Originally published by the Provincetown Independent on September 7,
2022
By Paul Benson
PROVINCETOWN — The Summer of Sass program brings
vulnerable LGBTQ young people who are living in hostile
environments to Provincetown, sets them up with secure housing and
a job, and lets the 18- to 20-year-olds breathe in a place where
the air isn’t thick with disapproval.
Alex Howard, Jessica Fuller, Milo Christy, Kristen Becker, Ethan
Jackson, Leon Cronin, and Seraphim Sea at the Summer of Sass
fundraiser at the Mary Heaton Vorse house in July 2022. (Photo
courtesy Kristen Becker)
The six-year-old nonprofit works with only a handful of young
people each year — it has always been limited by the number
and capacity of the rental apartments it could secure. In front of
a lawn full of supporters who gathered at a fundraiser for Summer
of Sass held at the Mary Heaton Vorse house on July 16, founder
Kristen Becker announced that the time had come to shift gears. She
had already begun looking to buy a house for the program’s
young people to stay in.
“I believe my exact words were, ‘There’s all
this money around me, and I can’t keep doing this by
myself,’ ” said Becker, who has day jobs as a stand-up
comic and a tour guide.
A self-described “small business owner and
kind-of-starving artist,” Becker said the annual struggle to
find housing for participants was threatening the program.
“I’m happy to continue doing it,” she told her
supporters. “But we need a space.”
Within a week, Becker had a verbal commitment from a donor for
$2.5 million for her housing quest. She looked at several
properties, including guest houses, a short-term rental house, and
a three-family home on Bradford Street.
The three-family was already under contract, it turned out.
Becker had previously considered the Stowaway guest house at 210
Bradford St., but it was listed for $3.7 million. The donor —
who wants to remain anonymous — offered to raise the donation
to that amount if the money was for that property.
The Stowaway is a larger space than Becker had dared to dream
of. “The location is so perfect, and there’s room to
grow there,” she said. The property went under contract on
Tuesday, and Becker is expecting to take occupancy in late
October.
There are eight bedrooms at 210 Bradford, plus a living room, a
dining room, a large kitchen, a den, and decks and gardens. The
abundance of common space is what made the property unique, Becker
said.
Seraphim Sea and Ethan Jackson at the future home of Summer of
Sass, 210 Bradford St. in Provincetown. (Photo courtesy Kristen
Becker)
“We stick to age 18 to 20, because they’re young enough
that they can’t drink,” said Becker. “Growing up
in the South, the only place you’re allowed to be gay is in a
bar. All of your intimacy and connection and affection are learned
with booze.”
Becker wants to loosen the links between queer identity and
alcohol. “We don’t all have to be broken gays by
35,” she joked. At home in a shared space,
“They’re going to entertain each other,” said
Becker. There will be family dinners and game nights, she said.
Becker started Summer of Sass shortly after doing a gay comedy
tour through the deep South, and many of the first participants
arrived via groups she met there, like the Louisiana Trans
Advocates and the Piney Woods Voice. Others came from Alabama or
small towns in northern states, including Ohio and Massachusetts.
About half, including most of her earliest participants, came with
the support of parents who wanted their children to see a life
outside of their hometowns.
“Jessica Fuller was here only for a summer, went back to
Alabama, and became an outspoken advocate for trans rights,”
said Becker. “Her father, David Fuller, is a cop. He
testified before the Alabama State Senate when they were really
going after trans kids and their doctors, saying,
‘Don’t arrest my heroes. They saved my daughter’s
life.’ ”
Others have come from more difficult home situations. Seraphim
Sea was in the relatively safe city of Austin, but when her mother
kicked her out of the house, she was on the edge of
homelessness.
Milo Christy, a Sasser from northern Louisiana, met Alex Howard
here. Howard had already made his way from Lawrence to Provincetown
as a 19-year-old, but he was living with two bunkmates in Stop
& Shop’s employee housing and not using his true name at
work. The two are now engaged and living in New Orleans.
Ethan Jackson came from Defiance, Ohio almost immediately after
turning 18. He found work at a bike shop, but accessing health care
was his big achievement last summer. Becker brought Jackson to
Outer Cape Health Services to sign up for MassHealth, and he made
his own appointments to address a heart condition that had sent him
to the emergency room a year earlier.
“MassHealth is amazing,” said Jackson. “I got
primary care, because that’s something I did not receive
growing up, and from there I took the wheel and made the steps to
get my surgery.”
Jackson had Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, in which extra
electrical pathways inside the heart lead to a racing heartbeat,
lightheadedness, and fainting. He had an ablation procedure last
September to remove the excess nerve tissue that causes the
problem.
Jackson took a job at Canteen that October and now lives in the
restaurant’s employee housing. He also runs spotlights at the
Crown & Anchor’s drag shows.
“I don’t want to use the word
‘liberating,’ because everyone uses that word —
but you don’t feel like you have this target on your
back,” said Jackson. He was never physically attacked,
Jackson said, but two weeks after he left Defiance, a 14-year-old
with a gay flag was beaten up on his school’s bleachers in
broad daylight.
“To be able to walk down the street holding hands —
it’s like night and day,” said Jackson.
“I’m out without even having to tell people, and
it’s the kind of freedom that everyone deserves to
experience.”
Becker expects to host six or eight young adults next summer,
and 12 or 14 the year after that. Her donors agree that Summer of
Sass needs a real staff now, and she and two other people will get
a salary.
Real estate agent Nathan Butera started helping Becker look for
property in May. He said he had agreed to donate to Sass his share
of the sales commission on whatever they found.
They looked seriously at a two-family house whose owner had
recently died, Butera said, and the three-family house at 262B
Bradford. They each could have held six participants, although the
Bradford property had year-round tenants who would eventually have
been displaced by the young people in Becker’s program.
The short-term rental properties and guest houses they looked at
had many more bedrooms, and among them Stowaway had by far the most
common space. These options were more expensive than other houses,
but none would displace any tenants, and they allowed the
organization to grow much faster.
With a million dollars to spend on real estate —
Becker’s original estimate of what could be raised —
Butera said, “It was going to be more of a baby-step kind of
thing.” Down the road, the organization would have to plan to
build or find another way to expand, said Butera. “But she
had her fundraiser, and she raised more than that. It went from
there.”