“You up for a little wahine action tonight?” Harry asked. “Canoe Club bar?”
I don’t know how it came out. I certainly hadn’t been planning to say it. I said, “Harry, I’m gay,” as we turned makai toward Kalakaua. “No more wahine action for me. I’m not lying anymore.”
“I wondered when you were going to figure it out,” Harry said. “Good for you.”
“You mean you knew?”
I looked over at him, and he nodded. “I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I had an idea. I mean, you could never stick with a woman for more than a week or so.”
“There was Peggy in high school. That was three years. Although I have to say I’m not quite sure what I’m doing dating her again.”
“High school was different. None of us knew what was going on back then.” He paused. “So what made up your mind?”
“It wasn’t really one thing. I don’t know why, all summer long, I’ve been noticing things I never noticed before. Porno magazines in a bookstore window. Two guys holding hands at midnight on the beach. Then I came here.”
I told him about that night, from the failed drug bust down to finding Tommy Pang’s body in the alley. “It doesn’t matter to me, you know that,” Harry said. “You’re my friend and I hope you’ll always be my friend, no matter who you decide to sleep with.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt elated, and also a little scared and weird, like my secret was out. I’d told Akoni, of course, but the circumstances and his reaction had been so different. Harry put his hand on my shoulder. “Mahalo,” I said. “I’ll call you. Maybe we’ll surf tomorrow.”
“Just not at six a.m., okay?” he asked. “I need my beauty sleep.” Then he smiled. “Plus, now you’re not going to know if I’m alone or not.”
I nodded and smiled, and he crossed the street, heading back toward his apartment.
On the way back to the station I ran into Alvy Greenberg on patrol, under the trees behind the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. It was cool back there, nicely landscaped, quiet. We stood in the shaded lobby of the shopping center, surrounded by the hushed voices of serious shoppers and the occasional small child racing around the courtyard. We talked for a couple of minutes, mostly me expressing my frustration at how few leads we had on Tommy Pang’s murder. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he said. “If you want my honest opinion, I think you’re the best detective we’ve got on the force.”
“Mahalo, brah. I appreciate the vote of confidence, even if I don’t feel like I deserve it most of the time.”
I walked past the open air market, full of t-shirts, plastic leis and coconuts you could send home like postcards. A parrot called out, “Hey, pretty baby,” over and over again. There was a lazy flow of tourists from one stall to the next, but nobody seemed to be buying much.
Back at the station, I checked out all the people in Tommy Pang’s address book. Akoni was out tracking down his own leads, and I only spoke to him long enough to determine that we’d start talking to the people in the book together the next day.
As I left the station, I passed an elderly Japanese woman, dirty and dressed in rags, sitting on the curb shouting obscenities. Alvy Greenberg was on his way to roust her, and I nodded as we passed each other.
I took my time walking home. At Kuhio Avenue and Lili’uokalani Street, a good-looking guy passed me, heading toward the beach. He had a surfer’s physique, like mine-strong chest, well-defined pecs, a dusting of blond hair down the center of his chest. His legs were long and his calves and thighs well-muscled. He was wearing a skimpy bikini that didn’t cover much, and as we made eye contact I experienced a sudden pang of horniness. Our eyes met for a moment, but both of us kept on walking. I couldn’t help turning to stare at him; though I forced myself to look away eventually, I watched his butt go halfway down the block before he blended in with the rest of the crowd. And then I knew what Akoni was worried about, and it scared the hell out of me.
My life had become my latest case. And like a bulldog, I was going to keep gnawing at my personal problems until I had worked them out. I knew then that I couldn’t keep my sexuality a secret forever, and that revealing it would rip open my life and hurt many people around me.
I knew my parents loved me, but I also knew my father’s bad temper and remembered the frequent disparaging comments he’d made about mahus when I was growing up. And though my brothers loved me, too, they had teased me mercilessly when we were kids. Suppose they chose to shut me out now?
I’d always appreciated my sense of being rooted in Honolulu. Landmarks in town had personal meaning to me, and my parents’ network of friends and distant relatives was all around. Now that I was an adult, I often ran into distant cousins and Punahou classmates at the grocery, on the beach, or on street corners downtown. What if I was shut out of that community, shunned? What if I didn’t belong in my own home anymore?
There was a storm coming. Akoni had just felt the winds a little sooner, and was scrambling to get under cover.
TERRI’S GIFT
When I got inside the red light was blinking on my answering machine. I thought it would be my mother, with some follow-up to the party of the day before, and I just didn’t feel like talking to anyone. There was still a couple of hours of daylight left, and I thought I might go for a swim. I hit the play button on the machine as I started to strip down.
It wasn’t my mother. A different female voice said, “Hi, Kimo, it’s Terri Gonsalves.” I dropped my shirt on the bed and stopped, listening. There was a pause before she went on. “I really need to talk to you, Kimo. Can you call me, please? Maybe we can meet.” She left her number. “It’s important, Kimo. Please call me tonight, if you can. Evan is working late.” She paused again. “I’m counting on you.” Then the line went dead.
I looked at my watch. It was almost six, and Terri answered on the first ring, as if she’d been sitting by the phone waiting for me to call. “I’m sorry to bother you, Kimo. I know you’re probably busy.”
“Never too busy for you, Terri, you know that. What’s wrong?”
“I’m worried about Evan. There’s something wrong with him-the way he’s been acting, it’s not like him. Do you think you could come over tonight? I can explain it.”
“Sure. When?”
“Danny’s playing at a friend’s house, and he’ll be home any minute for dinner. Do you think maybe eight o’clock? By then he’ll be asleep and we can talk. Evan won’t be home until midnight at least.”
I agreed to come out to Terri’s house on the Wailupe peninsula at eight o’clock. I finished stripping down and put on a bathing suit, and headed for the beach to get in a quick swim before dinner. I told myself I was just looking to cool down after the long, hot day, to refresh myself by contact with the ocean. But maybe I was hoping to run into the guy in the skimpy bikini, too.
Not that I would say anything to him, even if I saw him. As I walked to the beach, I wondered when I would stop running, when I’d make a move toward another guy the way the giraffe had moved on me at the Rod and Reel Club. I doubted I’d ever be blowing in a stranger’s ear, but I’d always been comfortable walking up to unescorted wahines, saying hello and trying to start a conversation. If it worked, it worked. If the girl snubbed me, I’d move on. It was just a matter of transferring that attitude to guys.
It had to be different, though. When you walked up to a girl, there was a big chance she wouldn’t like you, that she’d be engaged or dating someone, or just not interested. But chances were she’d be heterosexual, and wouldn’t be offended.
Unfortunately, the chances were that most guys on Kuhio Beach were heterosexual, too, and they’d be pissed off by any kind of overture, and ready to punch me out. Which left me at kind of a loss. The only men I can generally peg as gay are the faggy ones, and they don’t do it for me. The way I figure it is, if I was attracted to someone feminine, I’d stay with girls, and my life would be a lot easier. Unfortunately, the kind of guys who appealed to me were masculine, athletic, all male. I supposed there might have been a few of them at the Rod and Reel Club, and that eventually I’d have to make my way back there.