Today’s soundtrack:
peoples peoples peoples
you know what it means to be left alone
Today at 7:42pm: it’s too cold to be sitting at a sidewalk café, but so what.


A friend gave me two tickets to see a Japanese play. I knew nothing about the play except that it was all in Japanese, with supertitles.

(I didn’t know what “supertitles” were until I went to an opera--“Tosca”--as part of a class I was taking in college. Basically they put a small screen above the action and project English translations of the dialogue onto it. So they’re subtitles but they’re on top, hence the “super-” prefix...stop me if I’m talking down to you.)

Yuka was supposed to go with me, but bailed out last-minute because Mike got her swing-dancing lessons for her birthday. Several friends then declined the extra ticket so on a whim I headed to Sunrise Mart, a Japanese supermarket I go to for the canned coffee.

There’s a girl that works the counter there and we’re friendly, every once in a while I run into her on the sidewalk. Figured I’d ask her to go, so I did, and she said no. Well, whaddaya gonna do.

On the way out of the house I left a note for Lawyer Girl.

Darling,

I’m off to the theater. Please read Billy
a bedtime story and correct last night’s
assertion that his father is a “lying,
two-faced degenerate gambler.”

P.S. I found out about that life
insurance policy you took out on me.

I ended up going with Filmmaker Wendy, who doesn’t speak Japanese (she’s a Mandarin-talker) although her live-in boyfriend is Japanese. She works in Chinatown, close to where I live, so before the show we met up at Excellent Dumpling House.

Over shao lon pau we talked about how we both feel like we don’t have many friends, at least not the way we used to. Once both of us were well-liked and had some kind of social relevance. But now we both feel the things people used to like about us are things we no longer possess. We’ve somehow outgrown, shed, or otherwise forgotten these qualities, and for this we have paid a social price.

That in itself is sad, but what’s worse is that we don’t particularly miss these qualities, though we miss the times spent with friends. We’re all simply different people now. Getting older is really weird. I shudder to think what my forties will be like. At this rate I’m not only going to die alone, I’m going to die with shit in hock.

On the six-train, Wendy and I are shooting the shit when a Mariachi band gets on at Grand Central and starts playing right in front of us, pre-empting conversation. They were pretty good so we didn’t mind. When we got off at 68th Street we each automatically dug dollars out of our pockets to give them. Wendy and I both make less money than anyone we know but to us, this is what money is for.

The play, “Kazuki,” was at the Kaye Theater at Hunter College. In front of the theater is a smattering of Japanese people, mostly twenty- and thirtysomethings. Assembled off to the side, in front of a staircase, is a large group of black and Latino kids, high school students by the looks of them.

A harried-looking, bespectacled Japanese woman scuttles up to the top of the stairs and addresses the high school kids. “Okay everyone, I want all of us to meet right back here after the show. Wakarimasuka?” she asks. Do you understand?

“Wakarimasu,” (We understand), the students say, as a group.

Wendy and I take our seats on the balcony level, smack-dab in the middle of the kids, who are surprisingly orderly for high school students. When I was in high school I couldn’t sit in a balcony and resist the temptation to throw things over the edge. I got thrown out of Zelig.

I won’t say the play was bad, but I will say I didn’t enjoy it. The subject matter was kind of dark; it’s the true story of a famous Japanese painter whose mind was forever twisted by his hellish experiences in a World War II Siberian gulag. Call me shallow but when I go into theaters I like to be lightly entertained, as opposed to being forced to share another person’s pain.

It’s like this, boss: If you wrap your Toyota around a pole in front of my house, I’ll call you an ambulance. If you play uplifting guitar music and you look like you’re starving I’ll give you a dollar. Shit, if you need a bone marrow match and I’m the Black-47 your roulette ball lands on, I’ll let them stick me with that horse needle.

But if you’ve got a sob story, man, I just don’t wanna hear it. Don’t know what it is about me.

Today’s soundtrack: everything's gonna be alright this mornin’, now bust it
Today at 3:32am: at work on the book


By four in the morning I’m very, very tired. I click the lamp off, my head hits the pillow and I slowly begin descending into sleep. Fifteen seconds into it I hear a shockingly loud

BAMMM

and my eyes pop open.

Without a doubt that was the sound of a car accident, and judging by the volume of the crunch, the vehicle involved was huge. The lack of screeching preceding the impact means the driver didn’t even brake.

Well. I’m sure someone will call the police. There are plenty of other neighbors who probably heard it, I think, and close my eyes.

“Fuuuuck,” I say, opening them again. It’s attitudes like this that led to the Kitty Genovese thing, and I don’t want to be one of those people. (Do a Google if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) I get out of bed and start pulling clothes on.

It’s cold outside. First thing I see is a Daily News delivery truck, massive and dinosaur-proportioned, pulled over by the curb. They often rocket up my block late at night, because if you really gun it you can catch all the lights in a row. The driver is standing in front of the truck with a cell phone pressed against his ear.

The yellowcab he T-boned is thirty feet behind, skewed crazily in the middle of the intersection, passenger side crunched in like a “C.” The taxi driver is still sitting in the driver’s seat, talking calmly into his cell. Next to the cab lies the massive front bumper from the News truck, torn off from the impact.

Another yellowcab cruises past the damaged one and slows conspicuously, the way I’d imagine Serengeti wildebeests might pause when passing a mortally-wounded brother. The drivers make eye contact and then the undamaged cab is on its way.

There’s nothing for me to do down here, so I go back inside.

Poor Ms. Genovese, reduced to a paragraph or two in sociology textbooks. A shame if you ask me.

Today’s soundtrack:
So many people live in make believe,
they keep a lot a going up their sleeves.
Today at 12:02pm: On the sidewalk, me and the camera having disagreements about what to focus on.


Weird having another body in the house; I got used to living alone fast. With Lawyer Girl crashing here it’s like having a roommate again.

