Dirty Oahu, Far Beyond the Hawaiian Rainbow

I spent the first week of March traipsing across the verdant beauty of Hawaii’s Oahu in the compact splendor of a Chevrolet Cobolt. People think of a Hawaiian vacation as calm and decadent – shopping along the polished thoroughfares of Waikiki and sipping Mai Tais while the ukulele lulls you into a sunset trance. 

I sipped a lot of Mai Tais, but that’s the extent of my quintessential Hawaiian experience.I stayed in a sea shanty in a swampy junkyard. This palatial hovel bordered a known meth lab and the clever entrepreneurs threw raw meat out around their conglomerate of trailers to attract stray dogs for “protection.” 

My traveling partner and I had to buy a box of dog treats to throw out the window in order to distract the furry horde long enough to dash to the house in relative safety. Because what says “relaxing vacation” more than a gaggle of rabid dogs welcoming you home.

This wasn’t a real-life choose your own adventure tour gone terribly wrong. In February my friend Nicole called me and asked if I wanted to go with her to Hawaii for a week – a destination I could never afford had she not lured me away from frigid Boston with the delicious promise of a “free place to stay.” 

She used to be a professional sailor and a friend of hers is the captain of a ship that docks in Waikiki. He invited her out for a week in the spring and she asked me to come along, as he wouldn’t be around the entire time. Gratis accommodations in Hawaii...escape New England's witch-tit cold winter winds...taking time off to do something other than go home and have my mother lather me in guilt - I was sold.

I lucked out and got an insane deal on a ticket and couldn't wait to make my dream of basking in that sunshiny paradise come true. The reality turned out to be part nightmare, part adventure and entirely hilarious. Her captain friend ended up flaking and we had to change plans two days before we left and ended up staying with another friend. Morgan – bar manager, t-shirt artist and chain smoker. 

After a brutal 11-hour journey, I landed in Oahu at 7:30 pm. Nicole had mentioned the air in Hawaii, how it smells different, feels different. She was right. I l exited the plane almost at a run - my seatmate and torturer, Arthur the dentist from Jersey City, kept slapping me on the thigh every time or he or his wife needed assistance with the on-board entertainment system and regaling me with stories of difficult root canals. 

The Oahu airport is wide open, there are no windows and walking to the baggage claim I got my first taste of Hawaii. It’s soft but encompassing. You breathe in an unfamiliar sweetness with a charming aftertaste of sea salt, it’s magnolia and nightshade and orchids melting into one another. It welcomes you to the island, gently blowing away the dust of travel and the stresses of your regular life.

When Nicole arrived we left the terminal to pick up our rental car. Most people are unfamiliar with the power and majesty of the Chevrolet Cobolt, these poor souls have never heard it whine and spit as it chugs up a hill, they don’t know the story its ancient upholstery tells in a pastiche of stagnant cigarette smoke and crusty coco butter, they are ignorant of its tin-can design and beguiling mini-tires. I pity them. 

The Bolt, as it came to be known, was our greatest ally. We spent as much time inside its hallowed doors as out of them and if I could have taken it back as a souvenir I would have, but I never could have gotten it through security. By the time we got to Morgan’s bar on the North Shore it was almost midnight and I had been awake for 24 hours. 

Kainoa’s is not a tourist bar; it’s locals and locals only, and they like it that way. Nicole and I could not hide our glowing whiteness and were labeled as mainlanders and therefore were suspect. Walking into the bar we were looked over thoroughly by all the patrons – the women grabbed their boyfriends and shot us daggers of warning to stay away and the men sized us up to see how much rum we would require to make regrettable choices. 

Fortunately, it was known we were under Morgan’s protection and his bartender, Kip, took a liking to us as well so we had backup in case of a showdown, and of course the Bolt was ready to roll at any point. That point came when Ray-Ray, a prison guard who bears a striking resemblance to a chubby Lionel Richie, invited me back to his apartment with the ever-beguiling one liner: “So do you want to get some ice and fuck all night?” 

