Aloha's End Rewrites: The Surfing Disaster With Momi
Aloha’s End
© 2007 By Michael F. Zangari with all rights reserved.
Chapter twenty-three: Da Kine
Momi holds the two balls of yellow and green lilikoi, the passion flower fruit, in front of her breasts and offers them to TrueWest. With her long black hair hanging down her back she looks like a different woman. The chop sticks holding the coconut oiled bun are out and her hair is unpinned. It falls freely from her head and down around her shoulders like a waterfall.
It blows softly into the trade winds.
She fingers her hair out of her face.
Her lips are full and dry, a dusty rose color.
With her burgundy blazer gone, she looks less small. Less compact. She is well muscled around her shoulders and arms. Her breast in the rind of her bathing suit are tight.
The tapa print pueo tied across her hips is a red dirt color.
It accentuates the color of the fruit. The deep red in the yellow hide.
Behind her the sky is blue and cloudless. The beach sand is white and glistening.
TrueWest moons at her.
She looks a lot like the pictures of his mother and aunts in the country in the family albums.
The black and white photos were taken in much younger, happier days on the Big Island. They are like post-cards from the early 1900’s, of lei sellers and hula dancers at the port. They are beautifully Hawaiian. The dark eyes bright.
TrueWest is dizzy with the smells of the flowers, the fruits and the oil in Momi's hair. She looks very Pacific Island.
Momi's seen the look on TrueWest's face before.
He's having Tahitian daydreams.
“Gauguin” Momi says, “Right?’
She freezes in a painting pose.
TrueWest laughs big. “Right’ he says.
She looks like a Gauguin virgin offering breadfruit.
“The lilikoi fruits make you relax.” She says. ”I hope.”
She looks down again at the valley between her breasts.
She smiles to herself.
”And it increases testosterone levels too.” She says.
TrueWest takes the fruit from her hands and holds on to them. He hand balances them.
They are the size of small grapefruit.
He looks at her like she is the wicked stepmother in Snow White offering him an apple with little brown needle marks on the skin, like if he presses his thumbs into the fruit, tears it open and sucks it out with it's juices, he will pass into a long drugged slumber.
He’s a little nervous at first.
“It boosts da kine..." says Momi. " neurotransmitters.”
She looks into his eyes and says. ”Makes you sharper.”
She looks down shyly. T
hen back up like a scamp, a wild one.
Her smile broadens then drops to serious. “Not that you need that Mr. West.”
I might. He thinks. “By all means let’s have a little breakfast” he says.
He can’t help smacking his lips a little.
“I like surf on an empty stomach’ says Momi.
"My name is Palani” he says.
She looks at him.
“You’re still Mr. West to me” she says.
She fingers the hair off her face. Then blows it off again when it comes back. She is laughing. “The hair is a pain in the okole” she says. I should cut it.”
TrueWest says ‘Don’t you dare."
Momi had to be growing the stuff for her at least ten years. It is thick and lush.
He feels a little nervous in his new surfer trunks.
They are a little large and hang low on one hip.
He digs his toes into the sand.
He has a t-shirt over the top, the one that says “Surf Texas” on it.
It’s red on grey.
“Where are we going?” he asks. “Sandy’s?”
Momi laughs again and shakes her head.
She feels like she’s at the courtesy desk again.
“No," she says. " That would be a little chancy: Most of the neck and spinal trauma cases at the Queen’s Hospital come from Sandy’s. You have to know the currents, the way the waves break and the surf patterns to survive the ride there. Or anywhere, really.”
TrueWest looks disappointed.
“I listened to the surf report this morning on Hawaii Public Radio” he said. “It’s pumping out there.”
“You are peddling” says Momi. “We’ll stay in Wai’ki’ki and see how you ride.”
“Don’t tell a cowboy how to ride” says TrueWest. “You don’t have to tell me how or where to get on or get off.”
Momi smirks.
She ties her hair back in a pony-tail, the purple elastic hair dooby in her teeth like a rose as she pulls the hair back from her neck and holds it up. She retrieves the elastic band from her teeth and secures the hair.
She lets the pueo drop to the beach.
“Ok” she says. “I’ll see you out there.”
She grabs her board from the beach and trots down to the wave line.
Out of the straight skirt she really has a butt.
TrueWest watches the waves rise as Momi dives under them and paddles out.
He gets out of his t shirt and runs after her, pulling up the surf trunks.
The water is warm on his stomach as lays himself out and begins to paddle.
His arms hurt already.
