Reefdog

Each day began with the slate wiped clean on a bolster of caffeine and sugar, launching the conscientious dive instructor into boat prep as his mind massaged the second, third, and fourth steps of the day’s work: the aloha, the stowage, the launch. The welcome aboard and getting underway were easy enough, barring no-shows, declined credit cards, stumbles, and stubbed toes, engine trouble or big wakes from boats whose captains should not have been licensed, and maybe they weren’t. But even that stuff got resolved, and besides, some of the licensed guys drove like Cap’n Crunch.

Morning chores were like bubbles in the wake soon enough, with flat water, sunshine, and the best of life out front. It’s hard to be dour under clear skies, in good health. Shadows could darken a day. Or a man could feel the blue sky and sea and great good luck upon him.

The format was sound, the problems obscure, till blue on blue seemed rhythmic and lovely compared to the alternative: gray suit, silver sedan, reasonable commute, airless office, benefits including health insurance and a pension to cover decrepitude. Fuck.

But even an enviable life of harmony with nature in tropical latitudes had its share of tedium, with the same predictable postures, claims and questions on depth, distance, and the desirability of each dive site. Day in, day out, the routine altered only in destination, weather, and sea conditions. Business boomed when Americans feared traveling outside the “homeland,” which sounded oddly like the “fatherland.” What the hell, job security looked strong. Bookings were four days out. And a hardworking, happy man could afford minor anxiety when the place still blossomed anew nearly every day.

The fleet got bigger when business boomed, and the boat launch required more tolerance. Getting underway took longer and fuel prices rose, which were not crew concerns but undermined prospects for a raise or bonus. More competition kept revenue down. So the crews competed on service and aloha to make the same pay. The first downturn would shrink the fleet to proper size. Boats with repeat business would survive the next recession, pandemic, terrorism, airline strike, mortgage crisis or any challenge to fearless spending because a Hawaii trip gets scratched quicker than a bad Starbucks habit when times get tough.

So familiarity, predictability, crowding, and tedium got worse. It’s hard to be dour under blue skies, but emotional burdens gained weight. Ravi Rockulz sadly saw his island change her ways. As a marriage can outlast the love, so did he, feeling each day something less. His tropical island was going suburban, burbling to convenience, gagging chic, and LA-extravagance. The newest immigrants pushed into the gridlock with road rage, adapting successfully.

The Chamber and Visitors Bureau dismissed gridlock as a growing pain, a natural part of more money and growth, sounding foreign to those who lived for the beauty. Not quite in mid-life crisis, Ravi asked the tough questions:

Did I anticipate thousands more condos, cane fields converted to tract houses, and sweeping ocean views blocked by mini-mansions probing the twenty-million range?

Or would this malaise displace the bond between a waterman and his achingly lovely home?

Stuck in a quandary, with each day adding to his craft, he passed too many days on feelings of inadequacy. Something was amiss. A palpable incompletion persisted. He felt tardy and not there yet but couldn’t put his finger on where yet or why not. Renewing vows to beauty and perfection, he wanted to cure the uncertainty. He’d never met an itch he couldn’t scratch, but this was deep.

Maybe he needed a break, a few days off with a tourist, a plush and married one looking to buff her separate vacation with no baggage. Ravi was quick and easy as carry-on, replete with excellent manners—and he loved room service, air-conditioning, and remote control. Setting aside her love, obedience, care and devotion, till death do us part, a woman could get down to the romance she craved. A sumptuous woman might reach the itch with fun and kink in a lavish hotel, with six-hundred-thread-count sheets, thick, fluffy towels to use once and throw on the floor, an ocean view, and a mini bar with cashews and chocolates on the hubby’s corporate account, which would be easier on everyone, all things considered.

That worked sometimes, but usually not, because either the women had defects, rendering the experience deficient, or they had no defects and left a sensitive dive instructor alone at the dock with matching lumps in his Speedos and heart. Not that sheer frolic wasn’t worth the price from time to time, but the price rose, as good female company got more elusive and lovable.

He felt like the young sailor on shore leave in Waikiki. Finally seeing the woman of his dreams, a beauty with the lift, separation, and spread of everyboy’s fantasy, the sailor could hardly believe that she was real and available—that he might enter the Promised Land for mere dollars. So he asked, How much is this going to cost me? Understood was the whole enchilada—around the world, blow-and-go, smoke-and-fire, half-and-half, and so on—until the perfect woman smiled sweetly and asked back, How much you got?

What are you willing to pay? He laughed and marveled at the tonic effect of a small joke. La petite plaisanterie; maybe it would make the small death easier to bear. Laughing at society’s foibles could keep a man sane, at least in the short term.

He still loved his island, tawdry as she’d become; surely she would save her best for him, something more than another romp in a canebrake. Oddly for such a vagabond heart, he needed commitment. He needed love returned. He wanted to grow old together.

Among the small deaths was the spirit of aloha, its loss more noticeable to some. Ravi thought it only a toxic few lashing out, as non-resourceful people will do. But few as they were, their rancor rose with posture and noise. Many descended from plantation days as if “local” was sanctified and authorized, but it wasn’t.

Racism is troubling anywhere; as a source of pride, racial origin lacks staying power. But racial claims persisted, like blood instinct as a source of intelligence in nature—not to be confused with natural smarts. Genetic claims were proven untenable long ago. The loudest claims were often incomprehensible. Ah, Ravi thought. They’re frustrated too.

Some locals spoke pidgin as a first language. They resented white people making money and new residents driving prices high and the next generation away—their children—because they couldn’t pay the rent. The crush was ugly, with a spurious minority claiming oppression at the hands of haoles, starting with the missionaries who took everything. Welcome to Hawaii. Now Go Home—this bumper sticker raced down the highway, along with Slow Down! This Ain’t the Mainland, two sentiments claiming authority while showing volume exchange on stupidity. Pressure mounted but did not give in to hatred in most quarters.

