Unexploded Ordnance
Me and Buffy's big night out
Buffy and I went downtown last night. I had a $17 whiskey club soda at a place hanging right out over the ocean, and then a $6 whiskey club soda at a place about 25 feet inland (ie across the street). And THAT, my friends, is how beach front real estate works.
I was facing out, towards the band and the string lights and the ocean, but crammed in between other people at the bar facing in, because that’s how bars work. Buffy was in my lap, gently bopping to the music as I bounced my heels to the tempo — really basic island-style covers, executed passably — and eventually it was weirder not to have an exchange with the guy next to me than to have an exchange, because of the close proximity and opposite chair orientation.
He said he’s a show runner for NBA broadcasts. I asked if he’d seen all these examples of NBA footage, specifically for whatever reason, where several players exhibit the same movement patterns at various places on the court, at the same time. Like starlings, or a herd twitch. He said no, I pulled up a compilation, he received his nachos around that time, but the video was over anyway.
“Weird, huh,” I said, putting my phone back in my purse and kissing Buffy on her snout, which I do like every thirty seconds. I don’t even know I’m doing it.
He shrugged and reached for words, and I realized he seemed to think I was expecting him to provide something that, additionally, he did not truly want to provide…? “I mean,” he said.
I kissed Buffy’s snout expectantly.
“You’re saying it’s like a, a, a glitch in the matrix or whatever, right.”
I shrugged, but he was already continuing.
“I mean — I don’t believe in THE MATRIX, quote unquote. Except, I guess, in the sense that we’re all totally insignificant, tiny, meaningless beings, and we think everything’s about us, but in reality it’s this enormous planet in an enormous galaxy, in an enormous universe, and, and — yeah. Nothing’s actually about us. So, that kind of matrix, maybe, sure.”
“…Have you actually seen the Matrix movies…?,” I asked, as respectfully as possible. He glanced at me in annoyance. “Well, not the second one, obviously. That one is just all fighting.”
He dodged the question and said something about maybe video editing was responsible for the odd synchrony of the players’ movements, and I said that’s why I wanted to ask him, I never met an NBA show runner before, but there’s honestly lots of very odd footage originating from NBA broadcasts. He said no, he didn’t know that, had never seen it, wasn’t interested in it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m terrible at small talk.” He seemed to agree, like he was agitated. I was done with my whiskey anyway so Buffy and I tipped the band and fucked off to go home.
HOWEVER, the band at the second place caught my attention, blaring out over the upstairs balcony. What were they playing? Something a little dark, for a beach bar. Oh — it was Your Own Personal Jesus, by Depeche Mode.
Buffy proceeded me up the broad wooden stairs, in her exuberant hippety-hop, flippety-flop stair climbing fashion (she can’t stop or slow down until she reaches the top, without becoming entirely uncoordinated) so when I’m holding a leash I have to really expedite to keep up with her, or else drop the leash.
Everyone up there was vibing real fuckin hard, and the band was fantastic. They were doing Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Sublime, Hall and Oats, so many great ones. I sat with my back against the bar, again, Buffy in my lap, and a real sweet gal named Melissa came up and asked if she could pet my dog.
She ended up holding Buffy and swaying to the music (Buffy maintaining stone cold eye contact with me, reproachfully, whichever way she was turned), and eventually I became merged at the same table with her little party of three, mostly due to the allure of Buffy’s siren song. Melissa was — I don’t know about my age, because everyone between 30 and 50 looks the same to me now — but my generation, certainly. And she was there with two really great boomers. One was her dad, but I didn’t know if the other lady was her mom…?, or girlfriend…?, and I just don’t fuckin ask.
I mean — brief tangent — my brother and I were out for vegan sushi with friends in Honolulu, and the waitress came up and exclaimed (to our friend), “Oh! Are your parents in town?” Gesturing to us. Our friend, who is a millennial, certainly, blushed and said, “No, these are our friends, from the Big Island!” The waitress bit her knuckle and apologized, and then tried to recover by asking how long me and my husband had lived on Big Island.
I said, “Well, we’re brother and sister, and um…,” and the waitress’s skin melted off of her body in remorse, and we all laughed and told her it was fine. But honestly it is better to just let strangers explain their relationships to one another, or just leave it alone.
Melissa asked if I’d go dance with her dad, if she held Buffy. I agreed because I love to dance, but I wasn’t sure if this was a favor asked by the dad, a ploy for Melissa to spend more time with Buffy, or both. Melissa’s dad was wonderful and appropriate, keeping to his own quadrant of the dance floor in his long white ponytail and tropical shirt.
I swirled and swished my dress happily, but kept glancing over at Buffy. She was boring holes through my actual soul, with her eyes, from Melissa’s lap. Buffy is a powerful sorceress, and I have no doubt she would have frozen everyone in time, mid-libation, had I drifted too far, but I never do. I’m in thrall to her. And then when I hold her again, she droops her head down like that war pony in the famous painting, End of the Trail.
