Idol Curiosity

Word on the street is the new Star Trek movie ("forget everything you know about Star Trek") is really good and completely reinvigorates the concept for a new generation. It's probably time for the original crew members to pass the torch. It was getting to be like going to a Rolling Stones concert. (I mean, the Stones NOW.) I will humbly own up to going through a phase as a Trekkie in my junior high/high school days. I never dressed up as a Vulcan or anything, but I did go to a convention ONCE...at the Hilton Hotel in Portland. (Must've been 1990 or something.) That phase is long over, but I may check the movie out, out of idle (/idol) curiosity...

Rimbaud reincarnated?

I should like to offer my belated congratulations to Mr. Ben Whishaw for winning the BAFTA award three nights ago for his work on BBC-produced TV show Criminal Justice. Et j'adore les cheveux ébouriffé comme ca. If you don't know who "Ben" is, you haven't been reading my blog.

Pig flu

Apparently the swine flu warrants more concern than I had apportioned it. Unlike avian flu, it can be spread person-to-person. J just told the whole house that it's worldwide now and we should carry Purell and a face mask with us everywhere we go and wash our hands after touching...anything. He's concerned about us on the islands because there have been outbreaks in New Zealand, and New Zealanders come here all the time. Ah well. Maybe the locusts are preparing to descend at last.

LiLo in Lahaina

So, I'm not usually one to waste bandwidth (is that what I'm wasting?) on shallow celebrity gossip, but...OH, who the fuck am I kidding. My roommate who works as a pearl-seller in Lahaina by day said Lindsay Lohan came into the shop yesterday. And would you believe the bitch only dropped $1100 in the store, and it was hard to pry that out of her. Took her two cards to add it up.

Sex and the Classics

Maybe everyone's already seen this, but I just did and it's hilarious: a "Sex and the City" parody starring the recently departed Mr. Bea Arthur.

very good grasshopper

Yesterday I read in MauiTime Weekly (the liberal free paper on the island, something like the WW or Mercury, but less self-consciously and excruciatingly hip) that 100 grams of grasshopper has the same amount of protein as the same portion of lean beef, but only one-third the fat. How long until McDonald's updates their menu to reflect the new "green" cuisine?

Portland Queer!

Check it out, it's a real book...and I'm a contributor. PORTLAND QUEER, edited by Ariel Gore. It's at the printer right now, but should be available soon. And you don't have to be queer to read it. It just helps.

