The surgery in Moiliilili is covered with posters for drag beauty pageants and lots of photographs of sexy mahus. This time I meet some ex-work colleagues of Ginger’s from Divas in San Francisco and a stunning young Indonesian who’s so fish and is moving to Las Vegas the next day. She is definitely P. I guess from the way she’s dressed that she’s going to hook in Las Vegas and raise the $20,000 for a pussy. She pipes on about it incessantly as though it were the latest youth craze, knowing all the buzzwords and which doctor is best for each operation she requires. Ginger thinks the girl is nails for going on about it all the time. I remind Ginger that she told me she’d been there herself; having 34DDD breast implants and getting them paid for by various STRAIGHT MEN ON THE WAY TO GAY TOWN VIA TRANNYVILLE. Ginger rustles the magazine she’s not really reading at the Indonesian girl and I sit there in my yellow sunglasses not really looking at an interesting article in Nature about Superstring theory and wondering if I’m on holiday.
Is my life imitating art? Is it art? Is it life? I ask these questions as I lie here on this hospital bed. I have certificates confirming my qualifications as an artist, but have I gone too far this time? Away from ideas of representation, my practice has become my life and I’m the artist in residence of my mental, physical and psychological studio. Researching, preparing, experiencing, retouching, considering, evaluating, exploding into action and then spent and exhausted, relaxing and finally presenting a finished artefact of sorts. I don’t know if it’s true, but I remember it started with art and I think that this is my art project. It started 1 year ago when I began to research photographic persona presentation on dating websites. I created an archive of images when I became aware of semiological patterning and photographic unusualness that would make me a Doctor of Ph, but I missed my interview at the University of Arts. I fucked up and lost the gig. I had planned to build relationships with some of the datees and then construct a theoretical argument based on their implicit comprehension of visual culture or something or other that was arty and grant worthy, but it all went wrong and then I met Ginger. Six months later I collapsed in her and Ken’s tiny 12th floor apartment, two blocks from Waikiki beach and we became lovers. I don’t know if I know what art is, but Ginger thinks I’m some kind of artist and a twat. She says that being a twat is SO BORING.
Doctor Goodman tells me that people didn’t start smiling until the 1920’s; it’s a Hollywood invention and it pisses him off. I try to suggest that cameras in the Victorian era had such long exposure times that it may possibly account for people’s miserable countenances - having to hold a fixed smile for too long - but he’s having none of it. Smiling is a Hollywood invention and it irritates him, happy people. We laugh. In fact Ginger and I laugh uncontrollably as he is currently injecting feminizing hormones into her arse and it’s all a bit too much for me. The last time I met the South African born doctor, he told me how he’d made nitro glycerine as a boy and blew up his father’s cornfield. He hung a vial of the explosive from thin copper wire, placed a concrete block underneath and passed a high electrical current through the wire, melting it and causing the vial to drop on to the concrete. The explosion wiped out a large proportion of the surrounding maize and damaged a tree, but he got away with it because he paid the servants to keep schtum. Doctor Goodman pulls out the needle and slaps Ginger on the arse. She pays him 20 bucks for the pleasure, pulls up her knickers and we leave listening to the good doctor complaining that he can’t get Channel 77, “It’s got all the best Hollywood films, but you’ve gotta pay!!” I flash him a smile.
Lying in the Queen’s Medical Centre in downtown Honolulu with tubes in my arm, electrodes stuck all over my body and a machine behind me with an alarm that keeps going off every time I have a heart attack, I’m on holiday. Hospital staff rush in and look worried and leave again. I’m giggling my throbbing head off between bouts of unconscious babbling and chest explosions. I see Ginger who shouldn’t be there; I thought she’d dumped me in the hospital after drugging me and harvesting my organs, or whatever her and Mr Ed’s evil plan was - some kind of sexual perversion - luring men from abroad and then physically and psychologically abusing them. My arse feels fine, but my head is fucked. Ginger’s sitting there in the ward looking worried and I realise that I was wrong, she wasn’t trying to murder me; she ACTUALLY likes me and is concerned for my welfare. I apologise for thinking she was going to kill me and we make up, but with the condition that I don’t do it again. I agree to her terms; my blood pressure reaches 248/123 and the machine’s siren goes off. It’s my second day in Hawaii.
I can see the Banyan tree in the Food Pantry car park from Tula and Brandon’s lanai. My two favourite things in Hawaii are Food Pantry, where I learned how to buy stuff and Banyan trees, because they’re weird. My third favourite thing is Newcastle Brown. Ginger kicks the ashtray off the lanai and we lean over as it drops 22 storeys and explodes in the car park. I say “Wowdy” and Ginger says “Fuck”. Tula’s and I go down to sweep it up so that she doesn’t get another fine. Ginger stays in the apartment drinking Jack and pretending it didn’t happen. Afterwards and after we’ve finished off a large bottle, we argue about cocaine and she storms off saying that I was accusing her of being a drug addict. She was once a drug addict, addicted to smoking Ice and she came to Hawaii to get clean - Hawaii, Ice capital of the US. I wasn’t calling her a drug addict; I just didn’t want to do cocaine because I don’t like Todd. We walk back screaming and shouting at each other until she asks me for sex with no strings attached and I say no. We argue some more about that and then I laugh when she yells, “I do not want to be having this conversation” and it echoes around Waikiki. When we get back home we fuck.