Ravi hated the hatred, which felt contradictory, but what could he think? He knew what came of complaisance in the presence of evil. Next thing you know, liberals are laying their necks on the block to compensate for injustice of the past. Missionaries my tuchas—I’m Jewish! We don’t proselytize.

Besides, Ravi knew people all over the world from many racial, social, economic, age, and health strata, and he judged on merit. Natural values, love, and good manners were foremost in any culture. Maybe the Hawaii challenge was best called uninformed, not to be confused with hateful and ignorant. Still, few things got his goat like the false pride of being born and raised. Everyone was born. Everyone surviving childhood was raised. But a sanctimonious few assumed that no place else counted. But growing up local was so much less than growing up in the world. The difference began in local schools. Some matriculates put huge decals on their trucks:

Born & Raised.

Hatched and Fledged on four of the seven continents, deep diving four of the seven seas while engaging intimately with richly diverse cultures in their political, artistic, warrior, romantic and meditative layers…

Well, a message that long would require a new car with a huge back window, which might be nice but would also require giving up his current ride and identity marker signifying liberation from material gain and the burden of possessions. Ravi Rockulz was free of the rigors of undue mechanical maintenance or cosmetics that could hinder nature in her course of decomposition to dust. His vintage Tercel lost its back window and back bumper in a tribute to gravity and the miracle of massive rust in movement. The back window was good for laughs through many recollections. Little shards littered the drifts and detritus on the back seat, or on the ground where they tumbled in a sparkling wake through gaping holes in the floor.

Most males in Ravi’s social set drove beaters. A beater indicated comfort in the soul. A man in a beater had beaten bourgeois creep. The first symptom of a man giving in was a new car or a car with no rust. The women loved beaters and the men who made the commitment, or lack thereof, and they matched sincerity tit for tat.

Could that be the problem? Could a devil-may-care approach to milestone events be the cause of subliminal anxiety that might be gaining momentum on the road to nowhere? Yes, it could, but no, it wasn’t that.

Are you kidding? You want to call nights of wine and laughter, friendship and love a dead end? If that’s the case, call me suicidal. You fucking nutcase. You… you Mennonite. You Taliban. Christ on a crutch, you want to take away joy and call it productive? Go peddle that poison elsewhere. Get the fuck out!

Anyone could observe that Ravi Rockulz refrained from obscenity. He left it in the bilge, favoring polite discourse every time. Esprit de corps made the bawdy good times all the more fun. Polite good taste, as seen in your better hotels, was a matter of choice, and it was free! Still, conversations internal were often profane, meant to discipline self and ventilate the spleen.

But it was the days of endeavor that best balanced the dark view. Could a person be more gainfully engaged than in fun, laughing aloud, or moaning to God in gratitude for what must be heaven-sent? No, he could not—until he questioned joyful pursuits as adequate compensation for a life of no security, no prospects for advancement and, in a most difficult phrase, no future. Good times rolling seemed less foreseeable than growing old. Getting high, getting laid, getting loved, getting wet was easy. Jump in. Youthful wonders are free to anyone willing to work for rent, groceries, entertainment, and no more. In California, they’d call it a lifestyle. In Hawaii, they called it life. I submit to the court that life cannot get better than a rollicking good time, Your Honor. Simple truth was the defense.

But it felt like a losing case, with the prosecution closing in. Hand-to-mouth existence was not a victory over wealth but was perceived as such to bolster the case. Living close to the ground had its perks—many mainland tourists envied the vibrant context as far superior to material gain and the urban commute—Ravi Rockulz lived the spirit. Many reflected on their own dull lives while flying home and through Monday morning. Just as speed and comfort counterbalance each other in most boats, so did security and adventure require a choice.

Ravi chose long ago. But something came up like a blemish on a soft complexion—troubling and hard to reckon. Was it midlife time when men panic in the DMZ between boyhood and its inevitable destination? Each day moved inexorably onward, even as the boys dragged their feet. Most men would rather lead dives than sell insurance or shoes, equities or annuities, or swing a hammer or shuffle paper in a stifling office on the thirty-third floor where the windows won’t open and the ceilings have no rafters because you must wear a tie…

Maybe that was the rub—that a Hawaii dive instructor topped the heap and craved more, like a profession or artistic endeavor. Maybe this restlessness came from the beauty abounding, from unrequited love that needed sharing, so he and society could better appreciate it. Tourists valued his stories on the way to the reef and on the way home. He told them what to watch for, then pointed it out, then told what species and habitat meant in the scheme of reef life. He had learned and absorbed these things, and guests felt the kinship. They loved what he freely gave, and they tipped generously in return.

Maybe a bigger audience could ease the pressure. Maybe he could paint. Or something.

Well, it was a fine, pretty picture, but who could think of art and culture on such a rigorous schedule? Daily demands, with the aerobic output and relentless schlep were enough to tire a younger man. On top of that, a man in his prime wants a normal social life, which wasn’t the easy pickin’s that met the eye, except for when it was. But luck was fickle. Ravi did not get laid at will. No men do, except for rock stars, some professional athletes, and a few politicians. Those guys get hot and cold running leg anytime they want it, but the rockers, jocks, and pols get mostly high-mileage, skank leg with frequent-fornicator risks of frightening potential. Or mental leg that graduated from Hollywood High Omigod! Or they get it retail.

Tourist fare, on the other hand, included upper-echelon females of spiritual, physical, intellectual, and economic development, many of whom lusted for the simplicity of long ago. They’d worked hard to get ahead, trim down, and firm up, sacrificing desserts. They’d gone vegetarian. They exercised and lived right. Most hard-driving women suffered the same stress and compulsion their male counterparts had suffered for ages, leading to the same question, Why do I work so hard, eat so right, and stay so trim?

Arrival at the boat provided some of these women with an answer. They worked so hard at self-improvement so they could catch the eye of the soulful dive instructor with the outrageous body. Ravi’s mystery unfolded in layers, beginning with a paradox. How could a man so thoroughly defy containment in a three-piece suit, a shirt, and a tie, yet an ounce and a half of nylon splendidly covered him?

