Hawai'i Blog Entry #1

Aloha, Hawaii! – Feb 27, 2008

Warning: No Holds Barred. No more mercy, no more trying to be tactful, no more fucking diplomacy.

Sunday night, Hilo Hawaii.

We came to Hawaii at my uncle Boo's invitation. He has a house here on the Big Island near Volcano Village, bordering Volcano National Park in the indescribably beautiful Hawaiian mountain rainforest. Megan & I flew to Phoenix & met up with Boo at Sky Harbor Airport for the grueling six hour flight to Kona.(somehow I always seem to have connecting flights there. I much prefer the Denver Airport because of its lovely smoking bar, but Phoenix is at least better than DFW)

I'm not gonna go into too much detail about the geographical and botanical beauties of Hawaii at this point because I have bigger ahi to fry right now, but we had a breathtakingly lovely drive around the island and through Hilo en route to Boo's house in Volcano. We arrived after dark and by then it was pretty cold up there, but we were prepared for that.

Boo began his flirtation with Megan almost immediately after we'd started our drive & Megan, good sport that she is, played along. In truth, it creeped me out a bit from the beginning, being that Boo is just about old enough to be Megan's goddamn grandfather, but I figured he was just trying to be friendly and being socially inept like all the damn Millers, was unable to express that in a more conventional manner. I suppose I'm sadly naive, but it's also true that I really don't know Boo all that well. Hell, I didn't know his brother all that well, and he was my father. I've never known how to read Boo; he's offended me & pissed me off & hurt my little feelers more than once, but my mom & my aunt Katy always told me that he didn't mean anything by the way he acted & the things he'd say, that "he's just that way". I even warned Megan about him before we left, told her he was crazy but harmless, that he might say some strange things to her, that he might bait her to see her reaction, that he might take out his glass eye out to freak her out, but "he's just that way". So even when the flirtatiousness started escalating into sexual innuendo, it still didn't set off the alarms that it maybe should have. I thought it was all in fun, just a big joke.

The first night went fine....we got to the house, we all had some drinks & food & laughs and then went to our separate beds. I slept in the bed downstairs because the stairs were more like a ladder & I thought I might break a bone trying to get down them in the dark if I had to pee & I didn't want to haul my big-ass suitcase up them. Megan slept in the room at the top of the ladder & Boo in his room just beyond. It was cold by bedtime, the temp was in the 40's & there's no heat there, but it was tolerable under 6 or 8 blankets. Barely.

During breakfast the next morning, Boo started muttering about us (I repeat, US) needing to wash everything in the house down with bleach to control the mildew (that I couldn't see or smell....it seemed to me that his neighbor had taken very good care of the house, it was well-kept and spotlessly clean to my eyes, but by then it had become apparent that Boo was more than a little OCD.) and had me make a list for the store: bleach, scouring pads, rubber gloves, trash bags, etc. At this point, I was willing to pitch in, being a compliant sort by nature. Though it did seem somewhat odd that we were being drafted as scrubwomen here in paradise.

But first, he said, we were going for a ride to see some sights & go to meet his friend Mike. And we did see some amazing sights....rainbows ("We got rainbows, whatchu got, bitch?") at Rainbow Falls, lava fields like a black moonscape, beaches with sparkling black sand, jungle flowers, mongooses (mongi?), improbably-colored birds....y'know, Hawaii. He also took me to meet his friend & stockbroker, Luanne, because he wants to move my trust account to her along with the others, which I had no objection to. She was very nice, truly friendly & invited us along on a hike she had planned for the next day & then to dinner at her home. Boo accepted her invitation and we continued our day of sightseeing & ended it with a pizza at his friend Mike's house. Boo's flirtation with Megan had continued throughout the day, complete with him introducing her to his friends as his fiance, and Megan continued to be tolerant of it, though it was becoming more tedious and juvenile than amusing. It also became evident that Boo has some control issues, since the day consisted of doing exactly what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it with not even a token consultation with us about how we might feel about it or what we might enjoy. It was late when we got back to his house & we were all tired & went to our separate beds.

But not all of us stayed there. Sometime in the middle of the night, Boo took it upon himself to crawl uninvited into Megan's bed while she slept & woke her by putting his hands under her shirt and, as Megan put it, "grinding his boner into my asscrack". I, sleeping blissfully downstairs, was unaware of this when the next morning at 5 am, before it was even light, Boo came downstairs & started banging and slamming stuff around in the kitchen and generally behaving like a spoiled 4-year-old having a temper tantrum.

I lay in bed for awhile wondering what the fuck & finally gave up & got up about six as it was getting light. Boo had the kitchen torn apart, everything out of the cabinets, drawers out of their slots, stuff piled everywhere, scrubbing the cabinets out with bleach. It was beyond bizarre, bordering on surreal, especially since he had made plans with his friend Luanne for us all to go on the hike in just a couple of hours. Even before I'd had my coffee I could tell Boo was pissed off about something so, still trying to be cooperative and conciliatory, I took up a sponge and started helping, trying to ignore the little voice in my head that was telling me that I was letting myself be jerked around, a feeling I'm all too familiar with.

By the time I heard Megan get up, I was scrubbing the seal of the refrigerator door with bleach and a toothbrush & I hear this exchange between the two of them:

Boo: "Good morning, Megan....was it as good for you as it was for me?"
Megan: "You better watch it, mister".

