I got off the short flight to Boston and spent an hour staring up at a maze of exposed wires, ducts and tubes in the missing ceiling of Logan airport. What an ugly spot for a reunion, I thought. I wondered if I could snap a shot of the labyrinth of wires without being arrested for terrorist activities, and decided against it. A security officer chatted me up. I tried to look as unterrorifying as possible, begging him in my head to go away. Finally the Scotsmontonian came off his overnight flight.

After a few iterations of trial and error with what our holidays, bank accounts and personal fortitude can sustain, the Scotsmontonian and I have settled into a routine of meeting every three weeks, once here, once there, and once somewhere else. So here we were, somewhere else.

After Air Canada cheerfully reported that his luggage would “surely follow soon”, and I told the story of how an airline once lost my dead grandfather’s body for the 1000th time, we were on our way into Boston. I reflected in the hot and nasty subway that it should really be spruced up, as it’s probably the first Boston experience for many tourists.

When I was little, my grandfather went to Mexico and drowned. The airline lost the body for a few days. A really important person called my mother and apologized. As far as I know, they did not offer to compensate financially by the kilo. 1001.

It would be the last time I called Boston ugly in any way. That Boston is beautiful is something I’ve always known in the back of my mind, but had to see for myself to really know, like the fact that Milk Bones only look yummy. This weekend, the former became glaringly obvious. What’s unique about Boston’s beauty is that its many spots of gorgeous, from the brownstones of the South End, through the impressive sci-fi buildings of the financial district, to the quaint Quincy and neighboring marina, are not connected to each other through corridors of ugly, as is often the case. Boston does a good job of hiding its ugly, if ugly there is.

Our favorite sci-fi building was 111 Huntington, which is topped with a dome of concentric circles. It is surely the site of many an endgame battle between superheroes and villains. I mean, it just looks like it would attract epic apocalyptic showdowns between evil and light. When the circles begin spinning on themselves, they surely open a vortex that sucks cats and dogs (nothing else, mind you) into another plane of existence.

We visited the sites of the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, saw the USS Constitution, Paul Revere’s house and Cheers. I love big cities that are not built according to a grid plan, probably because I’ve never had to drive in one. But there it is, wedge-shaped buildings make me warm and fuzzy. At the Quincy Market, I turned down the Scotsmontonian’s offer to buy me Boston terrier earrings. Then I kind of regretted it.

I had to promise the Scotsmontonian that Cliff and Norm were only on vacation, that they otherwise would be sitting at the bar, and that of course they knew his name.

After two days in Beantown, we took the ferry to Provincetown, a “gay-friendly oceanside community”. After giving us a tour of our seaside cottage, our host handed us a paper detailing the local current events, which had a picture of a person in a gimp suit on the cover. Embarrassed, he tried to apologize for the current leather festival, but we told him we lived in the Village. I never thought posing as a veteran of the fetish scene would get me out of an awkward situation. As if to keep up the pretense, we went for a little walk and ended up going into a fetish shop, the only open shop that night. A small group of round, past-middle-aged female tourists from Orlando attracted our attention when the eldest one fell backwards onto the floor. When I asked what had shocked her so, the owner showed me the rock chick, a female stimulation device. That’s when I decided that the Orlandonians were probably not here for the leather fest. At the same time I wondered if the Scotsmontonian would have offered to buy me that, had it come in a Boston terrier motif.