Entry for April 19, 2007 Chapter Twenty-Four The Pink Whites of His Eyes (Rewritten on 8/21/07)
Chapter Twenty-Four
By the time TrueWest paddles out to Momi, his arms feel like sun baked bricks and his chest aches. His hair is drenched and he leave a little rainbow oil slicks in the water where the sun makes it twinkle in the sea like colored tinsel.
His amber colored eyes are pale and diffuse.
They jitterbug in the pink whites of his eyes as he looks at the endless ocean tussle to the horizon. The water is choppy, throwing rags of foam to the tops of the endless runners.
Out to the right he sees Momi lying on her back on her board looking up at the sky.
She looks a lot younger with her hair down that way. She has pulled the thinger-ma-jiggy out of her hair and it floats on the water like a goodbye-lei. Her lashes are long dark and curly. Her legs are strong, shiny and wet, her breast full and heavy laying on her chest.
Her breathing is long and even.
TrueWest paddles and kicks his way across to her, splashing her as he approaches.
She’s up like a shot.
“Hey, not so close.” She says.
TrueWest is panting like a dog.
He awkwardly paddles around next to her.
She lowers her lashes and looks at him, half eyed.
“You paddle like a poodle” she says.
TrueWest is truly miserable.
“How come you are so far out?” he wants to know.
“I had a very groovy up-bringing” says Momi.
She smiles at him knowing she’s destroying all his hula girl fantasies with one brazenly hoale-kine sentence.
Out here she needs his attention.
“It’s a much longer ride cowboy”” she says. "You've got to make it worth while."
TrueWest lays his cheek on the board for a few seconds before coming up.
The water rocks the board under him. The waves are big enough coming in to cup the board up in handfuls of water and lay him down in the valley of the scoops.
The waves are getting bigger.
“High tide” says Momi.
The waves are going from five to seven foot and breaking right.
Momi points to the reef line and the currents.
TrueWest drops his flirt eyes and looks at the rocks in terror.
He sees the jagged ones on the left and the jagged ones on the right.
They look like shark teeth.
“We’re surfing into the mouth here, that tiny patch of beach down there.” Momi points to the narrow stretch of beach between the reefs.
She carefully describes what’s under water along the shore line.
TrueWest looks at her dully.
“My dad made me snorkel here before he taught me to ride” she says.
“Any undertow?” he asks.
“Plenty undertows” she says. “It’s strong current.”
TrueWest is nervous. “I hope I don’t wipe out down there.”
“No worrys” she says. “You won’t reach the beach”
She lifts her ass off the board with strong arms and flips down, “See ya” she says.
She pushes speed with fast kicking like a flying fish before launching into the wave she’s going on. It catches her immediately and throws her down the long sloping blue green yukio of ocean as it starts to foam up and break from the sea. TrueWest sees her rise from the board and ballerina on it on tip toes to see what’s around before dropping into a 70-30 position on the board with her arms just above her legs. She slashes right and left and takes it all the way in, bouncing it towards the beach, pushing foam all the way in.
TrueWest gawks at the ride, and her behind.
He’s terrified of the water and of looking bad.
He’s thinking about those first few times on the air during a national crisis. Especially the time he was on the air during the 9-11 crises. He remembers the unfamiliar butterfly of stomach muscles as he went over the details in the pillowed space of his mind.
What to say.
How to say it.
The casualty lists.
The impact.
The responsibility.
The producer’s assistant kept fiddling with his hair, spraying it down.
She finally messed it up a little. “You should look a little haggard” she said.
He was a little haggard, like Merle.
He got off the bus and went to his bird perch in the parking lot, the smoke billowing in the background, two fire-people over a third on the pavement to the right of him. Him averting his eyes and motioning the camera away from the spot.
The smoke aching his eyes, clogging his tear ducts. He coughed a little and wiped his eyes.
He stood silent on the green light the producer twirling his fingers like he was making cotton candy and then bowling his fore-finger to him. You're on the air.
He just looked into the camera and stepped out of the way.
The panorama of destruction rolling out like a machete mowed carpet in back of him.
The words stuck in his dry throat.
It's like that. He sees the wave coming, the big green one swelling like a small breach of a whale and slips into it, paddling to catch up.
He stands up like he’s doing the news and is torn into the maelstrom, flipping his board up and over into the air and his ass into the wave.
He is dragged under water. He fights and kicks until he gives up and floats embryonic up to the surface only to be slammed by another wave.
It conks him on the head like a Samoan war club and he’s under again with water up his nose and in his lungs.
He goes deeply under and dances in the open like a jelly fish.
TrueWest begins to drown.
Chapter 25 The Big Orange Balogna
TrueWest falls into current like a snowflake into a rushing mountain stream.
