Mahu (40 page)

My father smiled. “I have three sons. Each of them so different, yet each of them so much like me. Or like a part of me. You know, when I was younger, before I met your mother, I had a bad temper. Like Haoa. Chin and I used to run together, we’d get in fights, make mischief.” He shook his head. “Ai, ya, I’m glad I grew out of that. I hope one day your brother will. And then Lui, well, Lui is the businessman in me. I knew some influential people in my time, the men who made things happen in this state. I was privileged to call a few of them my friends. Lui’s the same way, with his own generation.”

“And me?” I asked. “What part of you is in me?”

He smiled. “You’re my dreamer. You know, when I was a boy, I used to climb up to the roof of our house and watch the stars. Just like you. And I loved to be out in nature, swimming and surfing like you.”

My mother came back in then, with three glasses of iced tea on a silver tray. My father picked up his glass and raised it to me. “To you, Kimo. Keep dreaming.” He and my mother smiled and we all clinked glasses. I knew he would never tell me the deal he had made on my behalf, what it had cost him in money, or work, or the regard of his fellows. And the funny thing is that it didn’t matter. I understood that he did these things for us as a matter of course, because he was our father, because he was the man he was.

IT’S WHO YOU ARE

After I left my parents I drove to Lui’s office downtown. It was just after five, but I knew he often stayed around until after the six o’clock news. I signed in with the guard, who recognized me. “Your brother’s in his office,” he said. “You can go right up.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I tell you something?” He was an older guy, haole, maybe in his late fifties.

“Sure.”

“I’ve got a nephew that’s gay. Sweetest kid you ever want to know. He worked for this department store on the mainland, and they fired him when they found out. He sued the bastards, and won. Got enough money to set up his own little store, he sells used clothes, vintage stuff.” He looked up at me. “You do your job, nobody should be able to stop you just because of who you are.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Where’s his store, on the mainland?”

“Sausalito. Little town just north of San Francisco.”

“I know it. I ever get over there, I’ll stop by.”

“You do that.” He smiled. “You can take the first elevator, goes direct to the executive floor.”

I found Lui in his office with the door open, and knocked on it. “Kimo,” he said. “Come on in.”

I stuck out my hand to shake his, and instead he grasped me in a big hug. I hugged him back, surprised, because it was the second time in a week he’d hugged me.

I told him about the hearing, and that I thought our father had pulled some strings on my behalf. “I wanted to tell you I appreciate that series you ran,” I said. “About gay cops. I didn’t catch all of them, but I’m sure that they helped convince HPD that they weren’t exactly blazing new trails.”

“It wasn’t easy to convince the powers that be about that one.” He looked a little embarrassed. “We started out with a sensational angle. You know that’s the kind of stuff we do around here.”

I smiled. “I know.”

“But then as the guys did the research, they found all this positive stuff. So we kind of snuck it past, and I think the viewers liked it. We actually did some pretty good numbers because of that series.”

My father was right, Lui was definitely the businessman in the family. “You stuck your neck out for me,” I said. “I appreciate it. If the numbers had gone the other way you’d have been in trouble.”

“TV news is ephemeral.” He snapped his fingers. “You blink and the segment’s over. Nobody even remembers it twenty-four hours later.”

I looked around his office. One wall was filled with photos of Lui talking, shaking hands, sharing drinks with most of the movers and shakers in Honolulu. “I want you to know I appreciate everything you did for me,” I said. “Everything. The series helped, but I know it took more than that for me to keep my job. Dad knows a lot of people, sure, but even he admits you know more of the people who make things happen nowadays. I’m sure you put a word or two in on my behalf.” I nodded my head in the general direction of the photos.

“I might have called in a few favors.”

“That must have cost you.”

“Nothing I can’t afford.”

That night I called Akoni at home. He’d already heard, from Yumuri, the basic outline of what had happened. “Are you going to take the job?”

“I worked hard to get to homicide. I’m not going to give it up. There are guys who aren’t going to like me, but that’s their problem. I’ve got to be who I’ve got to be.”

“You’re the first homosexual I’ve known.” Akoni paused. “It’s made me think a lot, you know. Changed my attitudes. I mean, I’m not saying I don’t still have a long way to go. But it isn’t even a place I ever thought of going until you—came out, I guess.”

“So?”

“So I’ll bet there’s lots of other guys, cops and other people, too, who could start changing the way they think. That’s an important job, changing the way people think.”

“That’s the part of the job I don’t like,” I said. “I’m not all that comfortable with being gay yet. I want people to think of what I can do, not who I am. I’m worried people are going to see me as the gay cop, and they’ll only see the gay part, not the cop part. And that’s not who I am.”

“I think it is,” Akoni said quietly.

“What?”

“You’re not just a cop anymore, Kimo. Like it or not, you’re a gay cop. True, people are going to see you that way, just like if you went to the mainland they’d see you as a Hawaiian cop, or some kind of mixed-race cop. You better get accustomed to it.”

“Maybe I should just quit the force. I could be a security guard or an insurance agent or something.”

“You’d still be a gay security guard or a gay insurance agent. At least as a gay cop, you can do some good. People still like to victimize fa—I mean gays. Look at that guy your brother beat up. Just minding his own business and somebody whales on him. You could do something about that. And that gay teen center in Waikīkī. You could go there, help out. Maybe you can make it so it’s not so hard to come out for some kids there.”

