Safe Harbor

In 1836, after a two-year journey from Boston to California and back again, sailing twice around Cape Horn, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. wrote the following about his arrival in Boston:

We had all set our hearts upon getting up to town before night and going ashore, but the tide beginning to run strong against us, and the wind, what there was of it, being ahead, we made but little by weather-bowing the tide, and the pilot gave orders to cock-bill the anchor and overhaul the chain. Making two long stretches, which brought us into the roads, under the lee of the Castle, he clewed up the topsails, and let go the anchor; and for the first time since leaving San Diego, — one hundred and thirty-five days, —our anchor was upon bottom. In half an hour more, we were lying snugly, with all sails furled, safe in Boston harbor; our long voyage ended; the well-known scene about us; the dome of the State House fading in the western sky; the lights of the city starting into sight, as the darkness came on; and at nine o'clock the clangor of the bells, ringing their accustomed peals; among which the Boston boys tried to distinguish the well-known tone of the Old South.

(Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative. With a supplement by the author and an introduction and additional chapter by his son. Illustrations by E. Boyd Smith. Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/resource/calbk.139. Accessed 16 May 2025.)

Though separated by nearly 200 years, my arrival on the North Shore here in Boston in my rented SUV filled to the brim with my wife, three screaming cats, and the bare necessities we needed to camp in our apartment until all our furniture arrived in a week felt a lot like that. The apartment office was going to close in less than an hour, and we needed to get our keys so we could unload the cats and our stuff after nearly 24 continuous hours on the road. We were very much tacking against the tides with a wind blowing the wrong way.

The last two years in Florida hadn't been great. The governor of Florida had decided that queer folks were a threat to our nation's precious bodily fluids, and that led him to wage an all-out war on “woke.” That made Florida a pretty miserable place for me and my little queer family. Both of us worked at the largest public university in the State, and there was no way in hell we were going to scrub DEI references from any web sites or tell trans people which bathroom to use. While neither of us were weathering life-threatening storms on the open sea, a lot of days felt like that.

There are a lot of different ways I could write the story of leaving Florida and moving to Boston. I’m choosing this one.

Having lived the outskirts of Boston for a year, I still end up starting my days looking at the window at this view and marveling that I live here:

I inexplicably drink Dunkin iced coffee now. I care deeply about where the Red Sox are in the standings. I hear that my vowels have become a lot more clipped when I speak, and I have accidentally dropped a rhotic r or two. I described a day in Salem as “wicked cold,” and it didn’t even occur to me that this was odd until my wife pointed it out because she thought I was joking. I pepper my speech with “fuckin’,” but honestly, I already did that. I just fit in a lot more with my fuckin’ environment now. I’m taking more photos. I’m exploring the city. I’m playing music again. I’m apparently writing for this blog again. I feel like a person again.

It’s hard to pick a best part of living in Boston. The weather is perfect for me. The winter is harsh, but I find it delightful to wear warm clothes and throw an extra quilt on the bed. In spring, the whole environment just erupts with color. When we first arrived, the cherry blossoms were popping off, and it felt like I was in a slice-of-life anime, getting ready to start at a new school.

Contrary to what New Englanders might think, the summers here are a delight and—to a recovering Floridian anyway—mercifully mild. They provide you with just the right amount of time to get out to the beach and eat an ice cream in defiance of your lactose intolerance.

The public transit is amazing. Everyone in this city loves to complain about the T, but as someone coming from the never-ending sprawl of Florida, it is simply amazing to walk a couple hundred meters and get on a train to basically wherever I want. In the last year, thanks to the hard work of a bunch of MBTA track workers, I can now get to downtown in 20 minutes. When we went to Manhattan this past winter, we got on the T, and then took a three-hour train to the middle of New York City. No need for either a car or a plane.

On a good day, I can see the barest hint of the ocean from my apartment. I cross at least one river to get basically anywhere. I can easily walk to a public park with a pond full of Canadian geese and (lately) a family of swans, or I can hop on a train and be in the middle of the Boston Common. My part of Florida was surrounded by wilderness, but here nature is so much more accessible to me.

I have an intense and sometimes crippling phobia of wasps. I have seen exactly one wasp in the last year up here. Down in Florida, the fuckers were getting in my house at least once a month, and they were active for 9 months out of the year.

I have seen friends and family a surprising amount. In fact, for the first time in my life, I saw friends far more often than I saw wasps. Turns out more people come through Boston in their travels than go through Gainesville. Every month or two, somebody is the in the area, and we get to meet up for food or drinks. During the summer, we get to see family down on the Cape.

The people up here are incredible. Many (if not most) of the stereotypes are true. Sometimes you can’t tell if they love or hate this place because they can exhaustively catalog everything wrong with Boston, but they’ll still be almost ready to fight someone from out of town who talks shit about the place. They’re gruff and not interested in talking to you unless you’re at a bar, but they’ll pitch in to wordlessly help a complete stranger in a pinch.

Having said that, I can’t deny that this SNL skit is oddly spot on as well:

Because we’re so close to the ocean, the seafood tends to be fresh and delicious. Lobster rolls (which I have strong opinions about) and clam chowder (which I’ve learned to make at home) get all the attention, but don’t sleep on the fried clams. I have eaten so many clams with the bag on since I came up here. They’re 100 times better than clam strips, and you should all come visit me to experience them for yourself. If you end up disliking them, don’t worry: I’ll eat your portion.

I can just walk into the Boston Public Library and check out a book with my library card. I can sit in a quiet room there and read for a couple of hours. This might not impress you, but the library down on Boylston might genuinely be my favorite place in Boston.

I’m thrilled to be an adopted daughter of Boston. I am aggressively proud of where I’m living, and I’m not ashamed to talk a little too loudly about it in public. The situation here in America is really fucking rough, but I’m trying to remind myself that finding happiness is an important part of both daily survival and fighting injustice. I’m allowed to like where I live. I’m allowed to be proud of where I live. A person builds a life by stringing together individual moments, and I’m having a lot more positive moments up here in the Bay State. I’m not from Boston, but she gave me safe harbor anyway.