Hana

This may be a rather desultory post as I have many chronologically-scrambled impressions to record. It is actually kind of cold here right now, but that may be partly due to coming back to Haiku after spending the night in Hana, where humidity hangs like a muggy curtain of vapor in the air all the time. It’s definitely rain-forest climate. The house there, on Maia (means “banana”) Road, the one that used to be the bed and breakfast, is a little less well kept than the Hohani Place house – most notably, the pool and hot tub are dry, except for gross algae-infused rain water at the bottom, which Cousin and I spent some time pumping and scooping out – but it is BEAUTIFUL, and I can imagine how great the parties they used to throw there were. David Lachapelle, the photographer whose twisted, bad-acid-trip work I’m a fan of (his subjects include Courtney Love and the repugnantly fascinating tranny Amanda Lepore), came to one of their pool parties. The backyard/pool area is completely private and enclosed by the house and trees; what you see from the front/driveway doesn’t give any inkling of how gorgeous it is in back. They have several acres of land and it’s like a maze with walls of lush green growth and bamboo, palm trees, shower trees, and African tulips (an invasive, destructive, yet pretty exotic species) that have been sculpted with the landscaper’s hands in such a way that it creates a labyrinth of interconnected trails with walls, floor and ceiling of verdant, pungent foliage. I went for a walk through the green maze after smoking some of D’s hash and felt so strongly the green Alice in Wonderland earth magic of the place. Hana exudes a potent and sensuous enchantment. It made me wish I wasn’t single. You can see why so many people take their honeymoons there. But I didn’t get to enjoy it much; I did a lot of weed-whacking (fun, compared to machete work or indoor cleaning, but still draining in the hot sun), cleaning, vacuuming, mopping the wood floors with Orange Glo (a scam like Riddex: doesn’t really work: the floors don’t look much better, and we still have mice and cockroaches), not much else, really. J. and I went into town to get dinner at the restaurant (maybe the only one in Hana) and a redneck guy at the bar while we were waiting for the food razzed J. about his man-purse. Back at the house we found J. and Cousin’s friend Marlena and her husband/boyfriend visiting, but after eating my “saimin” (name for a ramen-noodle type soup they have here, sort of the Hawaiian equivalent of pho, but not as good) I completely fell into a sleep coma: it was like someone put a spell on me; just went to bed and couldn’t even think about getting up for hours, although I wasn’t fully asleep, and heard it when the rain started falling, INCREDIBLY hard, like a SOLID WALL of tropical rain just deluging everything, and the windows were all open so I could hear it so loud all around me, and it was like being outside, but it was nice, having a roof overhead and yet feeling like I was in the middle of it, and of course that’s what rain forests do, baby....they rain. A lot. It stopped and started a few times. I could have slept straight through until morning, but I had enough wits about me to realize I’d wake up at 4 a.m. and be in limbo, so I made myself get up around 9 or 10 and watched TV for an hour or two (including a movie called “Boys Over Flowers” on KBS which I think must stand for Korean Broadcasting System or something like that, and a Discovery Channel show on the hunt for an elusive nearly-extinct ancient fish called a goblin shark that could also be called the Pinocchio shark because it has a grotesquely elongated nose), then went back to bed, woke up this morning and we finished cleaning (Cousin in one of his stormy angry moods where I just need to get away from him until he calms down) and drove home. The road to Hana, though dangerous indeed (I was tense the whole way, especially on the way back, with the road slippery from rain and the truck occasionally fish-tailing across the road), was gorgeous beyond belief, even with vog (volcanic fog) obscuring the view: breathtaking ocean vistas, waterfalls, a place called Rolling Pig Park (I forget the actual Hawaiian name), and vegetation so dense and vibrant I can’t imagine the rain forests of Brazil being any more lush. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the other day when I went to the nude beach with J. (Cousin stayed home, stressed about the dogs) a big sea turtle swam right by me in the shallow water, between me and the shore, close enough I could have touched it. It was such a peaceful lovely animal (and so cool knowing something like 1 in 10,000 of them actually make it to adulthood) and I want to think it was attracted by the mellow non-threatening energy emanating from me into the water: it recognized me as a fellow aquaphile. Really made my day, and I called Mom to tell her, since she’s always loved turtles, but I woke her up from a nap and she sounded confused and didn’t know whether it was morning or night, or even what day it was. (Poor woman. It has to end soon.) So now we’re back in Haiku and J. and Cousin are watching silly reality TV shows downstairs and I made fruit salad for breakfast tomorrow and I changed my Ben W. portrait (HER BEAUTIFUL SON) a couple more times since the photos I took and I’m happy with it at last, actually it kind of lights me up with love and affection when I walked into the studio this afternoon and looked at it for the first time in a couple days after getting back, so yes, I love my painting. I was going to say a couple other things about Grey Gardens, too: something about the line between fantasy and mental illness (you've got to be a little loose in the wiring to live in such filth for so long) and also about the poetic beauty of the fact that Little Edie finally got to have her movie-star moment because of the documentary made about how tragic it was that she never got her movie-star moment (!) And I came up with a great new working title for Cousin’s book that I think may be THE ONE, and I wish I could tell you it, but I’d better not, because I said I wouldn’t, and we don’t want people stealing our ideas, but suffice to say it is fabulous, and it IS Cousin, it is one of his catchphrases and it encapsulates him to a T and I can see it written in lipsticky flowing script over a hilarious photo of him with a lipstick kiss mark over it – oh lord, yes, let it be, it’s purrr-fect, this book is going to be a whole lotta fun.

