Also, finding it hard to refer to himself as “he,” “his,” and “him” (particularly since he was living in a house full of hims) he chose a word, a name. Henceforth in the story he would be called Nik. It was a decent enough name, he thought. There weren’t many Niks. The ones he did know, personally or professionally, were usually N-I-C-K, a less interesting though acceptable spelling of the name. Plus, all of the letters in either spelling could be found in Hawai’ian.
The Hawai’ian language consists of 10 vowels (five with a kahako, or extended vowel sound, and five without) and eight consonants, h, k, l, m, n, p, w, and the ‘okina. The ‘okina is a glottal stop, appearing in words like “Hawai’i,” and actually looks like the mirror image of an apostrophe (but for our purposes the apostrophe will be substituted).
It was a beautiful, melodic language, Nik concluded. Particularly in song, it was the kind of language that seemed to float on the trade winds. For the year prior to his move, Neal had tried to study up on the language. He memorized words and phrases in pidgin, a hodge-podge rural speak. But, he realized, the grave difference between laboratory study and field experience is that the prior rarely helps much with the latter.
“You go Ewa, take Kalakaua, then left at Ala Moana, right at Piikoi, an’ right at Kona Iki. Da kine mall gots choke stores, brah.”
“…Right…so…am I going in the right direction?” Nik just wanted to get to the mall. In New York you could go to any corner to find any number of coffee places, even a Starbucks would be welcomed at this point. At least in the mall he could find coffee. And if he could find coffee all would be mellow with the world.
Again, the surfer tried to give him directions. It all just sounded like a convergence of too many vowels. The “a” was a perfectly lovely letter but he wasn’t sure so many were necessary. Choke vowels. He nodded to the surfer not wanting to appear ungrateful or, worse, uncool.
There were several things Nik liked about island life. He loved how people on the street were easy to smile or throw a shaka in passing. Attendants at gas stations seemed to genuinely love what they were doing. He loved how at night it seemed to be sunny. Cars on the street never drove faster than 35mph and Jack Johnson was ubiquitous on the radio. Neal loved the fact that no matter how many times he showered he found sand in the creases of his skin. And his hair looked incredible with dried salt water in it.
He wasn’t sure, however, whether he liked the professional world.
“Don’t worry, something will turn up,” chirped Becky, the receptionist at the temp agency, as if she were vomiting sunshine.
“Yes, but if I don’t worry I’ll have nothing to do.” Indeed, Nik had been a worrier of grand proportions. In elementary school he had stolen a Colorform Scooby-Doo from the classroom. So worried was he about getting caught that he promptly returned it the next morning. Still to this day he was convinced that the infraction would turn up on his record. Guilt and worry were old friends Nik hoped to some day ditch at a party on the other side of town.
He hung up the phone with Becky promising himself once again that he wouldn’t panic until Saturday. He still at a few days left to do the miraculous: find a job. He preferred an office job. Something about post-it notes and a surplus of writing implements comforted him. Plus, his utter inability to print or fax anything at the moment deeply disturbed him.
He needed to organize something. Nik was nothing if not organized. Once again, as he had for the past several days, he sat at his computer imputing nonsensical appointments into his iCal.
“OK, 5:00am go surfing; 7:00am shower; 8:00am emails; 9:00am…oh god, what do I do at 9:00am?" He hadn’t any interviews or temp jobs lined up.
“Hi, Becky, it’s Nik.”
“Hi, Nik. Let me check with the ladies and see if they have anything for you.”
Pause, pause, pause.
“NIk? Nothing today. They haven’t heard back from the jobs they submitted you for,” Becky said with an audible smile and, he imagined, a cute tilt of the head.
“Did they tell them that I was awesome,” Nik considered saying but instead chose, “Um, OK” instead.
“Don’t worry, something will turn up.”
Back at the computer. “9:00am,” he typed, “go to coffee shop." But, ah! He noticed a 2:00pm job fair for a cruise line. This was interesting. Nik had always wanted to be a pirate. Well, either that or an intergalactic, cyborg spy. Both seemed like admirable professions. Instead he chose theatre. A less glamorous and far less lucrative option. As such, he found himself doing office work. How had he gone from pirate to paper-pushing, go-fetch boy? Not that working on cruise ship would get him any closer to piracy.
Nik had a grossly overactive imagination and only a loose grasp on reality. There was the fantastic world Nik imagined (the perfect Hawai’i, the free-as-a-bird life of a surfer) and then there was the backhand, bitch-slap of reality. While this would be a job on a ship, waiting tables on Norwegian Cruise Lines wouldn’t offer much yo-ho-ho-ing. The more likely scenario would have Nik schlepping tuna salad to toothless 80-year olds on their billionth wedding anniversary. Plus, you would be stuck on a boat. What if he got scurvy? Do people still get scurvy? Nik was sure they must and surer still that he would be the lone asshole to spread it.
“You should bartend,” roommate Parker had offered. “Some of ‘em make six figures.”
“Oh, but that would be successful and, you know, I don’t really do ‘successful.’ I like to live hovering just above the poverty line. I believe if you keep your expectations low you won’t ever be disappointed.” Nik thought he was being witty. He often thought he was being witty.
But Parker wasn’t sure this was a joke.
Frankly, Nik wasn’t either.