I declined his offer of a coitus and crystal meth buffet and Nicole and I fled to our waiting 9-volt chariot.We dispatched to our temporary home – a charming Haleiwa bungalow snuggled in the bosom of a junkyard, surrounded by cars on cinder blocks, weeds and corrugated metal. A bit rough around the edges I thought, but it had a bed and a shower inside and at that moment nothing could be more wonderful. 

The wolf pack recognized Morgan and we were treated to one of the few unmolested arrivals, oddly enough they never bothered us when we were leaving.I was soiled with the filth of travel and all I wanted was to hose myself down and collapse on the nearest soft surface. 

I pulled back the shower stall’s half-curtain and looked down to the most heinous shower floor I have ever seen in my life. The cure for most known diseases is incubating on that floor even now. As dirty as I was I could not bring myself to enter naked and unprotected into the cesspit of fungi and single-cell organisms. 

I knew we were going to the beach the next day and thought I’d be better off rinsing in the ocean. As I was pulling the curtain back Morgan yelled from the kitchen “the big pliers are for hot and the little ones are for cold.”

That night I fell asleep surrounded by over 50 Japanese fighting fish, swimming solitary in everything from upcycled pasta jars to Dunkin' Donuts cups (one of Morgan's roommates collected them.) I thought I had wasted a lot of time and even more money on a vacation I could have easily replicated by spending a week with some distant cousins in Appalachia.

Nicole and I were out of the house by 6 am the next day – I was fortified with 45 spf and ready to crisp on the beach for the entire day. I had seen pictures of Hawaii a hundred times but there isn’t a camera strong enough to really capture how stunning the landscape is. 

Soft green towers of volcanic mountains reach into the clouds, when it rains small white waterfalls cascade through the vegetation, sometimes pulling rainbows seemingly out of the ground. Turning you see the ocean, turquoise blue and magnificent with waves bigger than I had ever seen rising up and crashing down. It was at that point I realized that it didn’t matter where I was staying or how bad I smelled, this was what I had come for. 

I decided to lean in and embrace the adventure in its entire unplanned splendor. I didn’t waste 100 bucks on a hotel-sponsored luau, but I did spend a wonderful Sunday afternoon with one of Nicole’s old shipmates and her family. They had a little house on the water and we watched the ocean come and go and I got to know a little bit about life on Oahu for people who call it home.

I listened to them talk about the derelict public school system, came to understand that crystal meth and the crime it breeds are poisoning too many lives, and was shocked to find out that the homeless population is growing at an alarming rate. Many families can’t afford to rent a proper home due to the inflated cost of living and there are communities growing in the parking lots of public beaches. 

I ate poke, raw fish chopped up with vegetables and soaked in various kinds of sauces, we bought some at a mom and pop shop that Morgan said was the best on the island. I loved the smooth and salty ahi - but wasn’t quite as fond of the bite-size pink tentacles. 

Local taught me how to play dominoes. Word to the wise - never play dominoes with a group of islanders if the game involves penalty beers. 

While I did succeed in letting go of previous expectations and enjoying the vacation I was presented with, I did not come out unscathed. There might be a picture of me showering at a beach floating around the internet, taken by a rude tourist who thought it was hilarious to see a person soaping up under a facet mostly used for washing sand off surfboards.

​​​​​​​There are a multitude of memories that only Nicole and I will ever find funny or interesting, and those ridiculous moments would never have happened had we stayed in a pristine, sedate hotel. I spent five nights on a beer-encrusted futon, was offered a cornucopia of drugs, some of which I was assured were local specialties, and bathed less than any civilized person should in a six-day period, but I will never think of my time on Oahu as a mistake in judgment. 

I saw sea turtles playing in the breaking waves, ate the best tuna I’ll probably ever have in my life and filled myself with air so sweet sometimes I still dream of it.