HI

It was taking its time coming up for air. I’d been warned about getting in their way; they have to do this every thirty minutes or so and there have been cases where so many people amassed themselves above them, that they suffocate themselves on the ocean floor. Hard to believe or digest – I thought anything that wanted to survive would do the little things like breathing to continue to do so – but just to be safe, I floated a few yards away and patiently waited, waited until one of the three turtles launched itself from fifteen feet below to come swim with me in this brilliant azure.

This was the paradise I fought for several months. It wasn’t my lesbian friend’s commitment ceremony; it wasn’t my group of friends; this wasn’t my deal at all. I didn’t lift a finger in the planning or the coordination of any of it - not the booking of flights or the car or the condominium rental. I would graciously turn over my credit card whenever needed, I did at least that much - but I was adamant that I not be relied on for a good time. This was my wiring. I’m not a vacation person; I enjoy the comfortable routine of the work week and the two remaining days I keep empty of plans to recharge as I see fit. So I came here begrudgingly, and in the several weeks that ticked down to our flight, my agitation crept to a point where it manifested in several biting, negative comments – by the time I was boarding the plane, I had secured my own sense of dread. I am not a joy to fly with, I know this, and I tried to spare myself and my companion with a lengthy nap.

The nap proved unnecessary. I could have delved into McMahon’s Happiness: A History, and let my chagrin wind up like a beehive hairdo caught in a ceiling fan; it wouldn’t have mattered. Alighting from the plane, I was already swimming in a humidity and climate where negative vibrations go flat-line. I didn’t have the energy to be a brooding bad time and welcomed having my itinerary set, my decisions made for me, as we joined a dozen couples, marriages, partnerships – choose your poison – heading for Costco to stock up on supplies and making a cavalcade to the same beachside condominium in Kihei, west Maui. I gave away to, and suspended my judgments, about being a part of a herd and the herded.

The first three days were a concentration of wedding activities and back and forth trips from the condo to Lahaina, where the wedding would take place. Some of these activities required my support, some I was told to make myself scarce…I had no problem sitting on the lanai, reading my book and occasionally looking up to watch the whales breaching several hundred yards out. We scored the best room – others lamented their carpeted floors, glass-surfaced coffee tables or jarring Victorian furnishings. We had stone floors that invited bare feet, aggressive water pressure that invited long showers, and we suspected: owners who lived on one of the other islands who decorated to make themselves feel at home.

In the entire en tourage, there was a single male my age I could kill some time with. Craig was reading Moor’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. Being an atheist, I had to bite my tongue. “Can you imagine what it would be like growing up with Jesus? Always being one-upped by the savior like that?” No, I’ve already exhausted my imagination believing there was a Jesus at all. Chances were, it was probably Paul, in the library, with the candlestick. Oh: and with a hit of mescaline and pen and paper. Despite Craig’s interest in super-market checkout line theology (actually, he had a degree in theology), he was an affable guy – and was well versed in scuba diving and island living. He would tell me about all the other islands that I needed to check out – Oahu, the Main, Kauai – expanding his picture to the Caribbean and Belize, where all the best scuba diving is, and I had to internally chuckle at the amount of travel you can accomplish on a theologian’s salary.

This was the frame of mind I was succumbing to: screw my core values, my unreligious bent and my uber obnoxious sturm und drang. If it wasn’t about immediate ease, it was tossed out with the bathwater, and my inadequacy in preparation facilitated this on the trip: I had left behind my music, my instrument, my books, all the little things I do that are all about me. I left behind every sign-post distracting and directing me to what I would usually do next and instead gave heed to my surroundings: an annihilated sense of urgency interrupted by bouts of bacchanalia. Even though there were appointments and responsibilities in the first three days, I embraced them adequately pickled and positive.

I was attending a wedding that didn’t have a dress code. Is there no greater gift? A short sleeved linen shirt, shorts, and sandals – my gal looking splendid as the maid of honor and me, whoozy on Heineken and trying to maintain a steady photographing hand. The ceremony was beautiful, though the beach was public. Participants in a volley ball match a few yards away suspended play as the harp played (the harpist was hired when I, yes I – fell through on playing the guitar because a) nobody would tell me up until the last several months what song was desired, b) I’d never played in public, and c) the impending sense that I was going to be asked to play a country song adopted by lesbians as anthemic). Me, I just did everything I had done at the dress rehearsal, the much drier run. At the reception, I did my best to be a stand-up accessory to my lady, arm in arm and introducing ourselves to every last soul in the room; checking in on everyone’s buzzed well-being. There may have been one incident: I asked our waitress, who had a very soft-spoken voice and what I thought was an Australian accent (so hard to tell when it isn’t booming, crikey) – where she was from. “Well,” – shying away as though I’d asked for her phone number – “I don’t really like to talk about it or go into detail. I was born in Australia, yes, but I picked up a lot of it in Alaska and Thailand and now here.” Right: no, you don’t want to go into details and no, that synopsis wasn’t an invitation to a dozen more questions.

Then there was nothing. The wedding was past, and we had five days to fill with no idea how to go about filling them. Couples would abdicate, one by one, and we would set lunch dates and dinner dates and outings as we could, before no one was left. We tried to make plans: I wanted to make a day trip to Hana, which would require a helicopter ride, but the morning news brought this tidbit: a crash, three dead, one person each from three touring couples. Hana was definitely out. But this was okay; we seemed to be happy with the unplanned state of things and would sneak away when there was a loose hour or two for a quickie, a randy romp and roll. I don’t know what to blame it on – change in metabolism? - but sexually I become a different, more insatiable person.

Without holding ourselves to eking all the tourists’ trappings from our trip, we both settled for compulsive snorkeling to fill out our days. We had no problems with it: so we wouldn’t be able to answer for the ‘Road to Hana’ or the Haleakala bike trip or a day trip to Molokini. I could care less about bragging to friends back home about which golf courses I played. Oddly, the cheapest thing to do in Maui is the best.

We made our way south along the coast, past Wailea and Makena, past Little Beach and past Big Beach, where we found one lost little cove – the last stop before the road gives way to endless horizons of volcanic rock and signs warn you that you’ve voided your car rental contract on proceeding. I could see where this might not be the most popular spot to embark…the beach was rocky, the water a little rough from the land’s enclosure. But it was cozy and private. Craig showed me how to spit in my goggles to create a seal and keep them from fogging up – something to do once I get past the disturbance of the waves hitting the beach. I was something to laugh at: struggling in water two feet deep, trying to advance feet first and repeatedly losing my right fin. I copied a child who was having more success: just float on your belly, don’t be afraid of scraping your belly on the rocks or the shallow water. Did I not tell how much I hate swimming? I do; I did - this was the last frontier of dissolving self-imposed limits.

And wasn’t it the last frontier? I followed the land to the end of the world, and I was happy to find there was no end – just another world waiting for me to enjoy it. From even the tiniest vantage point, where I could still use my arms to propel myself forward like the oars of a gondola, life was teeming all about me. I learned to breathe through my mouth and made my way out, joining my friends as we swam hundreds of yards from the beach. We awkwardly tried to get each other’s attention to direct each other to some new, fantastic thing – but we were mostly sealed and separate from each other, just floating on our stomachs, looking down like angels. Occasionally, I would hold my breath and dive to the bottom, just to touch the coral, just to prove I could still do it. Then finally, I was satisfied that I could not touch the ground at all.