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 drivers 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.
All the morning stuff was like bubbles in the wake soon enough, with blue water, sunshine, warmth and interaction and really some of the best of life. Come on; clear weather, good health. Laughter helped a day begin in the right spirit. A man who woke up thinking gray would rise to a gray world, to shadows on the morning, stretching across the day. Or he could look up and down at blue sky and sea and open his heart to the light and warmth and the great good fortune upon him.
The format was sound, the problem obscure, till the pattern of optimism, blue on blue and all’s well, seemed rhythmical, not repetitive, and hardly annoying when compared to the alternative, which was what? A conservative suit, a modest sedan, a reasonable commute, an airless office, benefits including health insurance and a pension for the years of decrepitude? Fuck.
But even an enviable life of harmony with nature in a tropical latitude had its share of tedium, with the same predictable postures, claims and questions every day on depth, distance and the desirability of each dive site. Day in, day out, the routine altered only in destination and in weather and sea conditions. Business boomed because of deep fear nurtured in America — fear of traveling outside the “homeland,” which as a concept seemed disturbingly similar to that of the “fatherland.” What the hell, job security never looked so strong. Bookings often went four days in advance. And a hardworking, happy man can indeed waste energy on a very minor anxiety, when in fact the place still blossomed with dynamic potential on a daily basis.
The fleet got bigger to accommodate more business, and the boat launch required more time, more patience and tolerance, as the effort to get things underway doubled, along with fuel prices, which certainly was not the crews’ concern but tended to undermine prospects for a raise or bonus. More competition kept revenue down. So the crews were called upon for more service with more aloha, more attention to detail and generally more of everything else, too, to make the same pay. The first economic downturn would surely bring attrition, taking the fleet back down to a proper size. Only those boats with repeat business would survive the next recession or pandemic or act of terrorism or airline strike or mortgage crisis or any significant ripple in discretionary spending, because an outing to Hawaii would get scratched quicker than a bad Starbucks habit, if times got tough.
So it was that familiarity, predictability, crowding and tedium got more familiar, predictable, crowded and tedious. A man in a bind can recognize his emotional burden gaining weight, but awareness won’t diminish the load. Ravid Rockulz faced a difficult truth, sadly seeing his island for what it had become. As when a marriage outlasts the love, he didn’t decide one day that it was over; he felt each day that it was a little bit less than it had been. His tropical island was going suburban, shifting into overdrive on its metamorphosis to burbling convenience, gagging chic and LA-extravagant values. The newest immigrants fit happily into the gridlock and road rage, adapting successfully.
This traffic? Bad? Compared to what?
Many others mustered their best laugh-a-day dismissal of gridlock in favor of money and “growth.” The Chamber and Visitor’s Bureau led the cheers.
Ravid’s niggling but manageable worries were compounded more frequently as time passed. Stopping shy of anxiety attack and falling short of mid-life crisis, they led inexorably downward to symptoms of both, beginning with some tough questions:
Could this be the right context for the prime of life?
Did I ever anticipate thousands more condos, cane fields converted to tract houses and the sweeping ocean views along the road blocked by mini-mansions proudly probing the twenty-two-million-dollar range?
Can I remain happy — or revive my happiness?
Or would this chronic malaise displace the bond between the waterman and his achingly lovely home?
For that matter, was home still lovely?
And there he was, stuck in a quandary, knowing that each day made him better at his craft, even as the days passed with feelings of inadequacy. He was the best, but something was amiss. An absence was palpable and was perhaps the feeling of incompletion common among many people approaching middle age. He felt tardy and not yet arrived but couldn’t put his finger on where he was bound for or what held him back. The feeling persisted like a self-imposed constraint. It gained urgency — or he suffered the growing pains of continuing commitment to what he loved. Renewing his vows to beauty and perfection with a vengeance, Ravid Rockulz wanted to cure his uncertainty. He’d never met an itch he couldn’t scratch, but this was deep, not surfacing. It moved around even as vigorous attempts to scratch it let the blood seep.
Maybe he needed a break, a few days off with a tourist woman, a luxuriantly plush and married one looking to round out her separate vacation free of long-term baggage. Ravid was as quick and easy as carry-on, replete with excellent manners and sexual courtesy — and he did love room service, air-conditioning and remote controls. Setting aside her love, need, obedience, care-giving and being there till death do us part, an open-minded woman could get down to the romance she craved. Maybe a sumptuous woman with imagination could reach the itch with fun and kink in a lavish hotel, with six-hundred-thread-count sheets, thick, fluffy towels to be used once and thrown on the floor, an ocean view and a mini bar with cashews and chocolates, her treat — or better yet, on the hubby’s corporate account, which would be easier on everyone, all things considered.
Well, that worked out sometimes, but usually not, because either the women had defects, rendering the experience less than perfect after all, or they had no defects, and left a sensitive dive instructor alone at the end of the dock with matching lumps in his Speedos and heart. Not that the sheer frolic wasn’t worth the price from time to time, but the price rose as perfection in females became more elusive and more lovable.
In time, he felt like the young sailor in the old story of a first shore leave in Waikiki. Finally choosing the woman of his dreams, a working girl with the beauty, lift, separation and spread every boy dreams of, the sailor could hardly believe his luck and that she was real and available. It seemed unbelievable that the Promised Land could be his for mere dollars. So he asked with trepidation, How much is this going to cost me? Understood was that this everyboy wanted the whole enchilada — around-the-world, blow-and-go, smoke-and-fire, half-and-half, the works — so the perfect hooker eyed him up and down, smiling sweetly as she asked, How much you got?
The little story came to mind when Ravid wondered how much he had or was willing to pay. The story made him laugh, imagining himself as the boy on the threshold of the dream deal. Every man had stood there. And he marveled at the tonic effect of a small joke. La petite plaisanterie; maybe it could make the small death easier to bear. Laughing at society’s foibles was certainly known to keep a man sane, at least in the short term.
Ravid couldn’t help but love his island, even as she became a working girl; surely she would save her heartfelt best for him, knowing that he needed more from her than another romp in a canebrake. Odd as it seemed in such a vagabond heart, he needed commitment. He needed his love returned. He wanted to grow old together.
Among the small deaths incurred daily was that of the old spirit of aloha. Its diminution was less noticeable to some, because some “locals” had become hostile over the years. Ravid thought it was only a toxic few blaming others for their shortcomings, as non-resourceful people will do. But small in number as they were, their rancor was loud, their attempt to dominate by posture and noise overbearing. Most had no Hawaiian ancestry but descended from workers who’d come from the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Tonga, Samoa and, above all, Japan. The “local” label was deemed sanctified and authorized, as if locals were somehow derived from original stock, like Hawaiians.
They weren’t, yet they bore animosity toward anyone not island-born. Conflict was rare, isolated and generally aimed at Caucasians. Racism is troubling anywhere; among the sources of human pride, racial origin lacks staying power. On the other hand, Caucasians are often equipped to deal with racism, so assured are they, deep down, of their innate superiority.
