Little Squirrels Can Climb Tall Trees

by Michael Murphy

  Once we got off the plane and into the terminal, the telltale look of wonder returned to Kyle’s face. His first comment to me was simple. “Sure is big and busy, isn’t it?” As we walked, his eyes got wider and he told me what I already knew. “There are no walls.” I’d seen that reaction many times before, and I had known it would hit Kyle just as it hit everyone else.

  “If they tried this no walls thing in Oklahoma in the middle of winter, it would be very uncomfortable,” was his simple observation.

  As with so many other things, through Kyle’s eyes and reactions, I experienced the awe of Hawaii all again as if for the first time. I had been to a lot of places, seen a lot of things. I had traveled the world and had seen the good, the bad, and a whole lot of perfectly average things that had just simply blended into vague mists of memories. Kyle had had none of those experiences, and everything about the new places was a first for him. And jaded-world-traveler me got to tag along for the ride, which thrilled me to no end.

  We grabbed a quick snack at a kiosk in the airport. Since we had no bags to retrieve, we simply exited the front of the airport into the sea of humanity that accompanied a big arrival bank of flights. The line for cabs was surprisingly not an issue, and in no time at all, we were in a cab and headed into Waikiki to our hotel.

  Even though I had been to Hawaii six times previously, I hadn’t stayed at this particular hotel. I knew exactly where it was and what would be nearby. The reviews online from previous guests had been glowing in their praise of the place, the accommodations, and the staff. While I always took such reviews with a certain grain of salt, I was optimistic about the place.

  First impressions are always important, so we were both pleased when our arrival was easy and efficient. There was no line—yes! Who wanted another line after flying for more than ten hours? We got checked in, our room was ready, and in under five minutes, we were on our way upstairs to what turned out to be an absolutely lovely room with a spectacular view of Waikiki Beach toward Diamond Head.

  “Holy shit!” Kyle swore in wonder as he stepped to the sliding glass door that opened onto our balcony. “Holy shit!”

  “You like?”

  “Holy shit!”

  “You already said that.”

  “Holy shit!”

  The only thing I could do was chuckle. “I’ll take that as a positive reaction.”

  Kyle simply stood looking, his mouth hanging open in astonishment. To give my partner a few minutes to soak in the scene, I decided that I could give a little commentary about what he was seeing.

  “You’re obviously looking out at the Pacific Ocean. Off in the distance,” I said, pointing toward Diamond Head, “is Diamond Head, the top of a very old volcano. Very old and most likely extinct. Tomorrow we’ll go up into the caldera and walk around inside. Un-freaking-believable experience.

  “Between here and there is, of course, the world-famous Waikiki Beach, one of the best-known beaches in the world. Personally, in my view, it’s an okay beach, but there are far better beaches in the world. Hell, there are far better beaches in Hawaii and elsewhere on this island. This one is just famous because when people first started coming to Hawaii and when the jet age began, most people simply came to Waikiki and didn’t venture out anywhere beyond. There weren’t a lot of people here, there wasn’t a lot of development, and most people just wanted to lie on a beach soaking up the sun, thawing out from a cold winter back somewhere else.

  “We’re on the island of Oahu, one of the eight main Hawaiian Islands. While this one is not the biggest, it is the most populated island with something like 80 percent of the state’s population living here. I’ve never really understood it, but a lot of people come to Hawaii and never venture off Oahu.

  “Oahu is not the biggest, but with more than a hundred miles of coastline, it’s not exactly tiny, either. After we’ve had a day or two to get acclimated to the climate, the time zone, and all that shit, I’ll take you out and drive you around the island to show you some of the other beaches. There’s one not too far over that way,” I said, pointing toward Diamond Head once again, “that I think is a phenomenal beach. It’s called Hanauma Bay. It’s a nature preserve and a marine sanctuary. The waters are awesome—so clear. The water is shallow, and there are some amazing tropical fish that hang out there. It’s a great place to snorkel.

  “If you go on past there, you come to Sandy Beach. It’s about ten minutes past Hanauma Bay near the Halona Blowhole.”

