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Thread: Maui

  1. #1
    Registered User Steven Hunley's Avatar
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    Maui

    Maui
    We’re shooting at sixty-five miles per hour down the 163 north when Barb gets a call on her phone. Babygirl has Blue-tooth®, a kind of magic you-can-hear-and-speak-to-someone-else-system that allows her to keep both hands on the wheel while talking. I can’t hear everything, but here’s the gist of it. Nicole is going to Maui with Shane and the boys.

    ‘Big deal,’
    I’m thinking. ‘Cole always goes to five-star resorts; works hard, brings home the bacon, eats tender juicy steaks, gets up at the crack of dawn. So when she’s off, she plays hard at places that make Disneyland pale in comparison.”

    I don’t see an exaggerated look of excitement on Barb’s face that’s not explained by what I’ve overheard.

    Then Barb looks over and says, “Nicole wants to know if we want to go to Hawaii.”

    ‘Hmmm, let me think about this for a micro-second.’

    Barb turns her eyes off the highway, at the place where there’s a road sign advertising gambling at Sycuan Indian casino. During this millisecond I consider, and she considers, and we come to the same conclusion, flashing the decisive signal back and forth with our ojos. As much as going with Nicole and Shane to Hawaii is a gamble, it would be more fun than throwing money away on an Indian reservation in the San Diego hinterlands.

    I enthusiastically nod yes, and she smiles, and delivers the message over Blue Tooth ®.

    I’ve heard the story of Hawaii is a tale of ruthless principals. On the mainland, we stole the all the best land from the Native Americans and returned the scraps and worst pieces. I’m familiar with that story, westerns being our national film genre, Indian Wars, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, John Wayne cowboy persona, and all. Somehow the Euro Misfits immigrants and poor Dirty White Boy immigrants that made up America’s Immigrant Nation got hold of Hawaii too. I can’t imagine how that happened. Here were the Hawaiians, a sovereign island nation, with a King, and don’t tell me some American explorer waving Old Glory landed on Waikiki Beach one sunny day said,

    ‘Hey, this is a pretty nice island. Can I have it?”

    And some big bronzed-skinned Kanaka-in-Charge put down his pineapple and longboard and replied, “Sure.”

    This proves I know absolutely nothing about Hawaii and need to do research. Everybody has been there but me. I have to find out how the great island land grab happened, and if that’s not what happened, then I’ll find out what’s become of it now.

    Over the next few miles Barb starts to go over a list. She’s The Mistress of Organization, whereas I’m The Captain of Chaos. It may be one reason we’re so good together.

    “You’ll need to go in the garage, sort out the suitcases, and pack the umbrellas.”

    “I have sunscreen, do you have sunscreen?”

    “Yes, and I want a separate suitcase just for my books.”

    Uh-oh, her precious books. Looks like I’m going to take the part of native bearer and the load is already getting too heavy. Wonder if the native bearers on Burton and Speke’s expedition had this problem when they searched for the source of the Nile. I’d e-mail a letter to find out but they’re all long dead these many years.

    And the list goes on, and on, and grows with every twist and turn for the next fifteen miles.

    Maybe I’ll write a travel journal. That’s what they did in the old days. What was good for Sir Richard Francis Burton is good enough for me. After all, by the beard of the Profit, and by the grace of God, the age of discovery isn’t over yet. Not for this crazy white crackerjack fella.



    To be continued…

    ©StevenHunley2015


    http://youtu.be/0iNlzRH7UBo Bringing Home the Bacon

    http://youtu.be/r1JYZmT2uPQ The Holy Shrines

    http://youtu.be/5HarLg46uU8 Dirty White Boy

    http://youtu.be/2DHraWHABKg She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
    Last edited by Steven Hunley; 03-03-2015 at 05:29 PM.

