The Sunday Laze – Martha’s Vineyard Edition

by travistack

Martha’s Vineyard is many things to many people (an affluent summer community to some, a fishing village racked by inflation to others); either way, no one can claim it isn’t beautiful. Even when they cut down trees and kick out locals to build another golf course, the golf course still seems prettier than other golf courses (it’s too bad I don’t like golf that much). To me, Martha’s Vineyard is where my heart comes to rest; it’s the place where I came into myself (metaphorically, not literally).
It’s the first place I smoked pot (there; the secret’s out), but it’s far more than that. It’s where I made my first adult friends; where I met most, and definitely the first, of the people who would pepper my life with their presence for years to come.

The island is a mess of day-trippers, celebrities and earnest, hard-working natives (though, when I say natives, I’m mostly looking to history that only spans back about a hundred years or so, as most of the actual natives have either died off or left since then). I worked at a fish market there for four summers during High School, selling lobster to bumbling leafers and eating pilfered shrimp in the back cooler. Before that, I worked at a playschool looking after the children of those who are visiting and have the money to pay someone to look after their children. Both led me to discover and explore many different community subsets.
The social hierarchy of the Island is quite amusing; though many associate the Vineyard with name brand celebrities (it’s where Jay-Z got married) and a rich tapestry of the American bourgeoisie, the upper-middle class, polo shirts seems to stick to their own kind, whereas the famous have a long running history with the locals (possibly because fisherman are less enamored with the lives of the rich and famous; or, at least, act as though they are).
It was through my connections and relationships with these people that I generally found myself involved in varied run-ins with celebrity that would not have happened without a little help from my friends. For instance, I was once kicked out of a fourth of July party at Jim Belushi’s house for being too rowdy.
Let me say that once more, just to bask in the glory of that sentence:
“I was once kicked out of a fourth of July party at Jim Belushi’s house for being too rowdy”.

READ ON FOR MORE ABOUT JIM BELUSHI, JAMES TAYLOR, THE KENNEDYS, THE FORBES’ and MORE!

(…Continued.)

Again… “I was once kicked out of a fourth of July party at Jim Belushi’s house for being too rowdy”.

[FEEL FREE TO IGNORE THE FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT] Now that I’ve put that wonderful image in your head, I feel the need to explain that, ACTUALLY, a sixteen year old me was politely asked to leave for making an ass of myself, and Jim Belushi is most likely completely unaware of the incident. So, really, it’s not half as cool as I made it sound. But none the less, it made me feel special.

I remember walking by a gas station one time with a friend. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Jim Belushi approached us. He pulled my friend over to the side and asked, kindly, if he had any idea where his son was. This was also the place where Jim Belushi once approached my sister, said “here. Watch this kid for a second”, and then left his child with her, a complete stranger, while he went to browse the sea-food (leading me to believe it’s not surprising that he doesn’t know exactly where his son is).
But, no matter how it sounds, it’s not actually bad parenting, because the Vineyard is also the only place where you can trust a random stranger to actually take care of your kids while you have something else you need to do.

In general, the Vineyard is a place where a lot of stuff involving Jim Belushi has happened. I think we can all be glad that we don’t even know the half of it. But, Belushi is just one of many names people associate with the Island. An even more integral subculture has to be members of James Taylor’s family (of whom I have many great stories, most of which will not be mentioned here in respect of their privacy; but let me just say, a lot of them involve narcotics).
[In an interesting side note: The “sleepy senorita with the eyes of fire” from James’ song Mexico is a reference to the mother of my sister’s ex-boyfriend. Though they met in London and have no Martha’s Vineyard connection between the two of them.]
The whole family is an interesting breed. It’s not unordinary for people to come home only to find a Taylor walking aimlessly around inside their house. When I first started at the fish market, I worked with James’ niece. She was a nice girl who had an obsession with writing “what the !” on things and she once told me I should try to be funny like Lenny Clarke; then told me she thought it was hysterical when Lenny said if someone wants to name a sandwich after him at the local deli he should come down there and “stick his dick in the mayo”.
Two years later an extremely skinny and almost unrecognizable Lenny Clarke, riding high on the success of “Rescue Me”, would walk into the fish market and it took ten minutes before almost everyone there started saying “Hey, Lenny! Good to see you, I hardly recognized you”.
Because that’s the type of community it is. Another time, Clarke would drive by, and stick his whole upper body out of the car just to yell “hello” to an acquaintance of mine.

Of course, celebrity is just one part of the Island. For many it’s simply a place of peace and serenity (a home away from the home that’s near work). Martha’s Vineyard is easily one of the most naturally beautiful places on earth; a welcome change from the almost post-apocalyptic metropolis that is Chicago. (As I’m writing this back in the city, a man just walked up to the fence ten feet away from me and began pissing on it.)
The Vineyard is home to a climate so welcoming that many frequenters actually prefer sleeping in beds or TeePees. It’s actually quite logical, though a little confusing when you walk around an expensive house only to find it’s residents sleeping outside in a TeePee.