Still, it’s not terrible. She’s pretty low-hassle, and since she’s crashing for an extended period of time she views this as a sublet, meaning there are rent subsidies involved. (I’m broke as a joke.)

Our schedules don’t always overlap, so sometimes I leave her notes like

Dearest,

I’ve gone off to the movies, will be
back late. Please tuck the kids in.

P.S. I’ve been sleeping with the cook.

On the plus side, Lawyer Girl’s even more emotionally detached than I am. When it comes to the human condition, I thought I had a heart of stone, but hers is made out of dust from a moon of Jupiter, or whatever’s more hardcore than stone.

Which is not to say she doesn’t date. In fact she’s currently embroiled in a bit of an intrigue. Apparently her white-shoe law firm frowns upon intra-employee dating, but she’s been dipping her pen in the company ink, so to speak. The sneaking around is starting to get to her, so she’s contemplating confessing.

“Maybe [Franklin and I] should just tell everyone,” she said, sighing.

“But you’re a lawyer,” I pointed out. “You should be practiced in the art of deception.”

“True, but...I don’t know...maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we just told everyone.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. Just tell ‘em when you guys have sex it’s only in the missionary position, and only for the purpose of procreation.”

“Um...yeah, I’ll have to try that.”

“And if they don’t take it well you can just leap to your feet and scream ‘I object!’”

I’m also of the opinion that before she and [Franklin] engage in intercourse, she should turn to him and say “Motion granted.” In, like, a really solemn tone.

Today’s soundtrack: Well I wish, I was a catfish
Today at 6:02pm: at Hapkido, doing involuntary push-ups



I lost my lid today. That’s not a euphemism for getting angry, I mean I lost one of my hats. A grey newsboy, shapeless, one of my favorites. I left the house wearing it and came back bareheaded.

Went out to retrace my steps, went all the way down Broadway, but I had the feeling I’d never see the damn thing again. At the very least I hope someone else found it and is wearing it, because it’s a good hat.

Well, easy come, easy go. Tonight I’m going to gather the other hats and say a few kind words about Grey Newsboy.

It’s not right, the lid going to the hereafter before me. No man should live to bury his hat.

Today’s soundtrack: people talkin' but they just don't know
Today at 12:42am: re-connecting



Jeez Louise. For five days I had no internet and it felt like a month.

During this web-less period of time:

- I got so much done. Found the meaning of life, developed cold fusion, solved pi and all that crap. Cake.

- My evenings were rather empty. It’s not uncommon to go through entire days in this crowded city feeling starved of meaningful human interaction, so I usually make it up at night on IM or by reading other people’s journals. But with no internet I was just staring at an empty rectangle, wondering about the choices I’ve made in life.

- Went to Hapkido for three nights in a row, and tonight I even taught a double class. That felt good. Sweated like a banshee though. Wait, do banshees sweat? Actually I don’t even know what a banshee is. If you have one, make it run up and down the block and see if it sweats.

- Threw a spontaneous dinner gathering. L.A. Designer Guy was in town, incidentally crashing with Epak, who is N.Y. Designer Guy. I think I was the one who connected the two of them, can’t remember. If I did then it is one of my proudest moments, demonstrating that I do indeed serve some sort of social function. These two have been to more places around the world and know more people anywhere than anyone. If everyone in the world lost their cellphones and you had to reconstitute a global phonebook, these two guys would be a good place to start.

- Watched “On The Waterfront.” I’ve joined Netflix in my effort to watch all the black-and-white classics in an affordable way. Movies at the local video store are five bucks; Netflix is $17-something and I’ve watched five movies in the past week, so I’m already ahead of the game. I can’t understand how they make money, but you know what? I don’t need to understand it. I just need to watch the last shot of “The Third Man” and sit there going “Now that’s a killer motherfucking shot.”

My friend Lawyer Girl has been crashing at my place for the past couple weeks. She’s from L.A. but I met her when I was living in Japan. Anyways she just moved to New York for work but her apartment isn’t available until the first of November.

So the first night she crashed, we’re getting ready for bed and we both looked at my queen-sized and decided to split it. We’re both adults and blah blah blah. Anyways the next morning she gets up and she’s like, “Yeah um, I’m gonna like, sleep on the couch for the rest of the time.”

I’m wondering what the hell I did in bed! It was either snoring, groping, moaning or something to do with bodily functions, I’d imagine. I used to crash on my friend Seiji’s floor in Tokyo and he’d wake me up in the middle of the night yelling “Shut the fuck up” because, he said, I was making all kinds of nasty moaning noises. Well, you’re not responsible if you’re asleep, right?

Five years ago I probably would’ve offered to take the couch and let the lady sleep on the bed. Then again five years ago I didn’t spend my evenings on the internet. Five years ago I could also walk out my door and see the Twin Towers, I carried subway tokens that costed a buck-fifty, and coffee at the diner was seventy cents. Every morning I’d be down there with two quarters, two dimes and a sense of optimism I can scarcely recall.

Today’s soundtrack: the things that I used to do
Today at 12:02pm: the six-train is my reading room



On foot, and I hit the intersection at a strange moment.

A taxi is reversing down Mulberry. A Chevrolet is pulling some kind of crazy U-turn on Broome. I stop short on the curb to avoid getting hit by the hack and I’m too tired to curse.

The two cars have colluded to block in a third, a large white SUV with tinted windows that is now stuck in the middle of the intersection. A police cruiser brings up the rear, closing the box on three sides. The truck is pinned in.

The taxi’s front doors open, and a burly Chinese cat wearing a grey hoodie and jeans gets out of the driver’s seat. With his hand on a large silver automatic strapped to his hip, next to a pair of dangling handcuffs. I thought NYPD standard issue was Glocks, I guess the DT’s get to pick their own shit out.