  2. #2
    Registered User 108 fountains's Avatar
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    Entertaining as usual, Steve. It rambles a bit, but I think that's intentional. I like the way you switch back and forth between dialogue between the two characters and internal dialogue within the narrator. You might have missed an opportunity - if you had done some research about the acquisition and subsequent coloniztion of Hawaii, you might have had a chance for some additional social comment at the end, and I would like to see that done in you inimitable style.
    A just conception of life is too large a thing to grasp during the short interval of passing through it.
    Thomas Hardy

  3. #3
    Registered User Steven Hunley's Avatar
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    Less than a week later, we’re barreling down the 163 south at six-thirty in the morning on the way to the airport. And I mean barreling at one hundred and ten miles per hour. Ric, Barb’s ex, is driving, and I shouldn’t be surprised at his speeding, since the first time I met him it was in his driveway, and in that driveway was a stripped down racing Porsche with a number painted on the side, and his racing suit, insulated for fire with sweat-stains all over, was hanging in the garage next to his helmet. Nicole and I were stuffed like pimentos in Spanish olives in the back seat between tall stacks of suitcases. The suitcases are heavy, but tottering around like the fake boulders on the Disneyland steam-train ride through the Wild West. It’s making me nervous. Not this lady.

    “Hand me that folder down there at your feet, will you?”

    “Sure.”

    I fish up a heavy file case and hand it over. She starts rummaging and sorting out papers, which she hands over to me. I can tell they’re legal papers while she’s reading what’s left. Nicole, the consummate attorney, the Perry Mason of Patent Law, is speeding through legal papers while her dad is speeding like a bat out of Hell for the airport. Makes me wonder if it’s something genetic. She’s motoring through a dozen legal briefs, packing and repacking cords and chargers into suitcases, and zipping them shut like a pro.

    “As you can see, I’m a last-minute person.”

    “Perhaps you work best under pressure.”

    “I do,” she says with a smile. “It’s the way I work best.”

    Turns out I’m sitting next to a chip off the old block. Nicole, our magnificent benefactor, is a multi-tasker, driven, talented, pretty, owns a million dollar smile, just like her momma.

    And her momma is mine.

    We pull up to the Air Alaska part of the terminal and funnel into the building. Barb has to take her time; on accounta one foot is swollen up due to a vicious attack of gout. No, she doesn’t have her foot bandaged up like Henry the Eighth style gout, nor is she walking with a gold- pommeled-lion-headed walking stick like Boswell and Johnson. She told me plane fights have a tendency to make her foot swell, and she’s already starting to limp. But I’m worried it will blow up in the plane somewhere over the Pacific.

    “Why bother putting a bomb in your shoe when you’ve got that?” I said, as we wheeled our bags to the counter.

    She grinned, one of those teeth-set-hard-in-her-jaws grins that meant pain instead of amusement.

    While jumping through the TSA security hoops, various and sundry machines molest our bodies, then our bags, and finally deem us ‘safe’.

    They’re playing Hawaiian music while we’re boarding the plane and the stewardesses have plastic plumeria flowers in their hair. We’re sitting together at first, and a lady taking the aisle seat hears Barb’s story and suggests she put her foot up, between the seats in front of us, on the arm rest. There’s a space where it will just fit. It looks fine for a while but I can’t help noticing that the row in front of us are the first class seats, and these first class monkeys sitting there may have objections to not being able to use their arm rest on accounta my woman’s swollen foot, now blown up to the size of the Hindenburg, is taking up all their precious space.

    These stuffed-shirted monkeys paid an extra bunch of bananas for premium leg and arm room, and may take offense.

    I’m sweating out the possible ugly scenarios while we take off, and notice they’re too busy looking out the cabin window to see what’s going on. The tarmac rushes past at break-neck speed, while between the seats, the Ominous Hindenburg Foot wiggles its biggest fire-engine-red-lacquered toe yet, and it’s quite a sight. But this temporary reprieve isn’t going to last long, I’m not that lucky. Then out of nowhere, an angel wearing 14 carat gold plated plastic wings appears.

    “We have a better seat for you in the back,” says the stewardess. “You can move there right after we take off. You can stretch out if you need to.”

    Hip hip hooray for the stewardess with the plastic plumaria in her hair.

    When we’re way up high in the air over the ocean, everybody changes seats. Now Barb is behind me and Nicole and Brody and I are in the same row. Brody is self-sufficient for a youngster going on four, playing with his seat belt, complaining that there’s a raindrop on his window, and stealing an occasional glance at his mother.

