Serving Drinks in Peulla, Chile

We took the Andean lake crossing to get from San Carlos de Bariloche to Puerto Montt, Chile. It involved three boats and two buses, and we chose to stay overnight at the mid-way point in Peulla, Chile. Peulla has a population of 152 people and the complete list of buildings include the customs office, school, the hydroelectric turbine building, and towering above all else are the massive old hotel and the even more massive new hotel, the Hotel Natura.

Peulla overlooks a many-acre marsh at the end of the lake, and is sandwiched between two mountains that jut suddenly from the rainforest below up into the clouds. We never actually saw the top of the mountains because they're just that tall. It's quite dramatic. The pictures we have are beautiful, but quaint by comparison to standing looking at it.

There is no shopping, nightlife, or anything else in Peulla, and the transit schedules are carefully designed so that you'll have many, many hours to kill before you depart. What to do with all that time? Fortunately, Peulla is run by a tour company. Guillermo paused with facetious excitement at the notion of TV in your room, or Internet in the hotel lobby. He thought a self-guided walk was a nice idea, but clearly the superior way to while your time in Peulla was one or more from the menu of attractively-priced excursions conveniently timed to avoid conflict with your departure the next afternoon.

But in case you didn't like any of those options, you could always run from the biting flies.

Included at no extra cost, Peulla offers an exercise program to ensure that when you do leave the Hotel Natura, you will return at a full run. Every time the sun comes out, the 1.5 inch orange horseflies come droning through the air like helicopters looking for blood. And they are not easily deterred. Insect repellants are pointless. Swatting at them turns it into sport. And smacking them with anything less than all your might doesn't harm them in the slightest. First one arrives, strafing and diving, then a whole family of bloodthirsty idling chainsaws the size of the smallest hummingbird is swirling around you looking for a place to land. And drink.

Within a couple of hours, tourists like ourselves who'd tried to go on a walk and been driven back indoors sat around in the lobbies and lounges of the hotel looking at each other with blank, fly-bitten stares. Personal anecdotes of our shared horror of the horseflies galvanized us, and became conversation starters. Joanna from South Africa was horrified to be trapped indoors without champagne or ice on her anniversary. Michael from Canada had one get under his hat. Lee from Canada had been bitten on the ankle and even skipped a pre-paid outdoor excursion in fear for her precious vital fluids.

The locals, no strangers to the daylight onslaught, were full of good humor and broken English sympathy at first. But while they were not new to the winged menace, they were also too familiar with the complaints of tourists for their own tastes. The obvious comparisons to Hitchcock were apparently so cliche that by the time the third English-only tourist made reference to 'The Birds' in 15 minutes, they could no longer suppress the eye roll. "Oh, please," it seemed to say, "Hitchcock? Really? That's the best you can do?"

Peulla was wonderful in all other respects. The views were amazing, and once evening started to bring temperatures down the flies settled in for the night, savoring the taste of fresh blood on their proboscides. We both fearfully sniffed the air and once we were certain all danger was past, we left the hotel under the cover of an early dusk. We spotted five waterfalls, at least a dozen native plants we consider to be exotic, and took lots of pictures without anyone in them. Given the extreme remoteness and the short supplies they had on hand, Hotel Natura's staff managed to prepare excellent cuisine.

The pictures will tell the tale of our night and day in Peulla, but we will always remember it for its predators. Peulla. Come for the vistas. Stay for the excursions. And run for your life.

Four Alarm Fowl

The California wildfires have been astonishing thus far and we haven't even seen them. As a pleasant little gay boy from the wetter side of Oregon I was completely unfamiliar with the horrors of a wildfire. But here in NoCal, we've been socked in smoke for over a week. Women have taken their newborns out of state to spare their lungs, and neighbors wear respirator masks.

I imagine the effect is like taking a little drag off a cigarette with every inhalation. In fact I must admit that although I pride myself on superior health and resilience, I feel as though I am becoming victim to the plague of wildfires. My throat is scratchy, I wake with a cough, and Head Chef and I have both fallen into a sort of inexplicable lethargy. Are we just especially lazy, or is it something more?

Lying around deprived of oxygen has given us plenty of time for contemplation and conversation. Among the many revelations we've had is that guinea fowl is a suitable substitute for pheasant in fine restaurants throughout Europe and North America. Who knew?

Guineas are actually a wonderful multi-purpose bird. Although they look like decorative chicken-vultures and are capable of incredible amounts of noise, they are also effective organic alert systems. Anything out of the norm causes them to raise the alarm. Furthermore, they are ravenous insect eaters. They can consume so many of the ticks that cause Lyme disease that some rural counties give them away in pairs to help people control ticks. All this, and delicious too?

Were it not for their potential delectability, we might not have even considered it. But in all the haze and apocalyptic gloom of the fogs of wildfire smoke, we started picturing a few of ours as roasted, dressed, and presented on a platter a la Bugs Bunny.

It's not that smoky environs make us hungry. No, we had other reasons.

At first, we couldn't quite put it together. Before the smoke was even detectable by mere humans, the guineas were raising a mighty cry. And they did it for all their waking hours. Unceasingly, from 4:30am to when they went to roost in their tree for the night. Then the smoke became visible, and then we could smell it. And still, the guineas called.

They gave themselves dust baths in the drive, screaming the alarm. Not acting frightened. Just screaming. If they had been a baby, we would have shaken them. So we went to town and bought a pellet gun. All the better to silence them.