One racial claim was that blood instinct was the same thing as superior intelligence in nature. That is, native intellect was held up as part of a group genetic. The loudest claims for superiority were often incomprehensible. Ah, Ravid thought. They’re frustrated too.
Some locals claimed Hawaiian blood as if to explain their rage. They spoke pidgin as a first language and bore Asian physical traits. They resented white people making money and living on the islands, especially the influx of former tourists as residents, who drove prices sky high and drove the next generation away — their children — because they couldn’t afford the rent.
Everybody felt the crush. It felt ugly, with a spurious minority claiming oppression at the hands of white people — how tricky those haoles could be, starting with the missionaries, and now they want what’s left, what is “ours.” Anyone white was assumed to have missionary lineage and values, which were wrong and oppressive. The exceptions were wealthy descendants of missionaries; they were unmentioned. Though Caucasians made up only a third of the population, the accusation was correct in part.
But racial entitlement went both ways. Outrage became proof of oppression: Why else do I get so pissed off? Some white people accepted guilt as charged — just look at history. But most accepted nothing, because indictment based on race is racist. The more virulent racists shouted for justice, not so much like their Klan forebears had done, but then not so different. Welcome to Hawaii. Now Go Home — this popular bumper sticker could be seen speeding down the highway, along with Slow Down! This Ain’t the Mainland, two sentiments claiming tenure and rights to original something or other, reflecting volume exchange on innate stupidity. The place was under terrific pressure but had not given in to hatred in most quarters.
Ravid hated the hatred, which felt contradictory, but he didn’t know what else to think. Pacifistic as the next fellow, he knew all too well what comes of complaisance in the presence of evil. Next thing you know, it’s the worst liberals laying their necks on the chopping block to compensate for the injustices of the past. Missionaries my tuchas — I’m Jewish! We don’t proselytize.
Besides that, Ravid had met people all over the world from most racial, social, economic, age and health strata, judging all according to merit. One man’s merit might be another man’s deficiency, but for Ravid, natural values, love and good manners could be inferior to nothing. Maybe the local challenge chronic in Hawaii would be best viewed as uninformed; if euphemism could soothe inflammation, so much the better. Yes, 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. The local crowd assumed that no place else counted for anything, but if you’d seen the world, you knew the big difference between growing up local and growing up in the world. That difference became manifest in the education available at local schools. Some matriculates put huge decals on their trucks:
Born & Raised.
Ravid wanted to have his own decal custom-made:
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, his identity marker signifying liberation from material gain and the burden of possessions. Ravid Rockulz was free of the rigors of undue mechanical maintenance or cosmetics that could hinder Nature in Her course of decomposition, decay and dust. Ravid’s early vintage, dinged and dented Tercel had actually lost its back window — along with its back bumper — in a tribute to gravity and the yin-yang miracle of massive rust in movement and vice versa. Losing his back window was also good for a laugh, or many laughs, from the moment of happening through many recollections. Little shards with rounded edges still lay among the drifts and detritus on the back seat and floor, or on the ground where they tumbled in a sparkling wake after falling through the gaping holes in the floor.
Most of the males in Ravid’s social set drove beaters. A beater indicated a driver who’d found comfort in lateral mobility. A man who drove a beater remained apprehensive of bourgeois creep. The critical first symptom of soul death was a new car, or a car with no rust. The women loved beaters and the men who made the statement and commitment, or lack thereof, and they matched sincerity tit for tat.
Could that be the problem? Could the spontaneous life and devil-may-care approach to milestone events be generating subliminal anxiety that might be gaining momentum along with mileage on the road to nowhere?
Yes, it could be, but no, it’s not that. Are you kidding? Calling nights of wine and laughter, friendship, love and women 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 fun and call it productive? Go peddle that poison elsewhere. Get the fuck out — and now!
Except that among the traits most observable in Ravid Rockulz was the notable absence of obscene language. He left it in the bilge where it belonged, favoring polite discourse every time. He learned that esprit de corps made the bawdy good times all the more fun, putting them in the context of polite good taste such as might be seen in your better hotels. Still, conversations with himself were often seasoned profanely, his didactic brutality meant to discipline the unruly self, as it were. Besides, in practical terms, harsh language helped ventilate the spleen.
Back to the point at hand: Days of honest endeavor with true friends and needs met among willing women could not be regretted. They were a source of joy, a blessing called life itself. Can a person be more gainfully engaged than in fun, laughing aloud or moaning to God, Himself, in gratitude for what must be heaven-sent?
Yet a case could be made against these joyful pursuits of sun, sea, wine, reefer and women. Naturally convenient to the service class, these pleasures seemed slight compensation for the security those same people lacked. Call it a trick of nature; the case against the good times rolling into the foreseeable future would lose every time. I submit to the court that life cannot get better than a rollicking good time, Your Honor.
You wanted to get high, get laid, get loved, get wet and deep? That was easy: Jump in. The water was fine. The youthful wonders were free to anyone willing to work for rent, groceries, entertainment and no more, except of course freedom and happiness. In California, they’d call it a lifestyle. In Hawaii, they called it life.
This winning case did not rely on the glory of hand-to-mouth existence or victory over wealth. It was simply that living close to the ground had its perks. Many mainland tourists saw and envied the warm, vibrant context and its apparent superiority over urban ambition and the hard-driven commute. Many fantasized on their flights home and through Monday morning and the next commute. Just as speed and comfort are counterbalanced in most boats, so did security and freedom offer differing returns.
Ravid Rockulz had made the choice long ago. But a malaise came on like a blemish on a soft complexion — troubling and hard to reckon.
Maybe it was midlife time, when male humans panic, caught in the DMZ between boyhood and its inevitable destination. Each day moves inexorably toward the latter, yet the boys cling to remnants of the former. Most men would give anything to lead dives rather than sell insurance, shoes or equities, 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 dive instructor in Hawaii topped the blue-collar heap, and he craved something more, like a profession, or an artistic endeavor. Maybe this niggling restlessness came from the beauty abounding, from an unrequited love that needed conversion to a marketable commodity for public consumption. Then society and he could better appreciate each other. Tourists valued his insightful stories on the way to the reef, on the reef and on the way home from the reef. He told them what to watch for, then pointed it out, then told them what it meant in the scheme of reef life. He knew these things, had learned and absorbed them, and the guests felt the kinship. They loved what he gave, and they tipped generously in return.
Maybe a bigger audience could make a connection now lacking. Maybe he could paint. Or something.
Well, it was a fine, pretty concept, but who had time to think of art and the betterment of society with such a rigorous schedule? The demands of diving daily, with the aerobic output and relentless schlep, were enough to tire a younger man. On top of that, a healthy man in his prime wants nothing more or less than a normal social life, which wasn’t the easy pickings that met the eye, except for when it was. But luck was fickle. Ravid did not get laid at will. No men do, except for rock stars, some professional athletes and a few politicians. Those guys have hot and cold running leg any time 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!