Other layers were revealed directly. He was great at his job, in love with his workplace and committed to freedom. His water skills, rust-bucket car, beach shack, scraggly but cute cat, reef wisdom, and gentle confidence made an appealing package optimally wrapped for the short term. Revisiting the first layer—his skimpy Speedos, so snug and compelling in their underscore and highlight of the flat stomach and love missile—a woman might well gain insight to the hopeless cleavage stare she’d suffered for so long.

Maybe his exotic, happy niche was also part of the problem. His happiness had been real, with natural aptitude applied to highest and best use. But like all things seeking perfection, the path fades. Ravi was not ready to die. So what might come next for a man in his prime? What was he missing? He’d seemed to have it all. Maybe he did and would again. Could it get any better?

A steady diet of sweets had seemed like a natural value, but maybe the sweets should be set aside. Maybe it was like the movie where Nicolas Cage was a Wall Street tycoon with these knockout girlfriends, but his money and women didn’t matter because life was cold and sterile. The guy didn’t even have any art on his walls on account of the great leg and money rolling in. Then this black angel guy sent him back to an old date he’d stood up at the altar, and in one of those Hollywood flashbacks, showing what would have been on the other road taken, he married her. What was her name? Don’t tell me—incredible rack but much more homey than the Wall Street women with a warm smile instead of a leer. Anyway, they had two kids on the road not taken, and one was cute and smarter than Solomon, and precocious enough to make you gag. She spoke pathos and irony in every line, and the other kid was an infant who cried and shit and peed all over the place until Nicholas Cage realized how sad he’d been with only big bucks and terrific snatch in his life…

That wasn’t it. That movie was dumb. That guy had no love in his heart for the snatch or the money. I just don’t have the money. What that guy needed was a rough cottage in the scrub on the beach and a ratty couch and a TV and some decent snacks in the fridge. Some brewskies and buds. That’s all. And a few friends instead of the money-grubbing parasites that guy had all around him.

And don’t get started on the lust and love confusion either—everyone in Ravi Rockulz’s water world was clear that it was all love and got lusty because of it. Your very best love started with lust, and vice versa. One set up the other, and the other confirmed the one. Sure, things got melodramatic on the coconut wireless, buzzing by brunch on who was doing whom, with regrets or congrats at last. Sure, the goings and comings and secret liaisons sounded like low budget scripts. As the Anchor Drags was the neighborhood soap opera, and it was funny, but love happened, sometimes.

Sure, the one and only love anybody actually witnessed in Ravi was for the orange cat, Skinny, which some women on the way out called misguided, unfortunate or somehow wrong, which is what they used to say about all the cute, sensitive guys being gay. But Ravi wasn’t gay, and the women criticizing his interspecies relationship didn’t know about love’s many forms, didn’t know Skinny, not really, nor would they.

Skinny came as a tiny pup—she so behaved like a dog—sitting on the threshold, an orange fuzz ball with eyes in the center and whiskers longer than her body, till she stood up, painfully thin. She meowed for yesterday’s sashimi, and a few minutes later, with her belly bulging, she found the warm spot for a nap on the feeder’s chest. He called her Itchy for a few days but then sensed the long-term effects of a name on a personality—not to mention social consequences. A flea bath and brushing got the itch out, so she graduated to Skinny. She gained weight, but the name stuck in tribute to her simple needs.

She followed him around. A few feedings gave her hope, but she watched him from favorite vantage points. A cat so bereft of love may reach, as many people do, for what’s been missing. She lay her head on the pillow, reaching over to rest a paw on his shoulder. She made an impression, but when he pressed for specifics on where they stood, she remained indifferent; the pillow and paw were merely convenient. As patterns became routine, she purred often. She woke him up, “Meow,” because morning was only three hours ahead. She shared with no reservation and became his friend and confidant. It began with practicality and led to familiarity, with needs met. Could it be purer? He didn’t know, but the thing called love returned every time to a little orange cat.

Like when Skinny was grown, and a woman came home with Ravi to engage in the romp most people find only on the Internet. Skinny watched, though her true focus was Ravi, no matter what he did. The woman bore amazing similarity to Annie Lennox on the Medusa CD but with the white hair. Call it synchronicity—the concept coined by Carl Jung and adopted by the ethereal set—or sheer dumb luck, but Ravi had that day splurged on a disc by Annie Lennox. So similar was this new woman, with her ivory crew cut and sleek body of astounding length that Ravi called her “Annie,” which the woman didn’t mind. Ravi loved Annie Lennox—okay, he loved her music, but who could separate the music from the woman?

So he closed his eyes as Annie Lennox poured warm honey in his ears and new Annie whispered sweet nothings. Her name was Carol or Stacy or Janet or something, but he called her Annie. Didn’t mind? She loved it, wrapping herself around this sweet anonymity, as if love could never be named. This must be a win-win situation, Ravi thought, so well could one Annie writhe while the other Annie crooned as only she could.

A fellow could bring down the eyelid movie screens, and who showed up, lithe and dykey blonde? Yeah, well, with such a lyric and score in the background, new Annie maintained the same high standards in the foreground. Just for fun, he opened his eyes on the refrain for real reality as juicy and sweet as a virtue ever was. New Annie’s hair was just as spiky and the buzz cut heightened the drama. Oh, new Annie was a keeper, with her amazing posture and wondrous tits—naturals! I’m sure of it! Wait a minute. Was Annie Lennox lesbian? Well, whatever. She’s so lovable; I can swing that way too.

Meanwhile, new Annie’s beauty was only par for the course; which wasn’t to say Ravi was lookist, fatist, or sexist. It was simply that new Annie was merely beautiful, that she lacked a certain elusive kink captured so perfectly in Annie Lennox. Who ever looked at Annie Lennox and didn’t want more?

Not to worry: Things worked out with a dollop of imagination, and don’t forget the fun. New Annie was a standout beauty with searing smarts, so the ride was crisp and invigorating. Quick as a whip with the sassy quip, she opened fire on any and all, but not on Ravi. He tingled at her soft touch and exquisite good taste.