The new Grey Gardens

J. said “Maui isn’t a good place for night owls.” I’m getting up at 8 a.m. every day now. It’s 8 a.m. right now and this is my second day in a row. For the first 2-3 weeks I was here it seemed like I always woke up naturally at 10 a.m., but I’m adaptable, and adapting. Yesterday J. and K. gave me an ovation when I actually emerged from the bedroom at the stroke of 8 after saying I would all week and failing. We had french toast and espresso for breakfast, then I did four hours of landscaping in the brutal sun (the high was only 81 but it felt closer to 100) in the back yard, cutting weeds where Cousin is going to install a pond. Today we’re going to the beach! Then tomorrow I go to Hana for the first time. We’re going to do some work there, and spend the night, then Tuesday I have to go in to Kahului to interview at the new Taco del Mar (don’t laugh...I need an easy, part-time job while I’m here). I watched the new Grey Gardens movie with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange on HBO last night, and it was really quite good. Melony (Melanie) called to talk about it. It adds the dimension that was lacking from the original documentary: how they got to be that way, and what they were like before. It also explained why Little Edie was bald (stress made her hair fall out, apparently), showed Jackie O. coming to visit and helping clean up the appalling decrepitude into which the house had fallen, and even showed what happened after the documentary was completed, with Little Edie attending the premiere in Paris. Drew did an amazing job of talking in the same voice and accent as Little Edie – I wondered if she was lip-synching at times, it was so amazing – and Jessica Lange looked so much like Big Edie it was uncanny. It really is a pretty moving story, to see all they had and how totally they lost it, and how one different decision, like if Edie had married that Getty guy, would’ve made things turn out so different, and then the force of the mother-daughter bond, and the powerful fantasy life they both must have had projecting like a movie in their imaginations in order to be able to live in that squalor and tolerate the sadness and desolation of stagnant lives for so long. By the time the Maysles made their film the Beales were like ghosts and their house was like a ghost house – raccoons roaming freely, broken windows with trees growing into the bedroom, piles of empty food cans stacked seven feet high - despite the fact they still lived there.

Spiritual Rampage

Another short film by director Alnoor Dewshi, starring Ben Whishaw as a dancing Hare Krishna!

Picture quality is pretty bad, but you get the idea.

77 Beds

A great short film by Alnoor Dewshi, starring Ben Whishaw.

The ghost has no home

Yesterday was Auntie April’s birthday. I wished a Happy Birthday to her urn, which rests on the fireplace downstairs. J. got in yesterday, so I finally got to meet him. I was a little nervous beforehand, but not as soon as I met him. He’s very down-to-earth and has a Continental charm and we were all laughing within minutes of meeting. I had really good sashimi for lunch, because we went to Costco for grocery shopping in the morning before J. got in. It came to $1100, including a $540 case of Veuve Clicquot champagne, cousin’s preferred brand. (He says he likes Cristal too, but Dom Perignon is gross. He’s like me in this respect: it doesn’t matter how much something costs or how high it ranks as a status symbol, if it doesn’t taste good, that’s all we base our opinion on.) So we should be set with food for a while, especially since I’ve whittled down my eating to one big meal and a couple snacks per day. (Staying slim!) Nice and sunny yesterday at last, too. My Ben Whishaw portrait number one (“Her Beautiful Son” is the title) has become quite nice indeed since I started over on it. I’m almost to the point of adding text, which is the last thing. Alex Grey says somewhere that a work of art made with love and spiritual intentions will radiate love and warmth to those who view it, so that’s what I’m going for with this painting. I want to see if people will sense that from it, even if they’re not crazy for the subject like I am. I’ve started on the second BW portrait as well. J. said if he had to guess my nationality and didn't know me he would say I was English, otherwise possibly Dutch (because I'm so tall and, formerly, blond). This meshes well with my increasing anglophile sentiment. J. also said there will be lots of opportunity for me in San Francisco (jobs, love, creative outlets, etc). I spoke with Mother yesterday, and broke the news gently that she will probably have to get her own urn, since Auntie April isn’t going to be giving hers up any time soon. Cousin says we'll go on a drive and visit various abandoned places, which there are a lot of here. I love old houses and buildings that used to belong to people and have now been reclaimed by nature. They are ghostly in a good way. I'll take photos.

Alex Grey / dog drama / Hare Krishnas

Last summer a friend gave me a copy of Alex Grey's book "The Mission of Art" before I left to work in Glacier Park. I finally started reading it on the flight to Maui, since it had been preordained in my mind that leaving Portland would be the turning-point when I would return to visual art, which I'd largely neglected for the past couple years in favor of writing and film work (not to mention being consumed with other problems). I am working my way through it in my slow way, reading a little bit each night before bed. My reaction is mixed. I love his clear, concise sections and easy-to-read style of writing, his obvious command of art history, the fact that he uses lesser known names as examples more often than the ones we all know, and the way he takes art-making seriously as a spiritual calling in the service of leading humankind to the next rung on its evolutionary ladder. Most of what he says rings true, and I've highlighted many passages, like this one.