As we drove, we talked about why this sudden change in behavior might have occurred. Were they reaching maturity and establishing their territory? Were they trying to keep the flock from wandering too far apart? As African prairie birds, we knew their instincts to stay close together would be strong, but this was ridiculous. Frankly, it drew a lot of attention. An animal attempting to avoid predation doesn't do that just for fun.

And so, in between coughs and while trying to peer through the drifting smoke at one another, it occurred to us that perhaps they were staying on high alert because of the smoke. That would be one reason they might not mind making themselves noticeable. If the prairie's on fire, predators are probably a secondary concern.

So we put the gun away, and decided to wait for Cal Fire to put a damper on the flames. Today we have nearly clear skies. We can see each other from across the yard, and can even spot the mountain across our valley.

And the guineas? Well, they have quieted down significantly. They shall live to be eaten another day.

Skunk Incursions

As a test of whether predators could get into our new henhouse, we laid bait inside and locked it up. Our chicks are still young and a few weeks from being ready to be outside on their own, so this seemed a reasonable precaution.

Sure enough, about three days later we discovered part of the bait had been taken.  And there was some digging inside the coop, too.  But the animal that had been digging had been trying to get out, not in.  Weird.

So then a few days later we checked again, and this time the animal had practically trenched out the entire building trying to get out.  It had been really, really trapped.  But it appeared it had escaped by digging about two feet under some buried wire, so I took a couple of hours to repair and reinforce the entire building perimeter and extend the underground wire where it had exited.  Finished with my reparative duties, I rebaited, and locked the coop.

A day later, Spooty Dog went out for her morning constitutional and patrol, and started barking so incessantly that we went to investigate.  Skunk in the henhouse!  Spooty Dog had antagonized it from outside the coop to such a degree that it had sprayed everywhere.  Thankfully, it had mostly missed her, but of course she did get a dose of it.

Since there was no evidence that the skunk had actually gotten in, only that it was having a devil of a time getting out, we figured we had trapped this animal in when we first locked the coop up.  It hung out, ate the bait, escaped, and went back in only to be trapped a second time when I fixed its new exit/entrance.

But by this point, that didn't matter. The henhouse smelled like a skunk bomb,  our chickens in the house would need the coop soon, and this animal just wouldn't leave.  It was under the henhouse stamping it's little feet and preparing to spray us over and over. We did everything we could to try to shoo it out from under the building, but it wouldn't leave.  And it was impertinent about it.  It flaunted its ability to stand its ground, and it teased us.

Well I'd never seen him do anything like it before, but Head Chef just kinda snapped.  It don't know, maybe it was 'mountain fever', or the skunk's attitude and Spooty Dog's barking, or all of us standing around getting nothing resolved. Head Chef just muttered a few curses and got kinda white in the face and scrambled under the henhouse after the skunk.  I was in awe for a second and then yelled after him - what was he thinking!?  But he rushed it on all fours and grabbed it like a naughty cat even though he was retching from the stench, and pulled it out from under the coop with his bare hands.  It was scrambling and scratching to try to get free, making these freaky little chirping noises, and spraying wildly.  Head Chef was hit, and the yellow stuff was dripping down his shirt in oily globs like warm butter-flavored Crisco.

He got to his feet and I guess this was the point that reason came back to him.  Still holding the skunk, he looked down at himself and at the skunk, and vomited piteously.  He dropped the skunk, who ran off away from the henhouse and us.  Head Chef hurriedly stumbled toward the house while trying to get out of his clothes and yelling about how it burned.  I had ahold of Spooty Dog, and together we rushed ahead and turned on the outdoor shower. I grabbed the skunk remedy makings we keep stashed - some baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, and dish soap -and provided them to the shaking and now somewhat panicky Head Chef.

He showered for probably 45 minutes and then did it again three more times.  Even then he swears he can smell it and it's ruined the taste of food for the past three days.  I guess he got some up his nose?  To avoid laughing at him, I have to call on all my self discipline when I watch him try to wash out the inside of his nose ...

Head Chef vacillates between claiming he's a real man for grabbing a skunk with his bare hands, and between seeming pretty embarrassed for behaving like a crazy, feral mountain man.  Although he can kinda laugh about it already,  I am forbidden from laughing or I get in trouble.

I'll get to do that later, I guess.

Epiphanies at The Mall

Head Chef and I have been so busy moving out, moving in, shuffling around, driving both to and fro, and just generally finding things to occupy us outside the common current of human civilization that we've become a little more authentic.

Authentic? Oh, that sounds euphemistic, and I suppose that's a fair criticism. But while not completely unkempt, we're definitely a bit less kempt. You might say we've allowed our appearance to get a bit rugged, without going so far as to call us feral.

My mustache has gotten rather long and my neck goes well more than a week without shaving, granting me a wilderness creature affect that is actually quite fetching if I may say so myself. I bathe daily, but I might pull on yesterday's shirt because it's not visibly dirty and isn't malodorous yet. And Head Chef is no more or less relaxed in this way than I am. His normally smooth pate may get a bit of shadow, then a week's worth of stubble before we assault it with the razor again.

And so forth. But this is not terribly shocking in what passes for public in these parts. Rural California cares not for the well-heeled gentleman. No sir. So there's no need.

But the other day, we found ourselves in need to visit a mall. Yes, a mall in a real city. Imagine our horror. Just a day or two after Christmas, we pushed ourselves into a mall and strolled along amongst tightly primped teens, cute couples on second dates, and businessmen on their lunch break.