They could share hormones and intellect so thoroughly that a waterman could feel, in a word, inexperienced. It was new Annie putting Ravi in the catbird seat, making good fun of the whole wide world with incisive irony between bouts of sweet succor, each cycle rejuvenating its alternate in a whirlpool of bodies and minds.

The vigor new Annie brought to the table and the bed felt like an awakening. Like a cool breeze in July, she alerted the senses with chilling repartee and willingness to please. Who was this woman? Did the gods send her to taunt and tease, to show perfection that no man could ever possess? Better yet, she reigned in her rapier wit in deference to her date. Nobody wants to be ridiculed—a woman once called Ravi a macho pervert, a sex machine who wore his spray-on swim skivvies like a billboard. Who needed that?

He did no such thing. He preferred a basic nylon swimsuit, so that’s what he wore. The rude woman who’d made that accusation was on the way out. So it didn’t matter, and she left satisfied, like in customer service, kind of.

But new Annie was different. New Annie lived above that petty stuff, scoring at will in every category, till the toughest macho nut could feel his shell cracking. She caught him staring within minutes of her arrival and asked for his thoughts. With a blink at her extraordinary hair, so dazzling and erotic, he asked if the carpet matched the drapes. With a soft leer, she gave him the news: “This is the nineties, baby. There ain’t no carpet.”

Ravi laughed short—the nineties ended years ago. Were they down to hardwood? But he couldn’t press the odd humor before she ditched her bikini and helped him follow suit. The farmer’s market never had produce so fresh and abundant.

Love germinated a few days in, sprouting and bursting forth. It felt like love forever, even with hormonal depletion finally settling in, which took longer than usual, which indicated something else, something more, something beyond. The music was so good and the likeness so striking, he just wanted more. And so did she.

Yes, his concerns grew as his heart opened. Surely she would move to Maui; it was warm, sunny, dry and more fun than Portland. She could move in to his place, or maybe she’d find a job and they’d get a new place, maybe a rental condo with a communal barbecue pit and a swimming pool. Then again, she loved Ravi’s place and said it many times, so maybe they could fix it up and make it work. Wait—she could just send for her things. Why not?

Well, she laughed again with sardonic wit, though it quivered. “The main reason why not, buddy boy, is that old hubby boy might not send them. You know, my things. Hey, grow up. Be a man…” And so on because it gets no better than with a married woman. Talk about no baggage: slam, bam! This was terrific. You were terrific. Love your place. Your cat! Ah! Hey, see you next year, maybe, baby.

Ravi wasn’t finished, but she was. Sudden revelation and departure felt like a dump—via Mack truck through the front wall into the living room and onto his chest with an offload of monumental heartache. So it had been love. He’d been used, as he’d been used many times and didn’t mind. Many times had sexual utility been shared, a mutual back scratch to achieve relief. But this was different. Yes, some women said they loved him—lonely women infatuated with the tropical scene, the palm trees and scented flowers, the garish colors, the cat, the beach shack and, yes, the Speedos. But the thing with Annie was no scene. It was real. Wasn’t it?

Inconsolable, Ravi remained numb for weeks. The usual cavalcade was even more intrigued by the zero-body-fat guy with the incredible frontage and indifference to the luscious buffet before him. They made themselves available but could not compare to Annie. They seemed predictable, demanding, and tiresome.

But time and nature work together toward recovery, so life can endure. Ravi met Marcia from San Francisco. Marcia was smart, not streetwise and ironic like Annie, but comforting; Marcia knew things—sensed things and was there to help. Helping was her profession: clinical psychologist. Besides success and professional know-how, Marcia had a unique worldview. She understood events and the potentials for goodness and waste. She spoke of nuance in conservation politics to hide the insidious greed therein. She sensed a disturbing contradiction in the gay agenda, yet she defended anyone’s right to do anything that didn’t harm anything else. What she didn’t like was “disturbing.” What she approved was “appropriate.” The San Francisco Forty-Niners could be disturbing but were mostly appropriate. But she looked good and seemed sympathetic, with warmth and humor that made the smallest task or outing a grand opportunity for fun. Marcia’s sartorial flourish seemed a tad extravagant for Ravi’s social set, but he didn’t mind. In fact, she seemed to be what the doctor ordered. She cured his malaise with her elegant designer sundresses, her lapis and pearls, her frilly lingerie, so exotic that it didn’t exist in key dramatic areas. He loved looking at it, especially where it wasn’t; it so perfectly framed her most exotic sampler. He loved removing it. Besides that, her seasoned slowness facilitated each favor with the meticulous deliberation of an older woman. Marcia was forty-five—and counting.

Marcia broke the ice with a flourish. Her enthusiasm in sexual exchange suggested years of practice in the field. Ravi used condoms religiously at the beginning of their romance but still suffered angst; she was from San Francisco. She assured him of no worries; she’d been without a man for at least seven years, longer than gestation of the dreaded disease. And she’d never been with a man who’d been with a man. How could she be so certain? She said a woman knows a few things and should be given credit. How did she know who he’d been with, and if he’d always been safe? She said she knew because she could tell and because she trusted him to tell her the truth. She sounded screwy but looked fresh as a catalog offering, so perfectly preened and buffed, with nary a dimple out of place, no creases or folds in the generous offering. Forty-five? Seven years without?

She made no sense, but with concise enunciation and eloquent syntax she could speak around an issue like it was jam on toast instead of a deadly virus. So he diddled her for a minute or two and then sought meaning with his tongue in her crotch for a few more minutes, then went ahead bareback. Hey, San Francisco. A clinical psychologist. Who better to know the odds and safe bets?