His partner gets out of the other side of the taxi, covering the SUV on the passenger side.

The Chinese cop keeps his hand on his gun, eyeballs the SUV driver, then yells to the cop blocking him in from the back.

“I thought it was ‘black male,’” he yells. (The SUV driver, visibly nervous, is white.)

“It is ‘black male,’” the other cop yells back. “‘Black male, white SUV.’”

“White male, white SUV,” says the Chinese cop, indicating the SUV driver in a we’re-wasting-everybody’s-time tone of voice.

Yellow cop, yellow cab, I’m tempted to point and add, but clearly I am the only one who will find this funny. Plus it’s only medium funny and if I’m gonna get shot for making a joke I want it to be really funny.

“Wrong truck,” yells the other cop. He gets out of the cruiser, approaches the SUV driver and apologizes to him. The Chinese cop shakes his head as he and his partner get back in the taxi. In a moment all four cars disperse.

I have to leave, and I don’t want to. This week went by like my twenties: I blinked and almost missed it.

What surprised me is meeting Hawai’ians who want to leave this place. Like it’s a gas station town in the middle of nowhere. They feel they have to get out, that they won’t be able to make anything of themselves if they stay.

I guess it’s the same no matter where you go. People unable to find their dreams within their current area code. For some of my friends back home New York City, with all its subways and restaurants and taxicabs streaking past like comets, is a dead end. And for some of my acquaintances here, these palm trees, beaches and rainbows all add up to a big pile of nothing.

A shame, and thank god for the jet plane.

Last night I was hanging out on the steps of a hotel in Waikiki while Beni was inside using the bathroom. Two kids--one dark-skinned with long hair, the other, white and freckled with a shaved head--loitered nearby.

“How you doin’,” the white kid hollered to me, in a bit of a Southern drawl. Friendly around here.

“Can’t complain, yourself?” I said.

“Pretty good,” he nodded.

“You guys from here?” I asked.

“He is, ah ain’t,” said the white kid, indicating his friend, who seemed on the quiet side. “Ah’m just stationed here.”

“‘Stationed’--you in the military?” I asked, surprised. The kid didn’t look older than sixteen.

“Yep.”

“Which division?” I asked, belatedly realizing “branch” might’ve been the word I was looking for.

“Marines,” he said.

“Well, this is a helluva place to be stationed,” I said.

“Yep, unless you in Kanny-oh-hay,” he said. (Kaneohe is a town on the east side of the island.)

“Why?”

“It’s boring in Kanny-oh-hay,” he said.

“Where you from originally?” I asked.

“K’ntucky,” he said.

“Holy shit,” I heard myself blurt. “What’s it like there?”

He looked at the ground, suddenly depressed. “K’ntucky’s the whole reason ah signed up,” he said.

It’s funny what people have to do to get out of a place. I should be thankful I didn’t have to learn how to use a rifle to get out of New York.

No trip would be complete without me absentmindedly leaving something important in a hotel drawer, and this one’s no different. On the way to the airport I think of the second drawer from the bottom and a souvenir I’ll never get to see again.

I debate turning the car around, re-acquiring my keepsake, re-booking a room for another week and signing up for surfing lessons. I wanted to take surfing lessons, badly; why didn’t I remember? And I didn’t get to see any waterfalls or volcanos!

Don’t do this, don’t do this. Think about what you did see, you ingrateful little shit. Think about the people you met, the moon you got lost under, the water you floated in. The car you’re driving in. You wanna take surfing lessons so bad, save up the scratch and do something about it.

And souvenirs should be kept in your head, not in a box you only look through when you’re moving.

Beni saw me off at the airport, and the goodbye was brief. She had to run off to a memorial service for one of the people Rex had poured beer for.

I pack heavy.

Once you enter the sealed environment of JFK International, you won’t breathe fresh air again until you get out at your destination city. But the airport in Hawai’i is different, with some parts that are indoors and others that are outdoors.

After checking in I traversed an outdoor walkway on my way to the gate. All smokers recognize such areas as the tobacco puffer’s version of the “Last Exit Before Toll” sign.

I stopped in the middle of the walkway, next to a freestanding ashtray and a tall, burly old timer in a Hawai’ian shirt. The old timer had sharp eyes and his style was that of a goodfella from the 1950s. He looked like a cross between Anthony Quinn and a tall Ernest Borgnine.

“I guess we can only smoke out here, huh,” I said.

“Yeah, sez we can’t go past dat point,” he said, jabbing his thumb towards a sign that said as much.

I dropped my bags and began fishing through them for my cigarettes when the old timer thrust something red in my face. “Take ‘em, I won’t be needin’ dese,” he said. Through the open lid I saw it was a nearly full pack of Marlboro Reds. “I just wanted a couple,” he explained.

“Wow, you sure?” I asked. “These are nine bucks a pack where I come from.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. “I’m from Long Island.”

I took the smokes, stuck one in my mouth. Slapped my pockets looking for fire.

“Here, take dese too,” he said, handing me a nearly fresh book of matches. After I accepted them he made a fly-swatting motion, like he was washing his hands of the habit.

We smoked in silence for a moment, staring out at the runways.

“So where you off to,” said the old timer without looking at me, speaking just the way I do.

“Back to Manhattan,” I said.

“Manhattan? No kidding!” he said, his eyes lighting up. “Whereabouts?”

“Chinatown, Little Italy,” I said.

“No kidding,” he repeated. “Canal Street, Broome Street and alla dat?”

“Aroundabouts,” I said.

“I yoosta go down’air a lot,” he said, looking wistful. “I mean, I’m talking, dis is way back.... Is Vincent’s still’air?”

“Still there,” I said. “Oldest joint in the neighborhood.”

“Oh, I tell ya...I yoosta go down to Vincents,” he said, his eyes practically glassy. “How ‘bout Roberto’s, is Roberto’s still’air?”

