The part where we meet the protagonist

He found himself on a beach. In Hawai’i.

“I think its Hawai’i,” he pondered.

He couldn’t be certain, but he had the kind of unpleasant awareness as one has before one is about to puke after a long nigh of boozing. Not that Hawaii, or wherever, was unpleasant. No, quite the contrary. It was glorious.

But how did he get here? And why?

He could remember saying that he was going to do it. “I’m moving to Hawai’i,” he told friends in New York.

“Wow,” they would say. “Have you ever been?”

“No.”

“Wow.”

He felt rather special at this. He was always the kind of shallow individual that wanted his life to be accompanied by “wow.”

But from that time it was a bit of a blur. He left a good job, great friends, the perfect man. There was too much Klonopin, and rum and Diet Coke, and general delirium to be sure. But here he was. A stranger in a strange land without friends or gainful employment. He had no other certainty of his place in the world than to peer out onto the vast Pacific.

"Wow,” he thought. “If a tsunami hit right now I’d pretty much be fucked.” Yes, he was also the kind of person to stand half-naked in paradise and recognize the dark fragility of his existence.

A brownish blob surfaced just ahead of him on the water. At first he though that it was a small, fat child or a particularly agile aquatic Hobbit. Then a pair of flippers flopped into view. Now, he had never seen an aquatic Hobbit and, in fact, was fairly convinced that they didn’t exist. And, though he was only marginally acquainted with children, he was rather secure in the thinking that they usually did not have flippers. Though it would be infinitely cooler if they did.

The monk seal bobbed its head out of the water as if to say, “No, asshole, I’m a monk seal. Dumbass.” It looked rather like an ugly, fuzzy dog. The kind that rich widows on the Upper East Side would dress up in designer frocks.

And then it disappeared.

Quickly, he put on his goggles (you know, the ones he bought when he was going to train for the triathlon. Yeah, like that happened). He ran to the water’s edge and was bitten by the cold of the Pacific. Nevertheless, he dove in and searched for the sea puppy.

“Perhaps I will find it, speak its language, and we could be friends. I could use a friend here. It could be like Flipper and we could solve mysteries and I could write a screenplay about it and make millions at the box office though that would likely drive a wedge in our relationship. I don’t think monk seals deal with celebrity like the rest of us. Silly seals.” At that point he realized he was under water and couldn’t normally breathe in this environment and should probably consider returning to the surface where he hoped there was still air in the world. Once there he discovered he was quiet far from the shore. In fact, the current had speedily washed him into a coral forest.

It wasn’t necessarily a picturesque and colorful reef like they are on the Discovery Channel but he had never been near one so the experience set him aback. Schools of fish swam beneath his feet. He felt sure several were Humuhumunukunukuapua'a, Hawai’i’s state fish and reportedly the longest word in the English language…even though it wasn’t English.

But should that surprise him? His Anglo kith and haole kin had robbed, raped, and never returned the phone call of the Hawai’ians. The islands were stolen, the Queen Lili’uokalani imprisoned, and the language and culture brought to the brink of extinction. And now here he was. One more haole, mainlander thinking he could become some kind of local surf god. Well, at least he had a tan. Perhaps he could blend.

But he was far from a surf god. He wasn’t even a surf altar boy. The term “kook” came to mind.

In the blur of transition into his first week on the island he had attempted surfing several times to no avail. In fact, the only thing he came away with was several cuts and scrapes from the coral, a ding on his kook surfboard, and a scolding – he wasn’t even sure he was being scolded by the elder surfer and so asked several times for his admonishment to be repeated.

“What?” He asked a third time.]

“You need to be careful!” The elder surfer’s inner eye rolled in disdain.

“Right. Thank you,” our hero replied, trying to appear as cool as possible as a giant wave toppled him once again off his board and intro the reef.

The view from the water, however, almost makes the humiliation worth it. The Diamond Head lighthouse stands guard just above the break. He had never been into lighthouses (though their phallic appearance had not alluded him) but for some reason this one seemed especially majestic. It was a beacon to wayward sailors. A way home. Was this his home? Had he left home and needed to find his way back? “It would be nice,” he thought, "to have the clarity of a lighthouse.”

Perhaps one day.