Marcia shared her vision quest. It included experiential data—her phrase—and she needed to test something for herself. Her latest dilemma was in the parental/friendship interface with her daughter. She wouldn’t say her daughter’s age because age should not be important. Her daughter was post-pubescent at any rate and came to Mummy, asking innocently as a young lass, “Mummy, I really liked my last three boyfriends, Darius, Martin, and Francis. They weren’t really my boyfriends because I didn’t want them to think I was loose, so I didn’t let any of them… you know. They stopped calling. That’s what they do. So I let Pierre do what he wants. I do what he asks. I thought it was disgusting at first. Now I’m used to it, but I still think it’s weird. Ew. He says he’s in love, but I don’t want to go out with him anymore. Am I doing this wrong?”

The constrained response began with, No, dear, you aren’t doing anything wrong, but that doesn’t mean you should… What I mean is, you can’t… You can’t…

Ravi waited for the moral of the story. The daughter had experimented in a way the mother called unwise, though the daughter’s experience in love was greater than her own. “I had sexual intercourse with a man I hardly knew and got preggers with Samantha. It was rather clinical and went nowhere, really, except for making her, meaning Samantha. But frankly, I’ve held back.”

The bigger question: Had Mummy been doing this wrong? Frustrated and lonely as a heterosexual woman in San Francisco can be, Marcia had resisted the temptation to gobble up any straight, educated, and socially adjusted man she met. She’d met a few, but they were so predictable, pithy and urbane—and soft, like city men. She had doubts but decided to wait for the right man. And wait and wait—because her standards had meaning. She realized on seeing Ravi at work and play that he had a love affair with life, that he alone could replace Dirk. Dirk was her dildo, who she praised for selfless giving, sparing them both many evenings of solitude.

Ravi seemed perfect for the grand experiment, in which a real man would be granted the same free license only Dirk had enjoyed, to see if they could bond as one. Scratching the big itch would be easy if she could establish intimacy with another person. Is that unreasonable? No, and she was bound for glory on the highest levels of spirit and emotion. She shuddered, confiding her sense that this could be “it.” She assured him that he could be so much more than the rippled dive guy in the spray-paint Speedos, and the cavalry was on the way because nobody should go through life as a sex object. Not to worry; they had their best years remaining.

Willing to bet her credentials as a clinical psychologist with twenty-three years’ experience, she pegged Ravi for sensitivity. She was a woman, so Speedo-tinted glasses may have influenced her vision of his inner glow. Not to worry once more—he could unleash the love so long gone from her life.

She seemed complicated, and her psychosexual conundrum felt murky. Naturally gifted at sperm extraction, she sank quickly and woefully to love and its failures in her life. Referencing her life as a separate entity, she enumerated her life’s assets and liabilities. She longed to correct her life’s deficiencies. He felt her life engulf him as it had her, like a net.

On the day they parted company, she had a friend call him from San Francisco, “a mediator, if you will, to see if we might work through this.” She’d left that morning, leaving him half asleep, hormonally spent, in the solace of she who understood best: Meow. Ravi told the friend that the work was done. “Done?” So Ravi explained that Marcia was clingy and neurotic, except in brief lapses when she praised him and God for her orgasm. “Hmm. I see.”

Yet the friend persisted: Marcia needed Ravi to return her love, and she waited that very minute in her condo nearby—a short walk from where he sat—waited for the love of her life to say he would.

So Ravi told the friend that he felt no love. He’d liked her at first, and liked her even more after the first sex, but he was really glad she left because she couldn’t keep up, and he was a really horny guy. She called him a failure and said his life was empty. She’d asked, “How long do you think a grown man can blow bubbles with tourists?” The friend said that two lives find success as one life shared. But success for the goose was a straightjacket for the gander. Ravi told the friend that Marcia was unhappy, unstable, and unacceptable. With luck, the friend would help her work through these obstacles in finding the true love she needed.

Ravi thought the friend saw very little but the view from his navel, with his head so far up his ass. But that felt unkind, possibly hostile. Ravi asked if he should move to San Francisco and become a clinical psychology intern and get laid and analyzed at will.

But beyond glib humor was the lesson in delusional love: Marcia would have moved in—would have phoned the daughter to pack the essentials and come on over. Don’t worry—the movers can get the rest. Marcia wanted to grab this eternal love, wanted to shape him up and snap him out of his ridiculous stupor, wanted total realization of the man and his feelings. Marcia and the charter crowd asked: Who but a fool gets up at dawn to play in the ocean, smoke dope, and bag the odd tourist? Enjoying warm days with no view whatsoever to the cruel winter ahead is not a future.

Marcia ended her week in Paradise sorting stats on emasculation and reconstruction. Alas, Ravi could not cure her life but gave what he could till the weekend. By then the beach shack got crowded and insensitive. He’d wanted distance, which is not a sign of love.

Marcia’s last day began and ended at first light when she twisted her head to see Skinny sitting by Ravi’s pillow, purring. Ravi had been stroking her head—Marcia’s—with one hand while she ate him. He scratched Skinny’s chin with the other hand, generating intense satisfaction in the cat but conflict in the woman. He had naively assumed all needs met in the females nearby. With so much purring and moaning, each to her or his own, life seemed good, promising another beautiful day—till the woman stopped and spoke accusingly, “You love that cat more than you love me.”

But he couldn’t respond. Not that it mattered; morning service was fading fast, unless he could say something equally foolish, like, Oh, no, I love you much more than Skinny.

Which was true. Marcia’s initial take on Skinny had been far more challenging to the man and the cat: “Not much to look at.”

Au contraire, Skinny loomed large, seven pounds of orange fluff with a baby face. Ravi had let it go, deferring to potential. But it lingered through the week to Saturday morning and blowjobus interruptus.

Marcia had risen, indignant as an urban professional forced to rectify the untenably inappropriate. Grabbing her things, she’d huffed to the door. Hearing no apology, no nothing from the bonehead in the sack, she’d left, her parting counsel, “Let her suck your dick.”

Ravi called out, “You’re crazy. She’s cute as a button!” Then he asked Skinny: “Who needs three blowjobs in a night and a day?” Skinny, also stumped, commiserated in her way. Not that she, Skinny, would deny him any affection, but Marcia’s suggestion wouldn’t have worked, and besides, it wasn’t like that between them. She was a cat, providing love, and he had the others for the other. Marcia’s exit seemed inevitable, perhaps demonstrating God’s plan in creating both cats and women. What a relief.

