Torna a Sorriento (NOW, DAMN IT!)

Sorrento is a great place to be.  From Sorrento, you can easily access the Amalfi Coast, one of the most beautiful and terrifying bus rides in Europe.  We sat in the front seat of the tour bus as we made our way along the winding, narrow road that lies, in my opinion, much too close to the edge of cliffs that drop almost straight down a thousand or more feet into the Gulf of Salerno. (I'm not sure about the exact height of the cliffs; but, let's face it, five hundred, a thousand, two thousand . . .Who gives a crap?  As far as I'm concerned, if the question, "If I fell off of here, would I die in a bone splintering, terminal splat?" can be answered in the affirmative, I am officially terrified.)  Compound the height with the fact that buses -- big 'ol regular tour buses -- are passing one another going in opposite directions along a narrow two-lane road, filled with pedestrians, motorcycles and parked cars, and I begin to feel the heat in my feet.

Since I was a child, hot feet has been my response to any perceived potential falling threat.  I grew up in Buffalo, New York.

 ( Yes, Buffalo, friends. The city is not without its merits. It is the place where one of our least affective, shortest tenured presidents died as a the result of a gunshot wound. It is the place, obviously, where Buffalo Wings were born. It is the only place where you can eat "beef on 'weck," and it is known everywhere for its winter precipitation. 

When I was living in Sweden, about four hundred miles below the article circle, my friends would ask me, "Does the snow in Sweden bother you?" I would just say, "I grew up in Buffalo." and all of them would begin nodding in unison.

My favorite line ever about Buffalo was in "A Chorus Line." One of the dancers says something like, "There was a time when I became suicidal, but I couldn't go through with it because I was living in Buffalo and it seemed redundant." While I am a huge Ani DiFranco fan and I loves me some Polish sausage, I have never regretted my departure.)

Whenever anybody came to visit, they had to be taken to Niagara Falls, of course.  It's one of the seven wonders of the world and it is very close to Buffalo.  As I would approach the edge of the escarpment to look over the fence and into the water below, my feet would begin to burn, as though I were standing on hot asphalt, and it wouldn't stop till I backed far enough away from the railing to block my view.  My sister has the same bizarre reaction.

In addition, if I lived on the Amalfi Coast -- and there is literally NO chance of that -- and I had a car, I would have all the side panels removed from it and stored until I  was ready to sell it. 

The sole purpose this little Amalfi jaunt was to go to a town called, Positano.  It is supposedly one of the European haunts of the incredibly wealthy.  People with money "LOVE"  (exhale the word and throw your head back) the place.  People who carry their dogs in their purses go there to "get some rest" from the hideous torments of Beverly Hills, and the Upper East Side.

I just cannot bear the thought of one more, minute-long elevator ride to the penthouse, listening to that annoying, electronic buzz.  I've got to get out of here.  Fly me to Positano immediately!  Call Hollis, I'm sure she'll go with me.

So, we middle-class schmoes, the vast majority of whom will never experience that lifestyle . . .

 (. . . a lottery winning not withstanding . . . and, by god, I will not give up my right to dream of boundless wealth being bestowed upon me, not because I did anything, but just by sheer unadulterated chance.   It is my religion, my drug of choice.  Nothing gets me more buzzed or harder than contemplating the vaguest possibility that, through some quirk of fate, against all prevailing odds, I will turn so fucking rich over night that I will be able to start thinking about going to Paris for a weekend;  and I will consider becoming a Republican just for a moment because I really finally think I have enough to protect;  but then of course, I will opt instead to divvy the astounding fortune with all my closest friends, leaving me just enough to keep me in sex slaves and pharmaceutical grade marijuana for the balance of my life, as I wander from town to town, giving $10,000 gifts to  people who are nice and well-intentioned and need a hand.) 

. . . we envious middle-class decide instead to pay for trans-oceanic airplane flights, innumerable train rides, and tour bus fare to see what all the fuss is about. 

When the bus pulled into Positano, Patti and I looked to our left at the houses and other buildings above us, stuck to near vertical cliffs; then we looked to our right at the houses and other buildings below us, stuck to near vertical cliffs; then we looked at one another. 

I said to Patti,"This is where we're supposed to get off?"

"This is Positano," she told me.

"Yeah, but what are we going to do?  If you decide you want to go to a restaurant up there, we gotta hire a freakin' Sherpa to get there and if you want to see something on the right, down there, we're going to have to rappel down."

"We could just look around at this level."

"Walk along this narrow road with cars and buses and freakin' motorcycles passing and a vertical drop of who knows how many feet?  I don't think so."

"I guess we could just stay on the bus and keeping going."

I raised up my hand.  "I vote for that.  Worst case, you vote to get off here and we've got a tie, in which case, I promise you I will invoke the Klutchman Rule, a little known element of parliamentary procedure that states that:.

'. . .when a stalemate/tie occurs during discussion and it has been determined that either or all members of the discussion is/are neurotic, the deciding vote will be cast by the person with the largest penis.'

We're not getting off the bus."  

And so, we rode to the end of the line to the town for which the Coast is named -- Amalfi -- which is on reasonably flat land.  We had a glass of very nice wine and a lunch of Frutta de Mare Risotto; then we got back on the bus and, seated on the uphill side and at the rear, returned to Sorrento.