Tourist fare, on the other hand, included upper-echelon females of spiritual, physical, intellectual and economic development, many of whom lusted for the simplicity left by the roadside long ago in the quest for status and money. 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 common 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. Ravid’s mystery unfolded in layers, beginning with paradox: Here was a man defying containment in a three-piece suit, yet an ounce and a half of nylon splendidly covered him.
The other layers were more straightforward. He was very good at his job, sincerely in love with his workplace and obviously 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 spirited woman could well understand the cleavage stare she’d suffered for so long.
Maybe the unusual, happy niche Ravid had found was also part of the problem. His happiness had been real, with natural aptitude developed admirably and applied to its highest and best use. But like all things that evolve toward perfection only to reveal it as an illusion, a time comes for fading away, for finality in all things. Ravid felt fairly certain he was not ready to die, nor was he inclined to. So what might come next to 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? Well, anything could get better. A steady diet of sweets had seemed right in a pastoral water life of natural values, but maybe the sweets should be set aside. Maybe it was like the movie he saw last week where Nicolas Cage was this 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 pictures on his wall on account of the great leg and money rolling in. Then he got visited by this black angel guy who sent him back to an old date he stood up at the altar on their wedding day, but then he was married to her in one of those special Hollywood flashbacks to show what would have been if the other road was taken. What was her name? Don’t tell me — incredible rack but much more homey than the Wall Street women and much warmer with a more domestic smile. Anyway, they got two little kids on the road not taken, and one was real cute and smarter than Solomon, and nobody minded that she was precocious enough to make you gag; she was so well scripted, and the other kid was an infant who cried and shit and peed all over the place so much it made Nicholas Cage realize how sad he’d been with only big bucks and terrific snatch in his life...
Nah...
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 with some dense 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 Ravid Rockulz’s water world was clear that it was all love and got lusty because of it. Your very best love was a function of lust, and vice versa. One set up the other, and the other confirmed the one. Sure, things got melodramatically comical on the coconut wireless, reporting by brunch on who was doing whom, with regrets or congrats at last. Sure the goings and comings and not-so-secret liaisons were often deemed script material. As the Anchor Drags was the neighborhood soap opera, and it was funny, but it was love too, mostly.
Sure, the one and only true love anybody actually witnessed in the guy, Ravid, was for the orange cat, Skinny, which some women on the way out called misguided, misplaced, unfortunate or somehow wrong, which is what they used to say about all the cute, smart, sensitive guys being gay. But Ravid wasn’t gay, and the women criticizing his interspecies relationship didn’t know about the forms love can take, didn’t know Skinny the cat, 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 a name can have on a personality — not to mention the social consequences. A flea bath followed by a 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 the place, then chose her favorite vantage points from which to watch him, which felt like the first steps in their developing love. A few feedings offered her hope for more but provided no guarantee, so she watched him, as if to enhance her prospects. A cat so bereft of personal care by a loved one may reach, as many people do, for what’s been missing. She slept beside him with her head on the pillow, sometimes reaching over to rest one small paw on his shoulder. Naturally, she made an impression, though when he pressed her for more specifics on where they stood, she replied with indifference, her feline coyness making the pillow and paw seem simply convenient. As patterns became routine, she purred often, satisfied with life at last. If he opened his eyes, she would calmly say in her youthful, matter-of-fact voice, “Meow.”
In his less chipper, not-so-youthful voice, Ravid would moan, realizing that any available peace of mind there on the pillow would be hers. She woke him up, indifferent to his needs, oblivious to the morning just three hours ahead. Maybe that was her gift, sharing what she felt, offering it for him with no reservation. Ravid felt no need to convince anyone of anything, except to assure himself, as necessary, that a little cat named Skinny could serve quite well as a guy’s best friend in the whole wide world. She spoke cat and more — she was a sounding board, offering guidance and comfort. So maybe a thing called love did begin with practicality, with needs met and time left over for leisurely communion and deepening familiarity. Maybe, even, it could be no purer than this.
Some years later, once Skinny was grown, a woman came home with Ravid to engage in the physical romp most people fantasize about or seek out on the Internet. To say that Skinny liked to watch would have missed the cat’s true focus, which was Ravid no matter what he did. The woman represented a milestone in Ravid’s personal history of women. For starters came her striking good looks and amazing similarity to Annie Lennox, like, you know, on the Medusa CD but with the white hair.
Call it synchronicity — the word and concept coined by Carl Jung and heavily adopted by the ethereal set — or sheer dumb luck, but Ravid had that day splurged on a disc by Annie Lennox. So similar was this new woman, with her ivory crew cut, her sleek body of astounding length and shape, that Ravid called her “Annie,” which seemed okay with the woman. Ravid had never met Annie Lennox but loved her — okay, he loved her for her music, but who could separate the woman’s music from the womanly vibration?
So he closed his eyes during the sweet exchange, with Annie Lennox pouring warm honey in his ears in perfect cadence with the woman conjoined, whose name was Carol or Stacy or Janet or something but who got the connection and didn’t mind being called Annie. Didn’t mind? She loved it, wrapping herself around this sweet anonymity and Ravid in admiration. This must be, Ravid thought, what they mean by a win/win situation, so well could one Annie follow a lead and writhe in grace, while the other Annie crooned as only she could.
All a fellow had to do was bring down the eyelid movie screens, and who do you think showed up, svelte, lithe and dykey blonde? Yeah, well, with such a lyric and score in the background, this engagement of new Annie maintained the same high standards in the foreground. Just for fun, he could open his eyes on the refrain for a virtual reality as juicy and sweet as a fantasy ever was. New Annie’s hair seemed spikier and a tad more severe than Annie Lennox’s but failed to dilute her femininity. If anything, the marine buzz cut only highlighted her gifts, a feat few women could achieve like new Annie, with her amazing posture and Cadillac-bumper tits — naturals! I think.
Wait a minute. Was Annie Lennox lesbian? Well, whatever. She’s so lovable; I can swing that way too.
Meanwhile, new Annie’s striking good looks were only par for the course; which wasn’t to say Ravid was lookist, fatist or sexist in any way. It was simply that new Annie was beautiful, which wasn’t to say merely beautiful but rather that she lacked that certain elusive kink captured so perfectly by Annie Lennox. Who ever looked at Annie Lennox and didn’t want more?
Hey, not to worry: Things worked out with a dollop of imagination, and don’t forget the fun. With new Annie coming in merely average on her standout beauty and then surpassing the teeming refuse yearning to be free with her smarts, the volley was crisp and accurate. Quick as a whip with the sassy quip on anyone or any subject, she shrewdly avoided cracking her wit at Ravid, who tingled at this amazing skill in a woman of such dexterity and grace.
So she wasn’t Annie Lennox. We’ll make do.
They could still engage in a free exchange of hormones and intellect so thorough that a waterman could feel, in a word, inexperienced. It was new Annie coming home with Ravid, and she put him in the catbird seat, making good fun of everything and everyone else with incisive irony between bouts of sweet succor, each cycle rejuvenating its alternate in an intellectual and physical whirlwind.
