Mahu Surfer

by Neil S. Plakcy

  The next thing I remember is waking up in Dario’s bed, naked, his mouth on my left nipple. He bit and sucked at both nipples until they were hard and sore, and then licked a trail down my stomach to my crotch, where he gave me a blow job.

  I wasn’t a virgin then—I gave up that title to a girl named Penny Phillips, who transferred into our class at Punahou junior year with a voracious sexual appetite, and was gone by the Christmas holidays. In the interim, she slept with at least a dozen of our male classmates, relieving one and all of that most unwanted commodity among teenaged boys. I’d had girlfriends in college, and one night a girl named Jocelyn had talked me into a three-way with another guy, which both freaked me out and turned me on intensely. For the most part, though, I had successfully repressed my attraction to other guys, convincing myself that it was something I could grow out of if I just ignored it.

  I must have passed out after Dario finished, because when I woke again it was almost noon and there was a note on the refrigerator from Dario. “You’re a champ, Kimo,” it read. “I’m on the water.”

  I felt paralyzed. My mouth was dry and my head pounded, and my body was sore in unaccustomed places. When I looked in the mirror I saw my nipples were raw and red, and I had a hickey on the side of my neck.

  I didn’t know if I was gay or not, back then. I knew that I liked to look at men’s bodies, in magazines and catalogs, and on the beach when I thought no one would notice. But the only men I knew who were clearly gay were fairies, effeminate guys who flounced around. If that was being gay, then I didn’t want any part of it, and I determined to hide any part of me that threatened to become like them.

  Waking in Dario’s bed, though, I knew I no longer had Jocelyn to blame for what had happened. Sex with Dario, even as drunk as I was, was amazingly more erotic and thrilling than sleeping with a girl had ever been. And that knowledge scared the hell of out of me.

  Once I’d had a taste, though, I knew that I would have to keep on fighting, harder and harder, to hold back. And the more effort I had to put into hiding that desire, into forcing it down into the deepest part of my being, the less I would have to put into surfing.

  I was scared and confused, and somehow I decided that I had made the best showing I would ever make in a competition, because I knew you had to put 110 percent of yourself into surfing if you wanted to be a champion—it had to be all that mattered to you. And as long as I was hiding my sexuality, I couldn’t give surfing that 110 percent.

  So I left. I hitched back to the place where I was staying, packed up, and went home. I slept nearly non-stop for a few days, and awake or dreaming, I kept coming back to that night with Dario. It felt like my world had been turned on end and I didn’t know how to make sense of it.

  My parents couldn’t figure me out. I wouldn’t tell them the details, just that I’d decided to give up on being a champion surfer. My mother wasn’t exactly depressed—after all, she’d sent me to college for four years so I could become a professional of some kind—and not a professional surfer. My father knew something was up but I don’t think he ever figured it out. He kept trying to get me to go down to Waikiki to surf, offering to lend me his truck, to wax my board for me. But I was so caught up in my own internal struggles that I paid no attention to them.

  After hanging around my parents’ house for a while, I saw a notice in the Advertiser that the Honolulu Police Department was looking for new recruits. Intuitively, I knew it was the right thing for me, so I entered the police academy. It was, after all, the most macho thing I could think to do. I thought if anything could save me from being gay, being a cop would be it.

  I wanted to be a pro surfer when I was twenty-two, and I let fear of being gay stop me from chasing that dream. Dario Fonseca had been a big part of that fear, but I was ten years older and out of the closet, and I couldn’t let fear of anything keep me from finding out who killed Pratt, Zamora and Chang. I couldn’t avoid the Next Wave, if going there would help solve the case, just to avoid Dario.

  Dario had probably known I was gay within about five minutes of meeting me, if it took that long. I knew there was this thing called gaydar, a kind of gay radar that you developed the more comfortable you were with being yourself. It helped you figure out who was gay and who wasn’t. Mine wasn’t that well-attuned yet, but obviously, ten years ago Dario’s had been in full bloom.