    His glance is a small thing, nothing much, a little boy thing, lasting only a fraction of a second. But in that tiny micro glance, in that fraction of a second, lies an entire world of pure adoration.

    Like the Beatles said, ‘It’s only love, and that is all.

    Like her mother, Nicole can be difficult to figure out at times. Like her mother, a woman to be reckoned with… but never difficult to love.



    To be continued…


    ©StevenHunley2015


    http://youtu.be/Uv46hTWP7uk It’s Only Love

  4. #4
    Registered User 108 fountains's Avatar
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    Steve,
    In the first paragraph, you have: "Nicole is going to Maui with Shane and the boys." But, so far anyway, there is only one boy and no Shane.
    A just conception of life is too large a thing to grasp during the short interval of passing through it.
    Thomas Hardy

  5. #5
    Registered User Steven Hunley's Avatar
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    You're right! I'll remedy that at once.

  6. #6
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    After five hours islands appear on the horizon and I can tell by the gentle slopes they’re volcanic. The one on our right is Maui. Lots of green stuff sprouts up and then pavement and we land and pull up to a two-story building with a roof with a gentle slope too. It doesn’t look like they have snow around here. Barb’s foot is swelling up like a flesh-colored I don’t know what, as unfamiliar and threatening as Dragon Fruit. Even familiar plants like Elephant Ears are gigantic. Birds of Paradise are gigantic Birds of Paradise. Bromeliads are immense Babylonian towers of color. Yellow, red, white, Hibiscus, grow on both sides of the roads like common bushes. The hotel is just around the bend.

    We pile out of the car and a tiny brown-skinned lady places a wreath of plumeria or kukui nut lei around our necks, saying, “Aloha.” just like in the movies.

    ‘Ah, she just said it, the one word I’m sure I know what it means.’

    The Grand Wailea Resort is formidable, impressive, with high roofs, scenic vistas, and island-themed designs laid out on smooth terrazzo floors. An environment all gild and flash. Paintings are simply not enough, so massive bronze sculptures, prints, mosaics, and rows of chaise lounge chairs vie for your attention. They place the reclining chairs around an azure pool, in the shade of dazzling white umbrellas. Well-fed tourists sit there, lay there, buttering each other up with sunblock and insincere compliments. Like all resorts, it is a lavish formal exercise in grand consumption dressed up in casual clothes. Bellboys wear white linen shorts and flowered shirts, but they are still bellboys, licking boots for their perks. I feel like a ghost…just passing through.

    The golf cart didn’t make much noise, and when the wind was just right, you could hear every word.

    “Honey, you look great in that new bikini. You’ve really know how to count calories. I know it isn’t easy.”

    “Waiter, could you get my husband a bib? I believe he’s starting to drool,” said the fashionably sleek woman. She knew her business, and her husband’s, the successful plastic surgeon from Newport Beach who didn’t look a day over thirty. He’d lifted her body so many times it wasn’t funny.

    Her eyes were hidden behind Jackie O sunglasses. She was looking down, watching her French-tipped nails idly tinkling ice cubes against the side of her Mai Tai, which sported a pink bamboo umbrella in a frosted glass. She was one of those women who laughed at danger. She relished taking chances. Bring on the knives. She qualifies for the physician’s wife’s discount, and asks for it with a smile.

    “Oh, it wasn’t too hard. Those hormone shots in the belly didn’t bother me one bit.”

    She wasn’t your every-day girl. Beauty and money gave her a sense of entitlement. You know what Francis Scott Fitzgerald said about the rich:

    "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."

    And Papa Hemingway too:

    “The rich were dull and they drank too much, or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ And how someone had said to Scott, Yes, they have more money. But that was not humorous to Scott. He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him.”

    These divisions, as far as I can see, are false divisions. People will always be more alike than different. They’re just different spices in the universal soup. The recipe varies with individual tastes.

    We ride down the path and when I see a sign for a water slide, I ask Calen,

    “Calen, how long did it take you to learn how to swim?”

    “One day.”

    “One day?”

    “A thousand.”