Though, in truth, Nik had gone to Bartending School in New York. He even worked in a gay bar for all of two nights. But he quickly discovered that the job required one to actually talk to people, a practice Nik was mortally adverse to.
“Bartending School?” squinted Keith, who had bartended since he was able to reach the tap. It was rumored that he had shaken his first martini whilst still in the womb. “And what do they teach you at ‘Bartending School’?”
“You know, how to mix stuff. Drinks or whatever.”
“Like?”
“Like, I dunno.”
“Like, how to pour a beer?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“But you know how to pour a beer.”
“True.”
“Then guess what, you’re a bartender. The rest of the job is mastering bullshit.”
Like most schools, what they teach you is rarely what you actually need to know. What Nik needed was a class in bullshit. It wasn’t that he couldn’t lie. He was a writer, after all. It was improvisation that was the problem. He could always think of the most cleaver thing to say several hours and several rewrites after the conversation. At an early age Nik had learned, in lieu of actual dialogue, that he could get through most interactions with a well-timed, enthusiastic smile. He had developed and perfected 112 different smiles for most any occasion.
There was the smile to use when meeting new people.
The smile to use when meeting new people he wanted to sleep with.
The smile for after having slept with the new person and now trying to get them to go home.
The smile when he was listening.
The smile for when he was pretending to listen.
Ad nauseam.
There were big, full-bodied smiles; coy, seductive smiles; mischievous or pensive smiles. He knew the right muscles to use to select Smile #37, used during job interviews. “If they could only see Smile #37 I wouldn’t be stuck in this damn coffee shop!”
A woman turned from her book to look at him.
Had he said this out loud? He often feared one day devolving into “that guy” who has full conversations with himself. While riding the subway he would observe these people discoursing the value of peanuts as weapons or the politics on Mars and think, “Hello, brother, I’m coming to join you soon.” Though, he hoped, he hadn’t thought this out loud.
So, yeah, pirates. Nik had once taken a pirate name test online. It was one of those silly sites where a multitude of personal questions are asked and then some magical algorithm selects a name based on those answers. Nik's pirate name was Calico Sam Vane. Calico because he couldn’t choose just one favorite color and instead selected “multiple.” And Vane as in “weather vane” because apparently the algorithm knew he would go whichever way the wind blew. “Well,” he snapped, “I don’t know where the hell it got Sam from. Stupid algorithm.”
Nik arrived at the job fair and was greeted by China. Not the country, though that would have been impressive, no, this woman was about 50 (but was working damn hard to be 20). She hungered to be young and vibrant again. She was dedicated to perfecting her tan, despite the current and inarguable science saying that sun actually ages skin. No, China was sure her tan was the secret to a youthful life. Her eyes smiled brightly and eagerly but her face didn’t move, either due to Botox or conscious effort to simulate Botox. China explained that Nik’s current attire, the shorts and slippahs he chose to wear that morning, were too casual for this event.
“Oh, I didn’t realize,” he said using Smile #78.
“No worries. Everyone in Hawai’i is so laid back. I decided I had to draw some lines.”
“Oh, now someone was drawing lines?” Nik thought and hoped he hadn’t said out loud. He had been here for a week and hadn’t seen anything remotely resembling a line drawn by anyone.
“I thought it was more informal,” he lied using Smiles #37 and 104 – a brilliant combination.
She bought it. In fact, it was entirely possible that this cougar wanted to see him in even less clothing. China proudly handed him her business card and, with a purse of the lips that would make Jennifer Saunders impressed, all but begged him to come back in two weeks for the next session.
Nik left the office mildly ashamed and mildly aware that on a very real level he had deliberately sabotaged this event. Perhaps he didn’t want to work on a boat after all. He wandered around the harbor trying to salvage the trip downtown. He passed a great tall ship. If this were the ship he wouldn’t mind working on it so much. No, the cruise ship was not for him.
He stopped at a café and ordered a turkey panini in memory of New York. For some reason it reminded him of his friend Van, though they had never eaten paninis together before. New York also reminded him of Tom. Though pretty much everything reminded him of Tom. A kindly waitress brought the sandwich over to him.
“Mahalo,” she said.
The greatest words in Hawai’ian were Aloha, Ohana, and Mahalo. Aloha, as most probably know, is more than just a word; it’s an entire philosophy of welcoming and joy. It’s about breathing deeply, embracing the beautiful and chaotic world around you and sharing it with others. NIk understood that, in part, he had come to the island to learn this first hand. This is what he wanted to carry with him regardless of where he received his mail. Ohana means family (thank you Lilo and Stitch) and that family can be anyone and everyone. Nik realized that, worry as he did; he always had his family and friends. This was a tremendous comfort to him. But perhaps the greatest of all of these words was Mahalo. It is a word of thanks but it goes so much deeper than a flippant English “thank you.” It is about being grateful every waking day for another chance to do good. It is thanking another human being for even the smallest kindness – the holding of a door, letting another car pass in front of you, of a smile or shaka from a stranger. It is thankfulness in the infinite.
Another great word, he remembered, was lolo, which meant crazy.
So, Nik closed his eyes as he bit into his turkey panini and sent out a vibe from the deepest part of his soul.
“Aloha, my lolo ohana. Much mahalo for your love.”
Picture 1: A view of Koko Head and Hawaii Kai
Picture 2: A big canoe
1 comment:
this is beautiful and inspiring. maybe you're actually a novelist??
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