Smartly dressed in our dingy jeans, yesterday's thermal tops, and Wal-Mart's most bleeding edge $20 fashion footwear, we walked about, shopping for a French press. You'd be surprised how hard they are to find these days, and so we hit store after store. As our hunt wore on, we brushed ladies who were wearing perfume of all things. And men with not just a haircut, but a hair style.

At some point throughout this experience, my discomfort grew to a tangible level, and I realized that I was not of this world. In the span of a mere two months, I had moved from the above-the-bed realm of children and pleasant dreams to the under-the-bed, hiding-in-the-closet realm of monsters. And I announced my discovery to Head Chef.

"We're monsters." I carefully measured my delivery to indicate a statement of fact.

"We are?" he said as one who's just been told an obvious truth but cannot believe he hadn't come upon it himself.

"Oh yes. Don't you feel it?" I asked.

"I do! But I'm experiencing it more like being an alien dropped into the shopping mall. Disturbing." He shuddered for effect, then assumed a stiff-legged alien walk and posture for a few strides. Just enough to make us both laugh through our beards, but not enough to make us stand out any more than we already did.

For myself, I think I'll stick with the monsters. Although Head Chef would look adorable in antennae.

Moving On Out

So I’ve been pretty quiet lately, and I hope you haven’t been shocked. Oh, it’s OK, we’re friends, we can talk. I know how easily you’re upset by my silence, and how you start to imagine scenarios. You worry. It may even be a little bit twisted, but I kindof appreciate that, you know? Like, you care enough to be concerned, and that’s actually pretty special.

But no, nothing’s wrong. In fact, aside from the fact that we can’t use our kitchen any more, everything is quite fine.

See, the house is on the market. As in to sell. And we’ve made it positively glisten, but the road to this point was arduous and tiring. And frankly, we just didn’t want to talk too much about it because we weren’t really sure what the goal was, or if we’d still like our goal when we reached it. So yes, we were always working on the house, but we weren’t working on the house. Not like this. It consumed us. It was the only thing we did.

When all you do is make widgets, it’s hard to talk about gadgets, you know? So if you’re working on widgets with secret properties, you don’t say much.

But it’s done now. And now it’s just a matter of keeping it sparklingly clean and not cooking in the kitchen until the right person walks in and just loves it. And then when they do, that’s when the next adventure starts. Because we really are leaving after that person finds this house. And we’re going back to the mainland, to start all over again.

What grand adventures await? Well, we’re not really sure. How fascinating is that? One thing we do know, though, is that Internet access may be rare. So if you thought I was quiet before, just wait a month or two. Because we're going to be turning up the volume on ssssshhhhhhh........

Cue the crickets.

Tagged

Oh, Bother.

Although I’m generally disdainful of blog meme tagging, I’m also completely adoring of GoB. So even though he tagged me, the love fest must go on, and I must comply. To do so, I’m supposed to recount eight random facts about me, then go on to tag eight other people.

1. I grew up on a farm in rural Oregon with two hundred goats, fifty chickens, thirty five pigeons, three pigs, a cow and her calf, and a dog. Being the eldest boy, it was my job to kill the chickens that escaped repeatedly. Since I could never properly figure out how to aim my BB gun, I did it with my bare hands. (It was also really fun to give the pigs bubble gum. OMG that was some funny shit.)
2. I want super human powers. I mean, I really really want them. Not unlike how an eleven year-old boy wants them before, during, and after reading a Harry Potter book or X-Men comic, I yearn for extraordinary abilities. Sometimes I want them so I can improve society, sometimes I want them just to show off or to cause a reaction, and sometimes I want them so I can hurt someone. This is how I know I would be a poor candidate for having any.
3. Bumper stickers that say “Abortion stops a beating heart” really piss me off. What I want to do to the people with them on their cars reinforces my belief that I should have no super-human powers.
4. If I’m not sore, I feel scrawny and unattractive. Head Chef says I have the most annoying case of body dysmorphia the world has ever known, but I disagree. There are plenty of people with it worse than me. Plus, it keeps me in the gym. Given the choice between a gym habit, chewing my finger nails, or heroin, I think I’ve chosen wisely.
5. I fully expect a cure for baldness to arrive within the next ten years, and I don’t mean some Propecia-esque thing that sorta/kinda helps. I mean a cure. And I’m already preparing to deal with the ethical dilemma. Hair provides me very little increased likelihood of survival and baldness is a valid and even attractive alternative to hair. Should I take the cure, or take a stand for natural beauty? Only time will tell.
6. Remodeling our home has been a grueling and long-term effort, and has taken approximately 21 months longer than originally estimated. A good friend of mine attempted the same thing a few years ago and ended up on anti-depressants. I have avoided the same fate by alternately ignoring the construction zone I live in and working on it like a man obsessed. Lately, I’ve been so obsessed that it is testing Head Chef’s patience. But we are making excellent progress and it’s exciting on at least two levels.
7. For the second time in my life, I’m ready to throw caution to the wind and do something dramatic and rash that has the possibility of great reward coupled with the risk of devastating consequences. I’m either getting older and more able to face risk, or the last time was so traumatic that I’m just not afraid of it any more. Either way, it seems like a win.
8. I still play World of Warcraft. I might be less inclined to continue, but the Draenei racial was just too good not to roll a new warrior.

Coming up with eight random facts about yourself can be a challenge, but coming up with eight other people to tag is a nightmare. For starters, I don’t actually know eight people. Furthermore, at least one blogger I adore is blogging in secret (figure that out). This makes it too difficult to bother with tagging eight other people.

I suppose if you break the chain in a chain letter you’re supposed to have terrible luck. So if the consequences of not tagging eight other people are so dire that I’m physically or technologically incapable of blogging them, may my silence serve as a warning to others.