“Umberto’s, the clam house? It’s still there.” Umberto’s was the scene of a famous mob hit in the early 1970s. (That night the scungilli salad might not have hit the spot, but a bunch of bullets did.)

“Umberto’s, dat’s the one,” he said. “Place is famous.”

“I know,” I said. “There was a famous hit--”

“Dat place,” he continued, clearly not listening to me, “dis is going way back, about twenty years ago, dey hadda shootout dair,” he said. “Mafia, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He looked at his watch, then stubbed his cigarette out. “A’right kid, have a good one,” he said, and walked off.

“Thanks for the smokes,” I said to his back, unsure if he heard me.

I leaned against the railing, studying planes on the tarmac.

A couple drags later I felt someone tap my arm, and I turned to see the old timer again.

He leaned towards me and kept his voice low: “If you see me wit’ my wife inside, don’t say ‘Thanks for da smokes,’” he said. “Ya gonna get me in trubble.”

He left again and I turned back to face the runway. A moment later I stubbed the smoke out and double-checked the time on my boarding pass.

Passengers marched past me, moving in both directions. Both to and from the gates. Outbound, everyone was tan, having wrapped up their vacations. Inbound, everyone was pale, having yet to start theirs. The contrast was striking.

My own arms, darkened from the sun, would be pale again inside a week. Not a lot of UV inside the six-train. Well, whaddaya gonna do. I have a life in the city, and a tan is not something I can wear forever. I just have to figure out how to stay mentally tan.

I hoisted my bags, slightly dizzy from the Reds. A little harder than what I’m used to smoking. Fine with me though, because when someone gives you something for free, there’s nothing to complain about. Whether it’s a pack of smokes or a trip to Hawai’i.

The sound of laughter, the din of music, jets of smoke shooting from nostrils.

The ashtrays are filled with beer. Not just some of them, but every ashtray on our table, which is otherwise covered with a forest of empty beer bottles and red straws leaning forlornly against the side of their empty glasses, drained of their purpose.

Through the haze of cigarette smoke I ascertain it’s the table comedian, an animated guy named [Rex] who, in between jokes, carefully tips his bottle to slosh precise mouthfuls of beer into the ashtrays.

“Whatcha doing that for?” I ask, between drags. His smiling face goes dry for a minute.

“For my friends who aren’t here,” he says quietly, but after a second the smile comes back.

Beni has overheard the exchange, and I lean towards her for a more detailed explanation. “Some good friends...died,” she explains. She recounts the tale for me out of earshot of Rex, who is already busy cracking somebody else up.

The tale is sad and pretty personal, which is why I won’t print it. All I can tell you is that in some sense I’m not supposed to be here, sitting right here in this chair, but other people are and that’s a shame.

Wasn’t planning on drinking tonight, but after hearing the story I lean over and take a sip of Beni’s beer. Not because I want booze, but because I can.

Waves don’t take breaks; even though it’s well after dark and the beach is empty, they still diligently roll in every few seconds.

We’re standing on the end of a long dock, lit in precise intervals by tiki torches. Water ten, maybe fifteen feet below. The ocean is dark but the reflection of moonlight traces the crests of waves, providing visual cues of the tide.

The Hawai’ian version of a group of young punks struts towards us, laughing, talking some sort of smack to each other. Strong pidgin accents give them away as locals, in case their bodyboards and lack of shirts were to go unnoticed. They are the typical teen quartet, with one overweight kid and one skinny, wild-looking fellow who is probably the leader. For a fleeting second I wish I could join their gang.

They climb up on the edge of the dock, peer over the edge, and one by one, they jump. Four leaps, four splashes.

I watched as they paddle out, enthusiastically, calling out to each other. Needless to say there’s no lifeguard on duty at this hour, it’s just these four and the dark water. But as far as juvenile delinquency goes I’d say this beats the crap out of tagging up mailboxes or boosting highlighters at a convenience store.

We knock off a few cigarettes on the end of the dock. Beni talks about her plans for the future, and I talk about mine. The only difference is hers sounds fairly well-thought-out whereas even a high school guidance counselor could tell you I’m pulling stuff out of my ass.

I am in denial of the fact that I’m thirty-three. There are young people dying and not even getting to try their lives out, and I’m sort of pissing mine away by refusing to make certain decisions. For the umpteenth time I resolve to do something about this. Irresponsibility is like the girlfriend I keep coming back to.

Waves roll in, and some of the kids shoot across the water on their boards. It looks like fun.

The fat kid of the group has paddled much farther out, and can’t seem to catch a wave. He paddles frantically in anticipation of one, but is too early in the chain, and he bobs without going anywhere.

Beni and I continue talking.

The other three boys have mixed success, jetting across the water now and again, but the fourth, stubborn, stays further out. Waiting for his big chance.

Patient...or stupid?

Couldn’t tell you.

I wanted to stay and watch until the fat kid finally caught a wave, but eventually it was time to go, and we left them to it. He rose and sank with dark water, waiting.

No matter what city in the world you visit, it always looks like they designed the highway in a different room from where they were forecasting automobile sales figures.

The sight of all these cars queued up against the beautiful backdrop of Hawai’i seems somehow obscene. Like this many fume-spewing machines shouldn’t be allowed in a setting this potentially pristine. (Those two sentences rhyme but it’s not on purpose.)

Beni and I are off for the North Shore, because I’m curious to see another part of the island. Ten minutes out of Honolulu the bumper-to-bumper traffic clears up, and it’s smooth sailing on beautiful highways with green mountains in the background.

Ninety minutes later we pull up in front of the Dole Pineapple Plantation and get out to stretch our legs. Tourists abound. There’s a little house in front filled with souvenirs and blatantly pro-pineapple propaganda. I’m something of a pineapple expert so the educational chart on how to tell a ripe pineapple is nothing new to me.

