the eXile - Other Shite

Issue #23/104, Nov 23 - Dec 7, 2000

Other Shite

Cucko|dry with Hulas

By John Dolan

I just got back from a week of cuckoldry in the South Pacific, and boy is my Id tired. It wasn’t the worst cuckolding I’ve ever gotten, but then you have to understand: I’m something of a specialist. My standards are high. And even by my standards, it was a tough week.

In the beginning I just wanted somebody to go snorkelling with me. That probably sounds like some awkward cunnilingus metaphor, but I mean it simply and literally: I wanted someone to float over coral reefs with me. There’s no real reason I couldn’t’ve gone snorkelling alone, except that I kept seeing my lonely death in Spielberg-cam: a lone pink floater on the reef, suddenly dragged below as the water turns a frothy pink and a last jet of blood spouts from my brand-new overpriced snorkel.

I wanted, not so much a bodyguard as a witness, someone who could say I fought bravely against the shark that took me down. Not that I would actually fight bravely, but that someone could be suborned to say that I had. It also might be possible for a companion to drag a spat-up chunk of my freckled rind onto the beach, to be packed in an ice-chest, yielding DNA which could be thawed out a hundred years from now, when they’ve got a cure for fecklessness. At which time I’ll make them regret bringing me back, I assure you.

Besides, another body floating out there with me would halve the shark odds. You know what bigots these sharks are: one biped looks like another to them.

Recruiting snorkel-pals proved difficult. Some of my colleagues at this Athens of the Sub-Antarctic agreed to go to Fiji, where a coup had driven airfares down far enough to tempt even typically cautious, tightfisted academics. But flights to Fiji were booked up, and when my prudent colleagues saw the fares to my next choice, Tonga, they howled like coyotes and remembered previous engagements.

That’s when I thought of Alanna. She’d been a student of mine. No, no, there’d been no funny business between us; ‘tis only yer dirty minds! For one thing I’m not very good at it; besides, she was, you know, kind of plain. That’s just a personal opinion, y’unnerstand; as I was to discover, some demographic groups, notably Tongan men between 18-22, find her desirable enough. But most folk would call her plain even by the standards of New Zealand, a world leader in plainness. —Not to brag, but you haven’t seen plainness til you’ve seen Kiwi plainness. And the plainest of the plain are my fellow denizens of Dunedin, “The Sleet City.” Here at the famed “Gateway to the Ozone Hole,” a growing girl’s face can suffer windburn, frostbite and UV damage at the same time! When you combine weather like that with the genetic advantage which comes from a tiny gene pool derived from a handful of scone-faced, life-hating Scots Presbyterians, you have both Nature and Nurture working hand in red, chapped hand to produce some of the plainest girls you’ll see this side of Amherst.

So I offered Alanna a free trip to Tonga, asking only that she snorkel with me. She’d shaved her head again (a bad habit she can’t seem to break), and that somehow made it less embarrassing. A big pink-skinned girl with a shaved head is just naturally easier to ask to go to Tonga with you. Ask anybody, they’ll tell you.

But my cuckold genes kicked in the day before we were set to go. Suddenly I remembered this body in which I have to live. All its most gross and loathsome failings listed themselves in bold red type: the phlegm. The hairy back. The saggy, furry tits. The snoring. The screams for help which punctuate my sleep (according to the last unfortunate to attempt to share a bed with me). It’s bad enough that I should have to live with, or rather in, this vilest of bodies; but it was unendurable that I was going to make an innocent Kiwi girl, accustomed to clean, decent mammals like sheep, share a Tongan-style bed with me.

I went out and bought everything I could to neutralize my innate repulsiveness: nose-bandages for the snoring, antihistamines for the phlegm...I even thought about buying some Nair to rub into my back, but decided it might leave those telltale werewolf-lines at the neck and decided against it. Then I picked up Alanna, apologized to her a few dozen times for my existence, and we took off for warmer climes.

The island was run by a German couple, who loomed up to meet the boat, both tall and thin and fit as if to shame me. We waddled after them to our hut, which turned out to be all too authentic, a tiny dark slice o’ Tongan history containing one (1) bed. We lay down in it and I commenced downing enough vodka to make this unnatural closeness bearable. If Alanna wanted to jump me, that would be fine. I was prepared to do my part. But that I should roll over toward her—no, that would not play well in the Humanities Division. Any first move must be hers. Not to mention the fact that I was frozen in terror.

The fourth gulp of vodka seemed to clarify things: slee...eeep, yeahSLEEP jusSLEEP tonite’n’maybe toMORrow iit’ll be...you no more reLAXT. I slept, and woke to find Alanna up and away. She told me with a chuckle that I’d screamed in my sleep. We shared the drollery of it all, and left the hut together to snorkel and otherwise frolic among the stern German couples.

