Hawai’i. Manhood.
Last Wednesday I was on the North Shore of Oahu with family, enjoying a late afternoon of paddle ball and surfer-ogling. Forget for a second that I’m back in the armpit of interior longitudes today, “working” at a computer. And forget for a second all the other wonderful things I saw in the Pacific outpost. I keep returning to this one moment at the beach, in which all three dimensions of manhood were made apparent.
The beach was full of novice surfers taking lessons with a threesome of experienced locals. The youngest surfer was no more than six years old. The tide moved out and students were replaced by older locals as the surf school started to wade back to shore. The instructors stacked the rented longboards and told their kids how great they each did out there.
Two of the boys (I’m gonna guess eight and twelve years old and brothers) were collected by their parents, who spoke in excited Japanese about how great they looked out there. The father, tanned to a coconut shell hue, was wearing off-hours surf attire and wraparound Oakleys. He asked his wife to take pictures of him “hanging loose” with the boys. The boys did their surf hula on the sand as their father crouched behind them with shakas on each hand.
Suddenly, a middle-aged white man in full Tommy Bahama regalia (oversized Aloha shirt, khaki cargo shorts, Kenny Rogers hairdo) stomped up to one of the instructors and angrily stated that one of their boys slapped his wife in the head with a board during the lesson. The instructor was quickly backed by his two partners, and the three of them took turns explaining the nature of surfing in a crowded beach; that surfers have channels, lanes, etc. Tommy Bahama wasn’t having it. He barked that the “amateur” instructors ran a “shit show” and should’ve known better.
The focus of Tommy Bahama’s accusations was the shortest instructor of the three, who in turn said,
“You think he meant to hit your wife?” Gesturing at the nearest kid, implying that a tween couldn’t have possibly meant any malice. He added,
“Sounds like you need to teach your wife how to surf.”
The fuse was officially lit. Now, Tommy Bahama and the instructor weren’t arguing about surf protocol, but about whether they were gonna “talk about this” or “talk about this.” Bahama threw the first “punch,” grabbing mud, then kelp, and throwing it at the instructor’s face. The instructor landed a solid punch in Bahama’s shoulder. They grappled.
Several people jumped in and separated the two before it got out of hand, and Tommy Bahama stomped off again, yelling, “amateurs!” and “shit show!” the whole way back to his wife, whom I might add, was ostensibly suffering a head injury grave enough to have warranted a cock fight. I hope for Bahama’s sake she suffered an aneurism just so he learned the valuable lesson that when a loved one is injured, your priority shouldn’t be someone who could’ve caused the injury, but the person who is hurt. Duh and duh.
Anyway, the instructor yelled again, “teach your wife how to surf eh!” Tommy Bahama came back for some more pomp. The instructors all stomped right back up to him this time. From about fifty yards away we all watched as they yelled for another few minutes. The three instructors collectively made it clear Bahama would get bloodied if they “talked.”
I was impressed. First, by how the instructor thrashed T-Bag not just with pimply indignity or physical violence but by insulting Trophy Wifer’s manhood, suggesting it was his chauvinistic shortcoming (inability to teach a woman how to surf) that caused his wife’s injury. Second, by how quickly they decided to make it physical. Cuz I’ll be honest: sometimes an argument is so futile, you will offer to punch your opponent in the face and settle the affair. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? A punch in the face is sometimes the greatest end to all debate.
However.
What made this episode so memorable was not the explicitly masculine discursive between archetypes: old white tourist and young local surfer. It was what happened after Tommy “My Other Car is My Woman” Bahama left.
The mother of the accused boys, rushed to the instructor and asked if he was alright. The instructor said he was, coyly apologized, and involuntarily flexed every muscle in his torso as he checked for scratches.
The mother checked too.
Her husband stood at a distance, holding his two sons’ opposite shoulders, and watched, bereft of his shaka.
In other words, the real loser was not Tommy Bahama.