Beni gets a cone of pineapple-flavored ice cream, which a taste reveals to be surprisingly undisgusting. I stare at the Dole employees running around the plantation, wondering if they can appreciate my sacrifices; I’ve been eating pineapple every morning for about ten years so I’ve put half of their kids through college.

We go out into the field to see how pineapples grow, and I get a nasty shock: Pineapples grow above ground! For years I thought they grew underground. (See Fig. 1)

This is disturbing to me simply because it challenges my previously-held assumptions.

There are lots of tourists and their kids running around, making it difficult for me to take a good photo. I only squeezed off a few.

Pineapple workers who step out of line
are flattened by steamrollers, then placed
in the fields as a warning to other workers.

Even the one-armed Senator Bob Dole (or whatever Dole started the plantation; it might have been his wife, Liz) knows that fields full of nothing but pineapples are boring, so to spice it up they’ve added “attractions.” The Dole Plantation has the largest hedge maze in the world.

Apparently the way it works is this: Parents drop their children off at one end of the maze, then are escorted by tram to the other end, where they wait for their children to come out. If their children don’t make it through the maze in thirty minutes, the parents are sent away.

The children are then loaded onto another tram which takes them out into the fields to gather pineapples, never to be seen again.

The last vehicle Billy will ever see

After the Dole Plantation we get back in the car and drive north, and inside thirty minutes we’ve reached the shore. Oahu isn’t very big at all! Less than three hours from one end to the other. This must be a terrible place to hide from the law.

Honolulu, where we’d started off, is on the southern end of the island. From the northern end we have an option to drive back along the eastern perimeter of the island, or along the western perimeter, which would take us through Pearl Harbor. I didn’t want to go to Pearl Harbor, because I’ve already seen the movie, so we went the eastern route.

It’s a lot like driving down U.S. Route 1, in Cali. The shoreline was pretty--the coast often comes right up to the roadway--and we stopped frequently, to admire this beach or that. Occasionally a shower would hit and we’d have to put the roof up.

Along the way we passed the Polynesian Cultural Center.

(stock photo)

Had I more time I’d have stopped in, to expand my knowledge of Polynesians. I already know a fair amount about their culture but wouldn’t mind filling in the gaps.

Hawai’i Fun Fact #1

Polynesians invented polyurethane, polyhedrons and polygamy. Their advances in the fields of materials science, geometry and sociology are often overlooked.

Hawai’i Fun Fact #2

Similar to the Polynesians are their genetic cousins the Micronesians, who invented the microscope, the microphone, and the micromanagement style of business that pervades many offices to this day.

Hawai’i Fun Fact #3

In New York, Spam is something you delete, but in Hawai’i you have it for lunch.

After driving and beaching, driving and beaching we got hungry and stopped at a gas station. Beni ran inside and came back out with something in a bag.

“I got you a moose-[unintelligible],” she said.

“A what?”

“A musubi.” Ah. Hadn’t heard that word regularly since I lived in Japan. Didn’t even know they had them here. “It’s a Spam musubi,” she said, unwrapping it.

“Sounds gross,” I said. “I think I’ll pass.”

“Take a bite,” she said, in a don’t-be-an-idiot tone of voice. So I took a bite...and it was fucking delicious.

“Gimme that thing,” I said, while chewing.

“Told you so,” she said.

Butter-grilled bananas, I like the sound of that. Along with two eggs, corned beef hash and hash browns I’ve got a little Hawai’ian Heart Attack breakfast going on here. Killer coffee to boot.

I’m sitting in what feels like an honest-to-god diner, but local Hawai’ian style. (Maybe I’m fooling myself, you’ll have to ask a local.) The Wailana Coffee House, on Ala Moana Boulevard. I’m sure locals and tourists alike would consider the place nothing special but that’s exactly why I like it. I rarely find what’s special in tour books special in real life.

Coffee just the way I like it. Fresh, unsophisticated diner java that comes out of a big silver machine.

Surprise: The service in Hawai’i ain’t bad! Since service speed in even New York has declined (waitresses, once snappy, now take fucking forever) I’ve assumed and often confirmed that service elsewhere is even slower.

But laid back as Hawai’i is, the waitresses both here and at Zippy’s come ‘round offering refills within 30 seconds of me draining the joe. Only difference is the coffee at Wailana’s is great, and it sucks at Zippy’s. Though I like both places.

Zippy’s is the Hawai’ian version of a Denny’s, we went there last night. In addition to serving American-style fast food they serve Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, and Korean chow. Open twenty-four hours, it’s the place you go at the end of the night to sober up for the drive home and top off the stomach tank.

Where else can you get Sloppy Joe’s and soba noodles, bacon cheeseburgers and kimchi-fried rice? They need to open one of these joints in New York.

After seeing Band of Brothers last year I read up on World War II, and facts from the conflict still occasionally pop into my head. So when I see the hordes of Japanese shoppers in Waikiki, I can’t help but find it striking. Because 60 years ago there were also scores of Japanese flying towards this island, with a decidedly different payload.

I wonder if that first batch of pilots could have imagined that later in the century we’d be at peace, and their granddaughters would be retracing their flight route in search of tans and shopping centers.

So maybe someday my civilian ass will go to Iraq and shoot things with a camera, not a gun; I’ll enter one of their households by invitation, not force; I’ll rent a convertible and drive freely down unmined streets, and I will be there to relax.

Of course it may take sixty years before that’s possible, and who knows if I’ll actually live to be 93. I don’t take great care of myself, so it looks unlikely. Say, I wonder what age I’ll die at? Will I reach my sixties, or will it be next week? I wonder what day of the week--

--Oh no you don’t, don’t you fucking do this. You can think about death and mortality all you want back in New York, but right now you are in Hawai’i, young man, and I forbid you to think about such things. I FORBID IT.