Though Boo's tone was jovial and joking, Megan's decidedly was not. With a feeling of dread, I went upstairs to find Megan visibly upset & repacking her suitcase. She told me what had happened and I was honestly floored. I guess I am naive, because I truly didn't see this coming. Boo had gone out for more cleaning supplies or something, so Megan & I had some coffee & tried to weigh our options. My first thought was to call Nadine & have her tear him a new asshole - which she undoubtedly would have done had she not been inconveniently dead - and then I realized with dismay that I was gonna have to be the one to tear him a new asshole. Unlike Nadine, however, I dislike confrontation and was starting to panic when I realized that we were trapped in the damn rainforest, miles and miles away from any transportation other than Boo's rental car.

When he returned, I asked him if we were still going hiking, thinking only that I needed to somehow get him to take us down the mountain to civilization. He seemed unwilling to go, talking about calling Luanne & cancelling, and while I was still trying to formulate another plan a half hour later or so, changed his mind & told us to get ready to go hiking and went out to the car & waited for us. I went out while megan was getting her shoes on & suggested to Boo that perhaps it would be better if Megan & I found another place to stay. No, no, no he said; no reason for that, we were welcome in his house. Megan came out & got in the car & we headed down the mountain. After 10 minutes or so, Boo changes his mind again, calls Luanne to cancel, and tells us that we're going to Hilo instead because he needs to buy rat poison or some such shit. Then we would come back and finish scrubbing & then go visit another friend of his. Again, we were informed of this and not asked.

A little farther along, I try again. Using my most reasonable tone, I suggest that we go to get another rental car; that way, I told him, he could do what he wanted to do & we could go do what we wanted to do, which was go hiking and swimming, as we had planned. No, no, no, that was a waste, he insisted. He talked about adding us as drivers to the rental car and then said he'd take us somewhere to go swim after he went to Home Depot in Hilo.

I was at a loss at this point; I was trying to get us out gracefully, but it was starting to look like a confrontation was unavoidable. He did indeed take us to a beach after Home Depot, where he said he'd just wait in the car for us. Megan & I went down to the water for a bit & waded, but felt even more uncomfortable knowing he was impatiently waiting in the car. So we went back & I tried again. "Boo, this is silly for you to have to sit here & wait for us. Let's go to get another car & you can go back home & we'll go exploring." No, no, no, we don't need to do that..."No, Boo, seriously. Take me to the rental car place." He finally agrees, to our great relief.

On the way there I tell him that we're gonna follow him back to the house & get our stuff & get a room in Hilo because it's too cold at his house (true) and we want to be near the water anyway (also true), neatly skirting the real issue - that being that we were not his bitches to be assigned roles (i.e. maid/sexual outlet).

This time he put up no real argument - I guess I'd gotten more determined by that point - and we got our car, followed him back up the mountain, got our stuff loaded up & made our getaway while he chatted with his neighbors, averting a real confrontation. We lit Kools, cracked a beer and cranked up 'Banditos' on the CD player: "Well, it's you and me baby, no one else we can trust, say nuthin' to no one, nohow, or we bust, and never crack a smile or flinch or cry for NOBODY." Uh uh...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfZbFh7qlCQ

Got a great oceanfront room here at the Hilo Hawaiian and then the phone calls start. First he wants Megan's cell phone number & I refuse to give it to him. I politely declined to join him for dinner at Luanne's as well; we liked her, but were obviously not wild about hanging out with Boo any longer.

The next day we went to Akaka Falls state park & took a nice little walk & then onto the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens, which was incredible....all kinds of wild plantlife that looked like they belonged on Mars or someplace, hundreds of varieties of orchids, enormous banyan trees, all set beside the crashing waves of the blue, blue Pacific. The day was marred only by Boo's calls wanting us to come to dinner at his house and my horrible feelings about trying to deal with the untenable position he had put me in. I tried to bow out gracefully again, but Boo kept asking why we weren't coming and forced the confrontation I'd tried so hard to avoid. So I told him exactly why, that Megan wasn't comfortable being around him after what he'd done (a remarkable understatment, as my friend Richard said when I related this story to him) and that I didn't blame her, that what he'd done was beyond inappropriate, that that sort of thing might have been ok for his generation but was no longer acceptable, that I was pissed that he'd put me in this position, that he'd had an opportunity to apologise but had acted like it was some big joke. I told him it wasn't a fucking joke to either Megan or me, but stopped short of telling him that his behavior was, in some places - say, courtrooms, for example - called sexual assault.
Incredibly, he responded by saying that he was just trying to get his feet warm and that he was sorry Megan was upset. Now, Megan may be only 27 years old, but I'm pretty sure she knows the difference between cold feet and a dick stuck in her ass. Clearly, there was no point in discussing this further, so I got off the phone as soon as I could and we checked out of the Hilo Hawaiian the next morning and headed for Kona and some sunsets and drinks with umbrellas in them.

Y'know, getting my crotch grabbed at the Phil Lesh show was no day at the fucking beach, as they say, but wasn't nearly as bad as the betrayal of trust by someone who we should have been able to trust, one of my few living blood relatives. Well, live and learn; not only are women not safe alone in a crowd - even a "peace-and-love" Grateful Dead crowd - but we're not even safe in the homes of those who are supposed to care about us.