  “The what?”

  “The Halona Blowhole. Don’t worry, I’ll take you there. It’s a popular beach with locals but can be dangerous because of the way the ground falls away underwater. Waves come in there harder than you expect.

  “And one of the best beaches—well, at least if you like to surf and you’re any good at it—is Waimea Bay. That place is legendary. In the wintertime the waves that come in there are just simply monstrous. If you want to ride the big boys and you know what you’re doing, that’s the place to go. Guys have been flocking to Waimea Bay to surf since the 1950s. In the summertime the waves are much smaller, and you can actually go swimming and snorkeling there. But when the big waves are crashing, hang on—they’re incredible.

  “And if you’re a really, really good surfer and you’re willing to take some risks, you can go a little farther on to Ehukai Beach, or what you frequently hear called the Banzai Pipeline. In the wintertime when the waves are stronger, they’re really intense on Ehukai because they come in and break over a coral reef that is just a few feet below the surface.”

  Kyle’s mouth had closed. He leaned forward, soaking in the beauty before him with a smile of absolute delight and peace on his face. And because he was happy, I felt happy as well. As I was about to begin reciting some more facts about the island, Kyle interrupted and said, “Babe, gotta pee, then let’s go out and walk while we’ve still got sunlight. We’re probably gonna fall asleep early because of the time change, so I want to get out and see a little before it gets dark.”

  “No problem, babe. No problem.”

  While Kyle peed, I changed into shorts and a loose-fitting T-shirt.

  Kyle came back into the room just as I was finishing. “I know why you wear that one, but I still think you look great in a tight-fitting T-shirt that shows off your pecs—not to mention those incredible nipples of yours.”

  Giving the man a coy look, I lifted my shirt and rubbed one of my nipples. “These nipples?”

  “Oh, yeah, that would be one of them.”

  Kyle started to move toward what was always a beacon for him, but I held up a hand and said, “Back! Back! Later. That’s your reward for later.”

  “Foiled again!”

  “Change clothes and let’s get outside.”

  “Okay.” He mock sulked.

  The afternoon of our arrival was beautiful. It looked like there had been some rain earlier in the day because there were big puddles everywhere, but none was falling or even threatening to fall from the sky, so we didn’t care.

  Kyle was clearly excited. Usually when we went out walking or running, we moved at the same pace, even though Kyle had longer legs. That day, however, Kyle was so excited that he kept bouncing ahead of me, forcing me to either call him back or speed up to catch up with him. After two hours of walking, I was hoping that we had burned off enough of Kyle’s excess energy that we could stop for a while.

  WE RETURNED to the hotel and went into the lobby bar, which had absolutely incredible views of the beach. Kyle had never seen a bar that had tiers that gradually stepped down to the beach level—and then opened directly onto the beach. Like at the airport earlier, there were, in effect, no walls on that side of the bar.

  Even though the sun was still up and it was relatively early, the bar was very busy. It finally hit Kyle—we weren’t the only two people on the island who had just flown in and had not reset their body clocks yet. Most likely many of the people in the bar that late afternoon were also on something other than Hawaiian
time.

  The only other time Kyle had ever dealt with time change was when he had moved to Massachusetts for medical school, and that had happened slowly and gradually as he took the bus from Oklahoma to Massachusetts. “So how long does it take to adjust to the difference in time? Do people ever adjust?”

  “Sure, you’ll adjust. Coming from east to west is easier. With six hours’ time change, we’ll fall over pretty early tonight and wake up really early tomorrow morning. It will get better tomorrow night when we’re able to stay up a little later. And then we’ll sleep a little later the next morning. And before you know it, we’ll be on Hawaii time.

  “Now, going back is another story. Going from west to east is tougher in my mind. I always have a harder time adjusting that way than I do coming over this way.”