"Any work of art or body of work that successfully runs the gauntlet has the potential to influence the worldview of many individuals, thereby subtly transforming the entire culture. So take care, artist, you shoulder responsbility for affecting the collective mind. Even a tiny drop of a powerful tincture can change the color of an entire glass of water."

Passages like these are making me think more carefully about the "energy" I want to put out into the world by way of the art I create. So, I'm enjoying the book, even if my distaste for organized religion occasionally raises a red flag. My ambivalence comes from my reaction to his art, as reproduced (mostly in black and white) in the book. My first reaction to it, and part of the reason I laid it aside for so long, is that I thought it was really bad. (Example above.) The style reminded me, and still reminds me to some degree, of the sort of bad new age/hippie fractal art that Deadhead types had on the walls of their dorm rooms during the summers when I worked in Yellowstone. I still don't really like it much. It's clear that he's drawn a lot of inspiration from LSD, DMT and similar naturally occurring drugs, and my psychedelic phase ended more than a decade ago. But I do find his work slightly more palatable after reading about how he arrived at the style and what he's trying to communicate with it. I'm also ambivalent about the seeming megalomania with which he presents his work alongside that of established masters like Van Gogh, William Blake and Michelangelo. But then I'm acquainted with the merits of audacity, so I have to go easy condemning it in someone else. Overall, though, I'd say Grey is a combination art critic/philosopher and practioner whose art criticism and philosophy I prefer to his own personal work. As with everything else, I will take what I like and leave the rest.

We are having dog drama out here right now. The people next door have two full-blooded pitbulls that have a history of causing problems in the neighborhood. Not long before I came out, they got into a tangle with our dogs (both pitbull/ridgeback mix) resulting in injuries on both sides. But their dogs are the aggressors and have caused trouble with many other peoples' dogs resulting in calls to Animal Control before. (Walking up the driveway yesterday evening, they were so menacing as they barked at me over the fence I almost walked back to the main road and called Cousin to come pick me up in the truck, because if they'd gotten over the fence I have no doubt they would've attacked me.) Elio's ear was ripped during the previous altercation, and that wound is still plain to see. From what I hear, the neighbor's dogs were in OUR yard when this happened, and they never came over to talk to us about it or take responsibility. Enter this morning. Cousin came charging out of his room in a rage and ran outside: they were at it again. Later the woman who owns the house finally drove over and talked with Cousin. He said they need to get a kennel, but she was uncooperative and let drop that she'd called animal control, because this time Nikita and Elio were on THEIR property. After hearing this Cousin was not happy and the conversation ended abruptly.

It was certainly rotten of them to call animal control, before talking with us, when their dogs have a history of violent behavior (the kind of dogs that give pitbulls a bad name), and Cousin says they only did it to forestall Animal Control coming to take their dogs away, since that's what will happen if they get one more complaint. Ugh. Just when I was starting to warm up to dogs, this shit has to happen and remind me why I hate them. I hate the feeling of being threatened by someone else's pet. If your animal is dangerous, you'd best keep it tied the fuck up, because if it attacks me, I will prosecute you for first-degree assault with a deadly weapon, and it will be YOUR fault if that dog is put down.

My solution: get rid of all the dogs and give everyone cats.

Allergies schmallergies.

My new friend Lawrence (who lives in Pittsburgh where the Andy Warhol museum is) turned me on to a couple cool little short films starring Ben Whishaw (by director Alnoor Dewshi) that are up on YouTube: "77 Beds" and "Spiritual Rampage." In the latter he is a dancing Hare Krishna in the orange garb and punkish shaved hair the HKs wear. He abstains from sex as part of the religion, and of course that only makes me desire him more, the way I used to get so hot and bothered by Mr. Spock on the classic Star Trek when I was a teenager. (Judging by the amount of "slash" fan fiction available on the internet, I'm not the only one. There are lots of perverted Trekkies out there.) I have this weird feeling that IF I was ever to undergo some sort of religious conversion/180-degree lifestyle change purification, I could see myself becoming a Hare Krishna. I like their discipline, and let's face it, lots of them are pretty attractive (well, I speak of the ones I used to run into selling books in downtown Portland...I don't know how authentic Hindu they are). All that dancing and chanting and getting up at 5 a.m. Discipline makes you hot (and off-limits, in the case of the HKs).