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 her 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 indomitable wit in deference to her date. Nobody wants a love based on competitive wit, just as nobody wants to be ridiculed — as Ravid once was by a woman who called him a macho pervert, a sex machine who wore his spray-on swim skivvies like a billboard.
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, like her rude predecessors, was on the way out. So it didn’t matter, though it always felt better to send them off 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 wink and a nod at her extraordinary hair, so short, so dazzling, so erotic, he asked if the carpet matched the drapes. Sardonically dominant in her most vivacious urban leer, she gave him the news: “This is the nineties, baby. There ain’t no carpet.”
Ravid laughed short — or was that a gasp? — processing the nuance; the nineties ended years ago. Did no carpet suggest that they were down to hardwood? But he didn’t sort her odd humor for long before she discarded her only two pieces of clothing and encouraged him to follow suit. The farmer’s market never had produce so fresh and abundant.
Love germinated only a few days in, sprouting and bursting forth. And it could have been love forever and ever, 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, he had concerns that grew more numerous as his heart opened to her. Suffice it to say that his growing list of questions mostly involved practicality. He assumed she would move to Maui, because it was so much warmer, sunnier, drier and more fun than Portland. He then assumed she would move in to his place, or maybe they would get a new place, and she would find a job, so their new place could be a regular place, one of the rental condos with a communal barbecue pit and a swimming pool. Then again, she did love Ravid’s place and said as much many times, so maybe they could fix it up and make it work. Wait — maybe she could just send for her things. Why not?
Well, she laughed again with the old sardonic dominance, though this laugh quivered on a note of trepidation. “The main reason why not, buddy boy, is that I don’t think the old hubby boy would send them. You know, my things. Hey, grow up. Be a man...” And so on, to the extent summarily that you can’t have it any 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 on the corner next year, maybe, baby.
Ravid wasn’t finished, but she was. Her sudden revelation and departure felt like a delivery of true meaning — via Mack truck through the front wall and into the living room and onto his chest with an offload of monumental heartbreak, proving that it had been love. He’d been used, as he’d been used many times and as he’d used women many times. Many times the sexual utility had been shared, in the mutual back scratch meant to achieve relief. But this was different. Yes, some of the women said they loved him, but they were lonely women infatuated with the tropical scene — with the palm trees and heavily 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, Ravid’s heartbreak rendered him sexually 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 heal. They work together toward the recovery of needs, so life can endure. Ravid’s needs returned in easy repartee with Marcia from San Francisco. Marcia was smart, not streetwise and ironic like Annie, but comforting; Marcia knew everything and was there to help. Helping others was her profession: clinical psychologist. Besides success in life with skills and professional know-how, Marcia had a unique worldview. She understood events and the competing potentials of goodness and evil. She sensed nuance in conservation politics and the insidious overlay of evangelical greed therein. She sensed “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 game for adventure, 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 Ravid’s social circle, 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 matted and framed her most exotic samplers. 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 also broke the ice with a flourish. Her vigor and enthusiasm in sexual exchange suggested years of practice in the field. Ravid used condoms religiously at the beginning of their romance but still suffered the angst of anyone with a game date from San Francisco. She assured that he needn’t worry; she hadn’t been with a man for at least seven years, longer than the gestation period of the dreaded disease. And no, she’d never been with a man who’d been with a man. He asked how she could be so certain. She said that a woman knows a few things and should be given credit. He asked how she knew who he’d been with, and if he’d always been safe. She said she did know because she could tell, and because she trusted him to tell her the truth. He thought she sounded screwy.
But she looked fresh as a catalogue offering, so perfectly preened and buffed, with nary a dimple or hair out of place, no creases or folds interfering with the generous offering. Forty-five? Seven years without?
She made no sense, really, but with concise enunciation and eloquent syntax she could speak around an issue, any issue, like it was jam on toast instead of a deadly virus. So he’d diddled her most personal self for a minute or two and then reached with his tongue for something or other through her crotch for eight or nine more minutes then went ahead bareback. Hey, San Francisco. A clinical psychologist. Who better to know the odds and safe bets?
She later told him that her vision quest included experiential data — her phrase. Marcia needed to test something for herself.
To wit: Her latest dilemma was in the parental/friendship interface with her daughter. She wouldn’t say her daughter’s age, assuming that her date didn’t care because age should not be important. Her daughter was post-pubescent at any rate, as the tale would tell. Marcia’s challenge was a study in patience, in which daughter came to Mummy, asking innocently as only a little lass can — “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 wouldn’t let any of them...you know. They stopped calling. That’s what they do. So I let Pierre do anything he wants. I do whatever he asks me to do. I thought it was disgusting at first. Now I’m used to it, but I still think it’s weird. Eww. He says he’s in love, but I don’t want to go out with him anymore. Am I doing this wrong?”
Well, the mixed emotion and constrained reaction 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...
Ravid waited for the moral of the story, which wasn’t as obvious as met the eye. The moral was that the daughter had let go and experimented in a way the mother called very unwise, even as she, the mother, measured her daughter’s experience relative to love as greater than her own. “Frankly, I had sexual intercourse with a fellow I hardly knew and got preggers with Samantha. It was rather clinical and went nowhere, really, except of course for making her, meaning Samantha. But frankly, I’ve held back.”
The bigger question seemed evident: Had Mummy been going about things wrong? Frustrated and lonely as a heterosexual woman in San Francisco can be, Marcia had resisted the temptation to gobble up any straight, clean, well-educated and socially adjusted man she met. She’d met a few, but they were so predictably pithy and urbane — and soft, like city men. She didn’t so much doubt her judgment but decided to wait for the right man to come along. And wait and wait — not to say that her standards were too high, but they were different. She realized on seeing Ravid at work and play that he had a love affair with life going on, that he would be the perfect replacement for Dirk. She’d named her dildo Dirk and praised him, Dirk, for selfless giving, sparing them both from many evenings of solitude.
Ravid 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 such openness could bond them as one. Scratching the big itch would be easy, if she could establish intimacy with another person. Is that unreasonable? No, but she was bound for glory, based on the highest levels of intimacy, including spiritual and emotional levels beside the physical. She shuddered on confiding that she thought this could be “it.” She assured him that with guidance he could be so much more than the rippled dive guy in the spray-painted-on Speedos. She said the cavalry was on the way, meaning herself in the rescue role, because nobody should have to 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 Ravid for sensitivity. She was only woman, so Speedo-tinted glasses may have influenced her vision of his inner glow. Not to worry once more — he could unleash the love her life had been without.
Ravid did the math — he was sixteen when she started her professional career. But her psychosexual approach felt skewed. For being so naturally gifted at sperm extraction, she seemed woefully wrong on the derivation of meaning as it related to her life. Referencing her life as an entity separate from herself, she enumerated what her life had going for it and against it. She longed to find what her life was lacking. He felt her life engulf him as it had her, like a net.