Ceiling Fan Attacks Twin

As a dutiful homo-ner (translation: gay owner of a home), I recognize and perform according to my duty to work on my abode. And so with Head Chef laboring over the power tools, I do the more menial tasks that must be done even though they require a bit more patience and perhaps a little less emotional return for the effort.

And despite the fact that it was he, not I, who operated the power tools, I still found my way to the hospital with a gushing head wound.

See, the ceiling fan attacked me in cold blood. I was innocently patching pukas in the ceiling and the wicked thing reached out and lacerated the back of my head. The impact resonated with a huge “WHAM!” through my head. I fell to the bed I stood on, and heard Head Chef turn off the power tools outside in the garage.

“Are you OK?” he called in. I got up from the bed and put my hand to the back of my head for the blood check. Sure enough, my hand was covered in beautiful red.

“I’m bleeding,” I responded as he came into the house and I went out into the hallway. Although the pain was subsiding quickly, he reported that the cut was an inch or more long, apparently deep, and covered in dust bunnies that had collected on the fan blades since their last cleaning.

So after some convincing, he took me to Kuakini hospital for cleaning, stitches, and a fashionable bandage.

And it was there that it happened again. The admitting nurse asked me my name. She asked me my occupation. She wanted to know if I had any other injury or had fallen to the floor. And she wondered if Head Chef and I were twins.

No? Perhaps brothers? Cousins? Step in-laws thrice removed? I held a cool, damp rag to my head with my right hand, and it was significantly streaked with blood. I looked over at Head Chef and rolled my eyes. Clearly, all bearded, bald men are related.

It was the first time I had ever been irritated by the question. Up to this point over the past nine years, I was fine with it. It even amused me. “Brothers! Ha! More like kissing cousins,” I always wanted to answer. But in this context, the nurse’s question wasn’t amusing at all. It was tedious.

And it was stupid and obvious that we are not brothers. I’m taller, more fair, with narrow shoulders and a gigantic head. I look English/French. Head Chef is shorter, darker, with broad shoulders and a decidedly Czech look to him, and yet again, “Are you brothers?” You should see the family get-togethers.

The bad news was that I needed stitches and a tetanus booster. I braved both, and brother Chef smirked at my discomfort and embarrassment. I was stoic in the face of hypodermics and self-effacing for foolishly standing up into a ceiling fan on high.

My twin (he has teeth and a spinal column) and I left the hospital and returned home to find the fan still spinning. With my head dressed in bandages, I stood there menacing it from the room’s doorway, “spin all you want, but I’ll get you in the end.”

Wistful For Bloodletting

I have learned from the great and wise GoB that the FDA is upholding the ban on gay men giving blood despite statements against the ban by the Red Cross itself. But unlike he who holds domain over scones, I am not angry. I just miss it.

See, I used to donate blood regularly in college. And I loved it for two reasons: I was deathly afraid of hypodermic needles but not the pencil-lead variety used for blood donation, so it was a sort of personal triumph each time. Plus, I walked out feeling like somebody somewhere might live because I made this minor sacrifice of time and resources.

It helped my mood in a truly unique way. I felt like a little hero, and I smiled for not just no reason at all, but for every reason. I felt generous and benevolent, and yes, even powerful.

I have a fairly rare blood type and great veins so my donation was always met with a peculiarly greedy but grateful welcome. It almost felt as though they might ask to take a little extra just this once. And each time I went in for a bloodletting, I answered the question "have you had sex with a man even once since 1977" truthfully.

I always said, "no." And silently in my mind, I followed my response with "...not yet." So the morning after I finally did go home with a man after a night at a bar, I took stock of what was next. And amongst all the other realizations I had that morning, I knew that my little pleasure of donating blood would be a memory. And I knew I would miss it more than anything else.

Some weeks passed, and I got my customary call from the Red Cross. "Mr. Chef," they started. They always addressed me so politely. "We just wanted to let you know that we're hosting a blood drive in your neighborhood and would appreciate it if you could make another donation because your blood type is so uncommon."

I thanked them and hung up, but I did not go. This happened two more times. And on the fourth call, they seemed puzzled. "Mr. Chef, you had an amazing donation record prior to nineteen ninety (something!), but we haven't seen you at the last three drives in your area. Is there anything that we can do to make it more convenient for you to donate?"

I was hesitant to describe the real reason I'd stopped coming in. "Well, you see, it's just that you don't want my blood any more," I explained.

"Oh, quite the contrary, Mr. Chef, you have an uncommon blood type and we're having a particular shortage of rare bloodtypes in our area," she pleaded. It was clear I had to be direct.

"No, see. You don't want my blood any more because I've had sex with a man since my last donation."

"Oh, I see. Thank you, Mr. Chef. We'll remove you from our call list." She hung up without so much as a goodbye.

I am still HIV negative, and even if I weren’t, the Red Cross says they could tell before my blood went into someone else. Someone who might need it badly.

I still miss giving blood. And I would again if I could. In a heartbeat.

Dial E For Murder

No, it’s not M. It’s E, baby. E is the true letter to dial for murder.

I work in a security-related field, and as such I have need for encryption in various situations. If you don’t already know what it is, encryption is a term for technologies that scramble information so that it is unreasonably difficult for someone to read unless they are authorized to do so. If someone who isn’t supposed to wants to read encrypted data, they had better have a lot of expertise, a large number of computers, and be in no rush.