Speaking of Ben...I wish I hadn't put up that photo of my portrait-in-progress of him the other day, because I decided it didn't look enough like him and basically started over last night. I'm so glad I did, because it already looks a lot better, and now it's going to be really good. But no more pix until it's done.

xo

glam aka tony

Victor, Victoria, Victory!

Easter Sunday, but no Easter dinner for us – just a slothful day of recovery from last night’s festivities. Yesterday we finally got a nice, mostly sunny day (back to rain again today) so I mowed Cousin’s lawn using his Craftsman sit-down mower – really the first time I’ve driven ANYTHING, not counting video game cars, so that’s a big step for me, and once I got used to it, it was fun...don’t think I’ll use a push mower again if I can help it. Wouldn’t it be weird if I ended up learning to drive and LIKING IT after all these years of avoiding anything to do with the steering wheel of a car? Around 4pm Cousin’s friend John (the one who helps Cousin make doll genitals out of sculpting clay) came over to get ready for the Victor/Victoria party with us.

Each time I do drag (apparently that term comes from Shakespeare?) I take it a step further. This time I fully shaved all facial hair, Cousin did my makeup, and gave me fishnets and a sweet purple sequin minidress that fit me like a DREAM and big blonde princess hair and a pair of old black pumps that subsequently BROKE. I put on fake eyelashes (with eyelash glue) and long, pretty fingernails (with super-glue) and made fake breasts out of rolled-up socks and attached a pair of clip-on earrings, since I’ve never had pierced ears (just eyebrow, nose and lip – and I am now completely over facial piercings). My drag name for the evening was Taffeta, Taffy for short; Cousin was Nicole (Nikki) and John was Camille. Cammy, Nikki and Taffy out on the town. And when we got to the party, my goodness, what an entrance we made! EVERYONE wanted photos with us, and at one point there were so many cameras flashing on us that it was like paparazzi on the red carpet. K., the host and birthday boy, lives in a beautiful house up in the hills with a panoramic view of the town below – even at night it was beautiful, I can only imagine in daylight. I had a little trouble with the long nails. When we first arrived and hit the food tables I said “Oh good, deviled eggs!” and snatched one up but sliced right through it with the nails and it fell to the floor in two pieces. A nice little woman, noticing my predicament, started making little snacks and handing them to me so I could eat (so sweet of her). We spent most of our time on the open-air deck, so Nikki and Cammy could smoke, so that became the drag queen smoking deck, and people kept coming out to get photos with us, girls especially just seem to love drag queens. One kept telling me that I looked SO MUCH like her 14-year-old niece. We handed out flyers for our Auntie Mame party in May. (I hope we gave one to the cute boy in the DIY bluejean getup – the one from Switzerland. He was a hottie.)

Then as we were leaving, first one of my shoes and then the other completely lost their soles, and I was stumbling along with the soles flapping on the ground, trashy as hell and most inconvenient. We drove to Gian Don's, the one club on Maui that has occasional gay nights (there is NO full time gay bar on the island, one reason I may actually be ready to leave by October), where a very nice man at an Easter crafts table in the bar (the DJs boyfriend) used his hot glue gun and glued my shoes back together! I danced a little – started the dance floor, in fact! – but Cousin didn’t want to stay long at the club, so then we headed over to his friend DJ’s house, and DJ was asleep and naked, but didn’t seem to mind that we woke him up, but we didn’t stay there long, either, so finally we headed home, and were followed for a long ways by a police officer, which was really unnerving (three inebriated drag queens going over the speed limit – oh, that would’ve made an officer’s night – Cousin joked that if they put us in jail we’d have to ask to be put in with the women). Luckily we got off scott-free. But I had a bitch of a time taking my super-glued nails off this morning. Couldn’t get the thumbs off, in fact – ended up just trimming them down with a nailclipper. Tomorrow morning, back to business: gonna get up early and go in to Kahului to continue the job hunt, and get a new canvas for another Ben Whishaw portrait I’m going to do (using a photo from Interview magazine) that’s going to be the best yet. Oh yes. It’ll make him fall in love with me for sure.