The same 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 abruptly that morning, leaving him in peaceful repose, hormonally spent and enjoying the solace of she who understood him best: Meow. Ravid told the friend that the work was done. The friend waited for elaboration, so Ravid explained that Marcia was clingy, needy and neurotic, except in brief lapses of reprieve, when she gave praise, camaraderie or orgasm. The friend understood.
Yet the friend persisted: Marcia needed only that Ravid return her love, and she waited that very minute in her condo close by — hardly a quarter mile from where he sat — waited for him, the love of her life, so he could say that he would.
“Would what?”
“You know. Return her love.”
“Oh. Well, maybe tell her you called me but I wasn’t home.”
“Oh, God.”
So Ravid told the friend that he’d felt nothing beyond genital contact, which was good till he got tired of it. When he failed to keep up with her sheer, mad love, she’d called him a failure; she said his life was empty. She’d asked, “How long do you think a grown man can blow bubbles with tourists?” The friend provided the correct answer: that two lives could find success as one life shared. But a correct answer for the goose was not good for the gander. Ravid assured the friend that Marcia was deluded, unhappy, unstable and unacceptable. Surely she needed the help she so often provided. With luck, the friend would help work through these obstacles in obtaining the true love that Marcia so fervently desired.
The friend asked, “Don’t you see?”
Ravid felt that the friend saw very little but the limited view from his navel, with his head so far up his ass. But that felt unkind, possibly hostile. On the bright side, Marcia would be an option. He could move to San Francisco and set up shop as a clinical psychologist. Then he could get laid and analyzed at will.
But beyond glib humor was the lesson in love and its delusive reality: 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 give this shot at eternal love her very best, wanted to shape him up and snap him out of his ridiculous stupor, wanted to facilitate a total realization of the man and his, well, feelings. Marcia begged the question often asked by the charter crowd itself: Who but a fool would be up at dawn, playing in the ocean, bagging the occasional tourist, smoking dope and enjoying warm days with no view whatsoever to the cruel winter ahead?
Marcia ended her week in Paradise on data assessment, sorting stats on emotional, mental and spiritual emasculation as a means to rebuild from the rubble, as it were. Alas, Ravid could not provide the missing link in her life, though he gave what he could till the weekend. The beach shack got crowded and insensitive to the needs of others. Then it felt oppressive. By Saturday, he’d wanted distance, which is not a symptom of love.
Elevation might be nice, with a mountain stream babbling more soothingly than the rapids down in the flats, with their iffy footing, slippery rocks and incessant flow.
Marcia’s last day began and ended at first light when she twisted her head up to see Skinny sitting beside Ravid’s pillow, purring audibly. Ravid had been stroking her head — the woman’s — with one hand while she ate him. He scratched Skinny’s chin with the other hand, generating intense satisfaction in the cat but a certain conflict in the woman. Ravid had naively assumed success in meeting the needs of all females in close proximity. With all parties purring and moaning, each to her or his own, life seemed good, promising another beautiful day — till the woman stopped and looked troubled. She spoke lowly and accusingly, “You love that cat more than you love me.”
Well, fuck, duh. What was your first clue? Of course he did.
What a dumb thing to say.
But he could say nothing. He couldn’t even shrug for fear of being misconstrued. Not that it mattered; morning service was fading fast no matter what he said, unless he could say something equally foolish, like, Oh, no, I love you much more than Skinny.
Fat chance.
So he tried denial and small humor: “No, I don’t; we just know each other better.”
Which was true and hardly mean-spirited. Marcia’s initial critique of Skinny way back at the beginning of the week was far more challenging, far more difficult — and yes, egregiously insensitive to the feelings of the man and, for all anyone in San Francisco knew, of the cat: “Not much to look at.”
Au contraire, Skinny loomed large, seven pounds of red-orange fluff with her baby face lit by sunbeams. Ravid had let it go in the spirit of hospitality, deferring to potential sex. But it stung and it stuck all the way through the week to Saturday morning and blowjobus interruptus.
Marcia had risen, indignant as an urban professional woman forced to rectify what had become untenably inappropriate. Grabbing her things, she’d huffed to the door, where she’d waited. Hearing no plea, no apology, no nothing from the bonehead in the sack, she’d left, her parting counsel, “Let her suck your dick.”
Ravid called out the door, “You’re crazy. She’s as cute as a button!” Then he asked Skinny, rhetorically to be sure, but still as one man to his closest confidant: “Who needs three blowjobs in a night and a day?” Skinny was also stumped, commiserating in her uniquely soft but effective manner. Not that she, Skinny, would deny him anything by way of affection, but Marcia’s hasty, crude suggestion wouldn’t have worked, and besides, it wasn’t like that between them. She was a cat and more, providing pure love and all heart, and he had the others for the other. The moment at hand seemed perfectly natural and inevitable, including the rude departure, perhaps demonstrating God’s motivation in creating both cats and women. What a relief.
He hoped he would not hear from Marcia or her surrogates again. Marcia was far from a great love remembered, though her farewell and follow-up seemed indelible. He pictured her waiting by the phone in her expensive condo — the friend had assured Ravid that Marcia had “full confidence in Ravid’s integrity as a man,” meaning he would call her once he realized what she represented, what they had between them and the sheer, raw potential looming just ahead. Except for one little glitch: They had nothing, which he saw clearly, his vision confirmed by her melodramatic exit and pining away, classic symptoms of the most manipulative people. He didn’t call. He wallowed in the warm, fuzzy feeling of not calling, but then he set the wallow aside, too, since it was harsher than any feelings she’d generated in an otherwise happy man.
She was scheduled to leave the next day, anyway, and could likely use the free time to regroup, reassess, fix her face and then imagine how good it would be to get home. There — there’s a much nicer frame for a difficult picture.
Ravid took a nap till late in the morning. He rose, stretched his arms and legs to start a glorious day off with nothing to do but savor a few hours to himself with no dive or female company or the endless maintenance chores of either. He couldn’t help but reflect on Marcia’s sad dilemma, and he wondered what was better, a heart-rending loss like Annie or a mental bitch whose departure was a relief. At least Annie left a few happy memories.
So he strolled outside and decided on a coffee, retail, up the road, maybe a double latte with one of those incredibly satisfying pastries.
He walked and thought that she really was a nice woman who might one day find her man, and maybe the match would be more tolerable because of her recent experience, where she learned what real men want, which is all they want, and what those men are willing to give in return, which is nothing. Who knew? If she met a guy from San Francisco, and he had a good job in town and wore a suit and made good money and could show his feelings on his sleeve and had no inkling of masculinity or assertiveness, things might work out. That guy might be strolling down Union Avenue right now wondering when Ms. Right would come along — make that when Ms. Right would come into his life.
Post-Maui Marcia would at least approach romance more humbly and with tempered expectations, and maybe she wouldn’t browbeat the new guy till the second weekend. So things had a fair chance of working out well for everyone.
Love her more than Skinny? Shut up!