I recently returned to my spiritual home on a short summer vacation with my girlfriend, Brooke (who will be happy to finally read her name in an article of mine). It was quite an experience visiting the Vineyard with the perspective of one who had not yet been. She noticed many things I personally take for granted at this point; for instance, she still laughs at the fact that the native tribal land is called “Gay Head” (now renamed “Aquinnah” because the inherent humor was a little too hacky and obvious for the board of tourism). The trip was speckled with her inquiries about the Kennedy Complex (not actually located on the Island) and questions regarding the whereabouts of David Cross, one of many famous faces vacationing there. Though we never found the Kennedy Complex (due to it being on Cape Cod), we did find out David Cross had been staying with a friend of a friend, and had briefly massaged a co-worker and best-friend of mine. Apparently he gives good massages.

On the ferry over, Brooke and I played a game called “Father and Son OR gay lovers with an age difference”. We later discovered it was a father and son, but they were German, so that cleared up all the confusion.
Brooke’s curiosity and willingness to ask questions of other human beings actually taught me a lot. It was through her questions that I can now actually identify a distant body of land as “the Elizabeth Islands”, and discovered one of the Islands (“Naushon”) is actually owned by the Forbes family.
If you don’t know the Forbes family, they’re the people who created Forbes magazine; a magazine about being rich, for rich people, comparing which rich people are richer than other rich people. It’s a family where one man actually looked at another person, said “I’m richer than him”, and then made a whole magazine based around that fact.
They now own an entire Island. (Frankly, if I owned an entire Island, I probably live there year-round and spend almost 100% of my time naked. Who knows what they decided to do.)

Although sublimely beautiful, the Vineyard and it’s neighbors have also been privy to many disasters. This is where John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed his small prop-plane (I was on Island at the time), where Ted Kennedy crashed his car resulting in the death of secretary Mary Jo Kopechne (I was not alive at the time); and, where I once screwed up an order of fish for Caroline Kennedy (It was entirely my fault).
Not many Island stories don’t turn into fish-tales; the risk becomes greater, the tail longer, and the cops more menacing. And yet, it really is that exciting. This is one of many places where the happenings, when retold, are doomed to disbelief by the reality of their own sheer ludicrousness. This is where, when I was fourteen, a rock-star (son of another more famed rock-star) met me and my friends, and then, within seconds, asked us all if wanted to take ecstasy with him and have an orgy in his van (unfortunately for the sake of the story, we declined).
This is where a fisherman I worked with accidentally gaffed a crew-mate in the face, causing his eye to pop-out of his head, only to instant smack the eyeball back in with one smooth motion and then watch over the next week as his friend recovered with almost no ocular damage. The crewmate recalls the event as getting “gaffed” then “punched in the face”; but, luckily, he can still see. I guess what I’m saying is it’s an eyeland of miracles (get it? Eye-land? …God, that one was bad).

Anyone who has had the pleasure knows that driving on Martha’s Vineyard is like playing a video game. The speed limits are absurd, the lane’s are tiny and you spend the whole time watching out for bikers, pedestrians and deer (any of which can pop up out of nowhere in a split second) while concurrently changing speeds to avoid being arrested at one of the many traffic patrollers. One step out of line and it’s game over; quite literally.

The roads may be a mess, but they are also a great place to play another fun game of mine, entitled: “Is that guy swerving because he’s drunk or because he’s driving with his knees?”.
At one point, we accidentally ended up driving the wrong way down a one-way street. We were forced to pull off into a handicapped-parking zone, at which point we accidentally turned on the windshield wipers and spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to turn them off.
Luckily, we were only seen by an entire tour-group waiting to board their bus.

After a few short days that could have happily lasted a lifetime, Brooke and I had to pack up our things, get on a ferry and leave for the mainland. Neither one of us was ready to leave and no one ever is.
We spent one night in town so I could do a show at The Comedy Studio in Cambridge, MA’s one and only Harvard Square. For those who don’t know, the Comedy Studio is a club hidden in the attic of a Chinese Restaurant, known for being frequented by members of the Conan O’Brien family and welcoming new talent, giving a start to both Brendan Small and Eugene Mirman. I was lucky enough to do a set along side Reggie Williams and Bethany Van Delft, two very talented Boston up-and-comers. (When I debuted there in 2004, I was lucky enough to do shows with Esther Ku, Abe Smith and Max Silvestri; who, though you possibly haven’t heard of them, are all great comics in their own right.) It was truly great being back at the club; it’s always a great environment filled with talented local insiders. As Rick Jenkins, the manager and MC, says: Most clubs put up ten shitty comics and one great host… they like to do the opposite.
While in Boston, we stayed at the Radisson. It’s a good hotel and I would love to say it’s because their reputation preceded them, but in reality it’s because they have a pool. When we arrived, I accidentally tipped the door-man $5 for moving our bags ten feet to the door, only to realize I no longer had money to tip the bell-hop who actually delivered them to our room. I later caught up with him and tipped him in singles. I think he hated me.

[Now, for all intensive purposes, the following details are entirely fictional.]
Before we left, we went swimming in the pool and then made sure to smoke one last joint on the balcony of our hotel room. While we were passing it back and forth, I looked up, over the city, across crowded streets, only to see two construction workers sitting on the frame of an unfinished building, also passing a joint back and forth between themselves. I don’t know if they noticed us or not, but either way I felt a sort of comradery with them and left feeling as though we had bonded through our unacknowledged session in the sky.
It had been a good trip, but, to sum it up in what should have been Timothy Leary’s final words: “All good trips must come to an end.”