Chapter 3: Waikiki

Chapter 3: Waikiki

The flight to Hawaii from Boston was fourteen hours long and it was the stuff that nightmares were made of, not just for me, but for the parents of the screaming infant on the last and longest leg of my flight, eight hours. Scientific fun fact: noise-canceling headphones, general engine drone, and two orange juices with a liberal nip of vodka, okay two nips, have zero effect on the piercing wails of a determined infant.

I landed in Oahu and immediately my suspicions were confirmed that Hawaii was exactly as I had imagined, just like Jurassic Park, misty and densely populated with ferns. I fervently prayed that one of the large cargo crates would crack open and forth would spring a raptor to devour the parents who thought it would be a good idea to bring a screaming infant on an eight hour flight from Portland to Honolulu. But alas, no dinos. Moreover, the sky was gray and drizzly, not exactly heartening.

That Saturday night I stayed in Honolulu, which sad to say, looked a lot like the financial district of Boston. Pearl & Francis put its interns up in one of the hotels in the area so that one could get one’s bearings and figure out where to go for work on Monday. As I laid there in the darkness of the cool room, I wondered if I hadn’t just made a huge mistake. I was feeling incredibly homesick, disheartened by the rain, and exhausted from the trip.

The next morning, I awoke and the sun was shining. I showered and took a cab to Waikiki to discover that I was going to be living a block and a half from its most famous beach.

The Ohana West Waikiki was a large hotel with palm tree décor and coral-print carpeting. It smelled of coconut tanning oil. My room was on a floor with a recreation room where I can look down and see the sparkling rooftop pool. My balcony, or lanai as it is called out here, overlooks the Denny’s and Miramark hotel. If I craned my head to the left I can see the hotel bar. Things were looking up.

I threw on some shorts and a tank top and went out to investigate. I first wandered down Kuhio Avenue and into the International Market Place, or rather, I got lost in the market place, looking for the path that purportedly led to the street the beach was on, but instead I kept coming out to a koi pond. The koi were fat and jolly and fun to look at it. Plus I could always spear and eat one if I couldn’t find my way out of the market place.

Eventually I found a food court, where I discovered one of many heavens on earth. Enter the Dole whip. Dole whip is like dairy whip except without the dairy, instead it’s made from fruit. It sounds…weird…but it tastes delicious. So I got a pineapple dole whip, for sustenance, just in case I never made it back to my hotel or found the beach, and explored the jewelry stands with shining pearls and polished jade necklaces where the vendors were trying to good-naturedly muscle you into purchasing their wares. Okay, they weren’t so much good-natured as more like seagulls fighting over clams on the beach.

I wandered into a clothing store, initially looking for a fun beach towel, when I saw a rack of string bikinis, their strings swaying in the gentle breeze. I looked around, suddenly feeling guilty. My mother was not the hugest fan of string bikinis. Of course, my mother wasn’t here, and besides, I’d never even tried one on. I grabbed a rebellious armful, gave the girl a hopeful smile and headed for the curtained-off dressing area.

Miracles of all miracles, I found one. I actually found a white string bikini that fit me and looked good on me. The tag said it was made with Aloha. I purchased it, glancing around me as if my mother might pop out at any second and demand I put it back. My first day on Oahu and I was already turning into a rebel.

Eventually I did find the exit and headed down the main boulevard that runs parallel to Waikiki Beach. On my left were high end shops, like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, interspersed with local places like Honolulu Cookie Company, Hawaiian boutiques and ABC stores, which I found out later, are located on every block and sell everything from fresh fruit to cigars and Hawaiian-themed prophylactics (think big kahuna and coconut themes).

And to my right was the beach.

I crossed the wide street, Kalakaua Avenue, the beach was thin and narrow with light colored sand interspersed with sparse patches of green and palm trees. The beach itself is only about two miles long. Its name means fresh spouting water. Or as some natives will tell you, swamp. At one end reigned Diamond Head and Kapiolani Park. Diamond Head was a large volcanic crater that looks out over the ocean. It was so strange to see something so looming and green, rising above the hotels.

At the other end lay the equally famous hotels, the Moana Surfrider, the oldest hotel first built in 1901, and the Royal Hawaiian, or the pink hotel. Wikipedia told me that Waikiki Beach was a once a playground for Hawaiian royalty and still played host to the rich and famous. I did my best Robin Leach in my head and snickered.

