

Next came the parking.

The streets are narrow and mostly one-way. In the summer there’s nowhere to park. We were moving from a city with alternate side parking and had sworn — sworn — we were never doing that again. We wanted a driveway.

She showed us a place on a lot-and-a-half. We said, Oh great — so we could put in a driveway.

She hesitated.

Well… if I’m being honest, you’d need Town Association approval. And they usually don’t approve.

Why?

She didn’t know.

And the thing is — almost none of the houses had driveways anyway. Maybe twenty-five percent, if I’m being generous. The houses are practically touching. Some are a foot apart. Parking isn’t tight because it’s charmingly old. Parking is tight because the town was never designed for modern life. Until the 1980s, cars weren’t even allowed on Sundays.

There are also entire blocks of tent houses.

Actual tents. Permanent, wooden-framed tents left over from the camp-meeting days. No air-conditioning. I don’t even know about plumbing. Maybe water, maybe not. Supposedly there’s a waitlist.

For a tent.

We used to joke about it.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Sheetrock salesman.

Then the rest of the rules started stacking.

They tell you what colors you’re allowed to paint your house.
You can’t tear anything down. Ever.
You don’t renovate — you restore. Whatever is there stays there, whether it works for you or not.

At that point, we were effing done.

The center of town is anchored by a long park they call God’s Holy Mile.

I called it the Green Mile (I still do actually).

Not out loud. Just privately.
It felt like a place with rules you were supposed to know already.

We bought a house in the bordering town instead.

After that, the only reason I was ever there was because it had the closest branch of my bank. I’d park, walk to the bank, walk back to my car, and leave. Even then, I’d get odd looks. Not hostile exactly. Just… assessing. Like I’d missed a memo.

Patrick, meanwhile, wanted to move there just to break all the rules on principle.

Paint the house traffic-cone orange.
Blast loud rock music.
Make margaritas on the porch.

Which is extra funny, because it’s a dry town.

At one point I was actively plotting walking onto their beach from the next town over on a Sunday morning and skinny-dipping.

Not because I wanted to be naked in the ocean.
Because the idea of existing freely in a place that tried to regulate joy felt irresistible.

I didn’t do it.
But the fact that I considered it told me everything I needed to know.

We first moved near the town about twenty-five years ago.

One day I was at my bank. I walked outside and a man hissed directly in my face.

Not yelled.
Not muttered.
Hissed.

That’s when I started calling it CT — short for Creepytown.

Later, I learned that when state psychiatric hospitals closed, many people were displaced. Old boarding houses in CT rented rooms. Some of those houses were still there when I was.

That explains context.
It does not erase the moment.

Another time, the day after Thanksgiving, I was walking on the boardwalk in CT when an elderly woman grabbed my arm and asked how my Thanksgiving was.

I said it was nice and asked about hers.

She lit up. It was wonderful. They’d gone out to dinner. They had steamed turkey. Had I ever heard of steamed turkey? It was delicious. With green beans. Cranberry. Jello.

She kept talking.

Her husband stood there silently, like he didn’t quite know who she was.

It wasn’t hostile.
It wasn’t threatening.
But it wasn’t normal.

Another day, I was walking Zee through CT. A woman stopped and asked if she could pet her. That felt normal. Zee is beautiful. People always want to pet her.

I said yes.

She stroked Zee and started telling me about her German Shepherds. She’d had two. Her husband beat them. When they were broke, he sold one. He beat her too. Eventually she left, but she couldn’t take the dog.

She told me all of this while petting my dog.

After a while, I made a quiet decision.

I just wasn’t going to talk to anyone in CT anymore.

CT wasn’t about faith.
It wasn’t about charm.
It was about rules, compliance, and control that showed up sideways.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.

And I was done.