I thought a lot about what Akoni said after we hung up. There were good things I could do. I could be an example, raise some consciousness, be a role model for some confused kid. But it would mean sacrificing privacy, letting myself be defined by my sexuality, opening myself up to the kind of conversations like the one I had with the security guard at Lui’s station, who wanted to talk to somebody about his gay nephew. For Christ’s sake, I didn’t want to be gay at all, if I could help it. It made me really uncomfortable to become the poster boy for gay life in Honolulu.

There was just too much to think about, and I had to shut if all off for a while. I surfed, and then I swam until my arms and legs felt like jelly. Then I dragged myself home and read for a while in the afternoon. Eventually I got into my truck and started to drive.

It was as if the truck was on automatic pilot, finding its way out to Wailupe on its own. I turned the volume up on an Uluwehi Guerrero CD, letting the pounding of the ipu hula take over my brain, keep it from thinking. I played with Danny for a while, hide and go seek in the backyard, then racing him down the street until he collapsed happily. After he went to bed, Terri poured us a pair of Fire Rock Pale Ales into two tall Pilsner glasses, and we sat out in the backyard under the stars.

“We’re in the same situation, you know,” she said. “We both have to reinvent our lives. I can’t just be a housewife and mother anymore. I have to do something.”

“If you need some money I can probably give you a loan.”

She laughed. “I don’t need the money. My trust fund isn’t huge, but I could certainly run the house on it. And my parents have already put away money for Danny’s education.” She shook her head. “No, I need to do something more with my life. I’m not sure what. Maybe some volunteer work at first. Or else I could go back to the cosmetics counter at Clark’s.”

A bank of clouds moved in front of the moon and the yard darkened. “You’ve got options,” I said. “Options are good.”

“You have them too. If this job makes you uncomfortable, then don’t take it.”

“Actually I kind of think that’s a reason
to
take it,” I said. I took a long draw of my beer and thought about what I wanted to say. “These last couple of weeks have been really awful, you know? But at the same time they’ve been exciting. I mean, I remember the summer I was thirteen I was miserable, just lying around the house, sleeping like eighteen hours a day, and my whole body ached, because I was having a growth spurt. I was five foot two when school let out and I was five foot nine when it started again. And it was great. I wasn’t the baby anymore. My basketball improved dramatically. My mother started buying my clothes in the men’s department.”

I had some more beer. “So even though it was miserable, in the end I was better off. Maybe this is just the next step in my growth process.”

“It’s funny how society labels us. You’re a gay man, now, and I’m a widow. And you know, we’re not the same people we were a month ago, before we had these labels. So maybe the labels change as we change. Who knows what they’ll be calling us a year from now.”

“To new labels,” I said, clinking my glass against hers. “And to becoming new people.”

That’s what finally decided me. Just like sharks ha
d
to keep moving to stay alive, I th
ought
we all ha
d
to keep growing and changing. Sometimes that growth hurts, and sometimes you ha
d
to give up things that matter
ed
to you. My father had made sacrifices for me and my brothers, and though I’m sure they hurt him, he made it through. They made him the person he is.

My brothers had sacrificed for me, too. They had stood by me, taken chances and given me, eventually, their unconditional love. Even men like Tico Robles were willing to take the risk that some asshole would beat them up just because they were at a gay bar.

The next morning, Derek was freed on bail and he began to spend most days with his grandfather. Aunt Mei-Mei said that the two of them spent a lot of time together, driving out to Windward Oahu and walking the long stretches of beach there.

Tim Ryan called me at home that night. He congratulated me, and we talked for a couple of minutes about the choice I had to make. “Listen, Kimo, there’s one other thing I wanted to say.” He paused. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. The whole gay thing has been so hard for me, and I never had anybody who was there to help me through it. Now I realize I could have done that for you, and I missed the chance. I want to work on that. If I can just get a little more comfortable with myself, then maybe I can be there for someone else. I’m just not there yet.”

“I understand. But let’s try and be friends, okay? You’ve still got a long way to go before you’re a real surfer.”

“I’ll work on it.” He laughed. “And I’ll try to let you help.”

We hung up, and I sat back on my bed thinking. It was a lot of future to face, a new job, new relationships with family, friends and coworkers, and then, finally, starting on the search for what my parents had, what my brothers had. There
was
a saying among women, that you ha
d
to kiss a lot of toads before you f
ou
nd your prince, and I ha
d
n’t kissed many toads yet, so I ha
d
some catching up to do. Maybe there
was
a prince out there somewhere waiting for me. At least, I ha
d
to believe there was.

I called Lieutenant Sampson the next morning and told him I was ready to come back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NEIL PLAKCY is the author of
Mahu, Mahu Surfer, Mahu Fire, Mahu Vice
, and
Mahu Men
, about openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka. His other books are
Three Wrong Turns in the Desert, Dancing with the Tide, The Outhouse Gang, In Dog We Trust, Invasion of the Blatnicks
, and
GayLife.com
. He edited
Paws & Reflect: A Special Bond Between Man and Dog
and the gay erotic anthologies
Hard Hats, Surfer Boys and Skater Boys
. His website is www.mahubooks.com.

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