The second night was more relaxed—vodka may be a coward’s drug, but then I’m a coward. The good old rhythms of village life: glug-glug, flop, snore. What awkwardness? We were as safe from each other as if one of those medieval swords was between us. Which was probably a good thing. I dreamed she rolled over to me. When we woke she said I hadn’t screamed, but snored “WAY more than the first time.”

The third night...it’s always the third time in these stories, isn’t it? That’s supposedly a hardwired element of Indo-European storytelling. But I can’t help the fact that it WAS on the third night that things changed. It was Wednesday, “BBQ and Talent Show” night, when the tame Tongan bartenders and waitresses dressed up to show the white people their customs.

Oh, the hulas. They went on and on—more hulas than there are stars in the sky. And each number was introduced at great length by Willie, the head waiter, who had the body of a heavyweight contender and the moves of a classic Polk Street queen. He wore a big flower in his hair and did the last few hulas in drag. All the Germans clapped to show their progressive views. Only the other Tongan men, sitting in a sullen kava-glugging circle, seemed unhappy with Willie’s antics. The two ladies who wrote the guidebook said Tongan culture was very, very “accepting” of transgender stuff, but Lonely Planet had apparently forgotten to tell the actual Tongans about their culture’s broadmindedness.

Alanna loved every cheesy minute of it, and stayed when the last hula was done. I went back to the hut, dropped the mosquito net around me and felt for the bottle in the dark, glad to be safe from so much cheer. Waking up hungover around two, I noticed something: no Alanna. Again at dawn: a distinct lack of Alannas on the premises. It was just me, the geckos, and the mosquitos. And Mistuh Smirnoff, of course.

She came in at midmorning, and if she’d had any hair she’d’ve been twirling it like Scarlett O’Hara in post-coital bliss. What with the crewcut, she settled for telling me what a great time she’d had drinking kava with the boys all night. She’d given them a good talking to, it seemed, about their homophobic attitudes. “Where I come from, girls sleep with girls and boys sleep with boys!” I was having 70’s flashbacks, hearing it from a shaven-headed girl. I had to remind myself: this is all lies, this is her way of flirting with the hulking natives, she’s about as gay as Frank Sinatra. It wears you out, reminding yourself it’s all a diversion. Oh, and there was so much more to tell, about this one Tongan boy who’d been in the mafia (uh-huh, shooooooor) and had green eyes. When they start noticing eye-color, like the characters in a damn novel, you know it’s over.

Thus began stage two of our sojourn, in which Alanna became very difficult to find. She appeared for meals with some enthusiasm; and she did, let’s be fair, snorkel with me when asked. But the rest of the time she was simply gone, transported to the Tongan Quarter behind the palm-leaf fence.

The Germans didn’t like it. I didn’t much like it myself, but couldn’t really explain it to them. Alanna and I had arrived encoupled, to all appearances; now she’s doing Midsummer Night’s Dream, traipsing—yes, “traipsing”!—around the magicked palm groves with her dusky swains. (and yes, “swains,” damn it!)

The Germans looked at me, when I went down to the beach, as if I were the most contemptible cuckold ever horned. It looked bad, I could see it their way—but it looked worse than it was! If only I could distribute bilingual press kits explaining that I’d never really even coveted the girl, let alone plighted any troths. I just wanted someone to snorkel with!

But there again—”snorkel” (a German word) sounded so sexual that it would only make things worse. I did, finally, learn to snorkel alone. The fish bore me no grudge; a wrasse which changes its gender every few months has necessarily a more broadminded outlook. They hovered beautifully for me, though the coral was all dead. (The coral is dead everywhere. It’s already too late.) And the sharks left me alone too, perhaps out of pity. Now my flesh isn’t good enough for you guys, huh? Et tu, sharkus?

From Wednesday to Friday seemed a long time, but at last we boarded the boat which would take us to the main island and the airport shuttle. Alanna and her Tongan stood at the wheel like a pirate couple. Two German couples, ten years older and ten times fitter than I, stared coldly at them, then at me, then back at them. Me, I was looking at the horizon and nowhere else. I didn’t really breathe til we clambered into the airport van—but God, the Tongan clambered in after us, and Alanna sat between him and me, prattling now to her fusty sugar daddy, now to her silent hunk, equal time. It must have been a real joy to a plain girl—plain even by the standards of this plain, windburned, irradiated place. And should I grudge her a few days of glory? The time comes when nothing hurts, really. Because you’re, well, you know: dead.