Anyway, at some point Melissa and her dad were both gone from the table, and I was talking with the other gal, Cyndi. She had shrewd dark eyes, and in another era I would have certainly traded a heart shaped locket for her services as a fortune teller. Going from village to village with her caravan, she would have had a respected place in the pecking order, and a lighter share of community tasks if at all, due to her status as oracle and diviner.
At one point a bouncer walked by and stopped to pet Buffy. I commented that he was a looker, but Cyndi dismissed him: “One of his shoulders is higher than the other.” Just like that.
I said, “You notice a lot!”
She snapped back into her nonchalant posture and flicked away my comment with nails painted the color of dragons.
“What did you notice about me? And Buffy?,” I demanded playfully.
Another man, at a table nearby, had been flirting on and off with Melissa. The flirter was socially graceful, witty, petting Buffy as well obviously, making terrific inroads on Melissa’s attention market share. But just then he walked off towards the bathroom and Cyndi observed, “He’s either got a bad knee or something wrong in his groin.”
I rolled my eyes because she dodged my question. I said, “Are you from Florida too, or do you live here like Melissa’s dad?”
“Oh honey, I’ve been here for forty seven years.”
We got into a discussion, almost a debate, about the resilience of Hawaii relative to current threats. Cyndi said Hawaii is very vulnerable, due to its isolation and dependence on ocean freighting. I didn’t disagree, but she was talking like end of the world. I was making the point that you just can’t quantify the significance, on the other hand, of NOT freezing, burning, starving or thirsting to death, in the event of even short interruptions of power. I mean, I get how fucked Hawaii is if something interrupts cargo logistics, but I’ve lived in places where people just straight up start dying if the power goes out for more than a few hours, either from heat or cold. I feel it’s easy to lose touch with that, being in Hawaii for so long, where you forget that even the AIR is trying to kill you in almost all other places.
So I was being a bit emphatic on that point, and Cyndi looked like she wanted to say something, but stopped herself, and I said I really was curious. She sighed and said, “Everybody says they want to hear what I think, but no one really wants to hear what I think.”
“I wanna hear what you think,” I said, kissing Buffy’s snout to prepare myself.
She said, “North Korea. Hawaii is perfectly positioned to be of strategic significance to North Korea, to gain access to the mainland, and we’ve pissed them off, and China and Russia too. They’re gonna go for Oahu. They’re gonna bomb it and we’ll get the effects, even over here. And on this island, we have unexploded ordnance off Old Saddle Road. They get worried about it when the lava —”
I had already interrupted her by being excited. “My dad asked his pendulum the same thing, and it said it’s a problem!,” I exclaimed. She looked startled, and I said, “You know what a pendulum is? Goes back and forth for yes, side to side for —”
“I know what a fuckin pendulum is,” Cyndi said irritably.
“Oh. Well — anyway, yeah, he got worried about China and the pendulum said they were gonna kill us all in our sleep, but my dad’s SUPER paranoid. He already moved, anyway, and my brother’s moving, and it’s just gonna be me here.”
Cyndi looked nonplussed, and I realized that my reaction wouldn’t make sense to her. I mean, def bad news if China or North Korea decide to, um, acquire Hawaii — and why wouldn’t they — but I mean, I just got done having this motherfucker at the other bar cringe out because I showed him some slightly odd NBA footage. Who then goes on to claim it only represents a glitch in the matrix in the sense of some reference to, like, absolutely not the premise of the movies, and then gets mad when I notice he’s never seen the movies, while freely making nonsensical reference to them. Then I apologize — for being a normally interesting human being with a functioning brain and a natural sense of curiosity, right — and he’s butt hurt. So I wander over to this other bar, and these are way more my people. I went on to have an amazing discussion with the very inebriated Melissa, after that, regarding trauma and the human psyche. Really amazing folks.
Anyway, it was def one of those bars and one of those nights where it sounds fun to just get trashed, and under other circumstances I might have. Melissa kept “buying” me waters, because I said that’s all I wanted. I’m horrified by the thought of ever losing track of Buffy’s wellbeing — and I have, a few times, not alcohol related but like forgetting she exists at all, because she’s so tiny and quiet and invisible, going all the way underneath the seats in vehicles and stuff — plus I’m a commercial driver and our legal limit is .04 BAC, even in our personal vehicles. So if I’m driving, I can do two drinks over a few hours, tops, without jeopardizing my entire livelihood, which I’ll never do. I love my livelihood :) I could have uber’d home, in the event of more drinks, but that still wouldn’t have been a good scene for Burf. She doesn’t mind loud-ish venues — or, she minds it a lot less than being abandoned at home, I should say — but she is my everything. And perhaps more importantly and relevantly: I am her everything. Laser eyes across the dance floor.
Anyway, back to changing linens and scrubbing toilets today, here at my friend’s Air BnB, and I’m grateful for the work!