Since encryption is so great at protecting information from prying eyes, people in my industry start to use it for the really important things first. When exchanging critical financial data with a client, for example. But then we start using it for less critical things, like placing an order for pizza, and it becomes a slippery slope all the way down. Soon, we’re using types of encryption to prove our emails to Mom really are from Sonny Boy. Like Mom’s checking.

So today I was chatting with the Boulanger, discussing encryption for our instant messaging chats. She didn’t know what it is, the poor dear. So I explained it and its purpose.

Boulanger is the sort of woman who cannot be bothered with the boring realities of certain things, most especially when there is a more entertaining alternative to discuss. No matter that it’s fictional, let’s explore it. So hearing my explanation of encryption and attempting to determine how and why it might be applied to instant message chat, she came upon the best reason ever.

“So you want to chat using encryption because you want to talk about … MURDER,” she stated. Because she is so literate that grammar literally inundates and colors her speech, you could practically hear the capitalization.

Faced with such a dangerous and tantalizing alternative reality, how could I disagree?

Fond Farewells

Head Chef’s parents came to visit, and although it was the source of some frustration, it ended very nicely. We returned from Big Island together and had fast food in the terminal while we waited with them for their connecting flight. Then we walked them to the Wiki Wiki shuttle and Head Chef hugged his mother while I shook his stepfather’s hand. Then we switched, and I got a hug from Mama while Head Chef got a handshake from his stepfather. And we stood there for a second.

At this rate, this might be the last time we’d see them again for another few years. I had just had that moment during Christmas with my own family, and it felt like deju vu. Mama Chef started to cry. We had to hurry and get the goodbye over with, or Head Chef would be next. So we waved and parted.

For all the things that can go wrong or did go wrong, I find it easier to forgive it all in those cases when we love each other enough to drop our guard upon parting. To get just a little bit overwhelmed by goodbyes.

Takedown

We were late for a lunch meeting so we were hurriedly walking to the restaurant through the historic part of downtown Honolulu. On our left we passed the Kawaiaha`o Church and a Japanese wedding party descending down its steps.

We rushed down the empty sidewalk, mindlessly navigating around a bus stop or other obstacle and talking about Churches and my buddies’ marriage-minded girlfriends. As we did, we glanced over our shoulders periodically to watch the bride bask at the top of the stairs like Makapu`u Lighthouse shining amongst a night of dark Japanese suits.

We approached two elderly women standing on the edge of the sidewalk waiting to cross, but they stood still and were well out of our path. I glanced over to the Church again as we talked about its popularity with the Japanese.

And then I was tested.

The more elderly of the two women was once a powerful but evil master of sciences and Kung Fu, and she used these tools to achieve her sinister ends. Using complex calculations based on her vast knowledge of physics and informed by her studies of Cheetah style martial arts, she timed her attack perfectly. While my head was turned to see the bride giggle and sway, Auntie launched herself into my path in an attempt to undo me for the last time.

But devious Auntie Cheetah was no match for my years of training at Shaolin Locomotive Monastery.

I never saw her coming and I barreled into her like a steam engine hits a cow. All I knew was that I had struck something with my chest that shouldn’t ought to have been there. I came to an abrupt halt, but Auntie absorbed my kinetic energy and began to crumple downward and toward the Church in a desperately pleading sort of slow-mo. Foolish mortal. As though the Church could save her now.

I stood in shock, almost completely unable to react, as my 70 year old nemesis collapsed. My friends, who had seen her leap at me but had no time to warn me, tried to slow her fall, but it was no use. No mere Grandma can stand after being struck by a man in Locomotive Stance.

We helped her up from the concrete and immediately began to abase ourselves. Auntie’s sidewalk companion yelled accusations of premeditated assault and attempted foul play. Finally, after everyone was confirmed uninjured and we promised for the fourteenth time that it was an accident, we were allowed to leave.

But I’m keeping my eye out for Grandma. She may be frail, but she is wise, vengeful, and she has powerful allies. Thank goodness for Locomotive Stance.

The Watcher Leaves

You are being watched.

Oh, yes you are.

By me.

You are hurriedly putting your bags through the agricultural quarantine scanner at the airport, and you just look like a guy from San Francisco. Like a guy I might even know. But you are trying to dress like you’ve been to Hawai`i. And naturally, because you are who you are – you there, with your appealing, stocky build and your good hair and short beard – you have done a good job. I’d almost think that you were local by your choice of aloha shirt. But of course you’re not.

You nod and smile. You know.

And you, with your plucked eyebrows - I know you do drag when you’re not in that uniform. The way you pull the curtain back using only two fingers and never, ever using your pinky. I know. And the rest of you, with the proper gait but just a bit too much lift in your step. I can recognize which one of you said, “Welcome aboard United flight 72 to San Francisco,” without even hearing you speak in person. And, sir, when you do speak to someone face to face, you still sound like Bea Arthur doing voice over for a Discovery Channel special.

Such a shame you couldn’t get the video system running properly. The movie was cute.

I don’t mind watching you. The guy who reads while biting his tongue. The tongue that just hangs from between his teeth, thoughtlessly resting between his lips. Or the guy who gets a nicotine fit and has to dip to calm his nerves.

I even enjoy it. But I’d give it all up to spend the day at home, play the game, work in the yard, and go to bed together tonight. I won’t do those things for a month, and I’m not happy about it, but it’ll be OK, and I’ll do those things again soon.

Laughing While Bathing

This morning as he trimmed his beard in the shower, Head Chef buckled forward just a bit and made a loud, “Oh!” sound. Razor in hand with his back to me, I couldn’t tell if he’d cut himself, had an epiphany, or been punched in the stomach.

