Aloha Mahalo Da Kine
Sep/091
I found this book that I haven’t read in a long time and I was leafing through the pages and I found the one way plane ticket to Hawaii that I bought way back when. Looking back it’s been three years since that flight and it’s crazy how much has changed. In some ways I don’t even feel like I’m the same person, in other ways I feel like I am finally doing what I was trying to do way back then.
When I moved back to Wisconsin in 2005, the plan was to stay at my dad’s for awhile and make some money. Once I saved up some money I was going to move to either Seattle or LA. The idea being that I was going to start my screenwriting career. I thought Wisconsin would be a great place to go because the winters fucking suck and I could just sit home in the cold all the time and just do some writing. This, of course, never happened. You start hanging out with some dudes and you just end up drinking way too much like always. I think that I’ve always had some really good ideas and if I ever sat down and wrote them that I could be a screenwriter, but I am a master procrastinator and if I get the chance to go and get drunk instead I usually take it. Anyways, time goes by and I don’t write a thing. I don’t save a thing and I really have no idea what I am doing.
Then I meet this girl. At the time I had been single since my girlfriend that I moved to Seattle with broke up with me. That was 2002. So I am at almost four years of girlfriend-less and at the time I thought this was a bad thing. In Alabama, I hung out with some chicks but I always didn’t like them. People aren’t right down there and their teeth are all rounded off because of all the sweet tea they drink. I am not down with them. Sometime when I moved back to Wisconsin I decided that I should have a girlfriend that wasn’t like the girls I normally liked and this girl I met here was that person. She was religious, smart and pretty but in a different way than my normal type. She had a sort of innocence about her that I had lost long ago. It was a good deal. So we dated for a couple of months and it was good.
Then she got a job and had to move. She got a job in Maui, Hawaii and she asked me “do you want me to stay?” and I told her that I didn’t want her to. It wasn’t because I didn’t really like her or because I didn’t want to be with her. I just felt this was a good opportunity for her and she should take it. Whether she got this or not, I’ll never know. I made a loose promise to go there one day. I lived out my summer in Lake Geneva and here’s the thing about Lake Geneva, you spend the summer here and you think it’s the greatest place in the world. Then the summer ends and it suddenly isn’t. I did this thing.
Well actually, I did this thing twice. At some point my plan came back. Save money and move. That plan came back and in the summer I decided that it would be best for me to move. LA, Seattle or a new candidate: Maui. Around August I decided on Maui. I really missed this girl and I wanted to give it a go. And if it didn’t work out? HAWAII. How could this possibly go wrong. So, I bought a plane ticket to Hawaii and one night I called this girl and said I was coming. Her reply wasn’t what I wanted it to be. She basically said “Why? What are you going to do for work? Where are you going to stay? Why would you do that?” I hung up the phone and my motivation to move was completely killed. I called the airline and canceled my trip. The summer in Lake Geneva ended then I realized once again that I wanted out and bought another ticket to Maui. This time I wasn’t even planning on telling her and I didn’t.
Until I landed. She didn’t believe me and then she did. She told me which hostel to go to and we made plans to meet up at some point in the next few days. Now, if you’ve never been to Hawaii it is a complete culture shock. It is NOTHING like here at all. It is just different and when things are different you get uncomfortable. I can remember from day one in Hawaii thinking that I couldn’t and wouldn’t live there for long. It just wasn’t me, but then I ended up dating this girl again and things were good for awhile. I got a job serving and I was making the best money of my life. Hanging out at the beach, getting a tan, drinking lots of beer, having a girlfriend that I liked. It was good times. Don’t listen to anything I’ll ever tell you about this. I moved there to be with this girl. I called it “My last John Cusack” moment to anyone that would listen. It was what it was and what it was, was good times.
When I watch the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall I feel very much that was what it was like. It’s a good time, but to me it was just a stop. It was never a destination. Sarah Marshall is like a movie I could write about my life. I moved there because of a girl and when it was over I felt better about the whole thing, but it didn’t solve any problems. It didn’t instantly make my life better. If anything it created new, harder problems. When I came back to Wisconsin it was like I never left. I didn’t advance any in my life, I just kind of hit pause for awhile. This is probably one of the many reasons that my relationship went south when I returned home.
Do I regret moving to Hawaii? Absolutely not. It was a good experience and if I never moved to Hawaii, I would never have lived with a Mormon and realized what a horrible idea Mormonism is. I would have never figured out how to hostel it up for a few months. Most importantly, I would never have my son and what good would my life be without him? I could easily write another 3000 words on this topic and still have more to say, but in the end I’ll just say this. Looking back on my time in Hawaii I have zero regrets. I don’t regret moving there for a girl and I don’t regret her getting pregnant. Even if she never did get pregnant, I still wouldn’t regret it. It was something that I needed to do and something that I’m glad I did do. I’ll never forget it, but when she asks me if I miss it I’ll always say no and I’ll always mean it.