    I love this kid. He’s plenty deep for a five year old. There are times I can’t fathom him, but I like his personal style. He’s a rebel. A rebel’s heart never takes anything lying down.



    One night here and tomorrow we’re down the coast in a villa at the Fairmont Kea Lani. I love villas ever since I read Maugham’s Up at the Villa. I wanna be up at a villa too. When I threw open the sliding glass door, the smell of salt and seaweed smacked me clean in the nose. Outside, between our balcony and the ocean, sat a white chapel surrounded by slim brown palms, green gardens dotted with riotous color, and waterfalls. Beyond that, you could see the deep blue Pacific, and hear surf crash like distant thunder.

    Tom Selleck, Jack Lord, James MacArthur, Hilo Hattie, Tommy Owens and his Royal Hawaiians, were nowhere in sight. They were as gone from Hawaii as Captain Cook.

    Barbara’s foot continued to swell. Soon she’d be hobbling along like a peg-legged pirate. I help her up on the bed and prop her foot up on a pillow. She winces in pain.

    “Try to rest, Honey. I’ll be right here.”

    “O.K.”

    There’s a desk by our sliding glass door and I sit down to take stock.

    “Let’s see, there’s aloha, and mahalo and wiki wiki and mai tai. That’s my Hawaiian vocabulary. And three middle fingers curled with thumb and pinky stretched out, what does that mean?’

    Within an hour, the sun goes down and I grab a few sunset shots. It’s easy here; the background is simplified and the color is fantastically vivid. The palms turn to black construction paper cut-outs lying flat against the color, and you have a wide choice, since the hues change every few minutes. So I decide to do what cameras do best, preserve the ephemeral. It’s common among those with ADHD to want to preserve the ephemeral, since everything they miss seems ephemeral anyway.

    The next morning, we go downstairs for breakfast. The huge dining room has tall French doors open on all sides. Mynah birds are foraging on the lawns and sparrows are darting up in the ceiling, and there’s iron railing next to the stairs with birds cast in the design.

    A Japanese mother walks down the stairs carrying a plate of food, followed by her Amerasion son and her American husband.Timmy, the guy at Enterprise rent a car, told me he was part Hawaiian. The small lady who placed the leis over our heads was Philipino. The Jewish girl from Ironwood, Michigan and the white-cracker fella from San Diego taking notes and making observations don’t count.

    I see what Maugham meant in ‘The Trembling Leaf’, East meets west in Hawaii.

    Two hours later, we’re about to live it up Maui-style at the Fairmont. The villa is happening big time and I’m reading that the Fairmont is somehow related to the Waldorf Astoria. I should say Waldorf Historia on accounta plenty people in history stayed there. Wiki says Cole Porter hung out there and they named a suite after him. Others were The Royal Suite, named after the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the MacArthur Suite after our own American Caesar, and the Churchill Suite. The Presidential Suite was the home of Herbert Hoover, and Frank Sinatra hung there too.

    OMG OMG I’m sooo impressed.

    But even so, this movie-star-ex-presidential-ex-king-ex-military action was nowhere near Hawaii. I’m not going to sniff any of their bones like Keith Richards, so what it has to do with me, the quintessential laid-back California dude, is questionable. Because it’s so upper-crust, I feel even more out of place, the black bird baked in the pie.

    On golf carts again, we motor down the hill from the hotel to one of the villas. Through the gate and past the bougainvillea we go.

    We pick out a bedroom with a view of the blue Pacific and unload as Nicole, Shane, and the kids run off in search of a water slide. I fluff up a couple of pillows and Barb flops down on the bed, then looks out on an ocean tinned brilliant azure, waves curling with foam, framed by deferential palms. I know she wants to go out. But she has to wait, and gives me a sad puppy-dog look.

    “Babygirl, don’t despair. In Of Human Bondage, Phillip had a club foot. And Mildred fell in love with him anyway.”

    “Mildred was a waitress, and a slut.”

    “Can a guy be a slut?”

    “Of course.”

    “Then…I’m a slut.”

    “I think my second toe is turning blue.”

    “Lemme see.”

    I give it a look and take on an official air, as if I know what I’m talking about, like I have a PHD and charge by the hour, like a plumber, electrician, or somethin’.