xo

glam aka tony

Art, Spam and stem cells

Just got back from a trip in to town (Kahului), and I have a bunch of new art supplies. We went to the Golden Palette, about the saddest, most decrepit little art store I’ve ever seen: the only shop left in a little ghost strip mall that was evacuated because of the fire that destroyed the Salvation Army. They don’t have much of a selection and I can’t think how they do enough business to stay open (Cousin says they’ve been there forever), and I bought a canvas because I felt guilty about leaving without buying something, it’s the sort of underdog business you feel sorry for. Then to Ben Franklin’s in the Queen Kaahumanu Center where I got another canvas and some paint and mineral spirits, then Cousin drove me to meet this guy who put an ad on Craigslist, offering 14 tubes of oil paint (including three of the really big sized ones) plus a bottle of linseed oil for $25, a killer deal, so that was a score. Then we went to Denny’s for lunch. Cousin said, “This is the good Denny’s,” meaning not the Bad Denny’s in Kihei where he broke his arm a few years ago. Two of the dishes on the Specials list came with – no kidding – SPAM. (Cousin said the food the natives eat here is really bad, and I’m afraid it looks that way. There are also these really gross red hot dogs that are sold everywhere and are made with meat possibly as gross or grosser than Spam.) I’m already finding it hard to stay motivated here, and the job hunt has yielded no success. It’s also proving hard not to eat bad (fattening, greasy) food, since it’s everywhere. But I haven’t fallen down on the exercise program yet, and the pants that used to be uncomfortably tight around the waist are falling off if I don’t wear a belt.

So, about that art. I have nearly completed a large portrait of Ben W. over a background of the Union Jack; oil over acrylic, and the oil is drying right now before I go in for the finishing touches. Cousin showed me how to print the photo I was working from on a transparency and then project it onto the canvas so it came out better than I can draw free hand. This is a revelation for me and will lead to all sorts of new and improved ideas, because the thing is I need to paint humans (or animals), figures motivate me, they’re the subject matter I’m drawn to; when I try to do landscapes or abstracts or still lifes I invariably get bored and don’t finish them. If there isn’t a relatable human or living figure in it, I lose interest. Then I’ve started another of an Egyptian style cat, gold/yellow color with lapis lazuli (really pretty blue) bangles and adornments. And with the two canvases I bought today I’m going to do two more: another of Ben over a background of candy hearts (the ones that say BE MINE and DO TELL and SO DREAMY, etc) and one of a tiger-striped hippo. So I’m back in full creative flux. Right now I’m doing a drawing of a box of Boo Berry cereal, because we started talking about things that symbolize our childhood at lunch, in the context of Cousin’s book, and I came up with the idea of illustrating the book not only with photographs of all the old times we’re talking over (which Cousin has a lot of ), but also with drawings and paintings of some of the products and toys and foods that we remember from growing up – hence the Boo Berry cereal drawing. (My sister sent me a box of it last Halloween, I ate the whole box, and remain of the opinion that it is certainly the best-tasting of the monster sugar cereals.)

Did a little more yard work for Cousin yesterday and I’m going to mow the lawn (with the kind of mower you drive) later today or tomorrow. The Victor/Victoria party is this Saturday and I don’t know what to do about shoes. Cousin has a big pair of white thigh-high leather platform heels that fit me in the feet, but they don’t fit around my legs, so they won’t work very well, and there aren’t really any other options. We were going to go to the beach today but it isn’t nice enough; it’s been cloudy and rainy and relatively cool (K. says it’s “freezing”) the last few days. And I just started getting my nice island tan!

I saw Michael J. Fox on Jon Stewart the other night. My Mom told me he was on Oprah recently and Oprah's new doctor (I gather Dr. Phil has been replaced?) told him that with the new stem cell research bill that Obama signed (to use stem cells from ADULTS and not just dead babies or whatever) he will be CURED of Parkinson's within the next decade. Mom hopes they'll be able to cure her of her stroke damage within that same amount of time. And I started thinking about how strange it would be if she suddenly, at age 65 or so, regained the ability to walk and the left side of her body was un-paralyzed, meaning she no longer qualified for disability checks, and had to find a job and start her life over again - at the very age when most people retire.

Script idea, there.

