You thought I was never gonna write about Hawaii or Thing-Fish again, dintcha? Well hahah, the joke's on you, 'cuz although it was over a year ago, here's the next installment!!!!!! When last we left our hero, he was headin' for the Big Island--specifically to the city of Hilo--where he hoped to resolve a rather difficult missing persons case...
The Honolulu coastline rolled up in front of us—its white, geometry seemed hard and sharp after the haziness of the upper atmosphere. It looked just like the city of resorts and nightlife that it is. (So I’ve heard. I partook of nothing but its airport, myself.) It was still bright out, though evening was approaching—according to the clock on my cell phone anyway. Somehow, the whole place looked a little too luxurious—like an icon of arbitrary privilege. Absurdly, I thought of some archetypal huddled mass, eyeing the whole thing with envy and hunger and, probably, with hatred. Stupid? Maybe.
But hey, what about the quaint local folk? An old and unlikely friend—given the wealthiness of his family and the humble middle class orientation of my own— had told about a growing uneasiness in the vicinity of his parents’ Hawaiian vacation home. While no one was exactly uncool, he said, you did sometimes get a vibe. And he mentioned a movement to establish limited Hawaiian sovereignty in certain parts of the islands—sorta like the Native Americans homelands of the continental U.S.
One of the guidebooks I’d read said that although Hawaii’s reputation for the spirit of Aloha is widely deserved, you might, as a non-Hawaiian, occasionally encounter some general dislike. It advised me to avoid being the only non-Hawaiian person in a bar or at a party. Later, I forgot to follow this advice, but I’ll get into that later. I may have been lucky. After I’d returned to Chicago, my guitar teacher told me about a brother-in-law who went bar-hopping in Honolulu. Outside one place, a group of Hawaiian guys approached, asking if he wanted beef. Sure, he sez, thinking he’s stumbled onto an idiosyncratic expression of that legendary Hawaiian hospitality. His new friends proceeded to kick the living snot out of him before returning to their own business.
And that was in Honolulu. Here I was, headed toward Hilo, which my handy guidebook, written by residents of the Big Island, said was about the most unfriendly spot in those parts. I’m here to tell ya, though, that Hilo rocks, no matter what any one says.
The guidebook, by the way, suggested that the idiomatic meaning of the common phrase, “Want beef?” had little to do w/ the ideas formed by my guitar teacher in-law. ‘Tis not an offer of jerky or steak or anythin’ like that, but rather hews more toward that old parlance “What’s yr. beef?” So if someone had asked me, I woulda said, no thank you sir. (I wonder if anyone would’ve refrained from kicking my ass if I had politely demurred. Hmmm… have to field test it sometime.)
Ha ha well… fortunately, I didn’t know about the beating my guitar-teacher’s-brother-in-law took. Nor, during my entire visit, did I notice Hilo’s rumored surliness. Fact, in my experience, almost everyone in Hilo was nicer than people on the mainland. (Except for these 2 women who waited on me in a Burger King, and c’mon, can you expect any different? It’s a lousy job and besides wouldn’t be BK w/o the attitude?) (And holy shit, I’m like turning into a walking advertisement for those assholes, and their food isn’t even any good!)
Yep. My dealings w/ the people of the Big Island suggest that this Aloha stuff really exists! At first, it freaked me out. I mean, OK, generally yr. large mainland cities are exactly as rude and hostile as they’re supposed to be. And I’m from Chicago, which is even more pissy than NYC in my experience, (I spent like ten days there,) where at least people are just confrontational, bravely staring into yr. eyes as they pass you on the street, knocking you to one side. In Chicago, people will run you over, but still refuse to look you in the eye. That used to freak me out too, but now I just expect it.
After I came back from HI, I was so far Aloha-ized that I spent weeks walking around looking everyone in the eye. Unfortunately, these eyes were difficult to meet. All of ‘em were averted to the right or left or to the ground, as their owners stepped willfully on my feet, or grazed me with their bumpers, as I, admittedly stupidly, obeyed the “Walk” signal, & C.
(An aside—after listening to me run on at length about how I hated Chicago for just that reason and would move outta town at the drop of a hat if my P.I. practice weren’t so firmly established, the clerk at the local liquor store laughed. He told me he knew what I meant, but felt that this passive aggressiveness was localized in white neighborhoods on the north side. He said the African American people he knew would look you straight in the eye. I did some experimenting, trying to meet the gaze of African American people in particular. The results were no different. Maybe because I’m white?)
But yep, people in Hilo were nice. Virtually all of them looked me in the eye, started conversations with me or happily answered my own conversational salvos. Hell, they really make that "hang loose" sign at you, when you let them merge into traffic or hold a door for them or sometimes, for no apparent reason at all. It’s like the anti-New York. Unfortunately, it took me most of the trip to master making the hang loose sign. My stress stiffened hands just refused to bend into the appropriate shape. Now of course, they snap in line like nobody’s business, but no one sees me doing it, because they’re too busy averting their eyes like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
But so like, for me, Honolulu evoked images not just of grass skirts or mai tais, but also of Cuban revolutions, of that very narrow buffer around yr. Jamaican resort, outside of which you might be cut to pieces, (you're told,) and of the general dislike focused toward the U.S. by, oh, pretty much every poor nation in the world. Perfectly understandable, when you consider that you’re sitting there in your vacation khakis—or whatever dumb shit you wear—slurping on some alcoholic confection served to you by a guy who’s working a 12 hour shift for around 50 cents per hour. And of course you wanna isolate yourself from any guilt and attendant liability by pointing out that you’re different, that you have legitimate reasons for being there, (like say, f’rinstance, you’re on a missing persons case chasing down some asshole who was probably guzzling his mai tai or whatever at this very moment,) but of course, you can’t.
Ah but there I go again with my white liberal guilt n' self-pity— in this case throwing in a dash of racist paranoia for flavor. Anyway, if beef was to be had in Honolulu, the only people servin’ it up at the airport worked for food court restaurants. And at some point during my one hour loitering there, I noticed that there were actual native Hawaiians around me! How quaint! No, but seriously, among many of the people, there was a different cast to the features, a different lilt to the speech. Something unique—at least in terms of the urban polyglot-melting-pot with which I am familiar.
I headed over to the inter-island terminal, from whence a lotta commuter flights depart for the other Hawaiian islands. (Duh. Thus the name, right?) By this time, Steve Forceman, P.I. was wiped out. I’m virtually incapable of sleeping whilst in transit of any sort (plane, train, car, horseback, shuttle craft, et. al). I find dozing off in public places to be equally problematic. (Though I used to be a wiz at it in my college courses, frequently and understandably pissing off an instructor or 2.) Paranoia, which is an unfortunate consequence of my profession, doesn't help. Besides, I just get restless when traveling. I don’t know why. So there I sat by my gate. I had about an hour to go.
I’d left my apartment around 5:30 a.m., Chicago time. It was now around 7 p.m. in Hawaii, making that 19 and 1/2 hours ago. I’d run across airport terminals, I’d sat in boarding lounges. I’d sat on planes. Stood in line. Eaten shitty fast food and consumed a whole lotta water and 1 beer. I would’ve hit the bars at that point, were it not for the facts that 1) being that tired, I was afraid I’d fall into an alcoholic coma after the 2nd drink; and 2) there were no bars in this terminal. There were hardly any restaurants. Does that seem weird? It did to me, but I gotta admit that the inter-island terminal was really, really small— not to mention dead. It felt like a late night hospital waiting room. Come to think of it, I felt the way I usually do when I’m sitting in a late night hospital waiting room—sorta shell-shocked by the long hours and weirdness of the situation.
More soon...