    “Well, it seems discolored, but not radically discolored.”

    She isn’t buying it. Like Pamela, one of my characters, she’s having none of it.

    “Gangrene can set in.”

    “No kidding? Really?”

    “Yes, then it could turn into sepsis.”

    “Oh Jeez, if it gets any darker we’ll go to the ER.”

    “I’m sorry if my gout is ruining our vacation.”

    “Think nothing of it. I’ll write about it, you know: “A Trip to the ER in Maui.” But let’s wait until morning and go then, if we have to.”

    “All right.”



    ©StevenHunley2015

    To be continued…


    https://youtu.be/8g-w5cuWI5o Of Human Bondage


    https://youtu.be/8g-w5cuWI5o Bellboy The Who
    Last edited by Steven Hunley; 03-24-2015 at 05:58 PM.

  7. #7
    Registered User Steven Hunley's Avatar
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    duplicate post axed by author
    Last edited by Steven Hunley; 04-26-2015 at 12:15 PM. Reason: duplicate post

  8. #8
    Registered User Steven Hunley's Avatar
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    The next morning we’re awakened by an alarm we didn’t set. I hear a ringing but it’s not very loud, although for some reason it sounds very close. Calen is at the edge of the bed holding a small alarm clock next to my head.

    “OK,” I tell his little-boy smiley smile face. “We’re getting up.”

    But first the clandestine shot. While Calen is changing out of his jammies to get in the pool right outside the door, and Brody is nowhere to be found, I sneak behind Shane who’s making breakfast and take the vial hidden in the refrigerator. Back in our bedroom I close and lock the door while Barb pulls up her nightgown and sits on the edge of the bed. The only shot I ever gave before this was a distemper vaccination for our puppy and he didn’t feel a thing. Fifteen CCs later the HCG hormone is doing its work. This is her magic elixir, and on this formula she’s lost a pound a day for the last week. I don’t see why not, her diet is restricted to five hundred calories per day. Up until now, Barb has shown great determination and has stuck to her guns. But now she has reservations.

    “I’m worried that with Shane’s cooking, the diet isn’t going to work out,” she tells me as she slips off the bed and straightens her nightgown.

    “He’s a marvelous chef, that’s for sure. But there’s something else to be worried about.”

    I’m rummaging around in the suitcase, counting needles over and over.

    “What are you talking about?”

    “We’re one needle short.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “I mean, I miscounted the days we’d be here, and we don’t have enough syringes. I suppose we could always use one twice.”

    Barb gives me a simple look that says ‘No’.

    That solution reeked of junkiness, something William Burrows would be up to. It was madness to suggest it.

    “Well then, we should google the nearest pharmacy and see what they’ll do.”


    After breakfast we telephone Long’s Drugs in Kihei, a town on Maui’s south shore. And it’s our first day together alone so we decide to make the best of it, even though this tour is not mentioned in any tourist magazines. Even if it's a drive to a common-as-dirt drugstore, there's something about this trip that has romantic implications.

    You have the woman alone, and all to yourself. You have the romantic island, and you have a simple everyday task. You plan something memorable. Go to Long’s Drug Store, find some proper syringes, greet the locals and soak up the exotic scenery. You never know what you’ll find.

    Some people need entire Disneylands to entertain them. Me? I have Barbara.

    With Barb, every day is a voyage of discovery. I never tire of the woman. Sail on Sailor.

    ©StevenHunley2015

    To be continued…


    https://youtu.be/Hl34g1Recss
    Last edited by Steven Hunley; 04-26-2015 at 12:34 PM.

  9. #9
    Registered User Steven Hunley's Avatar
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    Right now my noggin is filled with images of Hawaii planted by films and T.V. Magnum P.I. Hawaii Five-O, Bird of Paradise, From Here to Eternity, and for some reason, Hurricane by John Ford, even though it wasn’t Hawaii, and the make-believe island was wiped out at the end. When we landed I looked out the cabin window and I could see these islands aren’t going to get wiped out by a measly hurricane, they’re much too big and still growing. I slept secure.