When I realized that I had not punched him and no one else was there, I narrowed the options to cutting or epiphany.

“Are you OK?” I asked. He started to chuckle.

“Oh, my god, yes. I just remembered that I talked to my mother yesterday,” he said with a smile in his voice.

I didn’t know why his sudden remembrance of a conversation with his mother would cause such a confusing pain-like sound. From my perspective, she's just a wonderful in-law. About as good as one could hope for, certainly. And she says some funny, funny things. When she walks around something, she’s walking the parameter, not the perimeter. She warshes her dishes in the zinc. Other people are specific, but she’s very Pacific. And, according to her, the native Australians are Aberneeshuns.

“I was talking to Mom,” he continued, “and … oh, I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I said - Oh, I remember now, we were talking about the new cabinets, and the holes at the top that we have to fill before we can cover them – and I said that they were ‘pukas’ without even thinking about it.”

A puka, in local parlance, is a hole. Any sort of hole – in a boat, in the ground, in the top of a cabinet.

“And so,” he said, “she starts giving me crap about saying ‘puka’ ‘cause she doesn’t know what it is. So when I told her, she’s all, ‘Oh, what, so you’re so local you’re speaking Chicken now?’”

Standing there in the shower, we both burst into laughter. Through his own laughs and over mine, he exclaimed, “So I said, ‘Mom! It’s not Chicken! It’s Pidgin!’” And we laughed some more.

Untimely Offers

A few too many years ago when I was in college, I wore my hair very long. It poured off my head in long, gently coiling blond tresses that were the envy of coeds everywhere. My hair also bought me entry into the seedy underworld of Hippy Long-Hairs. I never ever shaved by youthful beard, instead just trimming to the shortest length possible. And I padded about campus in my Birkenstocks, with a tie-died shirt and ratty jeans. But I was not a hippy.

I was trying, see, and I was even fooling people. But the key to uncovering my deception was in that same hair I wore like a Subversive’s Badge: it was meticulously managed. I spent incredible amounts of money on the proper salon shampoos, and picked (never brushed!) it out daily.

But some people didn’t see through my simple facade, and I got offers for all sorts of drugs on the street. Naturally, in my Birks and tie-dyes, I looked like someone who would want them, but I always declined.

When I wanted any of what they were selling, I went to someone I knew and trusted.

Years later, I was mid-morning napping at home on a sunny weekday when a pretty young blond woman knocked at the door. I had pulled on some shorts but wore nothing else, and my hair by this point was no more than an inch and a half long anywhere on my head. When I opened the door, she asked to use the phone for a cab, so I let her in, listened to her call – clearly with a cab company – and prepared to escort her back outside.

She hesitated, and wanted to know if I “dated.” Not being part of the “dating” scene, I was naïve and said I wasn’t sure what she was asking. Suffice it to say, she wanted to perform a service in return for money. Before I finally ejected her from the house, she told me she was high on a number of drugs, showed me her breasts (they looked OK), and tried to convince me that I should “date” her just this once because, hey, she slept with women sometimes, too.

She really was very lovely, though. When it comes to women, I have to admit she was my type. Still, if I’d wanted some of what she was selling, I had female friends I knew and trusted that I probably could have turned to.

But that story’s now an anecdote from several years ago.

Yesterday, I stood waiting in the financial district for Head Chef to pick me up from work. Dressed in an untucked aloha shirt wrinkled from 12 hours at the office and my hair now no more than a quarter of an inch long, I slumped against a planter and played Tetris on my cell phone.

People came and went through the darkness and most of them looked like me to some degree. Just off work, they were dressed for business, but loosened, disheveled, and relaxed but hastening to get home before bedtime. My blocks fell into neat little rows, disappearing as they should until something unexpected happened.

“Wanna blowjob,” he mumbled as he shuffled passed. I was taken by surprise, and looked up at the man that had just passed me, then looked around, then back to him. He looked over his shoulder at me and lingered as he prepared to cross the street, and I stared back in shock. He had a 45 year old Anglo Rasta look to him, a couple of dreads in his hair and a beard a few days old. He looked away and crossed the street.

No, no, I was sure he had offered fellacio, this was not one of my moments of hearing the wrong thing. And so I looked at myself through the eye of a third person, and wondered what about me now - bearded, disheveled in my business aloha - had made this man think I’d want what he offered. I could think of nothing. No pink triangles, no limp wrist, and no look of desperation. I was just a man at the end of a long day playing Tetris.

Maybe there’s a correlation between Tetris and paying for BJs, but I doubt it.

A few minutes later, someone I know and trust showed up and I got in the car and kissed him hello as he pulled away from the curb. I told him the story of what had just happened, and Head Chef laughed out loud at the incident. “Only you,” he assured me. “That could only happen to you.”

I doubt that. And yet, I do get some unusual offers.

Times Worth Having

Curiously, I am finding myself in the holiday spirit.

Perhaps I’m cheerful and holidayish because my work days are looking shorter, and the end is in sight. I will go home at 5:00pm and eat my dinner with my handsome Head Chef, and whisper to my dog, and watch a movie or play a video game. I will walk through my garden before the sun goes down, and it will be good.

I’ve even started to voluntarily play the Hip Holidays and other seasonal music in our collection. Mind you, this is as significant a step as when I first fail to object when Head Chef puts on his holiday favorites on Thanksgiving morning. Indeed, I myself have chosen the “Holiday” genre for iTunes to use on my computer’s Party Shuffle. And I have done so more than once.