The beach was crowed and the scene was exactly what you'd expect, tans running the gamut from pink and painfully blotchy to perfectly bronzed, the air smelling faintly of sweat and coconut sunscreen. There was beach volley and surf board rentals and umbrellas staked askance in the sand, children splashing in the surf and sunbathers stretched out to greet the sun.

I sat on a green, manicured hump of short grass and watched the ocean sparkling in the sun. Children were swimming and teenagers were paddling out on their surfboards. I blinked. It was November and I was sitting in shorts on a beach. I sat here for some time contemplating my incredible good fortune. Ben had been right. This was the best decision I’d made in awhile.

To my right I saw a large statute of a man with outstretched arms and nothing on but swimming trunks, standing tall with a surfboard behind him. There were violet and white leis draped from his arms and everyone with a camera was stopping here for a picture. This had to be the famous Duke Kahanamoku statute. The Duke was a local legend, a swimming prodigy, Hollywood actor and modern father of surfing. There was a restaurant further down on the beach named for him and the tour book I’d purchased told me this was a not to miss spot for something called Hula Pie. I didn’t know what that was, but I was planning to find out.

After sitting for awhile, I headed left toward Diamond Head. I came to a little outside enclosure, nothing special to draw the eye, four granite posts and a roof, it was what was going on beneath it that drew me in: chess. Chess played by locals, bent over their boards intent and oblivious to surf and vacationers all around them. I stood there transfixed, watching a bare-chested older fellow in a wispy strawhat battling a younger, mustached man. The youngster didn’t have a chance, strawhat had him boxed into a corner with his queen and rook. Checkmate was only a matter of time.

I know what you’re thinking, tropical paradise, tan guys playing volley ball with no shirts, sun-speckled waves and warm sand, and what grabbed my undivided attention was chess?

In my defense, I never claimed to be cool.

“You play?” A woman with creases in her face but jet black hair approached me me. She was wearing a sun-faded sarong wrapped neatly around her tan, thin frame.
I nodded. “I’m not very good.” An entirely true statement. My Dad taught me to play when I was younger and though I’d never taken a single game off him, I planned on waiting until he was very old and dribbly, preferably mentally deficient, and then I would pounce. He’d still probably beat me, but at least the odds will be more level. My problem is, I’m rash and don’t think enough moves in advance and chess demands that you think ahead.

The woman smiled and patted her satchel. “You play me. Young people, they don’t play chess anymore. But we play.”

I felt like the untalented female version of that kid in that movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer” when he finds Laurence Fishburne playing chess in the park. My loss in all three games was swift and merciless, but, we’re outside playing chess, and this was very exciting for me, to play chess in Hawaii. The woman seemed to like me and she invited me back to play next week at this time.

I wanted to try my hand at tanning so I headed back to the hotel and changed into my string bikini. You laugh, but, I’m not a great tanner. It’s not just that I’m fair skinned. It’s been drilled into me, and rightfully so, that skin cancer is a terrible way to die young, and so I’m a bit zealous with sun screen. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever actually used a tanning product. And despite my enthusiastic use of sunscreen, I have just three hues: corpse white, shiny burnt red, and peeling reddish fade to tan. So when I said, I was giving it a try, I meant it.
The other problem, I guess, was that I just couldn’t lie there and do nothing, and reading was difficult because of the glare and uncomfortable positions. Sure you can read on your tummy, but not so much on your back. Enter the i-pod audio book. So I laid there on Waikiki beach, losing track of the hours and listening to Bill Bryson explain the history of everything.

At some point, I was vaguely aware that the sun would be setting soon. I gathered up my belongings, shook the sand off me as best I could and headed back down the beach where I came across a hula demonstration on the beach. One of the hotels sponsored a show several times a week that featured a different Hawaii story. Today’s legend centered around a young girl who wanted to marry a guy below her caste and so she went off looking for some spirit in the forest and danced for him so that the spirit would let her marry beneath her. Yes, I realized that I butchered the poetics of the story, but I’d gone and gotten lost in the dance and music. The hula was at times violent, fervent and sad and swaying at others. I couldn’t take my eyes off the dancers’ tiny bare feet making soft thuds in the grass. But people began murmuring around me, turning their heads over their shoulders and I followed their gaze: the orange colored sun was sinking over a calm, dark blue sea, and it was smearing the sky red and pink as it sank. I’d never seen a sunset like this one before.

This was my first day in Waikiki and already I’d seen more things in a single day that made me smile, than I’d seen in a whole quarter back in school. Still, as happy as I was, I was also a little nervous. Tomorrow was my first day at Pearl & Francis.