The City Of My Interior

There is so much to be said for those moments that catch us with our guards down. The walls of the cities of our interior take a long time to build up again and sometimes in our haste, we build them so they topple at the touch of wind. You are strong, darling, and worthy of love because you do not regret. You are aware of the healing process. You shall be as Moscow, a city that has been burnt down time and time again, invaded, its Kreml and heart taken and nearly disappeared. But you rise, too, just like the city. Again and again, each time stronger than the last so that every experience you have lived becomes a part of your emotional culture.
- Anaiis Flox

“Get home safely!” my little sister said to me as she embraced me in a warm hug. “Take DaBus! Do not walk home!” she admonished me as an afterthought, reminding me of my mother.

I did not heed her advice.

It was nearly midnight following an invigorating and inspiring late afternoon and evening spent with her and my littler sister over coffees and pupus in Waikiki, and I kind of didn’t want it to end. So I allowed the crispness, chill, and faintly salty smell of the late evening early morning island breeze to propel me into Waikiki.

Strutting along the streets of my city.

Wandering down the roads of my memories.

“I’m frightened,” I had confessed to her, not five minutes earlier, voice quivering and hands quaking as I inhaled grandly from my Marlboro Light.

“Why, hon?” she asked.

“Because I know that I have to write about him again this week. And I don’t want to,” I explained, taking another aggressive, almost angry drag from my cigarette. “And I wanted the last time I cried about him to be the last entry in the ghost town.”

She smiled at me archly, wisely, as she usually does. “But we’re not wandering through ghost towns here, anymore, hon,” she said. “We’re telling ghost stories. And after we’ve told them all we’ll collect them all and walk out to the end of that pier and just expel them from our viscera into the midnight high tide,” she finished, smiling widely and excitedly making a motion with her hands and arms that began at her abdomen and concluded in an expansive, outward shoving action.

I smiled wryly. Threw my cigarette onto the ground and stepped on it. Secretly wondered if I was strong enough and confident enough to do that, as I knew she was.

I thought about her words as I strutted past Hula’s, waving up to the boys and men who sent catcalls down at me from above; as I passed a karaoke bar on Kalakaua Avenue that Gavin and I once patronized; as I remembered a similar strut up the avenue two Halloweens ago with Bartholomew, all fuchsia wig and six-inch Patricia Field stilettos, made up as Gwen Stefani After A Bad Break-Up.

I chuckled to myself at these memories, and into the surprisingly quiet early Waikiki morning.

I stopped to rest across the street from an old haunt, The Wave, now simply a construction site. Fired up a newly acquired Marlboro Red after squatting on the curb. Considered my intention of only a few weeks ago to leave this city, what I have come to think of as my city. Surveyed the construction site across the street with a vague nostalgia.

Started slightly, as I felt the presence of another man squat on the curb quite close to me, thigh nearly grazing thigh.

I turned quickly to stare into a pair of vibrant green eyes, and quickly took in other details, as well: familiar, tightly-woven Armani sweater; similarly tightly-clinging Armani jeans; Prada lace-up loafers; a faint whiff of Dolce & Gabbana; blond hair soaked nearly black with sweat.

“Hey you,” he said hoarsely, voice all Bette Davis and Lauren Bacall from an evening of too many cigarettes and scotches. A Marlboro Red dangled loosely from his wry smile and jiggled as he inquired in perfect and non-provincial French, “Avez-vous du feu?”

“Bien sûr,” I replied, in equally perfect and non-provincial French. I produced my supah kawaii butane lighter and lit his cigarette for him, like a gentleman, his fingers falling lightly onto my own to hold the flame steady, green eyes flashing mischievously up into my own.

Cigarette lit, he sat upright again, exhaled, and asked, “Are you going in?” as his arm gestured widely toward the construction site across the street.

I smiled, closed my eyes, and turned my head toward the site, beginning to laugh, and in that instant felt the ground beneath me begin to quake with heavy bass and drums, heard music, laughter, and screams from across the street, smelled the long ago but still familiar scents of mingled sweat, alcohol, tobacco, fabrics, and a mixture of fine and not-so-fine perfumes and colognes. And opened my eyes with shock and awe to see The Wave, right in front of me, just as it once was: small groups of revelers posing in clusters outside and drying off after sessions of sweating on the dance floors, long entrance line that I somehow always managed to circumvent.

“Very hot DJs tonight,” the blond man said to me, squinting though smoke as he inhaled his cigarette. “San Francisco and Los Angeles.” I sensed him looking at me. Felt a finger wipe away a tear I had not realized was trailing down my right cheek.

“Don’t cry,” he murmured, softly.

And then, more conspiratorially, into my right ear, “You can’t leave, you know.”

I turned quickly toward him again, voice rising to be heard over the din of the club. “What?”

“You can’t leave,” he repeated, matter-of-factly. “Too many people. Too many relationships. Too many experiences. Too many memories. Too many personal deposits invested in the emotional `aina. Too many emotional landscapes still left to navigate. Too many drops of blood left for the goddess Pele. Too many strands of your retina, your very vision, left in this city. Too many deep fields of personal strength left to cultivate. Too many ghosts left to still lay to rest.”

I inhaled sharply, my mouth agape.

“You may carry The Paris with you,” he said, again, softly, placing one hand gently over my heart and waving his other arm again across the street, and far beyond. “But this,” he concluded, “this is Home.”

He flicked his spent cigarette onto the sidewalk, smiled at me sideways, and rose, walking into the middle of the street toward the legendary club. He stopped, swiveled swiftly around on one heel, and said, “She’s right, you know.” Music blaring and light bulbs flashing from behind him.

“Who?” I managed to croak.

A blue-lighted HPD cruiser sped by, and right through him.

“Our little sister,” he said, smiling. “Tell. Collect. Expel.”

He waved demurely, smiled wryly, and turned to strut the rest of the way across the avenue to throw his arms around a glamorous blond woman and an elegant raven-haired man, and dashed inside The Wave.

I closed my eyes.

And everything vanished: the feelings, the sounds, the scents, and, when I opened my eyes, the visuals. The construction site was back, lit only by a solitary night watchman’s lamp.

I extinguished my cigarette beneath the toe of my left Prada lace-up loafer, rose, inhaled the crisp, cool, salty air of the morning, and continued my walk home. Conscious, all the while, of the darkness, of the lightness, of all of the ghosts, and of the walls of the city of my interior enclosing and enveloping me as I walked ever deeper into its night.