“You’re going to have to.” She pushed a couple of forms at me across the table. “Sign these and we can get out of here.”
I looked at the forms. They seemed to spell out in further detail the conditions she’d set. “Got a pen?” I asked.
She gave me a pitying look and pushed a blue ball point over to me. The end had been chewed savagely, and I had a quick memory of her in tenth grade physics class, chewing her pen and puzzling over problems of velocity and motion. I signed the papers and pushed them and the pen back to her.
“Your badge and your weapon,” Lieutenant Yumuri said.
I took my Off-Duty. 38 Special out of my holster and slid it across the table to him. He flipped open the barrel and took the ammunition out, then slapped the barrel closed. I opened my wallet and pulled my detective’s shield out. I realized I was doing something that was going to reverberate through every part of my life, but I had no control anymore. I just had to do what I was told. I unpinned the shield and slid it across the table.
“You can go,” Peggy said. I wanted to talk to her about what was going on, to explain or apologize, but she was all business. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye.
I decided not to wait for the elevator. The service stairs were next to the conference room, and I could avoid walking back through that dismal room, hearing the conversations rise and fall around me. I walked slowly down the stairs, wondering what to do next. I wasn’t a cop anymore, and probably would never be one again. I couldn’t go back to surfing full time and I didn’t think I knew how to do anything else. I worried about how long my savings would last, and how I would identify myself to the outside world, to myself. I was a gay man, a faggot, a cocksucker. I had accepted that, but in the context of who else I was. Now it seemed that was all I was, at least to the Honolulu Police Department.
I came out of the stairwell into the lobby, and maybe it was my imagination again, but I couldn’t seem to make eye contact with anyone. It was like they all knew me and wouldn’t look at me. Then I said to myself that I was a fool, my imagination was running wild. I took a deep breath and walked outside.
I was expecting clouds, rain, wild thunder. Instead there were flashbulbs and the clamor of news people. “Detective Kanapa‘aka,” a Chinese reporter said. “Is it true you’re being suspended from the police force because of your homosexuality?”
I was stunned. How could they have found out so quickly? I just stared at the guy, my mouth agape. “Detective, have you hired an attorney yet?” a Hawaiian guy, who I recognized from my brother’s station, asked. “Will you be suing the police force for reinstatement?”
“Do you think this is a discrimination case?” asked another.
I just stood there. They called out more questions, but I couldn’t answer them and I couldn’t seem to move. Finally a desk sergeant came out behind me and propelled me away from them, and another sergeant ordered them to disperse. I got my sense back and got back to my truck. The Hawaiian guy from Lui’s station ran along beside me as I was driving away, still trying to get a comment, and I wanted to do something, give him the finger or yell something, but I knew it would just end up on the news and so I drove off.
I made it back to my apartment though I’m not sure how. I think my truck was on auto pilot. Seeing the guy from Lui’s station reminded me that my brothers would know what happened to me, my parents would know, my friends and my Punahou classmates and the guys I saw when I was surfing. I wanted to go back to that night when I went to the Rod and Reel, stop the movie, rewind, go somewhere else, anywhere else. I wanted to make it stop.
Almost as soon as I walked in the door, the phone rang. It was one of the TV stations again. I unplugged it from the wall and sat down on the bed. I knew I should call my parents and warn them about the newscast, but I just couldn’t. I tried to take a nap, but I just tossed and turned on the bed for a while, and then finally I got up.
This was stupid, I thought. I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t just hang around waiting to see what happened. I put on my bathing suit and got my short board, figuring I would challenge myself with the small waves off Kuhio Beach Park. If I could get out on the water, force myself to pay attention to the surf, then I could forget all this other stuff and maybe, in the forgetting, find a way to deal with it.
I felt better already. I was still a surfer, no matter what else I was, and surfing was how I was going to get out of this mess. But as soon as I opened my door the reporters were there, taking pictures and calling out questions. I shut the door fast.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to call anyone, not even Harry, who was the only person so far who had taken my news well. My head was throbbing and my throat was dry and I wanted to cry but couldn’t make the tears come. I took a couple of Tylenol P.M. and lay back down on the bed, and eventually I dozed off.
I slept fitfully, with half-waking dreams of hounding newsmen and disapproving policemen. I was trying to get to the beach, and they lined Lili‘uokalani Street like a gauntlet, yelling at me, refusing to make eye contact, saying things like “You’ll never be a cop again, Kimo. Who are you, now that you’re not a cop?”
When I woke up it was dark and I felt woozy. There was someone banging on my door. “Goddamn it, go away!” I yelled, and tried to bury my head under the pillows. I knew there had to be a law against the press harassing you. They wouldn’t stop, though, and finally I had to get up and go to the door. I didn’t even bother to look through the peephole, despite all the times I’d asked crime victims, “How come you didn’t look before you opened the door?”
“No comment!” I yelled, opening the door. Staring back at me was my father.
“Finally!” he said. Automatically I stepped back to let him in. My mother was just behind him. She took the door from me and closed it.
I just looked at them. They were the last people I’d expected to see at my doorstep and I didn’t know what to say. Then, finally, the tears I’d been trying to cry all day came, and my legs got weak and I had to sit down.
“We saw on the news,” my mother said, rubbing her hand across my shoulders.
I was embarrassed and ashamed. I tried to wipe away my tears and succeeded only in dragging wet streaks across my face. My mother gave me a tissue and I blew my nose.
“They are terrible,” my father finally said. “Those reporters. I told that one, from Lui’s station, my son is your boss. Go away. He wouldn’t. I told him I would call Lui and have him fired if he didn’t leave us alone, and he laughed.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want this to happen.”
My father paced back and forth in the small room, and my mother and I squeezed back into the corners to get out of his way. “This cannot be happening,” he said. “I did not raise my son to be a mahu. You must go back to the police and tell them they’re wrong. We’ll call your brother, he can bring a camera crew over to take your statement.”
“They aren’t wrong,” I said. “It’s true.” I swallowed. “I’m gay. I’m sorry it happened this way, but I can’t change who I am.”
“How can this be?” my father asked. “We didn’t raise you this way. You were a normal boy. A little quiet, sometimes. Maybe we let your brothers tease you a little too much. But you’ve had girlfriends. Many girlfriends. Why have you changed?”
“I haven’t changed. I’ve always been this way. I just haven’t had the courage to face it until now.”
“I wish you were still a coward,” my father said.
“Al, that’s enough,” my mother said. “Kimo, you must pack now.”
“Pack?”
“We want you to come home with us for a while,” she said. “These reporters outside. You’re upset. You should come to us.”
“I can’t. I would just bring more of my troubles down on your heads.”
My father walked over and opened my closet door. “Here are some shirts,” he said. “Lokelani, find the suitcase.”