First, I should tell you that we did not meet the Kennedys on an off-season trip to Cape Cod.  It was not for lack of trying:  we hoped to spot Joe, Jr., Robert F., Jr. (currently running for president on a conservative anti-vaxxer ticket), or John “John-John” Kennedy. Jr.  (still alive then), or a random Kennedy playing touch football or yachting, we didn’t care which. 

After a day in beautiful Provincetown, we drove to Hyannis Port, home of the Kennedy compound.  Our first stop was a store that specialized in vintage magazines that featured many, many photos of the Kennedys.  I was familiar with these because John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic president, and my Catholic mother, a Democrat and a political science major, collected Life and Look magazines with photos of the family.

 I grew up with the Kennedys.  I had Jackie and Caroline paper dolls, who sometimes got together with the Lennon Sister paper dolls for a sock hop, because it was difficult for me to think of things for celebrities to do.  And over the years the Kennedys were in the news.  Whatever people might think of the Kennedys, we were lucky to have Teddy in the senate, who sponsored many liberal bills and fortunately lived to old age. 

 I am bold, but I could not bring myself to buy any magazines at the shop (it would make me look trashy) or ask the proprietor if the Kennedys were in town (it would make me look crazy).  Nonetheless, I was glad to be in Hyannis Port, because it was a beautiful town, and the Kennedys had figured so largely, if absently, in my life.

And then we went to a bar for a poetry slam, and  I brought in my laptop in so I could take notes in the dark.

We approved the ambience of what we called “a rich person’s bar.”  The wooden floor was not sticky with beer, the menus were not greasy, the clam chowder was good, and the bar stocked perhaps 100 imported beers, so we did feel it necessary to tease the server and ask if they had Genesee Cream Ale, a cheap beer made in upstate New York.

While we waited for our order, I typed notes.   Laptops were popular but not ubiquitous then, so a girl doesn’t walk into a bar and… let alone a middle-aged woman….  So we were surprised when a young man as handsome as a Kennedy stopped to admire my Mac laptop.  We had an animated conversation about the superiority of Macs, and he admitted that he had five different models.  (“The rich are different…?” But, no I had two.)

Though “handsome as a Kennedy” does not mean an actual Kennedy, his preppy style was very correct, his clothes an upscale version of L. L. Bean gear:  the slightly grimy polo shirt, the elegantly-made jeans, and the scruffy boat shoes without socks, as if he had graduated from Phillips Exeter a couple of days ago, then gone on a flying visit to Harvard, and now spent all his time going to poetry slams when he wasn’t working at an elite law firm.

He said he was there because his sister had signed up for the slam.  “Very embarrassing, but she says she needs support.”

“How sweet!”

“What a nice brother you are!”

And then the slam began and he excused himself to join his good-looking friends.  We were in suspense to learn her last name.  Would it be Kennedy? Was he a Kennedy?

Alas, she did not have a last name.  This fragile person called herself Hera of the Sands, and her strange little poem was about sand, salt, sexual infidelity, and walking into the the waves with rocks in the folds of her robes, a la Virginia Woolf.  Then she segued into a rendition of a sexist Beach Boys song from the ‘60s, “California Girls.”  It was satiric, the song better than the poem, but she was young (on a break from Bryn Mawr or Sarah Lawrence?) and she would improve with education.

After the performance, we joined her brother in cheers and applause.  “Go, Hera!”  “Yeah, Hera!” 

“Thank you for that,” he said as he passed our table. “She’s thrilled. Her poetry means the world to her.”

And what meant the world to him, I wondered.  Sports? Books? Computer programming? Were things were working out for him? Was the law firm a good fit? Was there a law firm? I don’t know much about jobs.

It was sweet to see a young man fill a bar with friends, however briefly, to cheer on  Hera, the fragile poetess, his sister, on a cool autumn night. Worth coming to Hyannis Port for, in the long run…

Because the world is brutal.