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Mahape a ale Wala'au, a short story (24 pages)
by Paul G. Bens, Jr.
Why do people like to travel? To learn about the world. To learn about themselves. To shake off the dust of one's hometown. Sometimes to shake off more than that – such as one's everyday identity – and to take on an exciting new role.
In Mahape a ale Wala'au, our story begins with a young Japanese man in a tiny apartment above the teeming and repressive hive that is Tokyo. He calls himself Toshi, but that's not his real name. Right now, he's at his computer, typing on his keyboard. He seeks to describe a life-changing sexual experience that played out over a few days when he last vacationed in Hawaii.
His story unfolds, streaming over his internet connection into cyberspace where it will be hungrily consumed by lonely gay men all over the world in search of their next cyber-titillation. But that's not why Toshi is sharing this story.
He hopes it will somehow find its way to a certain man he remembers as Kristopher. This man has a starring role in his story and a wistful place in his heart. If Kristopher were to surf the internet and run across Toshi's loving description of their encounter, it might make him smile. It might distract him from the troubles of his present life. It might even make Kristopher immortalize the time they spent together within the shrine of his heart.
I don't want to give away too much more because you really should read this beautiful short story for yourselves. But I'll fill in a little background to give you a taste.
Toshi arrives in Oahu, feeling self-conscious about his pasty-white skin. He longs to blend in with the beautiful local boys. His friends back home know him as a shy, sweet, cute little fellow, and he finds that a suffocating image. Now he travels alone, hoping to shed his past and experience something new.
He checks out the gay beach. Some older guys insist on befriending him. They overwhelm his Japanese reticence with their American enthusiasm in an amusing cross-cultural encounter. He enjoys their friendly banter and benefits from their knowledge of the local scene. But the story really heats up when he encounters Kristopher, a young Hawaiian with reason of his own to shed the bonds of the past and reinvent himself in a brief sexual encounter with a lonely tourist such as Toshi.
As they flirt and come together, Toshi boldly steps into a dominant role foreign to his everyday self back in Japan and orders Kristopher through the steps of an erotic game. Dressed only in a tiny, translucent white Speedo, Kristopher has to run errands for him, making purchases in local shops. He also joins Toshi in some exhibitionist performances under the cool, revealing waters of a beach shower, and in a glass elevator ascending slowly along the outside of a high-rise hotel.
When they finally come together for the sex act itself, it's one hot encounter! It may only be the culmination of a one-time fantasy for them both: the tourist meets the native boy. But it will no doubt stand out as a high point over both men's lives to be remembered with longing, gratitude, and maybe even a little amazement.
This is a polished jewel of a short story where every word is placed with precision exactly where it needs to be. I could pull out several different quotations with which to dazzle you. Consider this description on page 2 of repressed businessmen packed close together on a Tokyo train:
"… Some of them even grow hard, throbbing against your thigh or your buttocks, their sexual heartbeat coursing along with the pulse of the train. To them you give a secret, shy smile and you do not pull away. You press closer."
Is this beautiful writing or what? All through this story, the author easily writes as well or better than Andrew Holleran in Dancer from the Dance, which also showcases a beautiful, dreamlike writing style.
What does the title mean, you might ask? Mahape a ale Wala'au. Well, I don't know. Probably not "We'll always have Waikiki." You might want to ask the author (or check out this page on his website). For those of us who don't speak Hawaiian, maybe it's best to let the phrase remain unknown and therefore open to our imagination.
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