Yet he could be a tad more circumspect in showing his love for his cat. More subtle affection for a beast, even a cute fuzzy one, in the presence of women might better prevent the accusation and confusion. When you got down to it, neither he nor Skinny needed to convey their love. They felt the love and happiness in this, their time on earth together. Words gave vibration to love, but a purr is the ultimate vibration. He could purr discreetly, but better yet might be a little rub on her chinny chin chin to affirm his love without spooking the guests at critical junctures.
It was like Basha Rivka Rockulz assured him time and again on nearly every topic: Tzim lachen. It should be to laugh. He couldn’t very well share this experience with old Mom, with the tourist woman getting jealous of a chin scratch for Skinny the cat right in the middle of a blowjob, though he felt Basha Rivka would laugh, too, since, after all, they both still had their health. Make that all three of them.
At the main road he walked to the crosswalk and began to cross to the coffee shop when a pickup truck with giant wheels drove slowly in front of him. The driver mumbled, “Fockeen haole suck.” Ravid wanted to assure this driver that this behavior was not amusing, and that the phrase “fucking haole” would adequately convey the hateful sentiment without the “suck.” But he knew the guy had no sense of humor, because you can’t spend forty grand buggering up a used truck and remain light-hearted. So he nodded to the driver and gave the right of way with a flourish. As if on cue, the little guy at the wheel stomped the pedal for a roaring smoke cloud, turning into the parking lot on two wheels but not quite rolling over. What dominance. What a show. What a perfect return on investment.
Local hostility seemed isolated and rare but stung like a centipede when it got you unsuspecting. Ravid didn’t take it personally but as a symptom of nature playing out, a sign of the times, in which he had made a mistake, or mistakes, in a series that put him in the wrong place at the wrong time.
At least that was the formula he tried to use. But what judgment could make crossing the street a mistake? Well, maybe this was the wrong place in general, and the times had turned all wrong. Who knew? Once a free and wild and exotic destination for the adventurous set, Maui felt pressured, morphing into one more cage with too many rats — or people. Rats go to cannibalism in the third stage of overcrowding, right after murder and butt sex. People would never do that — well, not the cannibalism part anyway, not that often. But in that moment came the difficult truth, that too many humans competing for Paradise shouldn’t be surprised at the old aloha going lukewarm.
With troubling influences in mind, Ravid crossed and walked up the road and into the parking lot to find the truck with the silly big tires and little bitty bed way off the ground, to see if he and the driver could reach an understanding. Finding the truck but not the driver was perhaps for the best, what with resolution so unlikely. Who had what to give? So Ravid held communion with the truck for a minute or two and then walked back to the coffee shop, disappointed that his shot of sugar and caffeine would be soured by a dose of vinegar. But such was the world devolving, pressing a righteous man to balance what felt hazardous.
What else could he do? Everybody felt it, being swept along with the debris in a tsunami of development with an undercurrent of more, more, more. Who could be more convenient to blame than each other? The so-called locals claimed dominance and cultural something or other, even though their forebears arrived in freighters and not in outrigger canoes. They didn’t arrive in airplanes either, and that was an assumed source of superiority. They too measured substance in tenure and grew confident as many lighter-skinned people granted their claim. Well, except for a few thinner-skinned people.
All the guy had to say was, Hey, brother. But no, the taunt and threat were more satisfying. Mixed free enterprise would sort things out. Who got what and how much of it would further inflame things. Multi-colored for centuries and split into haves and have-nots, island society suffered a contentious rift, with so many haves having so much and so many others feeling the squeeze.
So what? Was that any reason for a guy I don’t even know to call me a haole suck? What I got that he no got? Notting is the big fat answer. So his family started out a hundred years ago, or two hundred, as coolie labor, along with the influx of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and the rest, when the missionary sugar company took everything and gave nothing but a growing debt in the company store. The missionaries took the land from the Hawaiians and the labor from the Asians. The missionaries were white.
That wasn’t me, but the dirtball in the truck would rather be hateful than right. Let the chips fall, Mr. Asswipe. Is it my fault that they’re all blue chips in your prime beach areas? Couldn’t you have bought that beach scrub when it was pennies on the dollar? 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 3 million to 5 million, 7.9 million, 13 million, and so on?
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. Ravid Rockulz had everything he needed, including a million-dollar view, a cat to confide in and way 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 of 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 in the 12-to-15-million-dollar range.
Well...
A Hawaiian man of indeterminate age stood in the road a half-mile above the exposed rubble that last week was the forest home to many critters, now cleared, with many holes for dynamite to blast it away for underground parking for more Hummers and Ferraris. The Hawaiian man wore an orange vest and held a red flag. Ravid wondered how anybody Hawaiian could support the destruction, and he said in passing, “You know, this used to be beautiful.”
“Used to be,” the man said.
Yeah, well, the guy in the truck was confused on which whites were which, but this sun-baked Hawaiian guy 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 old guy do, give up his job? Well, yes, he could. But he wouldn’t.
Nobody wanted to dwell on the negative, but Ravid stood at the top of his road seeing the end. A man must live till he dies, and he’d be better off any day by not stressing out under blue sky and water, wondering where next he would go. He couldn’t help the regret; oh, man, here we go again. Here again a man of fortitude recognized the moment of change. Well, change is for the better. Change is evidence of life. A common bumper sticker said it best: All who wander are not lost. Unfortunately, most who wandered were lost, or yet to be found, but the road still waited for a man who loved the natural world with a few good years remaining. Besides, an old man ready to hit the trail was a man evolved, a successful Brahmin or Buddhist or waterman setting out with faith in what he loved. Not that Ravid 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 to Basha Rivka. Her chronic response, with the tongue clicking, the wince and wrinkled brow nearly visible over the phone, around the earth into the wayward son’s ear was meant to give him pause, to make him see and change. She wanted to know, as if she didn’t, “What is it that you do? What do I say when I’m asked what my son does? He’s 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.”
“Big shot! Who knew?”
“How is that thing on your neck?” And so on, the browbeaten flailing against the browbeater 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 his mother’s health or that thing on her neck. Then he listened to what the doctor, a real goniff, had her trying that week, and what the other doctor, so young, so...dumb, but she liked him, had wanted her to try — new drugs known to work miracles, which had a nice ring, though we really don’t believe in that sort of thing. He listened weekly from diagnosis, prognosis, indications, prescriptions, new symptoms, to who was sick or recently dead — like Sadie Kornblatt, who up and quit taking her medications one day because they made her feel 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 thought she felt better but that night died. “It just goes to show you.”