    So right after breakfast, with map in hand, and Barb behind the wheel, we motor onto highway 31 to Kihei. By highway, I mean Maui-style highway, two-lane blacktop, just like the movie with James Taylor.

    But this trip would prove to be different. We were together and alone. Now I had the island backdrop, the beautiful girl all to myself, and my camera to record it.

    We drive for twenty minutes and we’re there, passing between hotels and grassy parks on the ocean side with shade trees and benches. There are a few tourists, but most of the crowd is locals. We pass a park with grass right on the beach. The mixture of faces and colors is about the same as on the mainland but more Hawaiian style. Then we spot Long’s in a strip mall. We pull in and check out a tourist office, grab a few pamphlets and troop to Long’s to buy the syringes.
    In some parts the look could be Mainland, USA.

    “This Long’s is like a Long’s anywhere,” says Barb.

    “Except for that isle of souvenirs” I said, and pointed at an isle full of calendars, post cards, key-chains shaped like multi-colored flip-flops, key chains shaped like mini-surfboards, CDs, suntan oil, sunglasses, guidebooks and coffee mugs with the word Kona in coconut brown against a flaming Pacific sunrise. On the end was a pile of T shirts with various colorful island themes. We almost bought a dozen before we escaped. I said almost.

    Barb sees a sign that says Maui Snow Factory two doors down.

    “What’s snow?”

    “I don’t know, let’s see.”

    “Maui snow,” says the sign, “is a frozen confection that isn’t shaved ice, or ice cream, or frozen yogurt”. A bronze muscular dude with dark hair and a diver’s watch is standing behind the counter. He sports a goatee, a warm smile, and a white tee-shirt with a black yin-yang symbol embroidered on the sleeve.

    “I’ve never heard of this,” says Barb. “Is it like typical Hawaiian shave ice?”

    “Not exactly,” he smiles, “I had it first in Taiwan and decided to bring it back here.”

    “We’ll take two coconut-pineapple flavored snows,” I said, and he went to work on his inexplicable Taiwanese device.

    “Obama said shave ice was one of his favorite things,” said Barb.

    So I expected that this snow bit was only some clever ad man’s idea, and what I was going to get would be the typical ice with flavored syrup running all over it, the kind you get in Los Angeles from Mexican street vendors that push sheet-metal carts through the barrios. Once, on the streets of Compton, I saw the sheriffs arrest an old Mexican man for selling flavored ices without a license. He must have been seventy, and posing a real threat to society, the old bugger. But that was then and now it’s today, as Dave Mason once wrote, a different name and a different face.

    And besides, right now, in this particular celestial moment, in this exotic place, with this exquisite woman, I’m feeling alright, even if her toe is as gouty as Dr. Johnson’s. Just call me Boswell. I adore her.

    Under the snowman’s counter is a chalk board, filled with names and local graffiti, and next to the register, a basket of sidewalk chalk.

    “Can I write our names here?” I ask, while he works the mysterious levers on his inscrutable Taiwanese machine.

    “That’s what it’s for, Braddah.”

    He hands us a couple of cups filled with something that looks like ice cream pasta. It’s stringy and piled up in the cup like spaghetti. It’s like frozen cotton candy that melts in your mouth like magic and leaves nothing but flavor. This is what we bold travelers wanted, what everyone traveler wants, to eat something completely foreign and discover you love it.

    I write our initials with hot pink chalk in a heart just like a teenager, and step back to admire my work. Choosing hot pink was a fantastic decision. Making it real big was good too. I’m surprised no one else used hot pink, everyone used darker colors. But something is lacking.

    I need more than a sign to proclaim my love for Barbara. I want to hire a sky-writer to write it all over the sky. She’s lucky I don’t own the Good Year blimp. I want everyone in the known world to understand my situation and the blessing she gave me, the tools to help me examine my own self. I want them to know about her goodness and strength of heart. I guess that’s how love is. You want to proclaim it from the highest mountain to tell all the people on Earth because God already knows.

    That’s one thing about love; it has no age limits, no bar codes, no expiration dates, and no age restrictions.


    ©StevenHunley2015

    to be continued...
    Last edited by Steven Hunley; 07-17-2015 at 01:38 AM.