  Back then, I didn’t like the way he always found himself next to me when we were out drinking, the way he often rubbed his leg against mine—or the way my body reacted when he did. I was damned if I’d be dragged out of a closet I wasn’t even sure I was in.

  I hadn’t seen him since that day I’d walked out of his shack on the beach, but he hadn’t changed much. When I walked into The Next Wave that evening, he was standing next to a display of bodyboards explaining the principles of the sport to a customer. By then I’d been on the North Shore for six days and I was tired, sad, horny and frustrated. Beyond figuring out that Mike Pratt’s shooter had probably camouflaged himself as a photographer, I hadn’t been able to come up with a single lead on the case that took me beyond what I had read in the dossiers.

  Dario had clearly followed everything that had happened to me over the last few weeks. “Well, look what the cat dragged in!” he said, coming up to me as if it had been ten days since we’d seen each other last instead of ten years.

  He hugged me and kissed my cheek, and I hugged him back. I’d never been comfortable with too much physical contact with other guys before, always afraid I’d do something that would reveal my secret self. Now I figured I had nothing left to reveal.

  “You look good, Dario,” I said. “Must be all that clean living.”

  He was probably thirty-five, but he’d hardly put a pound on his skinny frame, his face had no lines, and his hair, though thinning at the top, was still full enough. “Flattery will get you everywhere.” He winked at me. “And I do mean everywhere,” he said, in a low voice.

  His voice returned to normal as he said, “Now, why don’t you take a look around while I finish up with this customer, and then we’ll go in back and get all caught up.”

  He went back to the girl he’d been showing bodyboards to, and I walked around the store. The Next Wave was located just off Hale’iwa Road, overlooking Waialua Bay. The buildings in the neighborhood were all one and two stories, simple wood-frame places often with fading paint and a motley collection of clunkers, Jeeps and pickups parked outside. Most people on the North Shore were there because they loved to surf, and high-paying jobs in the area were non-existent. People spent their money on expensive gear rather than on fancy homes or tricked-out cars.

  When I was surfing the North Shore, The Next Wave was a hole in the wall next to a discount shoe store. Since then, Dario had moved up from occasional salesman and the store had taken over the adjacent space. A news clipping on the side wall described how Dario Fonseca, owner of The Next Wave, had been given the key to the city of Hale’iwa by a previous mayor. Maybe Dario was more serious than I’d given him credit for.

  I hadn’t surfed competitively in years, but I still kept an eye out for the latest gear, and Dario had it. There was some serious money tied up in his inventory, everything from O’Neill surfboards to Rip Curl wetsuits, Oakley sunglasses to Reef sandals, Croakies to Sex Wax. As you moved around the store, you could shop for T-shirts, boogie boards, leashes, and cork coasters in the shape of aloha shirts. The Next Wave also sold surf guides, magazines, signs that read Surfer Girl Crossing, and beach towels featuring the Ford woody station wagon that the Beach Boys had made famous.

  Clothing took up nearly half the store, with fake surfboards at the ends of the racks with face-outs of shirts and shorts. You could buy every type of souvenir gadget known to man, including miniature surfboard magnets, bottle openers that looked like shark fins, ball caps with a long flap around the back to protect your neck from the sun, roof racks for your car or truck, and plastic cups with The Next Wave logos. After I’d made a compl
ete circuit of the store, I wasted time by trying on a couple of different pair of sunglasses, modeling for myself in the tiny mirror. I thought I looked a little like Keanu Reeves as Neo in The Matrix; just give me a black duster and the ability to do those jumping, twirling moves in slow motion and I’d be the baddest detective in the Honolulu PD.

  It was late in the afternoon, and The Next Wave was busy, a mostly young crowd shopping, discussing and buying. Dario had even installed a little cyber café in one corner, serving cappuccinos and lattes and renting out time on six computers. Each of them was busy, and from the expectant looks of a number of the coffee drinkers sitting near the stations, I figured they would be for some time. I also saw a couple of people using their own laptops and realized the café offered free Wi-Fi.