The sun is shining, the showers are showering and there are more rainbows outside than at a gay leprechaun convention sponsored by Pantone. Now get out there and enjoy yourself before you have to get in that goddamn plane in a couple days.

Swimming at the beach. As a reminder of how long it’s been since I’ve gone swimming, every time I resurface, my hands automatically try to wipe my hair out of my eyes. Man I haven’t had hair since the Clinton years.

I’m relatively close to shore but off in the distance, surfers silently carve across waves. Further off, silhouetted against the horizon I see an enormous freighter ship loaded with containers. Hard to believe we’re all in the same body of water.

I lie on my back, relaxing, drinking fresh mouthfuls of delicious sea water.

The seawater wasn’t sitting quite right, so back on shore I scooped huge handfuls of sand into my mouth and started chewing.

A relaxed-looking, shirtless black man and his eager son were building a sandcastle by the water’s edge. The enormous structure they’d rendered with buckets was so architecturally complex I was sure they had blueprints tucked away someplace. Nearby a big-ass, roly-poly Hawai’ian cat and his son were running into the waves and laughing. I looked at both in envy, then returned to the water to float on my back some more.

On a random note, I stopped into a Borders bookstore and of all things, there was a bunch of Stormtroopers walking around. They had the rifles and everything. I wanted to approach them and try the Jedi mind trick.

Palm tree bottoms are really underrated.

Halloween’s coming up, and it’s on Esmerelda’s seven-year-old mind.

“What are you going to dress up as?” Beni asks her.

“I’m going to be a killer...or a dead girl...or a princess,” she says.

Glad I’m not a child psychologist.

In my apartment back in New York there’s a shower, and when I stand in it I weigh a certain amount. But any time I step out the front door, I’m made at least ten pounds heavier by:

- running shoes
- socks
- boxers
- pants
- shirt
- ring
- keys
- wallet
- cash
- shoulder bag
- iPod + remote
- headphones
- cell phone
- camera
- notepad
- pen
- pack of cigarettes
- zippo
- matches in case zippo runs out
- pack of chewing gum
- eyeglasses and case

If I’m leaving the house for more than five minutes, this is the bare minimum I’ll step out with, and I’ll occasionally carry more. Fucking insane, right?

In contrast, in Hawai’i I leave for the beach nearly the same weight as I am when naked. I am wearing:

- flip flops
- bathing suit

and carrying

- towel
- hotel key

Yep, no shirt. And I am not one of these tanned, diesel cats you see walking around here. When I take my white T-shirt off it looks like I’m still wearing a white T-shirt. My legs are the color of fax paper. I walk out to the beach like this because I’m so happy to be there, I don’t care about anything else. I’m shooting for minimalism.

I didn’t break out the camera, for fear sand and brine would fuck it up. So all the best photos from the trip were not captured in pixel, but trapped within chemicals squirting around inside my braincase. I’m sorry I can’t show them to you, I really am. But maybe it’s better I didn’t spoil it for you, so that some day you will come down and see it for yourself, benefactor or no.

Walking around outside, every few hours you feel a light, pleasant sprinkling, even though the sun is shining and the sky directly overhead is still blue. These sudden, random sunshowers are just enough to cool you off but light enough that your clothes don’t even get wet. It’s just as good as A/C, though it doesn’t release all those pleasant, healthy CFC’s into the air.

The sunshowers are what causes the constant rainbows, and I do mean constant. I’m seeing like two or three a day, no lie, including some double rainbows.

I hear Ireland gets similar amounts, but it’s different there because the rainbows have an economic component to them. At the end of each Irish rainbow is a pot of gold, which the Ministry of Finance dispatches agents to intercept, thus anchoring the country’s financial markets. But in Hawai’i they’re just for decoration.

McDonald’s rocks down here. When you order a meal, they give you a container full of free pineapple cubes! How insane is this. They also have Spam integrated in their breakfast meals!

And sometimes when you open the Big Macs, a little rainbow comes out.

After sunset I’m driving around Waikiki with Beni and a friend of hers. On a random recommendation I’m looking for something called Teddy’s Bigger Burger and I can’t find it for the life of me. Something about being in this time zone has turned my wayfinding skills to shit. We circle and circle.

Rounding a corner, we get stuck in one of the absolute worst traffic jams I’ve ever been in. Worse than New York, Tokyo, L.A., Rome, Seoul. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life; we move approximately five feet every fifteen minutes.

After an hour (in which we moved twenty feet) we’re getting hungry. Cars are stretched before me as far as I can see, just a sea of red taillights.

A Hawai’ian cat driving a trolley is next to us. Since the top is down, he can look right in on us. “Pretty bad, eh?” he says, grinning ear-to-ear. I like this. This cat doesn’t have a care in the world!

“Pretty bad,” I laugh.

Ninety minutes later we’re still stuck but our stomachs can’t wait anymore, so Beni gets on the celly and browbeats a friend with a scooter into picking us up some Jack in the Box. (It’s some kind of burger chain, I think I saw some of these in Cali.)

Fifteen minutes later Beni walks back a block to meet the scooter. Next thing I know we’re having a burger picnic in the convertible, hemmed in on all sides by unmoving vehicles.

After polishing the burgers we finally reach the chokepoint, and I see part of the problem; the Hawai’ians don’t take turns. I don’t know if this is an island-wide phenomenon or just this particular batch. I’ve seen this in L.A. before as well. I don’t know what it is!

In New York, when multiple lanes hit a choke point, people take turns. One from the left lane, one from the right. Left, right, and so on. But at this chokepoint all the cars just zoom in willy-nilly, people lurching forward out-of-turn like it’s nobody’s business. As a result, cars are twisted in at angles and nothing’s moving very well.

When I saw my opportunity I took it, and as we squirted through the chokepoint a fellow motorist yelled something at us. Beni and her friend got fucking pissed, all hanging out of the car yelling for him to fuck off. They were fuming and carrying on for like ten, twenty blocks.

