Hawaii: The Big Island

While Mike and I spent the first and last nights of our Hawaiian vacation in the tacky delight of Honolulu, the bulk of our trip was spent relaxing on the Kona coast on the Big Island. Hawaii really has two kinds of vacations: Waikiki and everything else. With one of the big tourist hotels in the heart of Honolulu you get a sliver of an ocean view, beaches crowded with tourists and uniquely Hawaiian activities (luaus and hula dancing) under the watchful and familiar gaze of Diamondhead. This is the Hawaii that looks exactly like Hawaii, retold in countless movies from the 1960s heyday of surf culture. More modern and sophisticated travelers like the unspoiled and less crowded splendor of other islands, where massive resorts have sprung up in former sugar cane fields and pineapple farms, delivering high end slices of paradise.

I had been to Hawaii before in December of 1999, freshly released from my career at AOL, and living on my small farm in Southwest Michigan. Eric Mueller organized a big trip with many of his friends, and we all made the journey across the ocean. Mike was stationed there at the time, so it was an opportunity to visit him and get a little touch of warmth just as winter was settling in hard on the shores of Lake Michigan. That trip was a blurry sea of drunken sailors (the sixth fleet was in town that weekend) and wild gay adventures. A fight between me and one of Eric’s friends on the second day left Mike and I alone for most of the rest of the trip there, which is just how it was this time around too. Having already experienced Waikiki we were both ready for the other Hawaii.

We landed in Kona and the airport, much like the one in Honolulu, was a quaint throwback to a kinder, gentler time before terrorism and security made airports so utilitarian, ugly and walled off. The Kona Airport looks like a cheesy movie set, not unlike the opening sequence in Postcards From The Edge. I am not even convinced it was real lava rock the building was constructed with. It might just as well have been stucco spray-painted black by an eager production assistant. The biggest difference on the Big Island was a decidedly slower pace, set by a much older crowd.

The condo my Dad rented was in an old but well-maintained complex right on the ocean. The accommodations were functional, in the barest sense of the word. For someone who likes to be pampered and taken care of at all times, my Dad weirdly has no lust of luxury, another trait I largely (though don’t completely) share. The condo was disappointing, although given my father’s history with such things, I don’t know why I was surprised. However, when I learned that it was only $1300/month, it was magically transformed in my cheap eyes into a castle worthy of our adventure. After all, that was less than our old apartment in Manhattan.

Our week in Kona was supposed to be about relaxing, and it was. We logged in some nice time at the swimming pool, doing our best to avoid the elderly and small children. Of those of legal drinking age on the island, we were among the youngest people there. But with the six hour time difference from New York, dinner was at 5pm most nights and by 11pm, we could barely keep our eyes open. Combining that with the pace and demographic surrounding us, it was easy to feel like charter members of the AARP.

But we used the early to bed, early to rise scenario to our advantage. True, our one trip to the local gay bar, Mask (of course), was cut short when I nearly fell asleep in a bowl of stale popcorn there just after 10pm. But with our 7am wake-ups, it left us with a whole day of exploring, even after throwing away a few hours in the morning over lattes and bagels at the Café. On Tuesday, we drove for two hours to Volcanoes National Park, where we hiked into the crater of an active volcano and I posed for a series of wacky photos, including “warming” myself over a steam vent. When I recounted my activities to my friend Paui, he said that he treated the steam vents like a magical spa, opening his pores and lungs until a park ranger advised him that he was basically breathing in microscopic shards of glass and maybe putting his face in the vent wasn’t the best idea ever.

The volcano has been quite active recently and it is a good thing we went on Tuesday because Wednesday the sulfur dioxide levels were so dangerously high they closed the entire park. But by then we were miles away at the green sand beach. Hottie Zach recommended a trip there, and it turns out it is one of only two such beaches in the entire world. And not wanting to go to Guam, we made the trip to this hidden gem on the Big Island instead. Having been around the world, I have long since given up the notion of discovering a hidden treasure. The first time I went to Notre Dame in Paris, somehow I thought it would be tucked away in an old neighborhood, not surrounded by gift shops and a Haagen Daas store. The green sand beach was another story.

It is not far from South Point, the furthest south you can go in the United States. This is the place where the original Hawaiians probably landed when they came up from Tahiti. From there, you have to walk several miles along what is barely a path with no sign to guide you, to a beach that is literally cascading out of a rock outcropping. The sand is a deep olive color but green it is. The water was a pastel blue that day and the contrast was incredible. We were there for hours and all told saw perhaps two dozen people. Most of them, like us, making a solitary march through a barren landscape to encounter a fabled nook nestled in the far side of the world. Without question, one of the most satisfying experiences of my life.

