Hawai'i #5

DISCONNECT

I saw Dennis sitting on the seawall as soon as we got into Kailua-Kona and were driving down Ali’i Drive for the first time. I clearly felt that jolt of recognition: I knew I needed to go talk to him.

I suppose I could go on here about why I felt I needed to talk to him and what I thought my motivations were and what they actually were, but that’s just mental masturbation, as Dennis – and Larry the Pepper Guy – would undoubtedly say. Still, there’s something I still need to work out there but here isn’t the place to do it. Suffice to say, the impulse was strong & I followed it. And kept following it even when he tried to get rid of me at first.

Dennis sits on the seawall in town and weaves hats and bowls and roses and pinwheels from palm fronds to sell to the tourists, an “Aloha!” and that dazzling smile to every single person who walks or drives past. People of all description come and sit with Dennis for awhile, all ages, gender, race, educational background, and socioeconomic class.

The first time I talked to him, we were talking about the turtles we’d seen and about the whales and dolphins. He talked about swimming with sharks and when I asked him if that didn’t make him nervous, he replied “You make me nervous.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because you’re a woman.”
“Yeah, I feel the same way about your gender.”
He’d been looking down at the work he was doing & just glancing up occasionally, but then he looked up directly at me – into is what it felt like – and said, “See? Isn’t that interesting, how that just happened?”
I was a little silenced for a second, but y’all know me, not long. Trying to make light, I volleyed with “Great. Now tell me my future”.
Still deadly serious he just looked at me & answered “I don’t work that way.”

As we walked away, Megan said “Did you see those big blue eyes? They look right into you.”

My primary motivation at this point (at least consciously, again my real motivations are arguable) was that I was trying to find something that Hawai’i is known for; Dennis looked like the kinda guy who might be able to help me, but I needed to get to know him a bit. But even by then, I’d sensed that there was something more to him & when I saw him again later, I asked him if he’d like to join Megan & I for the sunset & Huggo’s On The Rocks just down the street for a drink at sunset. He said he didn’t go to bars anymore, but would like to share a sunset and some red wine with us at “The End of the World”. He gave us directions, several miles south of town. Megan was reluctant and wary, but I wanted to go so badly she relented. There was absolutely no reason to, but I trusted him.

The next day, after our catamaran trip, I went back to the seawall and sat awhile and talked to Dennis and watched him weave and interact with everyone. He seemed to know and be on great terms with everyone in town. People came by bringing gifts, food, coffee, bananas, palm fronds, baked goods, flowers….I really don’t think I’ve seen anything like this in my life. So I kept going there and sitting for awhile, day after day, even after he told me that he wasn’t going to help me (due to a few misunderstandings and some bad timing), that I talk too much, that I think too much, that I drink too much & smoke too much, that I need to shut up and listen to myself and other people, that my self-destructive behavior was not amusing, that I was in deep denial about most of the important aspects of my life, that I liked to play games with words but wasn’t as good at it as I liked to think, that my pain was in no way special or unique and that he was going to start cutting my fingers off with his very, very sharp knife that he cuts the palm fronds with when he caught me biting my nails. He was tough as hell on me, made me cry a couple of times, but it was impossible to deny the essential truth of the stuff he said. He pointed out every single negative statement that came out of my mouth and it was all annoying as hell, but I started to see what he was talking about. And I kept going back and sitting with him. And listening, finally.

He had a way of imparting information that demanded patience. And careful listening and attention. We’d be talking about death or god or the universe or Buddhism or Hinduism or physics or Hawaiian culture and history and he’d launch into a seemingly unrelated story about something that he’d done or had happened in his life. The story would be long, with a lot of tangents, and he’d periodically pause and you’d wonder if it was the end & then pick up again. He’d also occasionally say, “Now, where was I?” and at first I thought he’d just gotten lost, but I gradually came to realize that he was testing to see if I was listening. And, eventually, the story would indeed come back around to illustrate a point about whatever we were discussing in the first place. Sometimes it did get boring, but mostly it was interesting enough to be worth listening to and did indeed teach me a lot about listening. And patience. And I kept going and sitting with him.

One afternoon after sitting with him awhile, I was walking away with Megan & looked down to see a piece of paper – it was actually a sticker with a peel-away back – with a single word on it: DISCONNECT.