Ralph found a dozen ways to ask the same question, but every time I gave him a variation of the same answer. Finally he shifted tactics. “What about that murder case? Will you be testifying?”
“That’s up to the DA,” I said. “I’ll make myself available whenever the department needs me.”
“And yet you don’t want to be a cop anymore?”
“I don’t know what I want, Ralph,” I said, and something about the honesty of that remark made him finally believe me.
“So what’s next?” he asked. “There are forces on the mainland where you could work, aren’t there?”
“There are. But I haven’t looked that far ahead. Right now I just want to step out of the limelight and think about what’s right for me.”
“Going to hit the waves?”
“You bet. I’ve got a long board and a short board, and they’re both calling my name.”
“I’ll let you answer that call, then,” he said. The cameraman moved around to get a beauty shot of the waves. Ralph said good-bye, wished me luck, and told me to keep in touch. “You have a lot of fans here in town, Kimo, and I’m sure they’ll all be looking forward to your next move.”
I felt funny walking back to my apartment after the interview was over. A little depressed, maybe. A part of me liked the spotlight, even though most of me didn’t, and so I was torn between being happy that I could slip into anonymity and knowing that my visibility might be helping others.
And of course, the fact that I had lied through my teeth during most of the interview didn’t help.
Northern Exposure
My cell phone rang late that afternoon, as I was packing my truck with everything I would need on the North Shore. “You trying get me killed?” Lui asked, without preamble. “Because you know that’s what Mom is going to do if I run this story.”
Our mother still had not let Lui forget that he had broken the news of my sexuality, and my suspension from the force, without calling either me or our parents before the story ran.
“I’ll take care of Mom and Dad. I’m going there for dinner. Before the story runs, I’ll tell them.”
“But why, Kimo?” he asked. “If you’re going to leave the force, fine. But why make more of a story of it? I’ll square it with Ralph, we’ll forget you had the interview, and you can go up to the North Shore and surf. Nobody will even notice you’re gone.”
“That’s the point. I want people to know I’m leaving the force, and I love the way Ralph is making the story more than just about me. I know a lot of people have been following what’s happened to me, and I want them to know how it all has come out. You have to run that story, Lui. You owe me.”
“You’re crazy, brah, but it’s your own special kind of crazy. It’s a great story and a good interview, so I’ll run it, but you make sure and tell Mom that I didn’t want to.”
“I will.” »
I decided to spend the night at my parents’ house before leaving for the North Shore, and pulled up at the house where I grew up late that afternoon. St. Louis Heights is a nearly vertical suburb of Honolulu that backs up against Wa ’ ahila Ridge State Park. The houses are older bungalows or split-levels stacked at a forty-five degree angle down the streets.
“Your father said he had lunch with you yesterday,” my mother said, as I kissed her check. “I wondered when you were going to come and see me.”
My mother has always stood in sharp contrast to my father. Where he is casual, letting his hair get sloppy before he cuts it, or allowing half a shirt tail to escape his pants, my mother is the picture of perfection. Her black hair is cut and styled and sprayed into submission, her skin smooth and wrinkle-free even in her sixties. As a teenager, she was the Pineapple Festival Queen, glittering in a rhinestone tiara and satin sash, and she has retained that aura of poise and grace. She only comes up to my father’s shoulder, but she exerts a subtle force that easily allows you to forget her height.
My parents and I sat in their elegant living room, in elaborate armchairs imported from France. It was an odd room to find in a Hawaiian house, one dropped in from the pages of Architectural Digest , circa 1975. As kids, we never set foot in there, for fear we’d break something. My mother folded her hands in her lap and gave me the look that had terrified all of us, my father included, for years.
“You know I had a decision to make about work,” I began. I realized my mouth was very dry, but it was too late to ask for a glass of water. “And it was a really difficult one to make, but I thought a lot about the way you brought me up, the things you taught me mattered, and I’ve decided that I’m not going back to being a cop. At least not right now.”
“I don’t like to see you quit a job. We didn’t bring you up that way.”
“I know.” I squirmed in my chair, trying to find a comfortable position, finally giving up. And there was no way she was letting me stretch my legs out and rest them on the glass and gilt coffee table. “But you didn’t bring me up to lie, either.”
“What exactly do they want you to lie about?” she asked. “Being gay?”
“That cat is pretty much out of the bag. It’s something else. I don’t want to go into it.”
“But…”
“Let the boy be, Lokelani,” my father said. “If this is what you need to do, then we support you. Being a cop is a bad job for a gay man, anyway. You go surf for a while, then you come back, maybe you’ll work with me. You could go back to school, learn about decorating.”
That thought horrified me. I missed that gay decorating gene; my apartment looks like the “before” picture from some reality TV show. It was killing me to have my parents think I was a quitter, that I couldn’t do my job any more just because I’d come out of the closet.
My mother clearly wasn’t happy. Short, petite, and pretty in a china doll way, she has ruled her big, tall husband and three sons with a raised eyebrow, a tone of voice, a deep sigh. It’s rare that she comes out and takes a stand so definitely, but there was nothing I could do at that point. Once I’d made my decision, chosen my wave, so to speak, all I could do was ride it until it crashed to shore, doing my best to manage the fear and exhilaration, and avoid getting crushed on the coral that always lurked just below the water’s surface.
“There’s more,” I said.
My mother looked wary. I could only imagine what was going through her head, after all that had happened. “What?”
“There’s going to be a story, on KVOL, on the evening news.”
“No, Kimo. No more stories!” She reached for the phone. “I’m calling your brother right now.”
“You can’t, Mom.” The words rushed out, in my haste to keep her from spoiling those carefully-laid plans. “It’s not about me, so much. It’s about the decisions gay people have to make when they come out, about who to tell, and how to tell, and what you have to do once the secret’s out.”
I leaned forward. “The reporter interviewed other people, too. I mean, I’m the hook, the reason for the story. But they’re making it into another series, like the one on gay cops around the country. This is about gay and lesbian people in Honolulu, and how they live their lives every day.”
My mother looked at my father. Some kind of unspoken message passed between them, and finally my father said, “The news is on soon. We don’t want to miss it.”
We moved out to my father’s den to watch the news-there was no way my mother was letting a television set into her recreation of Versailles. My parents were both tight-lipped during the interview.
After the interview with me, Ralph gave the audience a preview of what was to come in this new series: gay men who had lost their jobs after coming out, lesbian moms who had lost custody battles, gay ministers who had been forced to leave their churches. There were other, more positive stories coming too, about people who had found faith, given up addictions, chosen new careers and established new families. It was going to be a good series, I thought, one that might change minds and move hearts. And it was going to do all that because I had told a lie.