As much as we loved our quiet days in Kona, we knew living there permanently would probably make us crazy. A week was more than plenty of time. By Friday we were sad when we sipped our last latte at the café and made the winding drive down the hill to the airport. But at the same time, we were ready to return to civilization. Waiting for us on Waikiki beach were rooms at the famed Royal Hawaiian hotel, with soaring ceilings and comfortable beds. Gay life was just a short walk down the road at Hulas where I ran into Michael, the former Mr. Gay.com who was a guest on my radio show way back in 2004. Suddenly, my week of anonymity was at an end. Our vacation was drawing to a close and this last bar crawl was the perfect way to ease us back into real life.

Hawaii: The Unexpected Father

Late last year, my dad let me know that he was renting a condo in Hawaii for two months and that for much of that time it would be empty. “I am only using it for a few weeks,” he offered, “but it is cheaper to rent it for two months. So if you want to use it, it will be empty.” This was the impetus for my current Hawaiian vacation. A free place to stay plus a flight paid for entirely in miles equals my kind of fun! I didn’t know anything about this condo before getting here. Only that my dad has been renting it out for years and for a time two years ago when he put his house on the market before heading off on vacation here, had briefly ended up signing his Dear Abby letters “Homeless In Hawai’i” after it sold unexpectedly fast.

Throughout my childhood, my dad was always a planner of elaborate vacations. In his mind, he figured we would never remember the boring parts in between, or the parade of stepmothers, if circus-like adventures clogged our tiny minds leaving no room for anything else. The downside of this strategy was the invariable disasters that would ensue on these road trips, always reminiscent of the National Lampoon’s Vacation movie series. Although in the end, he was right. I remember them quite vividly.

My concerns based on our shared history led me to email my Dad to make sure that the condo had the basics: cable and internet access. His wry response that it did, as well as running water and electricity, did not make me feel guilty in the least. After all, when we went to Lake Powell last summer, he booked us into a single-wide trailer with a backdoor that didn’t close properly, utilizing only a heavy rock on the outside to keep the urgently needed air conditioning from escaping. Never mind that it did nothing to keep roving serial killers from pushing the rock aside and just wandering in with a hatchet and a few hours to kill. The TV, mounted hospital-style in the corner of the living room only received two TV networks, forcing me to engage against my will in a night of So You Think You Can Dance and Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader.

While the condo in Hawaii did have internet access and basic cable, it also had an additional feature I had not anticipated: my own father. Apparently, he was able to successfully move some other business around and extend his stay at the condo for the full two months. He offered to pick us up at the airport, and sure enough, when our plane landed at the Kona airport on Sunday night, there he was, waiting just outside the Polynesia by way of Hollywood lava rock building. I always like spending time with my Dad, especially when he is away from the rest of the family. And Hawaii is really his element. Finally, he is able to be the hippie artist he always was inside, and hobnob with other disaffected burnouts of the me generation.

Mike has gotten particular joy out of hanging out with the two of us. Additional pieces of the Derek puzzle fall into place, while others go questioned back into the pile. While I have previously assured Mike that I picked up all my worst habits from the father, he didn’t believe me until he saw them played out right in front of him by someone else. Like me, my Dad is incapable of leaving the house once. There is always something left behind that must be immediately retrieved, and sometimes a departure can have as many as three or four false starts. Dad also shamelessly ogles, as Mike discovered at the green sand beach while he was transfixed by the blond wahine who briefly abandoned her bathing suit in a 60s era giggle fit and I stared at the hot guy ignoring her nearby.

One huge area of departure for us is humor. My Dad does not get my sense of humor at all. “I can’t tell if you are kidding or being serious.” It is as if his brain is unable to process sarcasm. While walked back to the car yesterday, we were discussing Dad’s new Hawaiian friend who goes only by his last name of Ransom. “It was like I said to Ransom yesterday. Send a million dollars or I am going to kill you.” I could hear Mike rolling his eyes behind me while my Dad just turned to me with a blank stare. “Why would you say that to him?” When I said I was joking, Dad asked me to repeat it but Mike tried to stop me. “It wasn’t funny.” I did the bit again and explained that I said it because his name was Ransom, like a ransom note. “Oh. I get it now. Mike’s right. It wasn’t funny.”

For the most part, Dad has kept to himself on this trip, not wanting to get in the way of our planned vacation. Although, he did introduce us to the Holuakoa Café, which has been our center of gravity for four days now, with our morning lattes and everything bagels with cream cheese. Even now I am blogging on their patio, enjoying the cool ocean breeze on an overcast day. Dad was here earlier, sitting at a table sketching but he has since gone off to the gym and then who knows where else. I would offer to have him join us for 30 Rock later tonight, but if he doesn’t get my sense of humor, Tina Fey will seem like an alien from another planet. I guess in the end it is fine. You should have some things in common with your parents, but the older you get, it is important to have your own identity. And maintaining a sense of humor about that relationship with them always helps.

