Or, “No, this is not a haole house…um…even though I am haole.”

My ex, Gavin, paid me a visit yesterday afternoon, and stayed until nearly midnight. The last time he was expected to come over he was fantastically late, never arrived when he said he would, and never telephoned prior to leaving his house on the way over, so I passed out and awoke to several voicemails on my mobile left via my building’s enterphone inquiring where I was. I did not return his calls, and when he telephoned the following day to inquire what happened, I, of course, lied, and said, “Well, I find it rather presumptuous of you to expect me to wait around all day Sunday as if I did not have a life that did not revolve around you. So I went out to meet my best friend for mojitoes.” (Never mind that I was actually passed out sprawled spread-eagle on my futon sofa and that my best friend does not drink mojitoes; it’s the fucking principle.)

So, after inviting himself over, yet again, ostensibly to give me a wealth of new music, I agreed. We are, after all, ex-lovers and longtime friends. This is the man who, after seeing me in passing in our office building, clearly preoccupied out of my mind with the state of my firm, called me randomly one evening last week just to make sure I was doing all right. He knows me like that. But he always manages to do or say something to fuck it up.

Case in point: walking through my front door yesterday afternoon, and all the way into my apartment, without removing his shoes when he stepped over my threshold.

Flashback: I learned, within a week of arriving on Oahu over six years ago, about the tradition of removing one’s shoes when entering another person’s home. Some households have a shoe rack outside of the front door, some have a pile of shoes immediately inside the front door, but I learned rather quickly that I should either buy a lot of slip-on loafers, or not bitch about having to untie and retie my shoes with laces when I was leaving a host’s home. (During the first years that I lived here, with Gavin, we kept a “haole house” in terms of this tradition, i.e., none of our guests were required to remove their shoes at the door. We kept it this way because Gavin thought, and clearly still does think, that this is a silly tradition, and only adheres to it when he feels he “has to” do so.) So when my next boyfriend, Tristan, first invited me over the threshold of his family’s home in Juneau, Alaska, and I removed my shoes instantly upon entering his home, he exclaimed, smiling, “Thank you! How did you know to do that?” “Oh. I just did,” I responded, smiling. But, even after the dissolution of my relationship with Tristan, I have retained this tradition, for myself, because it is a tradition I respect. It certainly is not a tradition I enforce rigidly, e.g., when my friend Remington visited Hawaii for the first time two years ago from New York, I explained the tradition to him so he would know what I was doing, but because he was a guest in my home, I allowed him to decide whether or not he would choose to follow it as well. He did.

Gavin, on the other hand, had to be told. Again. And he fucking still lives here. I waited a full thirty minutes before I made a point of looking down at his feet beneath my desk and saying, “Um. Why are your shoes still on?”

“You still do that?” he asked, seemingly genuinely puzzled.

“Um. Yeah,” I replied. “Dude, this isn’t the first time you’ve been here. Did you not see all of my shoes inside the front door?”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I thought you had stopped that. I mean, it’s not like you live with Tristan anymore. And you said the thing with The Doctor was over.”

I breathed deeply and counted to ten before replying, “I never did that because of Tristan, and you know that. It’s become one of my own traditions now. And fuck you for bringing up The Doctor at all.”

He looked properly chastised as he removed his shoes and carried them back to the door.

I thought a lot last evening, and throughout today, about personal traditions and how they are acquired. Some, we inherit from our parents, like my mother serving borscht and brisket almost religiously for every New Year’s Eve meal, or my father’s fifteen cocktails when he arrived home from work. Some, we learn from friends, lovers, and experiences, like me removing my shoes when I enter my apartment, or my mother, becoming obsessed with feng shui and always making sure to lower all toilet lids and close all bathroom doors lest she should inadvertently “flush financial prosperity down the drain.”

But however we acquire them, they should always be respected; because, once acquired, they become a part of us, and our experiences, and our memories, and the way we live our lives. Even if living our lives does involve fifteen cocktails after work, obsessively closing the toilet lid and bathroom door, and keeping a non-haole house in regards to removing one’s footwear upon entering a home when one is milky-skinned, blonde, and…haole.

And I think that said traditions, however they are acquired, should always be respected.