Yet echoing across the symptoms, remedies and mortalities was a thumbnail of life waiting to begin, a life stuck on the starting blocks, where so many lives stay. A swimming schlep? Of course it was more than that, much more, considering the training and experience along with the life-and-death responsibility of a dive instructor, who alone judges conditions and makes decisions for a different group of strangers daily, all of whom put their trust in his hands. Yes, you could be cynical in that first hour, beginning in the dark and ending with dawn, in which the boat needs prepping and checking, which is minor to be sure, since the captain handles the mechanical stuff. But then it’s the loading, eighteen scuba tanks, each pumped to three thousand pounds, give or take, never mind, hoisted aboard and set into the racks with no grunts, because grunting indicates weakness. Then they’re hoisted out as 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 top, so arrival at the dive site is like catered brunch. Then in they go with no worries, because a sharp crew makes no mistakes. Because the tourists might take for granted that all their weights are correctly in place, allowing proper descent and stability at depth; that their air is turned on and their buoyancy compensators slightly inflated, so they don’t find themselves sucking on a dead hose going down; that the tanks themselves are indeed pressured to three thousand pounds and not three hundred — but Ravid Rockulz does not one single detail take for granted. People think he’s playful and energetic, like an otter or mischievous seal, spinning, weaving, arching, turning, but these marine mammals inherited their behaviors from ancestors who survived, who “knew” that the constant lookout for merciless predators requires constant vigilance in movement to avoid the unseen predator. Just so, Ravid looked, checked air pressure, pocket zips, comfort level, ear clearing...
Are you okay?
Then it was on to pointing out what mere tourists might see unassisted only in the rare extreme. They came so far and spent so much — and spent it here — that they should not miss an octopus snuggled in a crevasse, her skin identical in color and texture to the substrate. Or a dwarf pencil eel, or garden eels, or a shark hovering on the verge or resting under a ledge. Or a manta, whale, monk seal, reef shark, coral bloom, flame angel, pyramid butterflies in a column from a hundred-foot depth up to twenty.
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 of the trip, when all those tanks and gear had to go back the way they came. So? Are not a man’s muscles defined by his labors? Does he not carry the loads of labor and professional responsibility with assurance, aplomb and dispatch? The short answer is yes — even if he grunts on the offload. The truth was that he was a waterman of first-caliber reputation and regard among the fleet!
Beyond physical prowess and professional skill, an evolving man will seek greater success by being more things to more people. Among Ravid’s realm of fearlessness was the spending arena. He spent foolishly only when foolish spending was in order, like on another round for friends who would go deeper than the dive plan and risk all for him as he would do for them, and on tipping the waitress lavishly, since she gave her all as well and needed to make ends meet along with the rest. Besides, every now and then a reasonably fresh waitress who hadn’t been on the job long enough to ruin her posture or give her hemorrhoids might turn her sparkling countenance on he who spent so freely. She might assess the tip in his heart and hope it could be spent as lavishly. Or she might just dive in, which every waterwoman will do now and then, looking for the tip in his pants.
Well, either/or was A-OK, but waitresses were exceptions to the rule, most of them having seen and heard every line ever invented and delivered by every Barnacle Bill or tourist wannabe who ever bellied up.
The salient aspect of Ravid’s discretionary spending was his thorough disregard for return on investment. Freely spending — what the boys called “pissing it down the rat hole” — was an act of liberation, a statement of life, liberty and anarchy. Ravid’s inspiration came one morning on the back wall of Molokini Crater, a deep dive by necessity with swells typically banging the wall at the surface, making turbulence down to fifty or sixty feet. The day was normal, calling for expert guidance. At ninety feet, the divers could spread their wings and fly on the current; not a novice dive but a real crowd-pleaser. The back wall got a few jitters churning among the “intermediates,” mostly accountants, insurance agents, businesspeople and the most intractable of any social segment, the doctors. Your average intermediate had between twenty and fifty dives and most often compensated for anxiety with effusive good cheer. Never mind; Ravid would take care of them, beginning with a little humor to ease the tension, telling them that the wall went down four hundred feet to a ledge that jutted out a bit and then down to eight hundred feet, making the back wall a bottomless dive, but not to worry, because the second dive would be much shallower, and topless. Oh, how they loved his joie de vivre in the face of danger, which, what the heck, made for 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 at the back wall, a tourist handed Ravid a severely expensive looking camera in an underwater housing with a huge glass bubble in front — the dome port over the lens. He didn’t hand it over for keeps but, please, to get some excellent photos of the tourist and his former fiancée, as of yesterday his wife. Ravid’s own thought bubble filled with: Did he say excellent photos? To which the tourist said, as if reading Ravid, “Don’t worry,” pointing out the important two buttons among the thirty or so available. “Press this, here, for auto focus. And this for your shutter. Get us within six feet. Okay?”
Okay.
Well, the shots came out excellent, though Ravid felt that excellence derived mechanically and not from anything he’d done, till the tourist pointed out that yes, the mechanical aspect had gone without a flaw, because the whole thing was automatic, which was taken for granted until somebody did it wrong, which Ravid did not do. The tourist seemed psychic here, as if knowing that Ravid would likely have a good eye. More to the point, the composition was balanced by the huge, yellow-margin moray peeking in from the right, as if to wish the newlyweds good luck, and the curious jack cruising in from the left, as if to wink, because he’d known the wife. “You can’t hire shots like this,” the tourist said, and then tipped the crew a hundred dollars.
Ravid dismissed this praise according to habit, as he tried to dismiss most praise and criticism, since most was impulsive and unwarranted. Yet he savored the concept of excellence for a week and then another week, realizing that he might indeed have felt Neptune’s presence in framing the eel, the jack and the newlyweds. He’d taken for granted his eye — his gift — for composition and balance. He could as easily have moved three feet forward or back to frame the eel and a massive coral head, or the jack and three hundred pyramid angels in the water column — he could have composed and balanced several different ways, all perfect, because he, uniquely among divers, saw the sea with instinct. His eye and balance could set him apart from 99.9 percent of every other diver or dive master or dive instructor in the world. Swimming schlep? Why must she use such degrading language? Would she really be happier if I wore a suit and got fat? Yes, she would, so let it go.
So he let it go, feeling — to coin a San Francisco phrase learned not too long ago — the passion release itself a few days later during another dive prep. Pulling his cummerbund snug, clipping in his waist and chest straps, humping the whole rig higher onto his back and cinching his front strap D-rings, he paused as if with sudden notice, telling his enrapt audience, “Those are angelfish you’ll see in the water column, not with wings and harps and white robes, but they truly are angels, as you’ll see in their amazing color and grace.” Oh, they loved him, plunging eagerly to the depths for a sample of the magic he so sprightly conveyed.
In the next week he visited an underwater photographer and a camera store, and in the next week spent two of the three thousand dollars he owned on a camera, housing, lens and dome port, used. He would wait on the strobes, to be sure, though the strobes came the following week for another six hundred, also used, because he’d taken many shots that might have been great but came out blue-green and slightly fuzzy, because color goes away below forty feet and light brings it back and into focus. For two weeks more he practiced taking pictures of tourists, and then, approved by his boss, the boat owner, charged ten dollars per shot, with two dollars per shot going to the boat.
When Ravid Rockulz had taken underwater pictures for six months on Maui’s most popular dive sites, he sent a portrait study of a giant moray eel to the biggest, best-known natural history magazine in the world. The shots were not only extraordinary for clarity, composition and detail but also the best portraiture ever captured of the elusive nocturnal giant moray. Ravid had gone alone soon after dark to dive to fifty feet at the pinnacles a quarter mile off Black Rock in front of the Sheraton Hotel on the Westside. He dismissed the endless chiding of friends and colleagues, who scolded tirelessly that the smart diver does not dive alone. At night? Are you nuts?
