You meet people from New York, they all wanna get out of New York. You meet people outside the city and they all wanna come here. It’s what I call damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t geography.

Right now I’m the guy in the first sentence, and I’m damned-if-I-don’t. It’s 8am on a Sunday and I step outside my door, bleary-eyed but on my way to paradise. I stayed up all night to make myself tired. Today I’m supposed to spend eleven hours in airplanes, and I’d like to be unconscious for all of them.

At this hour Canal ain’t crowded, and I tow the carry-on along the gutter in no danger of being hit by a taxi. Five years ago when I was making money I’d take a taxi to the airport, but times have changed so I’m hopping the A-train. Takes longer, costs less. Tastes great, less filling.

The guy next to me on the subway platform is jerking off. The girl standing near us notices first and hightails it out of there. My wits are dim with sleep deprivation so it takes me longer to notice this guy is masturbating and, in the absence of the girl, staring at me.

I sigh and pull my luggage to the other end of the platform, shaking my head while Horny McYankabee shakes his. He’s whacking it so enthusiastically that if I owned a whack-off company I’d hire him on the spot.

JFK is a miserable little complex of buildings, but I’m more than happy to put up with them because every time I see ‘em it means I’m about to experience another city.

Seven kids. I’ve just boarded the airplane and behind me comes a Hasidic couple with seven kids. The youngest is a baby, and they seem to scale up in two-year intervals, putting the eldest at around twelve (assuming the age of the baby is zero).

I am in awe, absolute awe, of the father. He holds nine tickets in his hand, trying to figure out which seats are which while the children clamor amongst themselves loudly.

“Hey,” says the father, softly. “Is everyone listening to me?” All of the children fall silent, instantly.

He didn’t raise his voice or put the slightest bit of menace in it, but his entire brood is facing him obediently, awaiting orders. Fucking amazing. I’ve never seen parental control like this in my life, and I’m Asian.

“Okay, it looks like we have these two rows,” he says, indicating the row I’m in, and the one in front of me. Due to inattentive ticketing clerks I have been placed smack-dab in the middle of Swiss Family Hasidim.

I figure I’ll do the right thing. “You want me to move, so alla youse can sit together?” I say to Hasidic Superdad.

“Oh, so you want the window seat?” he asks.

“No no--”

“So you want to sit in the aisle.”

Jeez Louise, everything’s a negotiation. “No no, it doesn’t make a difference to me. I’m saying, if you all want to sit together I can move. Up to you.”

Hasidic Superdad turns to his wife, who gives me a sour look and nods grudgingly, like she’s doing me some kind of favor. I’m not sure what that was about but I move over anyway, thereby uniting the family.

Unfortunately my act of good Samaritanism puts me in the exceedingly cramped window seat, where I discover sleep is impossible. Well, if I don’t do anything else right today, at least I enabled Hasidic contiguousness.

I transfer at LAX without event, and on the second flight I’m seated next to a lanky businessman with a southern drawl. “You in the service back in Hawaii?” he asks. Takes me a minute to realize a) he thinks I’m going back to Hawaii, like I’m from there, and b) he thinks I’m in the military.

“Thought you might be a Marine,” he says, indicating my haircut. “We do a fair amount of business with them in my line of work.”

I would unfortunately spend the next half hour learning about his line of work, as well as enduring a checklist of why his ex-wife is a bad, bad person. I’ll spare you the tales of both. Why do strangers always assume you care what they have to say? I continued nodding politely and tried to sleep, eventually failing at both.

Five hours later it’s like the Aloha Bowl: Touchdown in Hawaii.

Coming out of the deplaning tunnel, I haven’t slept a damn wink, my neck’s got a crick and it’s hot like a club. I pull the hoodie off and make for baggage claim. Not because I checked anything but because that’s where the exit is.

Outside I light my first smoke in what feels like forever and unkink my neck. There are palm trees here. Staring at them, I call my contact.

She appears within minutes, says my name, smiles, and puts a lei around my neck. This is like some kind of dream. Less than twenty-four hours ago I was standing underground and wrinkling my nose, trying to discern if I’d stepped in human feces. Now I'm wearing flowers and standing in a summery breeze, blinking.

(By the by, if you’re awaiting a more detailed description of my benefactor...sorry. She funded this trip and I’ve got some privacy issues to uphold.)

She’s come with a small posse. The group of us exchange pleasantries and a few moments later I’m climbing into a car with four complete strangers, two dudes, two chicks.

Part of me was worried but most of me wasn’t; these cats were so laid back, if they tried to stab me it would be in slow-motion and I’d see it coming a mile away. I could drink a steaming cup of coffee while dodging their blows and avoid spilling a single drop.

“Thanks for picking me up,” I say to the driver, as he pulls us onto something called the Nimitz Highway.

“No problem ah,” he says. He’s deeply tanned and looks as if he’s never been angry in his entire life. I bet I could grab the wheel, steer the car into a ditch and he would just kind of grin.

We’re in the car for maybe two minutes before I see a rainbow. I guess they’re commonplace around here, but back in New York the only rainbows you see are printed on banners hoisted skyward by marching homosexuals. I gape and snap a blurry photo, quick and spazlike.

“First time in Hawaii, eh?” says the driver, in his pleasant local drawl.

“I was here when I was eight...uh...twenty-five years ago. Don’t remember much,” I say, cursing as my auto-focus neglects to cooperate with me.

Next we pull up in front of the car rental place, where my benefactor has arranged a rental for me. This and my meals will be the part of the trip I am paying for. She knows I’m flat broke and has reserved me a Dodge Neon, the cheapest car on the lot.

My hosts wait outside while I sort the rental papers out at the counter. I tap my credit card on the edge.

“Dodge Neon, automatic, A/C....” says the clerk, peering into his computer screen and tapping keys. Behind him, hanging on the wall is a picture of a gold convertible in front of a grassy field.

Don’t ask, don’t ask. Just don’t.

“Just out of curiousity, how much more would a convertible be?” I ask.

“Hmm, let’s see.” He types some more, looks confused for a moment, then looks pleased. “I can give you a special: It will work out to...eight dollars more.”

“Eight dollars total?” I say, in disbelief. A business major I’m not.

“Eight dollars more per day,” he explains, in the manner you tell a small child that policemen and firemen are not the same thing. “For the week that’ll run you an extra fifty-six dollars.”

Fifty extra bucks. Don’t do this, Rain, don’t. You need that fifty bucks. Fifty-six bucks.

“If you skip the insurance it will work out to about the same,” adds the clerk.

For god’s sake, Rain, for once in your life act like an adult, be responsible and live within your means. Don’t get the convertible, don’t get the convertible. You don’t need it and you can’t afford it.

So I pull out of the lot in the convertible. It’s a Chrysler Sebring, which isn’t exactly a Mustang, but I’m not exactly Steve McQueen.

A moment of staring at that photo behind the counter and a moment of brief, sullen reflection on my life back in New York ensured the Dodge Neon would stay in the back of the lot. Perhaps it would be rented out later, by some sensible-shoes-wearing motherfucker with a dental plan and a future. But here’s me, putting the top down, feeling the sun on my shorn pate and asking a woman I don’t know, “Where to?”

“To check you into your hotel,” she says. “Follow them.”

The rest of the group pulls off in their sedan and I peel after them, adjusting my seat and mirrors. I’d be used to this in a minute.