Fear and Bloating on the Vineyard

Nude beaches. Sunburned Secret Service agents. Gossip columnists. Paparazzi. Airhead TV reporters. Wired caterers. Carly Simon. Just another day on the trail of the First Family's vacation.

by Jason Gay

If you really want to get to the bottom of President Clinton's vacation on Martha's Vineyard, sometimes you have to get naked. Or at least semi-naked.

It's a Thursday in August, temperature hovering at 85 degrees, and I'm standing at the edge of Philbin Beach, a residents-only shoreline in the Vineyard township of Gay Head, where bathing au naturel is considered an unalienable human right. There is enough pink, flabby flesh and naughty parts around here to impress even Bob Guccione, but I'm too Catholic and too chickenshit, so I'm protectively wrapped in a white T-shirt and swim trunks. Today, I'm decidedly in the minority.

I'm here to talk with Ted Collins, a year-round resident and an old friend, about President Clinton's impending vacation return to the island. Ted, whose long brown hair is approaching the dreadlock stage, partied a little too much last night and is a tad foggy, but says he's got a good story to tell. Ted's a house cleaner, and the last time Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton vacationed on the Vineyard, he cleaned up the First Family's waterfront bungalow after they left.

"Man, there was crap everywhere," Ted recalls. "I couldn't believe it. When we walked in there, there was this big, heaping pile of damp laundry on the floor -- presidential towels, bathrobes, just left right in the middle of the floor."

"What else did you find?" I ask.

Ted pauses for a moment and thinks. "Sorbet. The freezer was full of sorbet."

"What flavor?"

"Strawberry . . . no, raspberry. Raspberry sorbet."

"That's it?"

"That's what I remember."

Perhaps you are not impressed with Ted's revelations. But raspberry sorbet is what you get when you are assigned to cover the vacation of a president. Minutiae like this become the lifeblood of the press pool; weeks' worth of copy must be generated from a White House itinerary that could adequately be summarized on a cocktail napkin.

In the media circus that surrounds a presidential vacation, substance takes a holiday, and journalists must instead prey upon dimly recalled tidbits from waiters, golf pros, taxi drivers, and house cleaners like Ted Collins. Reporters are beeped out of bed to watch Clinton drag himself to a golf course; they are trapped in a government-issue minivan until midnight, waiting for the First Family to depart some celebrity-infested dinner party they are not invited to join. They are hot on the trail of a vacationing president, trying to spin hard news from soft raspberry sorbet.

Part 2

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.