Fear of Flying

I flew back home to Utah today. It is easy to forget sometimes in the whirl of Manhattan life that I ever lived in such a place. Oh but I did, and happily too. It is probably the smiling simplicity of that suburban upbringing that lured me to my current 1950s home life away from the bright lights, big city. It is as friendly and mindless here as I remembered; a comforting slice of Americana in a post Invasion of the Body Snatchers world. Such a marked contrast from the gritty wonder of New York City.

I got to La Guardia at 5:15am for my 6:30am flight. As I had expected, I sailed through checking my bag and airport security to arrive at my gate twenty minutes after I parked the car. In the interim, I got to spend a seemingly endless period of time behind a complete douche bag. He was all slick hair and too much carry-on luggage, a Gordon Gekko direct from a Central Casting wet dream. When the first security lady told him to throw away his bottle of sparkling water he insisted haughtily that he would finish it before he got through the line. This was the first moment I hated him.

I ended up behind him at the metal detector which he set off three times. Of course he hadn’t even bothered to remove his wallet from his pocket because he was too busy chugging his water and patting himself on the back for being so awesome. As the second security lady sent him over to be wanded and searched, I wryly announced to her that it was probably his flashy $15,000 watch he had refused to remove that set off the alarm. But by then, I was just content to put on my shoes and hope that a hand search of his bag revealed a mountain of cocaine he could ski down right into a Federal prison somewhere.

Once on the plane, I settled into 10F with a fifty-something gay in the Gil Chesterton mold in 10D and no one sitting in the seat between us. I threw myself on the mercy of the open space, donned my sleeping mask and ear plugs and sacked out for the entire four hour flight to Dallas. Behind me, two teen sisters held a talking contest through the entire flight that ended in a tie when as the plane taxied into the gate they both called their father on separate phones to announce that they had arrived. As someone who talks for a living, I cherish now the moments where I don’t have to say anything. I wish everyone felt the same.

Our flight was late arriving in Dallas and I was convinced that even if I made my connection to Salt Lake City, I was certain my checked bag would not. Normally I don’t check a bag but ski pants and sweaters are bulky and it is impossible on a long winter weekend trip like this to travel with my usual lightness. Once again, I sacked out in my seat (this time on the aisle) and awoke two hours later as we touched down in a fog drenched valley in the heart of the Utah desert.

“This is the place.” And Utah is. For most of America it is a mysterious place filled with people who look like Donny and Marie, and that is largely true. To me, it is a swirl of childhood memories. Familiar local fast food places like Taco Time and Arctic Circle blend with the chaotic suburban sprawl of name-brand America. After a few years in New York, it is easy to forget there are still places where you can get a fast food burger for 89 cents and gas for less than three bucks. Although, I went to see Cloverfield this afternoon, and even with the old tyme ticket price of $5, I still felt like I overpaid.

I always come to visit this time of year to attend the Sundance Film Festival and spend some time with family. My Dad is an alpine legend who can practically ski uphill. He forgets quickly that I ski once a year and I don't have his physical dexterity or sense of balance. A single easy run under our belts, Dad insists on leaping immediately to a sheer cliff. Two years ago, I fell, sliding down the hill on my back head first, refusing to stop so I could try to catch the cell phone that had fallen out of my pocket and was sliding just ahead of me, just out of the reach of my outstretched hand.

My Dad and his wife used to live up in Park City, right in the heart of the Sundance action. But just before Sundance last year, my Dad sold his house and they moved to another McMansion down in the less glamorous Utah Valley. Not knowing what to expect food-wise when I got there, I decided to drop by the store first on my way in. I picked up a few essentials at the local supermarket. I went to a nearby Smith's, the store of my childhood and was horrified by how carefully it was structured to make people fat. I walked almost immediately into the beer and candy section and sorted through aisle after aisle of sugary snacks and gooey baked goods to find a handful of items that could pass as healthy.

Tomorrow I will venture off into the heart of the Festival and see more of my "people." The Hollywood types will be in full force, skipping over snow banks in their Eddie Bauer winter togs with the tags still hanging off them. I observed last year to Dennis Hensley's delight that Sundance is the place for C list celebrities to be treated like A list celebrities. I will hang out in the Queer Lounge and hob nob with the near famous in this 19th century mining town turned Hollywood back lot. The whole time I will cast an askance glance at their latte demands and silly attitudes, but I will be torn. In my heart I will always exist with one foot in each of these two distinct worlds. So a weekend visit to Utah this time of year is the perfect way for me to satisfy both sides of my personality at the same time, as for ten shorts days each year they occupy the same spectacular space.