  10. #10
    Registered User Steven Hunley's Avatar
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    With other women I had to let my romantic imagination make up for their shortcomings. Now there’s one particular woman I admire, and no imagination is called required. It’s ‘wild and crazy guy’ Steve, the faun, in love with Earth Mother. Let Max, the Wild Thing, cry out, “Let the wild rumpus start!”
    After we finish rumpusing we get a picture with each of us and the Maui Snowman. I’m wearing a Hawaiian shirt and he’s wearing a smile. When I look at it later, I discover he’s making the sign, \m/.

    The next morning we eat left-over cake from Calen’s birthday party and head to the highway to whatever the name of the town was, oh yes, Lahaina. I’ve seen a few pictures and it looks kinda cowboy-like and right on the water. I hear tell it used to be a whaling post too. No doubt we’ll see an ancient sailor carving a piece of scrimshaw as old and yellowed as his skin. He’ll spit Indonesian tobackie between rafts of swear-words and salty oaths. He will sport a grizzled beard, like Old Joe Conrad, looking as nautical as possible. Unfortunately, I think these thoughts aloud.

    “You’re going overboard again, Thkinny,” she crinkles her nose.

    “So maybe I am. So what?” I raise my eyebrows and give her a look, like I don’t care about poo-poo.

    I’m in deep ****. From this angle she looks glamorous. And it’s only one of her angles. I’m falling apart, crumbling like Ozymandius. I’m a sucker for her good looks. With this woman, my romantic ideas move into third gear. Senses heighten. Blood flows well when hearts beat faster. We’re both on point and racing like crazy. Like Colombian Expresso Supremo. Like Java from Jarkarta. The dark warm liquid flows soothingly down your throat like a torrent of happiness. We know what we’re drinking, and it’s flavored with love. She’s right. I’m going overboard. Lost at Sea Me, Mister Swept Away.

    When we get to Lahaina it’s very much as advertised, except for the number of tourists. This kind of stuff bothers me. The scene is complete. The ‘main street’, if you can call it that, is narrow and short. On the ocean side, there’s only one set of buildings between us and the Pacific. And the buildings are wooden and look like they came out of an old Western set on Paramount Studio’s back lot. But since the days it was a whaling port it’s all gone commercial. There are tourists every street and on the sidewalk. Lahaina suffers a plague of locust-like tourists; they’re creeping around everywhere you look. In Bubba Gump’s they file by with glazed eyes in a consumer daze sporting sunburned shoulders, Nikon cameras, and Japanese caligraphy name tags stuck with tape on their Hawaiian shirts.

    “You see any grizzled old salts carving scrimshaw?”

    Barb looks around. She’s humoring me.

    “Not one.”

    “What about that guy over there?”

    On the end of Bubba Gump’s there’s a space of about twenty yards right on the sand near the surf. This piece of sand is his art showcase. There are five or six piles of rocks, but I don’t mean piles exactly, more like stacks, stacks of rocks balancing on each other. For this balancing act the grizzled old dude is collecting money from the tourists. They’re so irregular but perfectly balanced you’d swear he used Gorilla Glue.

    Down the main street a block more and I ask Barb to stand and pose by a Banyan tree. Some outa-towner and his wife are coming up behind her, and since Barb’s back is turned, the dude leans near and puts his arm around her for the picture.

    Snap!
    Barb turns with a look of surprise, and the dude is already two steps past her, only his wife remains.

    And his wife! If looks could kill, Barb just reached her expiration date.

    Then it’s up the block to Hilo Hattie’s and we catch a young couple smoking a cigarette. Well, maybe it wasn’t a cigarette, after all this is Maui Wowi Territory. They do seem to be in an awfully good mood. It may be because they’re young, or it may be because she’s straddling him with her arms around his neck, or it may be they’re infatuated with love. Their future’s so bright they have to wear shades, so you can’t see if their eyes are dilated or star-struck or moon-struck or what.

    Then it’s back up to the villa just like Maugham.

    ©StevenHunley2015

    to be continued...

    https://youtu.be/AskiH7aDv9I Swept Away

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