Walking in to town just now, it was raining and I was getting soaked, which sucked, ‘cause I was carrying my laptop in its bag, and had a job application in my backpack which I knew would be destroyed. Then a big native islander guy named Art (Arthur) picked me up in his truck, just when the rain was coming down hardest, and drove me to Mama’s Fish House. On the way he told me how he likes to go to Little Beach (the naked beach) with a metal detector on Monday mornings ‘cause all the people who were there for the Sunday night festivities (dancing, fire ring, drum circle, etc) leave all sorts of stuff that he finds, like watches, bunches of change. Once two girls had lost the keys to their rental car and were devastated and he asked “what part of the beach were you on” and they showed him and he found their keys with his metal detector and they were overjoyed and offered him anything – money, sex – and he said “How about a smile.” Seemed like a really nice guy, I got that feeling from him (and other native islanders I’ve met here) that I normally associate with Native Americans, of their spiritual earth magic connection, some of them are positively angelic, although they can also be demonic if crossed. As long as you don’t do anything underhanded or malicious, though, you have nothing to worry about. Anyway, I think every time I’ve been picked up hitch-hiking (or just walking) here it’s been by a native person, never by old mistrustful whitey. There’s an odd dichotomy here. You hear about the resentment the natives have for us usurpers (understandably, when you read about what the missionaries did), you see signs reading “Reinstated Hawaiian Government” which means the natives want to take their land back and secede from the U.S. (fine with me...can you do it while I’m on Maui?), and yet I’ve yet to have an interaction even approaching negative with any native person; they’re the ones who give me free rides and answers questions from strangers in a friendly manner and go out of their way to be nice to me, a tall, bottle-blond (bleached my hair a week or two ago...it looks really cute) white boy. What gives? I guess maybe it’s obvious that I’m not “overly privileged” if I’m walking three miles each way every time I leave the house...