Micky always turns his back on me and on his birthday I ask him why he hates me. He says he doesn’t hate me - he’s just been busy. Micky’s known Ginger since she was a boy and they tell me about calling the AIDS helpline and asking if you can catch it by having sex with a dead cow. Micky’s fucking Brian and Brian’s wife is fucking Brian, the other Brian and Brian used to fuck Brian when they did Hillbilly Heroin together and now someone’s divorcing someone and the happy family all work in the same bar and all live in the same house in Moiliilili. Ginger and I babysit Harry for them and in return we get a Happy Meal. Harry runs into my arms when they all go to work, I guess he likes guys. Ginger hates kids, which is why she pleaded with me to come, but Harry falls in love with her and they both start having fun. When she tells him to get out of the trash and he does and gives her a big hug, she has an epiphany. Ginger wants kids.
“It’s treat treat time!!!” shouts Mr Ed and all the kitties come running. He loves them and cries when they are ill; usually it’s just fur balls and the fact that they haven’t breathed unconditioned air ever. During the day, when he’s working they all watch Animal Planet, which features dogs having surgical procedures. Mr Ed is my very good friend and we share a mutual abhorrence of Ginger’s hygiene with regards to her apartment’s cleanliness. Mr Ed is very intense and one day corners me and asks me to name all the kitties - “Peepee, Boo, Patches and Tiger”. I used to think he was going to shoot me, but not after I named the cats and quickly too; I didn’t have to think because I’d rehearsed intensely. I knew this day was coming. Mr Ed is an EX. Alcoholic, Navy Seal, Smoker, Drug Addict, Pervert; he’s given it all up and found God. God features in our daily conversations and on his everyday To Do list - he always writes ‘pray’ first and then ‘cat litter’ or ‘treat treats’. Sometimes he buys me food. Mr Ed considers it his duty to save people and I think he thinks I need to be saved, but leaves me alone because I make Ginger happy. I really like Mr Ed, I really love Ginger and I really hate cats, but don’t tell Mr Ed, he might kill me.
Oh the beach!! Waikiki is a famous beach with surfer dudes and Japanese mini models, body builders, fat tourists and bums; healthy looking bums. I don’t go there except at night and usually walk down the Ala Wai Canal to Kapiolani Park and avoid the smug joggers. Diamond Head volcano towers over the east of O’ahu and is a direction pointer. South is Makai and north is Mauka. Actually Makai is ocean and Mauka is mountain, but east is definitely away from Diamond Head. Ginger and I climb Diamond Head without any water. We get to the top, sweating and smelling - I have BO and ED and Ginger panics. She gets claustrophobia AND agoraphobia, but I trick her through the tunnel in the volcano by starting an argument about something - I think it was my ED, which I’ve sorted out now by having my frenulum cut off. Out the other side, she realises that finally she has done something she’s been meaning to do for 5 years and she loves me. The view at the top is awesome, but we haven’t got time to appreciate it because we’re dying, so we run down and find a tinky toilet where we drink water and laugh about how crap we are at doing stuff; always ill-prepared, usually arguing about sex, broke, out of condition and crazy. We’re a weird couple, but it works. We’re not going to get married and not have any children and not climb any more mountains. These conditions have all been revised.
I walk up to The Contemporary Museum in Makiki Heights. On the map it looks a short distance, but Mount Tantalus is steep and the road winds up the side of it. No one walks there ever, especially in the middle of a baking hot day wearing jeans and boots and a jumper. I explain to the woman at the entrance that I’m English AND an artist and I walk everywhere. The Hockney room is crap, but has air-conditioning, so I sit there to cool off. When I visit two days later with Ginger, we get a taxi and she thinks the Hockney room is a children’s play area; she thinks it’s crap too. The exhibition of drawings by Geoffrey Chadsey is also crap. I write YOU CAN’T POLISH A TURD on a comments note. Ginger writes TURD POLISH FOR SALE.
Other places of interest in Honolulu: Iolani Palace, Cabana’s, Ginger’s bathroom, Tobaccos of Hawaii at Atkinson and Kapiolani, Hanauma Bay, Dog The Bounty Hunter’s house, Mr Ed’s 40” HD flat screen TV, Micky’s invisible chakra wall and toad, Family Guy, the ABC store, Brandon’s receding hairline (and hat), the lift in Lewers, Kuhio at night, Queen Liliuokalani’s prison, The Lieutenant Governor’s giant door (behind which is a lovely little lady behind a desk - it’s her birthday), Happy Jacks, the International House Of Pancakes, Ginger’s lanai, poi and a sex shop.
I fly back from San Francisco an Upper Class Virgin with $20 in my pocket, bankrupt, on the dole and an artist again. The stewardess asks me if I want champagne and what type of massage I prefer and then makes my bed because she thinks I look sleepy. Instead of sleeping I spend all night at the free bar, drinking Jack and hanging with the beautiful people. Drinking Jack makes me think of Ginger and the awesomely wild times we had together. I make a vow to return to Waikiki. On arrival at the airport, it’s a custom to get lei’d in Hawaii’. When you leave, you throw the lei into the ocean and if it comes back to the shore - you will return. I guess my lei floated back to the shore.
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