He hoped he would not hear from Marcia again. He pictured her by the phone in her condo—the friend assured Marcia’s “full confidence in Ravi’s integrity as a man,” meaning he would call once he realized what she represented, what they had going, and the sheer, raw potential dead ahead. Except for one glitch: They had nothing. He saw it clearly, his vision confirmed by her melodramatic exit and pining, classic symptoms of manipulative people. He didn’t call. He wallowed in the warm, fuzzy feel of not calling, but he set the wallow aside too; it seemed so harsh, and she was gone.

She would leave the next day anyway and could likely use the free time to regroup, reassess, fix her face, and think of home. There—there’s a nicer frame for a difficult picture.

Ravi snoozed late then rose to a glorious day off with nothing to do, no dive or female company or the endless maintenance of either. He wondered what was worse, a heart-rending loss like Annie or a mental bitch who finally left. He strolled out and headed up for coffee, retail, a double latte with a pastry.

He thought of her first with warmth and hoped she might find her man, and things would be better because she’d learned what real men want and what those men will give in return. If she met a guy from San Francisco and he had a good job in town and wore a suit and made good dough and wore his feelings on his sleeve with no inkling of assertiveness, things might work out. That guy might be strolling down Union Avenue right now wondering when Ms. Right would come along—when Ms. Right would come into his life.

Marcia might approach romance more humbly with tempered expectations, and maybe she wouldn’t browbeat the new guy till the second weekend. So things could work out.

Yet he could be a tad more subtle with his cat. Affection for a beast, even a cute fuzzy one, in the presence of women, should not be confusing. He and Skinny shared domestic bliss in this, their time on earth together. It was nobody’s business but their own—but he would avoid spooking the guests at critical junctures. Maybe if he’d grabbed her ears—Marcia’s. And he laughed.

Basha Rivka often advised: Tzim lachen. It should be to laugh. He couldn’t very well tell his mother of this tourist woman’s jealousy of a chin scratch for the cat during a blowjob, but he felt Basha Rivka would laugh too since they had their health—all three of them.

At the main road, he began to cross when a pickup with big wheels drove slowly past. The driver mumbled, “Fockeen haole suck.” Ravi wanted to tell him that “fucking haole” would have done, without the “suck.” But the guy had no sense of humor after spending forty grand buggering up a used truck. So he nodded and gave the right of way. The truck guy peeled into the parking lot on a roaring cloud, not quite rolling over. What a show. What a great return on investment.

Local hostility seemed isolated and rare. Ravi didn’t take it personally but as a sign of the times. Maybe the signs wouldn’t change. Who knew? Once an exotic destination, Maui felt pressured, with too many humans competing for Paradise.

He crossed to the parking lot to see if he and the driver could reach an understanding. Finding the truck but not the driver was perhaps best, what with resolution so unlikely. Who had what to give? So he held communion with the truck and walked back to the coffee shop, disappointed that his shot of sugar and caffeine would be soured by a dose of vinegar. Such was the world, pressing a righteous man to balance what felt hazardous.

What else could he do? Everybody felt swept along in a tsunami of development with an undercurrent of more, more, more. Who could be more convenient to blame than each other? A few rude boys claimed dominance and something or other, even though their forebears arrived in freighters and not outrigger canoes. They also measured their substance as a matter of tenure but got no respect.

The guy could have said, Hey, brother. But the taunt and threat better reflected him. Things would get worse. Who got what and how much of it would further inflame, with so many haves having so much and so many others feeling the squeeze.

But was that any reason for a guy to call me a haole suck? No. His family came a hundred years ago, or two hundred, as coolie labor, in the influx of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and the rest, when the missionary sugar company took everything and gave little but debt in the company store. The missionaries took land from the Hawaiians and labor from the Asians. The missionaries were white.

That wasn’t me, but the guy in the truck would rather be hateful than right. Let the chips fall. Is it my fault they’re all blue chips in your prime beach areas? Does my place look like Santa Barbara? Do I really care if a piece of the rock was only a million dollars two years ago and now runs three million or five million, seven point nine or twelve million?

Ah, well—the sun climbed higher on another beautiful day for those who could afford it. Those who couldn’t afford it wondered where to go and what to do. Or maybe they only thought they couldn’t afford it. Ravi Rockulz had everything he needed, including a million-dollar view, a cat to confide in, and more recent blowjobs under his belt than a fellow needs on any given day.

Too bad the coffee place was crowded out the door with pale tourists and more tourists piling out of matching Hummers, happily exclaiming that next year they would rent the Ferrari too, just to have it for their fabulous few days, which would be way better than the Porsche. They had the Porsche last year, and it was okay, but the Ferrari along with the Hummer would really be the best package.

Hey, it was no big deal that tourists were jamming the place with flesh and talk. A guy had plenty coffee at home, along with bread for toast and a smidge of lilikoi jelly left. And what a great day for a walk before breakfast—except for the troubling view of the woodland by the reef down the shoreline that used to be Maluaka and Black Sand, being leveled for new condos at twelve to fifteen million.

A Hawaiian man stood in the road above the rubble that last week was a forest home to critters, now cleared and prepped with dynamite to blast away for underground parking for Hummers and Ferraris. The Hawaiian wore an orange vest and held a red flag. How could a Hawaiian support the destruction? Ravi said in passing, “You know, this used to be beautiful.”

Yeah, well, the guy in the truck was confused on which whites were which, but this sun-baked Hawaiian knew the score; it didn’t even matter because the place was going down. Everyone felt the pressure of more, more, more going to less and less. What could the guy do, give up his job? Well, yes, he could. But he wouldn’t.

Nobody wants to dwell on the negative, but Ravi stared out, at the end. A man lives till he dies, and he’s better off any day under blue sky and water. But he couldn’t help the regret; oh, man, here we go again. Here again, a man recognized a moment of change. Change should be good. Change is evidence of life. A common bumper sticker said: All who wander are not lost. Too bad that most wanderers were lost, or yet to be found, but the road still waited for a man who loved nature with a few good years remaining. Elder Brahmins or Buddhists or watermen set out with faith, only faith. Not that Ravi Rockulz was old. Not by a long shot.