He comes up for air gasping and is smacked in the lower back by another on-coming wave Then it’s tumble dry in a big industrial dryer in a Laundromat in downtown Atlantis, head over heels, pinwheels straight down towards the dead reef at the bottom of the sea. A trail of bubbles coming out of his nose.
The snap of the wave has knocked him like a cue-ball into semi-consciousness.
He kicks and flounders in the water pumping frantically in place. The harder he kicks the less he moves. It’s like climbing the walls of a sand pit. The walls give in and collapse as he grabs at them. Instead of climbing he begins to sink like a lead sinker to the bottom.
He exhausts himself quickly.
Big man. Big voice. Big chest. Big lungs.
Bad swimmer.
The ballsy radio and TV voice is as silent. He watches himself delivering the news in his head, screaming lungless head and date lines.
Dateline: The blue pacific ocean. Drowning. Yes. The scream behind tight lips is underplayed by a calm, quiet voice that simply notes the glassy blue green water as it darkens and the sinking of his body.
Up above, not so far away, the surface gels above him.
The fight for the surface doesn’t last very long.
He gives up the fight as he looses consciousness.
A warm embryonic feeling pees around him in the chill of the water.
He feels good, relaxed and warm.
Drowning is good. Really good.
It’s like sleeping.
It’s like being carried around in the womb or in the top of his mother’s dress on the tits.
Its mother union.
He's the little Ku.
The anchor, before he was an anchor man, the anchor that held the family together in the foreign exile of the oil fields the pampas with derricks instead of palm trees.
The shade from oil derricks was stark and angular, not like the palm leaves bouncing in trade winds on the big island. His ear is next to his mama’s sighs on the heartbeat, like dessert. Mariah now, ghostly and high whined in his ears and his head as she is walking lunch to his dad on the days he forgot it. "You did that on purpose" she says, tossing the lunch bag to him.
Walking, behind his father’s casket awash in emotions of grief and tears.
TrueWest smiles.
He’s having a flashback as he loses consciousness. How about that.
Its typical and cliché of him.
On camera he pushes a little to get away from doing that, he’s always trying to do something new. Not repetitive. It's like trying to keep a West Texas Waltz fresh.
That old ballet in boots.
You have to go with intuition and emotion, and your best gal’s hips.
Drowning is a lot like doing a waltz, twirling now round and round and round with arms around and around and around his sweeter than sweet one, the belle of his ball, ya’ll. His girly friend. She is as tall as is. The girly girl is Gracie again, the one that used to get him in trouble all the time because of how light skinned she was, all that unsunned bone and white skin, blonde hair and eyes that sparkled like juiced cinnamon bark. A free willed looker. Not everyone gave them a hard time. But going into town could be a beast. And there he was with her on dusty plank floors, resting his head on her chest, nestling his head in the top of her dress.
Drift sound in echo. What she doing with that Mexican?
What’s it look like? (snickers all around.)
"Why don’t they find someone else to dance with?" she mumbles. "It’s last calling golden eyes. Last call. Had enough? Huh? You want another beer?"
"Mmmmmm?"
"Beer, another one? Had enough?"
Mmmmmm. (Just a dot of perfume.) At the top of the valley, then just a little bit of that female sweat smelling up and twisting into prairie road down the pike. That Frenchy smelling stuff from Ft. Worth her dad got her. A little import shop on the Dallas side.
Lean back and twirl, girl.
Then some wild hack is beating him on the back of the head with a two by four and calling him a Mexican. That is still annoying after all these years. “I’m Hawaiian” He says.
They smack him again.
“Makes no never mind to me” the hack says, winding back to smack him again with a big orange bologna.
Stop that.
They break surface.
He smacks him again.
Stop that!
“This one’s for Momi. He says. "for not paying attention to her.”
He slaps him again with the big orange Bologna.
“Quit fighting”
"I'm not fighting" TrueWest says covering his head.
"Then quit covering your head." He slaps him again.
The life guard is actually pretty pissed off.
He hits him again with his floater blimp.
“Ok. Ok.”
“Go limp. Or do I have to beat you silly to save you?”
TrueWest goes limp like a cat on a window sill.
The life guard grabs him and tows him like a wet cat from the surf.
As he gets to the shallows he stands up to walk but his legs buckle and he blacks out again, embarrassed.
Momi is standing up the beach with her hands on her hips and her long black hair blowing in the wind.
It’s all a dream, a dream, a dream…..
His cheek slaps the sand hard.
Labels: REwrites from Aloha's End
posted by Aloha's End at 4:30 AM
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