  WE DECIDED to order a couple of mai tais, one of our shared loves, and were savoring the complex taste as we watched people passing by on the beach and through the bar. Both Kyle and I thought that the beach scene was more attractive because most of the men out there were at least shirtless. There were some that were dressed (if you can call it that) in Speedos. Those were such lovely things. They left absolutely nothing to the imagination, to the point that both of us wondered why men had to go through the charade of even bothering with the little things.

  We were both very taken with a young man, in his early twenties, who wore a skimpy Speedo-type swimsuit. The suit was small, but what it was trying to contain was certainly anything but.

  “You’re a doctor,” I started seriously. “So tell me. Is it anatomically possible that that boy is sporting as much meat as I think he is?”

  “Seems unlikely, but stranger things have been known to happen. I’m actually wondering if he’s carrying his wallet and a change of underwear in there.” The man in question had clearly spent a fair amount of time in the sun, because his skin was tanned a beautiful light brown. “I wonder if he has tan lines?” Kyle asked.

  “I would love to know. Why don’t you go ask him?”

  “Me! Why me?”

  “It was your question!”

  “And it will remain a question since there is no way I’m walking up to some guy as good-looking as that, dressed in next to nothing, to ask him if he’s carrying his pet anaconda in his shorts and if he has tan lines.”

  As Kyle had uttered his observation, our bartender was standing nearby. Checking out the object of our obvious lust, he smiled and said, “It’s real. And he’s brown all over, but there is a hint of a tan line.”

  Kyle acted like he was horribly embarrassed and wanted to crawl under the bar. I didn’t give him time for that because I immediately perked up and said, “Tell me more.”

  Kyle swatted my arm and said, “Behave!”

  “I am. I’m behaving like the dirty old man that I am! Deal with it!”

  The bartender laughed with us. “He’s a lifeguard on the beach. We went to school together in DC, and we moved out here together about a year ago.”

  “Is he your boyfriend?” I asked.

  “No. I’ve seen him naked many times, but he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my roommate but strictly financial roommate, not sexual. Are you two—”

  “Yes,” I answered. Holding out my hand, I said, “I’m Joseph. This awesome man is Kyle.”

  The bartender nodded appreciatively. “Awesome, huh? What makes you awesome?” he asked Kyle. It was so cute to see how embarrassed my guy could be sometimes at the thought that he was awesome. I still had a lot of work to do with him.

  “He’s shy,” I observed lovingly. “He’s awesome because he’s a great guy. Smart as anyone you’ve ever met. Gorgeous beyond belief. Hung like a mule with a dick of death.” Kyle was seriously blushing now, but it didn’t stop me. “A while back he took on an entire mob of angry, uptight, upright Christian women and gave them some of the facts of life. Made me so fucking proud! And he saves lives during the day.”

  “Sounds pretty awesome to me!” the bartender agreed.

  “And I love him dearly,” I said, squeezing Kyle’s hand. “He asked me to marry him a few weeks ago too, so I get to keep him.”

  “Try getting rid of me.”

  “Never gonna happen, babe!” I announced.

  “I like you guys,” the bartender pronounced. “Hang on a minute.” He stepped away, out of our sight for a moment. When he returned a minute later, he had the object of our shared lust in tow. “Guys, this is Mano. Mano, this is Joseph and Kyle. They’re engaged to be married. And Kyle is awesome.”

  Not only had the young man been blessed with an endowment that could stop traffic, he also had been blessed with a smile that could melt the coldest heart. It reminded me of how Kyle’s smile had grabbed me in the beginning as well.

  “Mano, nice to meet you.” We shook hands. “And since I have no hesitation about such things, I just wanted to say you have a beautiful smile.”

  “Thank you!” he said, clearly surprised that the compliment wasn’t about his dick or some other part of his very exposed anatomy. “Most people are attracted to my dick.”

  Kyle blushed all over again. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he said, rolling his eyes and dropping his head.

  “Yeah, we noticed that. Kind of hard not to since it comes into the room a few seconds before the rest of you. But we’re both a sucker for a beautiful smile. And besides, Kyle here probably can match you in the dick department, unless you get a lot bigger when you get hard.”

  Kyle tried to slide down in his chair. He covered his face with his hands.

