| dewy decimal |
2003-09-29 - 10:50 a.m.
Vanessa�s place is a cavern--it has no ventilation, so if there are more than 10 people inside, the ceiling starts percolating. We all crowd on the futon, smoking glass pipes, book-heavy, looking like a Persian Harem, only more ghetto and shit.
We toss through fashion magazines, declaring that our favorites of the moment are definitely Nicholas Ghesquire, Hussein Chalayan, and Zac Posen. Vaness shows me her sketches from her fashion illustration class and I�m pretty confident that she�s probably the most progressive fashion student at UH. She hands the drawing to me sheepish-like but there�s a trace of pride in her willingness. They�re good, she should be proud and I tell her so too.
Lee, Val and Mike get back from work, polo shirt-clad. �Damn it�s so hot in here.� The first thing people mention upon arriving is the heat, thick and dank, almost furry. Faces crumble like wet tissue when they walk through that door.
Later, I tell Lee that I will go to Hula�s for an hour with him before I have to meet Ara and Jeff at Anti Pasto�s.
When we get to Hula�s, the place is half full with strangers and half empty of anyone our age.
Lee has a voice that is kinda soft and gentle, low-breezy, but somehow I can always manage to hear what he�s saying. We talk about moving to NY and he starts zoning out on one of those touch-screen electronic poker games that he�s not even playing, mind you, which is mildly insulting because it�s not doing anything really interesting, just blinking �Insert Coins, insert coin!� I start wondering if I�m talking too much about myself, being self-promoting and commercial-ish, because that�s when I seem to phase out of other people�s conversations and shit. Most of the time when my friend David is trying to impress others with his ideas, that�s exactly about the time when he�s being the most self-effacing, unbeknownst to him, of course. To everyone else, he disappears in his own voice, but he hears himself, loud and queer. Hyuk hyuk.
I vamanos from Hulas, Lee goes to Angles, I end up at Aunti Pasto�s, unable to find anyone and my phone has died. I slouch-step through the hip-hip-hopsters, trying my best not to trample the special edition Adidas / Yohji Yamamotos, lost in vain to the dark of the floor. Finding no one I head back to Vanessa�s and kick it with her and Mike in the muh-fuckin Harem dank, smoking and gawking at people on Friendster.
Later I go and meet Shari at Byrons, an all night drive in, below the freeway, a mile from the airport. The place is shattered by the sounds of racers and I complain to Shari. �Fast, thass why,� she explains, as I do not have an understanding of these nuisances. The place is besieged with nocturnal professionals�nurses in floral gowns, security guards with menacing haircuts, and the juvies with pocketknives that are well hidden in the grip of their socks.
We go driving through Moanalua, smoking more chronic. It�s sad to see how little has changed in her life. I think she�s still pushing drugs, but I don�t feel like drilling her tonight because nothing will change.
She tells me, offhand, that she�s not talking to her boyfriend anymore, for sure this time, cause he tried to choke her to death. �I am going to kill you,� then laughing. It�s nothing I haven�t heard fifty times before. I don�t know when I resigned myself to the disaffected state that I�m in. But I do care. I do care, from the bottom of my heart.
Five minutes from the airport, I can hear the roar of the red-eye tearing through the sky. I imagine Honolulu being reduced to a panel of lights, a tropical switchboard, and the ocean becomes a glass pane where above distances are surmounted, and I say, �Let�s fly by night. I have a credit card, letsgonow, lessgonow!� We laugh regretfully and dig into our onion rings, sopping with ketchup. The night gone silent with the things we really don't have to say.