I have a porn star's name

Well, I can’t talk shit about hippies any more. Not even the religious ones. This morning, walking along the Haiku road on the way to the community center to catch the bus, I was picked up by a Jesus hippie who offered me a ride. People hitchhike here a lot, but I don’t, because I’m not used to it, and I don’t mind walking: it’s exercise! But I’m not gonna turn down a ride if someone offers. As soon as I sat down I saw a JESUS SAVES hat on the floor of his car and knew I was in for a spiel. He told me about a great beach called Makena where the water is beautiful aquamarine blue like in the Mediterranean and the shorebreak is dangerous, but if you know how to handle yourself in the ocean it’s a paradise for bodysurfing. He dropped me off right by the Green Banana Internet Cafe where I was going to speak with the owner, and sure enough, right before he let me go he made his “pitch,” which went something like, “Bro, I’ve just gotta tell ya that people have done a really awful job of misrepresenting God, this God is great, he isn’t trying to make you feel bad or scare you, he’s love,” and then he wished me a beautiful day. Whatever, no big deal. I don’t hate religious people, I was just raised with an antipathy towards religion that I still have, from seeing all the harm and evil that it’s done, and the way it’s twisted and abused in the service of evil by so many hypocritical evil bastards, and I’m happy where I am, with my mild semi mystical form of pantheistic spirituality. So, I’m cool on the religion, bro, but thanks for the ride, all the same!

Then I met Dean, the owner of Green Banana, who told me Paia is a “very transient” place and he may need to hire someone new soon. He also said he has the same shirt I was wearing (the “For Good Luck Rub My Tummy” one, Urban Outfitters I think) and, get this, told me I have “the perfect porn star name.” I said, “Well, if I can’t get a job in a restaurant or cafe, I suppose there’s always that to fall back on.”

Speaking of colorful bananas, they grow decorative pink bananas (and pineapples) here on the Islands. Decorative meaning you don’t eat them.

Our dogs, Ilio and Nikita (Russian must have the opposite gender endings from Spanish and the Romance languages, because Ilio is the female and Nikita is her son) are pitbulls, a breed that has earned itself much ink and controversy. When I told my Mom that today she said, “Oh, I don’t like pitbulls, I don’t trust them.” But Elio and Nikita illustrate both sides of that controversy. Ilio accepted me right away (especially after I fed her some turkey leavins from my own plate) and lets me pet her and shows no aggression, while Nikita, who is notoriously shy and mistrustful of any new people in his orbit, runs away if I come near, and growled in his throat when I once tried to pet him. He seems to be accepting me nonetheless in his antisocial way, and K. says he’s usually much WORSE around strangers than he has been to me.

There’s no lack of food at the house, that’s for sure. I mostly eat the leftovers of the food Cousin buys, and I’m still eating better than I did in Portland.

The image above is a mermaid sculpture I took a photo of in Lahaina a few days ago, really lovely - I told Cousin he should buy it for one of his houses.

Thursday at the beach

Spent a lovely, lazy, sunny day with Cousin yesterday, first at the beach in Kihei (the Secret Beach, clothing optional, in sight of Bowie and Iman’s house), then at Spago in the Four Seasons building where he treated me to a swanky dinner of sushi cones and walu (fish) and cocktails – the bill came to $170, not including tip (holymoly). He said we got out of there pretty cheap, though; in the past he’s spent more than that himself. The last time he was there Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy were dining at another table. I said, “What is Jenny McCarthy famous for?” and he said the movie she made, Dirty Love I think it’s called, was really funny. We were at the beach so long I was actually ready to leave this time. Cousin made a nice sand castle and started on a mermaid as well, but didn’t get very far; I made a sad little castle myself that got sanded over by the window pretty quick. I got lots of sun and am now a candy cane: bright red from the waist up, then WHITE in my bathing suit area – not the most flattering look; I should’ve sunbathed nude like Cousin and others do. Now I’ll probably be peeling for the Victoria/Victoria party next weekend. But I am on my way to a nice bronze Island tan (I used some of Cousin’s bronzing spray). He drank Pyramid apricot ale, made in Portland. It was unusually calm today so the waves weren’t as fun, and the sun was behind the clouds much of the time, but we saw a whale, and Cousin said he could hear their whale language when he went under water, but when I went under I didn’t hear anything. The maid came over and cleaned this morning and I briefly spoke with her: she was nice. I told her about Michelle Obama making the unforgivable mistake of patting the Queen of England on the back (John Stewart had a funny riff on that on tonight’s Daily Show). Tomorrow I finally get to see the Hana house, the one that used to be Heavenly Flora: I’m going with Cousin to do some landscaping work – weed killing and mowing and such. I’ll earn some more money that way. I’ve been here only a week, and I guess I’m doing pretty good so far: I’ve already taken in Haiku, Paia, Kahului, Lahaina and Kihei. Cousin will be gone most of June with J. – they’re going first to Seattle for a friend’s memorial, then to London for a while, and K. is also going to Russia around the same time, so I’ll have this whole fabulous house to myself (not counting Ilio and Nikita, our dogs) for most of June! Good time to come and visit me, if you’re able...