Besides, nineteen years in one place did not make him a rolling stone. He’d stopped pleading his case years ago. Basha Rivka’s chronic tongue clicking, wincing, and gnashing was meant to wake him up. She asked, “What is it that you do? What do I say? My son is what? He’s a… a swimming schlep? What?”

“If you need to tell anybody anything, you can tell them I’m developing a career in tourism with an emphasis on ocean recreation.”

“How is that thing on your neck?” And so on, the browbeaten and the beater, till he beat her to the punch and led the fray elsewhere, to where she lived and worried.

“Hmm. Don’t ask.” But of course he asked in self-defense and because not asking would indict a wayward son who didn’t even ask about that thing on her neck. Then he listened to what the doctor, a real goniff, meaning that he could steal with integrity, and oy, what he had her trying that week! And the other doctor was so young, so… dumb, but she liked him, even though he’d wanted her to try new drugs to work miracles, and we really don’t believe in that sort of thing. Ravi listened to diagnosis, prescriptions, symptoms—to who was sick or recently dead, like Sadie Kornblatt, who up and quit her medications one day because she felt so bad. Forty pills, twenty each morning and evening for twenty years, she took. So many pills nobody needs like a hole in the head, so she quit one morning and that afternoon she felt better but died. “It just goes to show you.”

Echoing across the ailments and mortalities a voice called out for life to begin. A swimming schlep? Of course he was more, much more, with training and experience along with the life-and-death responsibility of a dive instructor to judge conditions and decide in the clutch daily. Yes, he could be cynical an hour before dawn, in prepping and checking. Then hoisting eighteen scuba tanks aboard and into the racks with no grunts because grunting means weakness. Each guest signs in and hands his dive bag aboard, from which the regulator, octopus, buoyancy compensator, and weights are set in place, with the fins, mask, and snorkel draped over the tank, so arrival at the dive site is like catered brunch. The guests have no worries because a sharp crew makes no mistakes. Because tourists can rest assured that their weights are correctly placed for proper descent and stability; that their air is on with buoyancy compensators slightly inflated so they don’t sink, sucking on a dead hose; that the tanks are full to three thousand pounds and not three hundred—Ravi Rockulz does not one detail take for granted. Playful and energetic as an otter, weaving, turning like a marine mammal who behaves for survival, he knows that vigilance in movement can avoid the unforeseen. Ravi looked, checked pressure, pocket zips, comfort level, ear clearing…

Then he pointed out what tourists don’t see on a reef. They came so far and spent so much—and spent it here; they should see an octopus in a crevice, matching color and texture with the substrate. Or a dwarf moray or garden eels or a shark on the verge or resting on a ledge. Or a manta, whale, turtle, coral bloom, flame angel, pyramid butterflies in a hundred-foot column.

Are you okay? How much air do you have left? Okay, we go out and around to the right. Okay?

Water schlep? How about water doctor? Or water lawyer? Or water accountant? How about that? Yes, the schlep occurred at sunrise and again at the end when tanks and gear went back the way they came. So? Are not a man’s muscles defined by his labors? Does he carry a load with assurance, aplomb and dispatch? The short answer is yes—even if he grunts on the offload. The truth was: he was a waterman of first-caliber reputation among the fleet!

Beyond prowess, an evolving man becomes more. Ravi was also fearless in spending. He spent foolishly on friends who would go deeper than a dive plan to help him, as he would do for them. He tipped lavishly since waitpersons also needed to make ends meet. Every now and then a reasonably fresh waitress might turn her sparkle on he who spent so freely. She might assess the tip waiting in his heart. Or she might just dive in. Either/or was A-OK, but most waitresses had heard every line ever delivered by every Barnacle Bill or tourist wannabe who ever bellied up.

Indiscrete spending was an act of vengeance. Pissing it down the rat hole was a statement of life, liberty, and anarchy. Ravi’s greatest demonstration of liberation from the material world began one morning at Molokini Crater, a deep dive by necessity with swells banging the back wall and turbulence down to fifty feet. At ninety feet, divers could spread their wings and fly—not a novice dive but a real crowd-pleaser. The back wall got a few jitters churning among the intermediates, mostly accountants, insurance agents, business people and the most intractable social segment, doctors. Your average intermediate had twenty or fifty dives and often compensated anxiety with good cheer. Never mind; Ravi would take care of them, beginning with a little humor to ease the tension: the wall went four hundred feet to a ledge and then down to eight hundred, making it a bottomless dive, but don’t worry because the second dive would be much shallower, and topless. How they loved his joie de vivre in the clutch! It was just another day at the office for him—and us too, come to think of it, out here on our own in the deep blue sea.

On this particular morning, a tourist handed Ravi a severely expensive camera in an underwater housing with a huge glass bubble in front—the dome port over the lens. It wasn’t for keeps but for some excellent photos of the tourist and his new wife. Did he say excellent photos? “Don’t worry,” the tourist said, pointing out a button on top. “Focus. And shutter. Get very close. Okay?”

The shots were excellent, but the process felt mechanical till the tourist said Ravi had a gift. A moray peeked in from the right, and a curious jack cruised in from the left with a wink. “You can’t hire shots like this,” the tourist said, tipping the crew a hundred dollars.

Ravi dismissed the praise according to habit. Yet he savored the view for a week or two, reframing the eel and jack and newlyweds in his mind. He could have framed the eel and a coral head or the jack and hundreds of pyramid butterflies. He could have done it several ways, all perfect because he saw what others didn’t. Swimming schlep? Why must she use such degrading language? Would she be happier if I wore a suit and got fat? Yes, she would, so let it go.