  Against my expectations, Dario seemed to have turned himself into a solid citizen. I’d given up on sunglasses and moved on to hats by the time he came over to me again. “So, how does it feel to be out and proud?” he asked. “You’re here, you’re queer, get used to it?”

  “Strange,” I said. “I never wanted to be a celebrity. But now my face has been on TV and in every newspaper.”

  “It’ll pass,” Dario said. He gave me a smile that was half a leer. “I always knew you’d come out of the closet some day. I didn’t know you’d do it so spectacularly.”

  “How did you know?” I blurted out. “When I didn’t even know myself?”

  “This calls for some liquid refreshment,” he said. “Hey, Cindy, keep an eye on things,” he called to a girl by the register. He took me by the arm and steered me back to his office, past a display of sun block featuring life-sized models of scantily-clad guys and gals.

  His office was at the rear of the store, down a corridor that led to rest rooms and a loading dock. He had a side view of the ocean through a big plate-glass window; I could see wind restlessly whipping waves against the deserted shore, a line of rock and scree too rough to surf.

  The rest of the office was cluttered with sales props and advertising memorabilia. The walls were lined with posters of past surf champions, including a couple we’d both surfed with way back when. He opened a small refrigerator and pulled out a pair of Kona Longboard Lagers.

  He used a bottle opener in the shape of a palm tree, with the Next Wave logo, to pop the tops and handed one to me. “To your new life,” he said, toasting me.

  “And to yours. Looks like you’ve come up in the world.”

  He shrugged. “I’m doing okay. Retail’s tough, though. You’ve got to be on top of things every minute or you can lose your shirt.”

  We sat down in a couple of beat-up armchairs. “Back to your question,” Dario said. “How did I know you were gay when you didn’t know it yourself.” He took a pull on his beer. “It’s in the eyes, usually. Hunger. The way a guy will look at another, thinking no one is noticing. Straight men touch each other without thinking—they’ll wrap an arm around another guy’s neck, they’ll hip-check or punch one another in the arm.”

  I shook my head. “I see gay men touch each other all the time.”

  “That’s true. What you want to look for is the ones who are afraid to touch. They’re the ones in the closet.” He smiled. “They’re the ones who are the most fun to chase. They know they want it, but they’re scared, and you have to get them past the fear.”

  “By getting them drunk,” I said.

  “That’s one of the ways.” He lifted his bottle to me, took a long drink. “By touching them. Giving them these deep, searching looks that say, ‘I can see into your soul.’”

  I shook my head. “Dario, you are so corny.”

  “Rhymes with horny.” He raised his eyebrow. “I’m always horny. How about you?”

  That was something I wasn’t expecting, and it took my breath away for a minute. “That was nine or ten years ago,” I said, finally. “And I’m already out of the closet by now. You can’t drag me any further.”

  “Honey,” he said, leaning toward me, “you don’t know how far I can take you.”

  He must have seen that he’d gone too far, too fast, because he backed up then. “You’ll come to me sometime.” He smiled. “I’ll be here.” He drained the rest of his beer. “Now come on, let me show you the rest of the store.”

  If it hadn’t been for Dario’s obvious connections to the surfing community, I would have walked out, rather than taken a tour. He was just so full of himself, I thought, and I imagined he was still taking twenty-something surfer dudes who were conflicted about their sexuality out for a few beers—and then back home with him, wherever home was. It was predatory, and the cop part of me didn’t like it.

  He walked me around for a few minutes, then had to go to the register to handle a customer, and I took that opportunity to leave. I knew I’d be back; it was clear that The Next Wave was one of the centers for the surfing community, and I couldn’t avoid it for too long. I just had to manage to avoid Dario when I was there.

