The morning started off a comfortable routine: black coffee, cigarettes, open windows issuing a cool breeze that lapped at our bodies under a grey sky being burnt away like a match to a white napkin. Rushing to the underground to catch a ten o’clock Peter Pan Bonanza bus to Newport Rhode Island. Four people on the bus nicknamed Peter’s Dance (the upholstery, of such buses are inspired by unworn collared shirts from the 80’s; rainbow stripes, falling like ruffled sheets of paper, or painted toe-nail clippings over a charcoal-grey landscape). Passing countless Dunkin Donuts, and other vernacular commercial buildings: Red Lobsters, Olive Gardens, places I have only seen on the television when I was a child, but have never been to; summon a strange disconnected nostalgia, of getting rug burn on my chin from my parents brown rug while laying down, straining my neck upwards to watch the commercials in between episodes of Roseanne, or Doug.

We are let out in a bus loop where people are waiting above signs that say “no loitering” with a salty sea smell that I’ve nearly forgotten. The main street, riddled with tourist shops, sweat pants, “Only in Rhode Island,” pink pants with blue whales on them, ray-bans, chocolaterias, anything sophisticate or sailboat-ish. We wait for the one bus that circles the peninsula, its a gold-plated trolley with lush velvet maroon ropes that manicured hands pull when they reach their destination. We sit on the heavy lacquered wood bench while five men, younger than us with briefcases, suits and peach fuzzed faces, a business meeting? get on the bus. Gannon asks them for directions to the mansions and asks what there is to do here in Newport, they reply “it depends on the day. Sometimes its quiet, sometimes there’s stuff.” We all get off at the same stop, they go to a business university that looks like a victorian castle named Salve Regina University, and we go down to the cliffs over-looking the atlantic.

The cliffwalk that takes you on a Disneyland-like train ride through the historic mansions, great sights and views, numbered spectacles, strolling with the same three repeating archetypes of pedestrians (old women with short grey hair, colorful sweat pants clamoring over boulders, middle-aged couples; worlds greatest dad, Patriot supporters, camouflaged wearing dogs, wives without eye-contact or words, and young girls, tuned in, jogging in inspirational clothing: just do it, I put the tude in attitude, I will be here forever, and ever and ever....
Needless to say we veer off from the path, and discover many things: there is no such thing as a boring rock, countless ecosystems and strange (to me) creatures of the atlantic, how the colors of the new spring fashion line is “totally harkening to colors of the brown algae soup, so stagnant and silted with its soaked package of half-smoked marlboros, and entropy,” hours spent staring at the endless horizon of ocean and sky, and how deeply I care about the person sitting next to me, a someone to tell things to. Pass countless photo-ops that the archetypes mentioned above stop at, and pose, a star-fish, jumping jack position inside of a tunnel, the odalisque over some rocks...etc.

This is some context of the Mansions and cliffwalk at Newport Rhode Island.


Oh, and the Marble Mansion, the most known Mansion in Newport, modeled after Versailles, is, as it happens, for sale.

After walking for hours we catch the bus back into town. A Christina Ricci look-alike gets on, along with a group of cliquey girls that attend Salve Regina. Nothing seems “real” in town, whatever notions of authentic are. People are hiding behind facades of the past. Girls straight from Jersey Shore, accent and all, bend over pretending to vomit as they recoil yet give themselves to the mangey chow whose eyes are nearly oozed shut, whose fur is matted and dreadlocked, mopping the streets of butts, chewed gum, and ice-cream cones, and whose owner, a local who I feel for in dealing with these women, and all the tourists all the time.

We venture into an army-surplus store where a seventeen year old girl, dyed green hair, lanky, spiked bracelets and a large hoop in her bottom lip, plugs away at her cell phone behind the cash register, as some anonymous pop-punk circulates the store. We ask her what there is to do in Newport, and she replies with a reddening face, “drink”.
We head for the bus back to Boston, when I hear a clicking sound as we pass a parking lot. The sound is coming from a parking lot payment booth. A guy in his late twenties who overlooks the acre of space -- now empty as the sun sets -- taking the correct fare from each family in their minivans, , is tapping out a one-hitter against the side of the door, who exclaims “I’ll be here all night” as Gannon and I look over at him with sympathetic laughter, and he turns back to his bunny-eared television set positioned in front of him, now stoned.

In Boston go to the Friendly Toast, I order a mixed berry, red bull, ice-cream smoothie, that tastes a lot like peto-bismol, but soothes my insides that are burnt out from the lengthy sun exposure, I felt like a sizzled piece of bacon, forgotten on a plate.