Forgive me for generalizing, but I really dig this island-girl temperament. It’s like, they’re so laid-back, but when they get heated it’s fucking on. You get the sense any of these chicks, when angry, would physically fight you at the drop of a hat. Sure, it’s a turn-off in New York, but everything is different down here.

Later on I’m chilling in the whip, waiting for Beni in the parking lot of her apartment complex. Next stop is a bar to meet up with some friends of hers.

The benefit of having a convertible is at night you can jack the seat back and look up at the stars. Yes, you can see the stars here. I’m told the light pollution in Hawai’i is so low, multiple countries have placed astronomical observatories here for the view. I suspect the scientists who lobbied for such simply used it as an excuse to get here. You just know those motherfuckers show up late for work with sand in their hair.

I’ve got my hands behind my head and St. Germain on the stereo, at a reasonable level. After five years of living on one of the noisiest blocks in Brooklyn, I’m super-sensitive about playing loud music in residential areas.

Because the music is low, I can hear a posse of people rolling up on me, on foot. One of them lets out a whistle--a “Hey, you” kind of whistle. I’m not blocking anyone’s parking spot, so I ignore ‘em. Which one is Orion again?

Another whistle. I continue stargazing.

Then they surround the car, looking in on me. “Ay,” says one of them. I sit up.

It’s a posse of old Hawai’ian ladies. I’m talking senior citizens, wearing oversized T-shirts and sweats.

“Whatchu doing here?” asks the apparent leader, a tall, freckled woman of indeterminate race. She could’ve been Asian, she could’ve been black, she could’ve been Hawai’ian. She basically looked like a Polynesian version of The Oracle from The Matrix.

“Uh--waiting for my friend,” I say, and somehow it comes out sounding unconvincing.

“Oh yeah? What apartment, ah?”

“I dunno,” I say. “She just ran up to get something, she’ll be right back.”

I guess the Polyoracle hears the accent in my voice, because she narrows her eyes at me. “You from around here, you local boy?” she asks.

“No, I'm from New York,” I say.

“Whooooaaa, New York,” she says, feigning mock awe while making a wax-on, wax-off motion. Some of the other old ladies are checking me out, the rest are looking around, bored. There must’ve been about eight of them.

“Dis a nice car,” says the Polyoracle. “Just don’t fall asleep in it, you better have eyes in da back of your head if you wan’ sleep in dis neighborhood.”

I looked around at the palm trees and the tidy parking lot. You’ve gotta be kidding me.

“Got your attention now, don’t I,” she continues. “Dis area’s like a little New York. They serve pizza ova dere and everyting.”

The thing I’ve found in traveling--worldwide--is that some people, when they find out you’re from New York, have weird reactions.

“Next time you come pick your friend up, get apartment number,” she says. “And make sure you don’t block anybody spot.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Watch out, watch out in dis neighborhood,” she says in a sing-song voice, slowly strolling away. The O.L.P. follows.

One of them, a heavyset Chinese-looking woman with a round face, stops and leans into the car. “It’s not that bad here,” she whispers to me, then waddles off to join the rest of the posse.

Second day at the beach, floating. Staring at the sky like it’s Maggie Cheung’s naked ass.

Part of me worries I’m not doing anything interesting enough. That I’ll get back to New York and write about the trip in my blog and people will be bored, and donors who dropped coin in my cup will feel they flushed it down the drain.

Then I tell myself not to worry about that stuff, just do as you do. Can’t live my life in search of thrilling blog anecdotes, and writing for the express purpose of pleasing other people or soliciting coin is a sure path to failure.

So is doing nothing. And lying out here in the water isn’t quite nothing. It’s something close to nothing, but different than the day before. That’s when I saw her, I saw her, she walked in through the out door, out door....

Sorry, still on my Prince jag.

Some people say you should be positive and only talk about the things you can do. I am not one of these people.

There’s plenty of things I’d like to do out here in Hawai’i, but can’t for various reasons.

I’d go snorkeling or scuba diving, but my left eardrum can’t withstand the pressure (I punctured it in an accident during my teenage years).

I’d go skydiving, as Beni had suggested, but I’m scared fuckless of heights and would probably spiderweb at the plane door, falling out of it only after being persistently kicked.

I’d fly to one of the other islands for the storied mountain drives or volcano visits but the tickets cost money and I’ve got less scratch than a declawed cat. Plus I suspect I’m allergic to lava. I don’t really have any evidence to back that up, just a feeling. Molten hot mag-ma.

No, I’ve found the thing I was meant to come to Hawaii and do, which is lie out in that beautiful, clear blue water and stare at the sky. It doesn’t make for thrilling reading but I need to do it badly. Who knew the remedy for my ailments was forty-nine states away, and offshore.

I’m not much for strangers, but luckily Beni and I get along great. Which is not to say we don’t have our differences: She doesn’t care for driving around with the top down, I do, and the two of us have what I can only define as a strong disinterest in each other’s music.

So we compromise; sometimes we have the top down and play the Skatalites, sometimes we have it up and I grit my teeth while her CD is on.

Compromise. From what I understand, this is much what marriage is like.

Do you like convertibles, The Skatalites, and short, indigent writers? Good, put this ring on. Sign here and here.

If marriage is about compromise, then having kids is about compromising and not cursing.

For one of my errands I took Beni to a particular café to meet someone. We walked in empty-handed...and walked out with a seven-year-old girl.

I’ll call the little girl Esmerelda. (Which is not her real name, you fools. Fools!) She was extremely talkative, short for her age and cute as a button.

“This is my boss’s daughter, I promised her I’d take her to see a movie today,” Beni explained, and I actually thought it was kind of sweet.