Well, maybe he was a tad whacked, but isn’t that the nature of artistic fervor? Besides that, the safety rules were always good to consider, but if truth be told, a few were plain useless. Like the one demanding a buddy on every dive. Only a fool would dive without a buddy anytime, given a choice. But a photographer at depth will soon be alone anyway. If his buddy is also shooting, then each will drift to a different subject — a hundred feet apart is the same as alone in the best conditions. At night, twenty feet of separation might as well be solitude. If his buddy isn’t shooting, separation will be quick. No buddy wants to wait on a photographer working with a fish, waiting for the fish to calm down and sense no threat, so the fish can approach socially, its curiosity captured by the best. Ravid knew these practical realities, snorkeling out to the pinnacles off Black Rock that night — snorkeling to save the air in his tank. He also knew of the night beasts who hear splashing as the sound of injury and an easy meal.
So he descended on rationale; yes, he could be with another photographer. They’d drift apart on separate pursuits and not meet again till it was done, back on the beach, which would be no safer and could cause more worry, too, if either was late or came out elsewhere.
Beyond that, the pinnacles off Black Rock were only a short swim off the point, even if the point was a bit farther out than the beach. At a depth of fifty feet, it felt manageable, especially with no shore break.
And things went smoothly at first. A diver has only two hands, both required by a camera, leaving no hand for the flashlight in the inky darkness. Not to worry though, the smart diver — Ravid, in this case — used one hand to light his sphere of visibility: some lovely coral, a big, sleeping parrotfish and a few ghastly conger eels. Then he wedged his light in his BC to turn on his camera. He checked switches by memory — so many switches and knobs, too many, more than any shot would require. Never mind. The flashlight squirmed like a restless child till it shined up under his chin, blinding him, working free and then falling free. Not to worry; he grabbed it in time, holding the camera in the other hand and noting a subtle but valuable aspect of underwater work, that something dropped could be easily retrieved with presence of mind and an easy reach. Then he turned suddenly, to a presence felt rather than seen, and on coming nose to nose with a giant moray eel, he gasped.
The eel wasn’t so much bigger than himself, unless they could have stood back-to-back on their tiptoes, stretching the eel’s curves. The eel would have won by a foot and a half with similar girth. Worse was the moray’s presumption. Opening wide in an obtrusive display of very long teeth in many rows crowding the fleshy maw, the eel assessed the plausibility of swallowing the prey before him. Ravid cringed, as it were, to a more palatable size.
As his heart and sphincter slammed shut in the face of death, Ravid turned away, one hand grasping his light and the other on his camera, with no hand for the knife strapped above his ankle. Well, what could he do with a knife, anyway, stab a giant moray? He might discourage it, but it could bleed, encouraging others. Or an outright attack might stimulate response in kind, causing Ravid to bleed, discouraging him. Glancing into the ink-black water of his retreat, he opted against the knife. He could make the beach on instinct and compass bearing, but dropping his light would render it pitch dark with no alternative but a surface swim. He would gain nothing by dropping the camera, except the chance for a one-handed knife fight with a giant moray, who would likely be the least of his problems, and a camera could come in handy as a sacrificial chomp for other gregarious feeders.
So it was flight over fight, jamming the fear-frozen muscles into overdrive on adrenaline thrust. He sensed a proper course to survival, determining the critical need for, and making a mental note to buy, a spare light. But he slowed into knowing: The sea is innocent, its predatory nature based on fundamental need, which is not psychotic, perverse or similar to human motive. Small fry gobble plankton. Boxfish eat small fry, and so on up the menu. Nobody in the sea kills for sport or personal aggrandizement or compensation for lesser attributes, or for photo-ops or mental derangement. Hunger and defense drive the system. This so-called giant met by chance hails from forebears and a social context far less egregious than my own. So?
So the flight stopped a long but short way from the point of origin. So the diver turned to see the giant moray also turning back from the verge, perhaps lured back by the light now shining his way, reengaged, socially, perhaps. Ravid pointed the light askew to avoid blinding the giant. He shone it on himself so the giant could see, among other things, no harm intended and that he, the diver, would not qualify as prey, not without a severe risk of indigestion and heartburn on so much neoprene, nylon, plastic and steel. So the giant moray snaked gracefully back to social proximity as the camera rose into place, as the diver’s innate skill kept him neutrally buoyant. With the light angled obliquely, the subject was lit with dramatic shadow, overtone, nuance and clarity. Aiming the camera one-handed, Ravid held his breath. Noise and bubbles ceased, and there in the black water off the point in the faint glow of a tiny nightlight, a tableau formed, in which a tentative being assessed the nature and intention of another being of equal uncertainty on a chance meeting in a dark hallway.
So the big galoot came on like a stranger from the country, with eye contact, cautious curiosity and shared interests. In near intimacy, each creature scanned the other. One sniffed the strange, new fish with the bulbous bug-eye. The other made a soft clicking noise as the shutter opened again and again on the eyes, the mottled skin, the dilating nostrils, all four of them, and hundreds of teeth, some in need of flossing and all defying a neat tuck into the maw. The eel breathed as eels do, opening and closing to push water over the gills and pursing a word, Aaaaloha. The giant moray eased to apparent bliss and beatitude in communion never before seen, much less photographed.
“Photos by Ravid Rockulz” in National Geographic magazine changed life materially for three days of giddy excitement. First was the arrival of greatness and recouping his total outlay to date on camera equipment. Second was enough left over to sustain the celebration into the wee hours with enough cash remaining to plunk down on the waitress’ tray and — third — encourage a night of company, though the company was secured hours before with such success at hand.
But life for Ravid changed in the long term too. Here was substance, vision and purpose instead of a void. Here too was the ephemeral nature of greatness; it fades fast unless fed. So he stood tall, ready to step up. He’d cleared the outfield bleachers and could do it again. He knew he could, though he feared the eerie feeling of invincibility that accompanied him. He could do no wrong — except that he could, like anyone of developing skills will err more often than your average spectator.
So he practiced humility, till a successful photographer said he used the same strobe as Ravid and loved the focus light setting that both spared the battery and served as a flashlight, freeing things up. Ravid blushed. Who knew? So many buttons!
The old pro saw his reaction and said, “Oh, man — you got that weird lighting by holding the light out to the side!” Ravid did not deny it, and greatness got boosted again.
The bad news was that he couldn’t tell his mother of his success. Well, he could but chose not to; it was so premature, too early in the game. Maybe he held back in self-defense against her inevitable critique: So? So what? You going to retire now? So now what do I say you do? You took a picture of a fish for a magazine, and now you’re retired, except for the swim schlep every day of your life? The question of motivation could sting or itch, a scorpion or a mosquito. Best to duck under a pillow; he would tell her when he had one more magazine credit, or maybe three more.