Paul Theroux - Hotel Honolulu

A Portugee florist and a hapa-haole and all the journalistic shorthand for sexual orientation that was understood locally: "an aspiring kumu hula," "active in the theater," "served a stint in the Honolulu ballet," "a protege of Richard Sharpe" (Sharpe was a shimmering old queen who prided himself on being a hoofer), "male model," "chorister," every significant term except "faggot."

The most vocal public reaction in Honolulu was that of gloating Mormons and sanctimonious Christians. Mormons — polygamous until just the other day — claimed gay marriage to be immoral. Such people tended not to question the motive or the violence in a gay murder — being gay was motive enough, for gays were seen as jealous and excitable, as Gypsies once were; it was a catfight between men, and because men, even

gay men, were strong, violence was expected. In the case of a man and woman, the woman was nearly always overpowered, but in a gay fight either party might win, since (being gay) the two men were equally matched. Therein lay the interest: the outcome — who was the victim?

There was perhaps also a factor that we understood to be common on the mainland — a certain pleasure taken by the public when a gay man murdered his partner, or did anything that placed him in the ranks of the unambiguous criminal. Theft, battery, destruction of property ("The weapon was a shod foot"), anything would do, because then the onlooker could gloat and decry without appearing to condemn the man for his homosexuality. Yet in such cases the queerness was the very thing that was being condemned, because it proved that, after all, they are even worse than the rest of us.

And there is always a shiver of satisfaction that the smugly voyeuristic public feels when marginal people kill each other, when a boxer dies from a lethal punch, or when the corpse of the unwelcome boat person is revealed by the ebbing tide. It is the rush of the spectator at a cockfight, for the faceless struggler has no character beyond his struggle, no personality, and all anyone cares about is the outcome — the loser is indistinguishable from the winner. Mexican farm workers suffocating to death in a boxcar, prison inmates clawing each other to death, vengeful mobsters, furious gays — such murders arouse little emotion. You don't feel that their distress places you in any personal danger. They asked for it.

So when Chip murdered Amo Ferretti in Kahana Beach Park in Punaluu there was no scandal, nor any outrage. No one felt any of that retrospective horror that grips the public when a hideous suburban crime is reported — the instant identification of the fear that sounds like a boast. I live right nearby! I use that road all the time! My best friend lives there! My kid went to school with that dead kid! That could have been me!

But in the case of the gay or the mobster or the Mexican illegal, people think, That could never have been me.

Murder seemed a natural outcome of the quarrel between Chip and his lover. People said "Where?" and "How?" but not "Why?" But "Why?" would have elicited the most surprising answer.

The version that Buddy Hamstra heard — it was going the rounds of Waikiki — sounded perverse enough to be true. Suspecting that something was wrong — his mother had not called — Chip had visited the hotel unexpectedly one afternoon. I could vouch for that. I remembered the day. Chip's visit was not as casual as it had seemed. Because it was deliberate it had all the elements of calculation: suddenness, surprise, daylight. Being on duty, I was aware of movement at the back of the house, and I knew that Chip had entered the hotel by the rear door, moving quickly through the kitchen and then to the service elevator.

"These gay guys have very strong manao," Buddy said, using the Hawaiian word for gut feeling or intuition. Chip and his mother were on the same wavelength; he was like her in every way.

It was as though Chip had heard his mother calling from across the island, like the cry of some panicky jungle bird in bright plumage, that same helpless squawk. Chip had been at Salt Lake, out near Aloha Stadium, getting the oil changed in his car. Sensing trouble he called his mother, and Brenda, the hotel operator, said, "She's not answering." Not "She's not in," but "She's not answering." That made Chip suspicious.

As soon as the oil was changed, but not staying around for a new air filter, Chip raced back to Waikiki on Nimitz Highway. Instead of parking near the hotel, he used a meter on Kuhio and hurried around back. He was spotted by the kitchen staff, who told me how he had come and gone, all within a few minutes, "chasing his friend."

What Chip had seen — so the story went — had shocked him. He had not knocked. Using his own key, he had opened the locked door and heard muffled cries from the bedroom. There he had found his lover, Amo Ferretti, furiously assaulting his mother. The big naked man with the hairy back was violently raping the old woman, who, sallow and shrunken, looked defenseless. In this horrible glimpse, it seemed to Chip like the worst child abuse, like a brute assaulting a small girl, for his naked mother had a child's insubstantial body. The dark man was holding her legs apart and driving deep into her as she thrashed, gulping for breath. It was the

rapist surprised in his crime, a son witnessing the violation of his own mother. And that same night the man was killed.

So, though it had all the conventional details of a gay crime — the bitchy quarrel, the car chase, the smashed skull — it only looked stereotypical. It wasn't a gay murder after all.

Chip's arrest and this explanation caused an outpouring of sympathy for the man in the orange jumpsuit in Oahu Community Correctional Center. He had the best motive on earth — the love for his mother. He had avenged his mother's honor by smashing the rapist's skull at the beach park. It was justified. Some people in Honolulu demanded Chip's release, but his mother was not among them.

If he had killed to defend her and had saved her life, why was his mother avoiding him? It was a question no one asked.

Blood is adhesive. In a hotel it is like a curse. It is a taint that never goes away. For selfish reasons I was glad that the murder of Amo Ferretti was not committed in my hotel. Murders leave a sweetly poisonous smell that lingers, and any hotel unlucky enough to be the setting for a murder ceases to be a hotel and is known only as the scene of the crime, vicious and provocative, attracting all the wrong people, photographers and thrill seekers. The hotel never gets its reputation back, even after the charade of the most elaborate and noisy purification ceremonies, the howling monks, the gongs, the firecrackers, the tossing of salt, the prayers, the expensive and conceited exorcists. We were in the clear. Yet I still wondered why Chip had not killed Amo in the hotel, and why had he killed him at all.

"Chip in shock," Keola said. I loved hearing this dim, unlettered handyman use technical terms like "nonselective blackouts" and "shortterm memory." At that moment he was cleaning the pool filter. I had approached him for the pleasure of hearing him say "I'm purging it," which meant nothing, the way "in shock" meant nothing.

Chip had committed the murder of Amo Ferretti on the windward side of the island, avenging his mother's honor. Public sympathy was with him, and Ferretti was seen as a villain. Chip was charged with murder, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of aggravated manslaughter, was

sentenced to twenty years with the possibility of parole. He could be out of Halawa Prison and back on his surfboard in five or six years if he behaved himself.

"Shock" did not explain why Chip, described as "furious," had not murdered Amo when he was naked, at his most helpless, his hairy back turned, in the act of rape. No one asked the question. Still, it seemed unusual for so much time to pass.