So he let it go, until another dive prep soon after. Snugging his cummerbund, clipping in his waist and chest straps, humping the rig higher onto his back and cinching his front strap D-rings, he paused. “Those are butterflies you’ll see in the water column, not with wings and little antennae, but butterflyfish, as you’ll see in their amazing color and grace.” Oh, they loved him, plunging to the depths for the magic he so sprightly conveyed.

The next week he spent two of his three grand on a camera, housing, lens, and port—used. He could wait on the strobe, though it came the next day for another six hundred, to correct the blue-green fuzz at depth, to restore color and focus. For a week he shot tourists until the owner approved ten bucks per shot with two bucks going to the boat.

In six months Ravi Rockulz sent a portrait study of a giant moray eel to a well-known natural history magazine. With clarity and compelling detail, a personality came forth. The editor called it the best portraiture ever of the elusive, nocturnal giant moray. Ravi said, “Pshh… those guys and their lavish praise.” He tingled for days. He’d gone after dark to the pinnacles off Black Rock near the Sheraton Hotel. Friends scolded him for diving alone. At night? Are you nuts?

But maybe a tad whacked was part of artistic fervor. Besides that, safety is best but is often forgotten. Only a fool would dive without a buddy, given a choice. But a photographer at depth will soon be alone anyway. And if his buddy is shooting too, they’ll drift to different subjects. At night, twenty feet apart might as well be solitude. If a buddy isn’t shooting, separation will be quicker. No buddy wants to wait on a photographer, waiting for the fish to open up and socialize, to pose in its moods. Ravi snorkeled out to the pinnacles off Black Rock that night to save his tank. He knew of night beasts who hear splashing as the sound of injury and an easy meal. So he descended on rationale; yes, he could be with a buddy. They’d drift to separate pursuits and meet on the beach, which would be no safer and could be more worrisome if either was late or came out elsewhere.

Beyond that, it was a moderate swim to the pinnacles off the point, even if the point was a bit farther out than the rock. It felt manageable with no shore break. And things began smoothly. A camera requires two hands, leaving no hand for the flashlight in the inky darkness. Not to worry, Ravi’s flashlight revealed some lovely coral, a sleeping parrotfish, and a few ghastly conger eels. Then he wedged it inside his buoyancy jacket to free his hands for the camera. He worked switches by memory until the flashlight squirmed to shine up under his chin, blinding him and falling out—till he grabbed it, camera in the other hand, gaining a valuable lesson underwater, that something dropped can be retrieved with presence of mind and an easy reach. But this felt awkward, till he turned and gasped, nose to nose with a giant moray eel.

The eel wasn’t so much bigger unless they went back-to-back on tiptoes. The eel would have won by a foot and a half with similar girth. Worse was the moray’s presumption. Opening wide on an obtrusive display of long teeth in many rows crowding the fleshy maw, the eel assessed plausibility on swallowing the prey before him. Ravi cooperated, as it were, cringing to more palatable size.

As heart and sphincter went peripatetic in the face of death, he turned away, one hand for his light, the other on his camera and no hand for the knife strapped to his calf. What could he do with a knife anyway, stab a giant moray? He might discourage it, but bleeding could encourage others. Or an attack might trigger response in kind. Then Ravi would bleed and feel discouraged. Dousing his light to see how things might look, he stayed deep and turned the light back on.

In flight over fight, his muscles jammed into overdrive on adrenaline. He sensed survival and made a note to buy a spare light. But he slowed on realizing practicality in the sea, its nature based on need, not greed. Small fry gobble plankton. Boxfish eat small fry, and so on up the menu. Gill breathers don’t kill for sport, status, or compensation for lesser attributes—or mental derangement or photo-ops. Hunger and defense drive the system. He suddenly stopped. Some people are naturally friendly, engaging and curious. Some seem like old souls who know their way around, who comprehend compassion and a soft touch. This so-called giant hails from forebears and a social order more orderly than my own! So?

So the flight stopped a long but short way back. Ravi turned as the giant also turned, perhaps lured by the light now shining his way. Ravi turned the light askew then shone it on himself so the giant could see: no harm intended, and a diver could not be prey without severe risk of indigestion and heartburn on so much neoprene, nylon, plastic, and steel. Giant moray snaked gracefully back to proximity as the camera rose on an emotive subject lit in dramatic overtone and nuance… et voila! Aiming one-handed, flashlight in the other, Ravi held his breath so noise and bubbles would cease. And off the point in faint glow, a tableau formed. Two tentative beings assessed the nature and intention of each other on a chance meeting in the dark.

The big galoot came on like a stalker with eye contact and intense curiosity. They scanned. One sniffed the strange, glass dome. The other made a soft clicking noise, from eyes to mottled skin to dilating nostrils, four of them, and scads of teeth defying a neat tuck into the maw, some in need of flossing. The eel opened wide to push water over the gills and purse a word, Aaaloha. Giant moray eased into communion as yet unseen through a lens.

“Photos by Ravi Rockulz” in National Geographic changed life for three days. With greatness came cash for better camera stuff with more functions a pro might need. Cash remained for celebration into the wee hours, with more cash plunked down on the waitress tray and reciprocal gratitude into the night, no cash required.

Life changed. Here was vision and purpose instead of monotony. Here was the ephemeral nature of greatness; it fades unless fed. So he stepped up. He’d cleared the outfield wall and could do it again, though he feared the eerie air of invincibility. What if he couldn’t? Development requires error. What if he failed?

So he practiced humility until a great photographer said he used the same strobe as Ravi because of the focus-light setting that let it serve as a flashlight, freeing things up. “Don’t you love it?” Ravi blushed. Who knew? So many buttons!

The old pro saw—“Oh, man! You held a light out to the side!” Ravi did not deny it, and greatness got boosted again.

The bad news was that he couldn’t share his success with Basha Rivka. Or he chose not to; it was so premature. Maybe he held back in self-defense against her inevitable critique: So what? You’ll retire now? So now what do I tell them? You took a picture of a fish and retired, except for the swim schlep every day of your life?

The questions could sting or itch. Best to keep it under wraps until one more magazine credit, or maybe three more.