Spent the last few days of 2024 in Newport, Rhode Island. It was an impromptu decision that came out of nowhere (or so I think). I jotted down some of these words in my pocketbook sitting outside of the cute Picnic Cafe in the rain, right by perhaps the most English corner of the town, trying to put my emotions into their places.
I hiked through the entire Cliff Walk trail on the second day of my stay. It took me approximatedly three and a half hours. I walked rather slowly, spending most of the time being in awe, and sometimes stopped to take in as much beauty and brutalness nature offers. With each step I took, I thought that would be it – I took mental pictures of what I believed at the moment would be the most incredible segment of the ocean and the sunset, only to be surprised how fast I was proven wrong. Some segments are quite hard to hike — the rocks are in all shapes and colors and are lying there to humble you becasue they preceded you by centuries and will inevitably outlive you. I had to hyper-focus on the choices I made — in terms of which rock to jump on — such that I wouldn’t mistep and fall into the ocean. The force of wind constantly reminds me that it would be a good idea to turn back like majority of hikers. Nothing seems to matter when you stand on a huge rock that streches out into but remains above the ocean. Provoked by the breathtaking view, thoughts come into my mind all at once, processed by the cold air running through my nose and mouth into the my cerebral cortex, turned into million pieces of compelling yet unrecognizable emotional simulators. I was forced to face them, to listen to them, and to feel them. It was daunting. It was too quiet. I was too exposed. I could walk off a ledge then and there. When the sun went down gradually, I felt the impusle to cry, incessantly, without inhibition, even though I long forgot how to cry as an emotional being. My eyes were so dry from the wind blowing so I could cry that way as well.
On my first night here, I went to a pub and a random local loudmouth sat immediately next to me and insisted that I follow his lead and he would show me the best spots in town. It did not take much persuasion. He indeed seemed to know evey single barkeep in town. We hopped from one bar to another, and I had to constantly fight off his nudge to move along to the next one before we even finished our first drink. That night, an ambulance also got invovled, but no one was hurt (badly). It is just like a regular night out in Brooklyn for me — regulars and newcomers were too drunk to maintain any coherent conversations and too busy telling one another they love them.
The following would be harder for me to articulate but I am trying. What had happened was rather simple, but I was never sure how I felt about it. The second night of my stay, after an overpriced yet underwhelming seafood dinner, I was on the quest for live music. Stumbled into a bar called “Speakeasy,” which is not in any sense a speakeasy with that spaceous frontyard in sight. The music man was a high-spirited man with a guitar, playing a jambalaya of covers. In stark contrast to the post-wedding crowd that were dancing their heart out, there was this bouncer who looked too young and ruggedly handsome to be doing this job. He looked a bit maudlin and sat there with a poker face and a baseball cap like a statue. He was just doing his job, I suppose. He stepped outside when I was smoking. He asked me where I came from and what I was doing here in Newport. I returned the question. Quickly, I learned that he used to play football as a quarterback in Salve Regina University here in Newport, majoring in economics. After playing football in the Midwest for a while and when things did not quite work out, he started feeling homesick and moved back to Rhode Island. He was trying to make it as a football coach. “I would never be able to live out there,” he meant New York, “it is good here.” He spoke about Newport in such mellow and loving manner. But there was an undercurrent in his seemingly even sounding tone – I sensed a smidgen of sadness as well as suppressed and unfulfilled longing.
I ended up staying till closing and kept hanging out with him while the barkeeps were counting ther tips. He invited me to his place. I said no at first but then changed my mind. During the drive to his aprtment, he said he spotted me in the bar because I looked so secure hanging out by myself. “You looked real.” When we got to his place, he pointed to the framed pictures on the shelf. “Her name is V. She’s my daughter. She’s 11 years old.” Apparently, he shared custody of V with his ex after they got divorced. V is his pride and joy and the best thing happened to him. He then showed me his oil painting in progress in the kitchen. The painting captured the perfect moment of sunset by the ocean – it was the exact scene that moved me deeply yesterday by the cliff. The painting meanwhile carried such a dark timber as if a storm was forming in progress, ready to decimate the deceptively tranquil heaven on earth. “I can never get the tone right.” He became a bit obsessive and started to tinker with the color of the sun with his fingers. We retreated to the living room and he turned off the light. We began to have sex. He was always so gentle, and sometimes insecure, which only accentuated how gentle he was. I do not wish to compare it with any sex with strangers I experienced previously. It does not matter if the sex was good or not, the profound sadness associated with the sex with him turned an otherwise textbook one-night-stand into something else. He was not trying to show his virility or skills or feigning passion, he was there to connect with someone and to feel less desolate. The way he had sex was also how he spoke about events. He was very straghtforward about his previous life being a quarterback or getting divorced. He was not shy articulating his affection for his daughter and his longing for being a football coach. But he told me about these things with such aloofness, as if he was narrating someone else’s life without commentary. They are just events that had already happened, devoid of any possibility for change. I crashed on his couch for two hours of sleep. When I got dressed, I noticed that he hanged all my clothes nicely behind the door. I left quietly without saying goodbye. Despite having done it more times than I’d like to admit, I’ve felt so alone and crestfallen this time, almost grief-stricken. It felt like severing a tie that has been built for years.
I got back to my B&B around 8 in the morning, and tried to make sense of what I was feeling. This town grows on me so fast, almost as soon as I got there without any expectation. There are a lot of objective reasons to love this place, such as the illusion of being in Europe, the friendliest faces, the slow if not stagnated pace of living, scenaries that bring you to your tears. For me, I began to realize that I fell in love with it becasue this place is a destination, an endgame, a solution. It is not a midway to elsewhere, or a means to an end. The ambitious kind would not care for this place, but the ones who arrived and stayed run the risk of never feeling like leaving. The town exerts a strong pull to those who lost too many battes to feel happy about where their lives are going.
My brief encounter with him made my last day in Newport especially hard to get through. That Irish goodbye should have been the perfect ending to my trip. Anything else that followed would pale in comparison to that night. I was so overwelmed by stream of emotions that I would not be able to pay enough attention to anything else. If Newport was a person, that would be him. It was not the unrealized romance that crippled me. Delusional as I am, it is clear we would never have romantic entaglement other than that night. It was the feeling of wanting but never getting, which boosts the self-fulfilled prophecy of being a hopeless romantic. The wanting is in being content and happy and loved, in slowing down and foregoing the constant need to move on, in not being alone and having to put on a brave face all the time. I came here alone, trying to get away from reality. But reality and the misery that comes with only became more pronounced as soon as I get a dollop of joie de vie but must leave it behind.
The next day, it was raining nonstop. I went to the Island Cemetery and spent the afternoon in utter silence and solitude. In the evening, I met some interesting people at bars and had some good conversations. But nothing registered in my heart and mind more than that night, where not many words were exchanged and not much action took place. I have still yet to process it fully a week after that night. Two days after I came back to New York, it was New Year’s Eve. Here I was, in a bar, bumping shoulders with people who were in a more celeratory spirit, and back to my familar surroundings I convinced myself that I love so much, feeling the wanting again, and more alone than ever.