Lahaina

April Fool’s Day. And I feel foolish for going to Lahaina in JEANS and sneakers and a polo shirt. I was thinking of job hunting, not of the climate I now live in, especially on the (south)west side of the island where Lahaina is, which is the dryer, more desert climate. (I wouldn’t use the word “desert” myself, though...it’s dryer and less lush than Haiku and Hana, to be sure, but it’s still pretty green, not like sand dunes or anything.) It was hot and sunny, of course, and EVERYONE else was in shorts and a T-shirt. I saw lots of tattooes and lots of Crocs (I bought a pair! finally! and they are comfortable! I remember when I briefly dated that cute little James kid years ago in Portland, the one who took those awesome photos of me back in the Melcliff around the time I started Dreck, he was the first person I knew who wore Crocs, and they were so cute on his little elfin feet, so I’m happy to finally have a pair of my own), and lots of shirtless boys with skin the color of tan leather. K. drove me there, she is very friendly and said I can ride with her whenever in the future if it coincides with her work schedule – she sells or buys pearls retrieved from oysters in some store on Front Street there, I think. She told me to watch for whales’ tails in the sea as we drove by – the prime whale season is mostly over (February and March), but it’s still possible to see them. Most of the way to Lahaina (it took us only an hour in her car) looked like one long stretch of public beach, but K. warned me that some areas are not safe for swimming, not due to sharks but rather to coral reefs, which you can scrape yourself on badly. I read in her Hawaii guidebook that all hula dancers were originally male, just like actors in the time of Shakespeare.

K. dropped me off in Lahaina and I turned in my application at Foodland (the Lahaina location is expanding) then spent the afternoon exploring Front Street, which is a wonderful concentration of art galleries (LOTS of them – I saw paintings done by Sir Anthony Hopkins – didn’t know he was an artist as well as an actor), discount stores, T-shirt shops, surf shops, restaurants, cafes, ice cream and shaved ice shops, and little marketplaces with kiosks like at Saturday Market in Portland, but with totally different weather. I brought my pair of jean shorts missing the top button to Ruth Ann at the Needlework Shop (by the Banyan Tree, a huge tree with 12 trunks that was planted in 1873 and is the largest and oldest tree on the Islands) and she said she could fix it and I inquired “It won’t cost too much then?” and she sort of scoffed and said, “A dollar.” It’s weird how some things (groceries!) are more expensive here than in Portland, while other things, for example liquor, are strangely about the same price, and then still other things – like the bus fare, which is a flat dollar whether you’re going one stop or all the way to Kahului, or getting a button fixed on your shorts – are CHEAPER. It’s a spectrum of relativities.

I’ll go back to Lahaina Friday or early next week to pick up my shorts and turn in some applications – especially one to the Cool Cat Cafe, a 50s-style restaurant with a full bar and (reputedly) the best burgers on Maui – although K. told me, “I don’t think it’s going to work for you to work in Lahaina,” and I know what she means – it will take an hour and a half to two hours each way on the Maui bus to make that commute. So I’m going to focus on trying to get something in Paia, which is a much shorter ride – in fact I could probably walk there if I was feeling up to the challenge. I tried to get a library card but I need a bank statement first showing my Maui address. I bought a pair of sunglasses, a ring from one of the kiosks, and the Crocs, which I can’t wait to try out on the beach. Got a waffle cone with two scoops at the Maui Swiss Cafe, which is very cute and very pink (it has Fred Flintstone out front driving a pink cart with a pink laminated menu).

On the bus back to Haiku two incredibly stoned hippie guys got on and sat right behind me and had an inane hippie conversation with phrases like “respect each other, man, it’s all we got” and “we’re all clowns and life is a circus!” They got off at the same stop I did, and I could tell they would’ve been happy to strike up a conversation, which I wanted to avoid at all costs, so I started walking really fast, to lose them. I walked home in the dark, and cars came along now and then and lit the way in front of my feet (no flashlight), and it was a little lonely and scary, but I didn’t feel lonely or scared, in fact the warm breezy summerish night put me in a mood of poetry, and I composed most of a poem as I walked home, which I’ll post here tomorrow after I add to/revise it a little.

Futile as poetry is, I can’t help but write some now and then.