So here I am driving to the movies in this convertible with a woman who could pass for my wife in the passenger seat and a little girl in the back. A week ago I was a single guy in New York and now I have a faux family in Hawai’i. A fauxmily. If I had a couple extra grand I’d take Esmerelda to get braces, then go into the kitchen and fight with Beni over bills.

Words I tried not to say in front of Esmerelda:

- fuck
- shit
- ass
- dick
- Dick Cheney

The movie they chose was “Princess Diaries 2,” but luckily I wasn’t required to attend. I think I’d rather lie face-down in a trench for two hours than watch Anne Hathaway.

I picked ‘em up after the movie, ten minutes late because I was back in the hotel doing more shit on the laptop. The Corporation got back to me with additional labor to be performed.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “You guys wait long?”

“S’okay, we just talk story,” said Beni, climbing into the front after putting Esmerelda in the back. I really like Hawai’ian slang.

I had the top down and was kind of worried Esmerelda would fly out, so I made sure she put her seatbelt on. At first she didn’t listen to me and was climbing around, but after the second time I told her she put it on and stayed put.

Next we took Esmerelda out to a sushi dinner with one of Beni’s friends. Esmerelda kept unwittingly kicking me under the table but for some reason I didn’t say anything. I felt like, hey, you’re the dad, just suck it up.

I walked out of the restaurant full and with bruised shins. Then we climbed back in the whip, and I drove my fauxmily through the moonlit Hawai’ian streets.

It’s only supposed to be five or six thousand miles back to New York, but on a night like this it’s a fuck of a lot further.

I’m at zero. Or 100, depending on how you look at it.

Complete, total peace.

I’m floating on my back, unconnected to anything except the Pacific Ocean. Lying in the crucifix position and submerged entirely except for my face, which sticks out of the water like a small Gilligan’s Island.

The only thing I can see is the sky. The only sound I hear is my own breathing. I can’t feel my body but I can feel the wind moving across my face. The shore is somewhere off in the distance.

I never understood the virtues of a beach vacation, it always sounded so boring to me. Friends would get time off from work and buy tickets to the Caribbean, full of excitement in the days preceding. “I don’t get it,” I’d say to them. “What do you do out there?”

“Just lie out on the beach,” they’d say.

“Anhhh,” I’d say dismissively, and make that gesture that looks like you’re slapping a fly out of midair. To me a vacation meant going to another city and discovering what its brand of urbanity tasted like. Los Angeles, Hanoi, Tokyo, now those are vacations.

But now I get it, this lying out thing. The trick is you have to be completely spent. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually just wiped the fuck out. Back in New York I’d been running on fumes and didn’t even know it. Now the tank’s bone-dry and it doesn’t matter. Looking up at the sky like this, slowly being rocked by the repercussions of waves while the current carries me further from shore, nothing matters. There is nothing except sky and water. Complete and total peace.

After paddling back to shore and stepping onto the sand, I realize complete and total peace is an entirely foreign concept to me. It almost feels like realizing you’re gay as a teenager in an after-school special: “What are these strange feelings coming over me....”

Back in the hotel, on the laptop, finishing up work for The Corporation. I’d worked on it all morning, then forced myself to go the beach because I felt pathetic, and now I was back at it. This assignment is a complete and total piece of shit.

I finish by evening, and now must find an internet connection to dump the files onto The Corporation’s server.

I hop in the whip and cruise over to Waikiki’s main drag, figuring there’s gotta be an internet café for sure. Can’t find one though. What I do find is hordes of tourists shopping. Every name-brand store you can think of, and ten you can’t.

No matter what city you go to in the world, some things are always the same: People trading coin for trinkets and T-shirts. It seems pointless to me, but maybe it’d look different if I actually had some scratch.

I park in a structure and conduct the rest of my search on foot.

“Izzeran internet café around here?” I ask the clerk at the ABC store. (ABC is like their 7-11. Though they have 7-11s too. It’s like their 7-12.)

“There’s one right around the corner,” he says. “You’ll see a bunch of stalls selling stuff, it’s right in there. Outdoors.”

Outdoors!

Around the corner I see what he means. There’s a night market of sorts, with vendors selling jewelry and Tiki dolls and whatnot. I’d only buy a Tiki doll if it was heavily cursed, so I could give it to a friend.

Amidst the Tiki vendors, I spy the “internet café”--an old Japanese cat reading a newspaper in front of a table with three PCs on it. Despite the fact it’s outdoors, Moneylove somehow has DSL on all these bitches.

It’s eight bucks an hour in fifteen-minute increments, so two dollars later I’ve done my business. Ones and zeros fly back towards New York, in cables laid across the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Fucking amazing, this internet thing. Ten years ago I’da been standing on line at Fed Ex with a stack of papers and an anxious expression.

Finally, chowtime. Walking down the glitzy sidewalk I pass assloads of high-class restaurants, but I head straight for the first mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall I find; I want to see what kind of food I’d be eating if I actually lived here. Meaning culinary delights in the sub-ten-dollar range.

I get a mahi-mahi (fried fish) sandwich for like five bucks. Unsurprisingly it sucks, but I know I could get used to it, like I have with Subway. I don’t mind eating poorly now because one day I’m gonna have money, and then I’m gonna eat whatever I goddamn please. Panda, bald eagle, komodo dragon, you name it. I’ll go to the Museum of Natural History to look at dioramas of endangered species, and then I will go out and eat them.

Dudes here call each other “bra,” which is how they say “bro.”

I’m in the packed parking garage, sitting in the whip, top down. Futzing with the iPod FM transmitter, so I don’t notice the waiting car idling behind me.

“Leavenbra?” I hear someone yell. Takes me a minute to figure out the guy’s asking me if I’m leaving and not, as I’d initially thought, randomly yelling out the name of some Scottish village.

“Leaving,” I say, backing it into reverse. The pasty-skinned New Yorker vacates the spot, and two tanned Hawai’ians fill it.