  What was it about me, I wondered, as I drove back to my room, picking up some fast food on the way, that attracted these predatory males? A kind of naiveté? I wasn’t some confused teen-ager. I was thirty-two years old, a cop. I had no trouble facing down the toughest criminals, but a guy who wanted to get in my pants still scared the crap out of me. It reminded me of a William Styron quote, from Sophie’s Choice, something about being six feet of quivering nerve. That was how I felt, even though I knew it was dumb. Really, really dumb.

  Down Mexico Way

  I surfed all day Friday, then returned to The Next Wave with my laptop to use their internet connections. I sent a quick email to Harry about the waves, and then a check-in message to Terri, who had just lost her husband a few weeks before. I felt bad that I had left town when she or her young son Danny might need me.

  I wrote to my parents, too, a quick note about the surf and how the North Shore had changed in the past ten years. I sent Lieutenant Sampson a longer message about surf bags, rifles, and talking to surfers.

  I sat back and thought about the case. If the only thing that connected the three victims was surfing, then maybe if I learned more about them as surfers, I’d find a clue. The dossier I’d been given didn’t have much detail, but I found that by searching for all three names online, I could find out which events they had competed in and what their results were. The only pad I could buy at The Next Wave was one in the shape of an aloha shirt, but with that and a surfboard-shaped pen, I began making notes. Soon there were shirt-shaped pieces of paper piling up, and I built a matrix, looking for any events where they might all have been entered.

  Pratt was the best surfer of the three. He was twenty-five, and had been surfing competitively since he was a teenager on the Jersey shore. He’d placed in the top ten in a number of contests, including Mexpipe in Puerto Escondido, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.

  Lucie Zamora had also competed at Mexpipe, though she hadn’t placed anywhere near the top. And way at the bottom of the men’s list I found Ronald Chang’s name.

  Interesting, I thought, sitting back. All three had been at Mexpipe. Was it just a coincidence, or a real connection? I couldn’t know for a while if it meant anything. I jumped over to email, and sent a message to my brother Lui, asking if he could dig up any video footage of the Mexpipe championship. I told him I was interested in studying form, but I thought perhaps I could see one or more of the murder victims there.

  I printed out a list of the top 100 finishers at Mexpipe; hopefully a couple would be around the North Shore, and I could ask them some questions. I also spent some time on the competition web site, learning about the races and the atmosphere surrounding them.

  The three dead surfers had been at very different places in the surf hierarchy. Pratt was at the top, a real competitor. Lucie Zamora was struggling to make it out of the pack. Ronald Chang was a weekend surfer who would probably never have finished in the money.

  Where did I fit, on that scale? I had to put myself somewhere between Lucie Zamora and Ro
nald Chang, though without Lucie’s obvious drive and determination. I had some natural ability as a surfer, and I’d been doing it nearly all my life. But to be the best at anything, you have to pour yourself into it, heart and soul. Dario Fonseca had shown me that I couldn’t do that, not while I was hiding my sexuality. I guessed I ought to be grateful for that, but gratitude was a hard emotion to feel around him.

  I saw him pass by a couple of times while I worked at the computer. I don’t know why, but I tried to look busy each time, so that he wouldn’t stop and chat. I wasn’t comfortable with him, and I didn’t want to give him another opportunity to proposition me.

  I found one interesting piece of information about Mike Pratt that I hadn’t seen in his dossier. He rowed with the outrigger team that practiced in Waimea Bay. Cross-referencing them, I discovered that they practiced every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings, and competed in single, double and six-man races. That worked for me; I could stop by the next day.

  By then it was late and I was hungry. I stopped for dinner at a bar called the Surfrider, where I had a beer and a burger. Neither were that good. The waitress seemed to recognize me, and so did a guy who was about twenty years too old for me, wearing a Heineken T-shirt that was too tight. He came up to me as I was finishing dinner and asked me, in a low voice, if I wanted to go home with him. I politely declined.