I am ready for Christmas. And I don’t mean shopping. I am ready inside, and that is where it really counts.

As for my shopping, I never really started. Distant family – even Boulanger – have shamed me by sending something, but I have sent nothing. Far-away friends whom I miss almost daily will get nothing, too.

But I miss them all right now, so very much, and I think they know. And when I see them again, we’ll hug and smile, and it will be just like yesterday. We’ll be older, fatter, thinner, and almost certainly a little greyer, but our hands will touch and we’ll talk, and it will feel like home.

I am also ready to laugh and enjoy. The video game we play sports peculiar Christmas iconography at this time of year, but calls it by a different name. And yet, rather than fuss about how similar to Christmas it is, I busy myself preparing gingerbread cookies to present to Greatfather Winter.

And then Sean sent me this, which I marveled and laughed at. Such a feat of technical mastery could only be achieved by a lighting special fx artist of great skill. I am amused to think of a fictional collapse of the broadway, rock, and other stage show industries that leaves such accomplished and comedic people with equipment and spare time on their hands. Kudos for their remarkable humor through these hard times.

On Christmas morning we’ll be up the mountain at Friturier’s house overlooking Honolulu on what will no doubt be a sunny and beautiful day. We’ll be in shorts and flip-flops, drinking gin fizzes and eating fatty foods, and living life on Friturier’s terms. Which is to say, living today as if tomorrow was of no consequence. Laughing loudly as if everyone should hear, and enjoying our island family from way out in the middle of the ocean and up on top of the world.

These can be difficult times and they can be good times, worthy of being had.

Hungary Was Even Worse

"You know what, sir," she asked in a vaguely ethnic southern accent.

I glanced up from my falling blocks of color, missing a key placement, and noted the stout woman angrily hunkered in the seat next to mine. Tight coils of salt-and-pepper hair bunched around her head, and she set her jaw, getting ready to tell me what. The busy terminal gate was crammed full of people, none of whom paid either of us any mind. We could have just as easily been completely alone.

"I was stranded there in Oakland," she announced. "Oakland!"

"You were stranded there?" I queried, puzzled. What an awful thing to have happen. And in Oakland, of all places.

"I ain't lyin. It really happened."

I nodded, more to confirm I’d heard her than to express understanding, and she continued.

"I think I’m going to have them call this time. The, the, you know – them ticket agents. Then I won’t have to sleep at the gate while they wait in the lobby!" She was quite upset. "Nobody told me they were gonna to be in the lobby," she offered. And then after a moment of thought, she conceded, "Although I s’pose I could have gone down to see if they were there."

I nodded thoughtfully, still not clear on what she was talking about. My game had become a disaster while trying to be polite, and my neat rows of squares were now in disarray. I closed the lid.

"And then the stewardess comes up to me and says that three men are waiting for me in the lobby, and I tell her, 'why you wait till I'm getting on the plane back to tell me that?'" I furrowed my brow in genuine concern. Genuine because I simply didn’t understand her circumstance, and because whatever it was seemed to be very stressful.

"I ain’t lying. I’m definitely gonna be tellin them in Honolulu to call so I don’t have to sleep in the, the – the terminal. And maybe they’ll be there this time."

We were no longer alone at the crowded gate. Other strangers – none so strange as my sudden conversation companion – were now covertly smiling and emitting expressions of sympathy. One man seemed to be suppressing the urge to join our talk and he fidgeted forward and back, glancing our way and grinning.

To comfort her, I assured her that they (whoever they were) certainly would have learned from their previous mistake (whatever it was) and would not repeat it. She seemed grateful.

"And you’ll never believe what happened when I was in Europe. You know about Europe?" she asked, her flat brown features scrunched into concern. I wasn’t sure if she was asking whether I knew of its existence, or about how it runs.

"Sure, Europe," I confirmed.

"Passport! Passport!" she yelled above the din of other conversations in the terminal. The newspaper held by a woman nearby seemed to be taken by surprise, and it shuddered just briefly. I looked on, puzzled more than ever.

"And I told the man, 'I don’t understand,' I’d say, and he’d come running after me yelling, 'Passport! Passport!'" With each incantation of the word, she’d wave her hand in the air like a customs official chasing her through the airport.

"And I told them, everywhere I went, 'I don’t understand, what’s this passport?' and he told me he’d arrest me if I didn’t show him a passport." She laughed, but I was unsure if I was supposed to laugh along. "Everywhere I went! It really happened. I ain’t lyin," she explained.

"And Hungary! Hungary was even worse," she warned.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her you’re supposed to meet your ride in the lobby or at baggage claim these days. Nor that you really do have to show your passport at international airports.

I just hope she didn’t really fly back to Oakland just because her ride didn’t meet her at the gate in Honolulu.

Home Work

We here in the Kitchen are home owners and home makers. To achieve our goals associated with those titles we become armchair botanists, technophiles, lay zoologists, hobbyist designers, craftsmen, and procrastinators. In short, we are distracted and lazy.

As such, our great home remodel project of 2005 has taken significantly longer than the three months that Head Chef once said it would take. Oh, and there are excuses. Some of our excuses are even reasons. But not all.

Despite our collective attention deficits and lethargy, Head Chef and I are motivated by nothing more effectively than the looming threat of visitors. We look forward to their arrival and the beach time we will take with them and the meals we will share. But we also stand on the steps to our little home in Pauoa and look around us with the eyes of a third person. And we shake our heads and think, “oh fuck.”