  “No, I’m more of a shower than a grower.”

  “Kyle’s a bit of both. Awesome dick on my awesome man!”

  “I don’t know you,” Kyle said.

  “He’s shy,” I explained. “Just wanted to say thanks for warming an old guy’s heart.”

  “Who’s old?”

  “Me!”

  “No way. What are you, like, thirty?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Honey, that’s not old! I slept with a guy last night who was well into his forties. And he was still able to get it up and do all of his manly stuff.”

  “Did he tip well?” the bartender asked.

  “Bitch! I do it for love, not cash.”

  “You seem to have a lot of love to share with the world.”

  “Hey, what the world needs is more love.”

  “But only if it comes with semen, right?”

  “Doesn’t it always?”

  Kyle finally stopped blushing and started participating a bit more in the conversation.

  The bartender had refilled our mai tais. Kyle quickly drained most of his glass. I explained, “He’s had a stressful day.”

  “Only once you started talking,” Kyle joked.

  “He hangs on my every word. He saved a guy’s life on the flight in today,” I said proudly.

  Both Mano and the bartender, whose name we later learned was Jake, nodded and looked inquiringly at Kyle.

  “Just a guy who had a heart attack in flight.”

  “And how did you save him?” Mano asked.

  “He’s an emergency physician. He saves lives every day.”

  “Really?” Mano said. “I want to go to medical school too. I’m working on my undergrad degree in biology at the moment.”

  “While he works on his tan and his true mission of spreading love to all mankind.”

  “Shut up. Why do I keep you around?”

  “It’s me who keeps you around. And it’s because you love and adore me.”

  “Do you know where you want to go yet?” Kyle asked.

  “I wanted to go to Georgetown originally, but since living here in Hawaii, I don’t think I could go back east and deal with the snow and the cold again. Where did you go to med school?”

  “Harvard,” Kyle answered simply.

  “That’s an awesome school,” Mano said enthusiastically. “But I don’t think I’d ever get in there. It’s so fucking competitive. They get tons of applications for ever
y opening they have. I’m not that good. There’s nothing wrong with me, but I’m just not in the top-top-notch caliber that would get in there.”

  “What’s the med school like here on Oahu?”

  “I’m hearing good things about it.”

  “Do you want to specialize, or are you interested in general internal medicine?”

  “I have no freaking idea,” Mano answered very honestly. “And even if I did, I’d probably change my mind seven times before I finished with med school.”

  “Fair enough,” Kyle answered.

  “You said, but I can’t remember—what kind of medicine do you practice?”

  “Emergency medicine. I’m an ER doc.”

  “That probably gives you a taste of all different kinds of medicine.”

  “Oh, yeah. In the course of one day, you can have an ingrown toenail, the victims of a drive-by shooting, a schizophrenic patient who went off their meds, a heart attack, and a brain aneurism—all before lunchtime of a busy day.”

  “I can’t wait to get there,” Mano said. It was obvious that the hot young man was enthusiastic. Since I had not known Kyle at that age, I could only imagine that he had been as enthusiastic a half dozen years before when he entered medical school. “Do you have any regrets?”

  “Only that I’m in debt up to my nipples to pay for it.”

  “And notice that he’s tall, so his nipples are high,” I tossed in.

  “You should know—you’ve had your tongue on them enough times.”

  “I’m an authority, but I’m always interested in gathering fresh data,” I said to Kyle with a truly lascivious smile.

  Jake good-naturedly warned Mano, “Stand back. I think they’re about to hump.”

  “Bite me!” I told Jake.

  “No. That’s why you keep him around,” he said, gesturing toward Kyle.

  Before either of us realized what was happening to us, we had become absolutely, totally, completely, 100 percent blitzed on a combination of Jake’s mai tais and our lack of adequate food to buffer the alcohol. I have absolutely no idea how many of the things we consumed. By the time we even figured out that we should slow down—well, no, neither of us ever actually fully understood that fact until much later. Well, at least until the next day. Had we realized it at the time, well, read on.