Neil Plakcy - Mahu Vice

None of us was that agile anymore, so we headed for a good break that wouldn’t kill us, creeping along in traffic and then snagging a lucky parking spot on the Kam Highway. The beach stretched out in both directions, miles of sand and surf, and the sun blasted us as soon as we left the cool comfort of the SUV.

The waves crashed against the shore, big and small, delivering some surfers upright, while others churned around in white foam as if they were inside a washing machine. The best surfers were out the farthest, tiny toy figures suddenly popping up and riding the top of an incoming wave. There were bodysurfers closer to shore and little keikis frolicking at the water’s edge.

We raced for the water and launched ourselves in, hopping onto our boards and paddling past the breakers, duck diving under the incoming waves, until the four of us were sitting on our boards waiting for the right waves to break and take us in.

It was a magical moment-until Lui claimed rights as oldest boy and took the first wave, and then we each followed him, repeating the in-and-out process until the sun was high in the sky and it felt good to collapse on the sand and have it warm our tired muscles.

“You want to talk about what’s going on?” Harry asked, lying next to me on the sand while my brothers walked up to the road to get us all something to eat from one of the lunch trucks.

“Nothing much to say.”

“Yeah, there is,” Harry said. “You’ve turned down every invitation to come to dinner with Arleen and me, to hang out, to surf. Gunter called me after he took you to the ER, you know.”

“Asshole,” I mumbled.

“Nope. He was scared. I get the feeling that he’s into some kinky stuff, but whatever it is you’re up to freaked him out.”

“I’m not up to anything.”

Harry sat up, shaking the sand off, and I realized how much he’d been working his upper arms. He’d always been a skinny kid, and when he’d gone away to the mainland for school he’d spent all his time in labs and classrooms instead of out on the water. Now that he was back in Hawai’i, he’d joined a gym to get back in prime surfing shape.

“You know what?” he said. “Fuck you. You don’t trust me enough to talk to me? What, you think I’m going to judge you? Shit, Kimo. If I’m going to judge you for anything, it’s for not being able to keep your balance on a board. Not for who you like to fuck, or how you like to get fucked.”

He stood up, ready to follow my brothers up the beach.

“Harry,” I said. “Wait.”

He looked down at me. “You going to talk?”

I sat up, and he sat down, so we were on the same level again. He looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t know what to say, how to start. I realized that I was crying.

“Shit, Kimo, I’m sorry.” He reached around awkwardly and hugged me. “You are messed up, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“This is about Mike?”

I rubbed my hand across my nose and sniffled. “How’d you know?”

“I know how I feel about Arleen. If we broke up, I’d go nuts, too.” He looked at me. “Come on, Kimo, why are you punishing yourself?”

“I thought Terri was the one who had all the emotional insights,” I said. She was my other high school best friend, a cop’s widow with a young son. She had always been the one we turned to for advice on feelings, as we looked to Harry for logic. Me, I was the one who just pushed through and got things done. “You’re supposed to be the computer geek.”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Come on, Harry. You talked to Terri about me?”

“I didn’t tell her the specifics,” Harry protested. “Just that it sounded like you were getting into some very dark stuff, and I was worried about you. Your brothers were worried, too. Hell, even Gunter was worried.”

I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them. I’d become so accustomed to keeping secrets, never telling my family or friends I was gay until I was publicly dragged out of the closet. When those secrets were torn away from me, I felt lost and vulnerable. As I got more comfortable with myself, I swore I wasn’t going to hide anymore. But I’d gone back to my old habits, and that failure to share the load was hurting Harry as much as it was me.

“I never told you what Mike did.” I explained to Harry about the conference in Santa Cruz, the sleazebag he slept with in San Francisco, the gonorrhea he brought back to me as a souvenir.

“What a dick,” Harry said. “You’re better off without him.”

“I should have gone easier on him,” I said, suddenly feeling defensive of Mike. “Hell, I know what it’s like to be stuck in the closet, the kinds of things you do without thinking because you’re screwed up. I should have given him another chance.”

“Why? So the next time he could give you HIV?” Harry looked at me. “That’s not it, is it? You’re not positive, are you?”

I shook my head. “Nope. I’ve been careful. And I get tested all the time. I may want to get roughed up a little now and then, but I don’t want to die.”

“You ever talk to Mike again?”

“Nope.”

“Then how do you know he’s not happy? He’s found some other guy stuck in the closet, and they’re both having a gay old time screwing in the dark, while you’re beating yourself up.”

“You’re right. I don’t know that.” I smiled. “Did Terri tell you that, too?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Came up with that one all by myself.”

My brothers came back then with bottles of water, plates of grilled shrimp, piles of sticky rice, and slices of fresh, sweet pineapple sprinkled with li hing powder, and we ate, and drank, and then dozed for a while. Then we surfed again, until, in succession, all three of their cell phones went off. Harry’s first; then Haoa’s. Lui’s cell phone rang next, and we were sure it was his wife-but it was the station, notifying him that there was a big fire at a warehouse in Salt Lake, and that the evening news was going to lead with the story.

I thought of Mike, but for the first time in nearly a year, I didn’t feel anything more than mild curiosity about whether he’d be investigating.

Or at least that’s what I told myself.

A couple of weeks later, I took a shooting victim in to the emergency room at The Queen’s Medical Center to get a bullet pulled out of his butt, and I pegged the handsome, haole ER doc as gay as soon as he introduced himself, when he made lingering eye contact. One thing led to another, and once the victim was wheeled off for surgery, the doc asked me to dinner.

Since the surfing expedition with Harry and my brothers, I’d been celibate, resisting any temptation to get in trouble, trying to get back to the things that mattered to me-seeing my family and friends, reading, surfing, beating my body back into shape.

Intellectually, I knew I ought to say yes to the doctor’s invitation. His name was Phil, and he was in his mid-forties, trim and well groomed, though his face was a bit too angular to be considered handsome. Emotionally, I was worried that I wasn’t ready for a normal relationship yet.

Then I looked at him and he smiled, and my dick stiffened. I said, “Sure. That’d be nice,” and we made plans to meet on Saturday night.

To celebrate my return to dating, I treated myself to a cleanup at my friend Tico’s hair salon. Saturday morning, I pulled up in the parking lot of the strip mall on Waialae Avenue where Puerto Peinado claimed an end location. Until recently, my father had owned the center, one of a few he’d built around O’ahu. He’d sold them all off in the last couple of years, investing the money in T-bills and CDs.

For an older shopping center, it was meticulously maintained, with rich green grass between the parking lanes, expertly trimmed hedges, and kukui trees surrounded by perfect rings of mulch. The center had been Haoa’s first client when he began his landscaping business, and he still treated it as a jewel. Fearing my father’s disapproval might have had something to do with it, too.