So this weekend, I eschewed my workplace responsibilities and we worked on the house. We floored the remainder of the hallway and the entire master bedroom. We cleaned. We investigated local options for kitchen cabinetry and planned the bathroom remodels. And then we worked in the yard.

If you know us even casually enough to have visited our home only once, you know our love for gardening. The front garden, now only 6 months old, is already reaching epic status. The gingers are getting taller, the brugmansia is blooming, and the Rangoon creeper already hides the stone wall. The ensete banana threatens to rule the world.

We dug in to our elbows, getting filthy and doing what is arguably one of my favorite things about gardening… discovery. From beneath four feet of shiny fern foliage, Head Chef produced a long-forgotten vanda sporting two spikes of shiny purple blossoms. Anthuriums that had tipped over were rooted, thriving, and blooming. And our new trees had fresh new growth popping out at the branch tips.

We planted a new torch ginger - one of my favorites - on the side of the house, and stood back to admire it. Now only 6 feet tall, it will one day reach as much as 15, with bright red flowers the size of large apples atop sturdy stalks jutting from the ground.

We do this – I do this, and I stand back and see what is done, and I feel full. I see the new floor in the bedroom from atop the living room stairs and the thriving garden and all the little improvements that are made over time, and I witness proof that things do get better, and that we have a hand in that. I see a sort of time lapse progression in my mind, from then till now, and I project outward just a bit – a skill that Head Chef teaches me each day – and I know that this is good. That this life is worth it, and that all the tediousness and doubt is made moot by these moments of doing this with him.

Working In Mililani

Listening to the online radio as I work through lunch, I hear the DJ say, “And for our fifth caller, we have a free lunch from Maruju Market. A pound and a half of fresh poké from Maruju Market - what a nice lunch.”

Poké. Heh. Try finding that anywhere else.

Also at this client site, I overhear things such as:

“We havin one lunchtime meeting, ya?”
“Try hand me da kine?”
“Oh, he no stay here no mo. He wen stay in Ku`unani’s ol’ cube.”

Makes working here worth it, to watch a Vice President of a major bank talk story Hawai`ian style. Well, that, and the drive across the island under bright skies dotted with white puffy clouds. And getting out of the car to be bathed in the fragrance of Eucalytpis leaves recently pelted by rain... And... And... And...

EDIT: And... on the drive home, there were not one, but two rainbows arching over the freeway on the way into town.

Golf Opposition

I do not wish to like golf. Golf is expensive, time-consuming, and fussy. It’s a tool of the insider’s old-boy network and it has been co-opted by the rest of the world so that they can feel like they’re in on the joke. Or, at least, to enable them to get an angle on the deal.

It’s popular because it’s a business skill used in lieu of physical combat. I would much rather engage in some old-fashioned wrestling match than dress up, spend all that money, and swing a stick at a ball. At least then you could justify the competitive tempers that have to be suppressed for the civility of the golf course.

But I did have a good time. Still, if it’s all the same to anyone, I’d rather not like golf on principle alone.

Time Travel

We were waiting for new tires on the white car when we inadvertently stepped into a world I’d almost forgotten.

To call the Dole Cannery complex in Iwilei a mall is to be unnecessarily generous. Yes, it was definitely intended to be a mall. The structure is there. The theatre still operates. But the signatures of a mall – people, teenagers (if you must make the distinction), and open shops – they are simply not there.

Like the sad little shopping complex across the street from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, it is no longer a mall. It is a ghost mall.

But it is also across the street from Costco, one of O`ahu’s busiest businesses. While our car got new shoes we were on foot and hungry. So we entered the empty corridors of the Cannery Ghost Mall in search of food and an hour to kill.

Fitting, then, that we lost track of time.

After our disappointingly successful attempt at food, we stopped into an unmarked Asian imports store near the Cannery’s exit. The front room was what you’d expect. Some Chinese wedding chests converted to entertainment armoires, tea sets, fabrics, lotus pots, and more Chinese tchochkes than you could shake a stick at. The proprietor was behind a desk, and she greeted us wanly.

Head Chef made it into the back room, and dug in. Here were the gems. Beautiful decorative planters in rare glazes at ridiculously low prices. Gear for the discerning Bonsai gardener. Chinese teas, and more classic Chinese furniture than appeared in the first space. I spotted an unpriced pot the right size for our night-blooming cereus, and mentioned it to Head Chef.

At that moment, the proprietor peeked into the room. She was a Chinese woman in her fifties or sixties with salt and pepper hair, perfect posture, and a beguiling grace. In her mild Chinese accent, she asked, “Do you bonsai?” Our bond was established.

Head Chef negotiated a wonderful price for the pot I had found, and I unearthed it from beneath the stock of other items that had been stacked upon it. And all the while, we talked of gardens. Of common shared fondness for China. And as I pushed our new find to the register in the next room, they talked of teas.

When I returned to find out where the conversation had lead to, I was ushered to a chair at a little table in the back room. “Shoshi shoshi ba,” she said, and warmed hot water for our tea. And there we sat, chatting and drinking the best oolong tea I had ever had. We talked of palaces, gardens, walls, and the exceptional individuals from Old China who touched us.

She spoke fondly of family, friends, and places she longed to return to, and spun our memories into new imaginations of the places we had not yet seen. Of another Star Pupil who would make an impression we would never ever forget. Time passed only when the bell on the shop door marked the entrance of a potential customer who then left without a word. Our proprietor never stood and only barely glanced their direction.

Finally, after a third cup, we had to go. We bought some teas to take home with us, exchanged phone numbers, and then returned to our newly shoed car in the bustling parking lot.

The contrast was jarring.