My time in Hawaii spanned five years, but it aged me like dog years—every day was a cocktail of beauty, danger, and cosmic slapstick. Before that, I’d done my time in Whittier, Cerritos, Norwalk, Compton—those cracked sidewalks of Los Angeles that smell like burnt oil and broken families. I’ve been in places where confrontation came standard, like napkins at a fast food joint. Places that made you clench your teeth when you walked into a liquor store. But nothing—not L.A., not Compton, not a single goddamn alley fight—prepared me for Hawaii.
People think it’s paradise. And yeah, it is. But not the kind of paradise you see on postcards. It’s the kind of paradise that grins while it tries to kill you.
In five years I was almost taken out by just about everything short of an asteroid. I had a breakfast date with a poly-swinger couple the morning we got hit with a fake nuclear holocaust alert. I was sipping coffee next to a man who knew I was screwing his wife while our phones all screamed “Ballistic Missile Inbound.” Nothing like a thermonuclear crisis to bring a room together. Then the TV flashes: Oops. False alarm. And we all just kinda went back to chewing waffles like that wasn’t going to haunt our sleep for a decade.
One afternoon I watched a military helicopter fall out of the goddamn sky and splash down like a dying bird in front of a crowd of stunned tourists. Another time a skydiving plane crashed on the main highway, just a few blocks from where I was standing, killing nine people. I remember hearing the crunch, like a soda can being crushed by God.
There was the woman who went out for a morning surf. North Shore. Just a board and the sunrise. A shark got her. Tore her apart. Nothing graceful or National Geographic about it—just meat and fear. They pulled her out in pieces. That one got me.
We had volcanoes blow up. Not the polite kind with lava you could toast marshmallows on. No, this one blanketed everything in ash so thick it turned the sunsets into these apocalyptic violet hallucinations. Beautiful. Terrifying. Like staring through a bruise.
And those sirens. Those old tsunami sirens that sound like the end of time. Every time Brazil sneezed or Indonesia farted in the ocean, we got hit with warnings. Everyone’d panic, board up, fill gas tanks, kiss babies. Nothing would come. It was like dating a bipolar god.
Hurricanes? Yeah, we had those too. One of them rolled right over us and I was stupid enough to walk into it, because why the hell not? You haven’t lived until your face is being sandblasted by Mother Nature while you scream into a 70-mph wind, half-drunk, convinced you’re about to be written into folklore.
And then there was the 20′ shore breackers that almost killed me. Picked me up like I was a rag doll and slammed me into the sand over and over like a pissed-off ex. I’d catch my breath, and it’d suck me back. Over and over. I lost count after the twentieth time. I got out, barely. with no shorts I crawled up the beach like a shipwreck survivor, coughing salt and regret.
There was the shark episode—the one where I chased dolphins like a jackass and ended up too far out, too deep, too alone. And the chopper came and screamed “Shark!” and left. That was it. No rescue. Just a nice little “fuck you, good luck.” I swam back with adrenaline and lies, sure I was about to be a headline.
There was a woman tied to a chair in the house next to me. Killed by her own house cleaner. Made her daughter watch. All for a car. That’ll shake your faith in humanity for a minute.
I snuck out to the Big Island once and found a secret trail at 2AM that took me right to the rim of a volcanic crater—no railings, no lights. Just steam shooting from the ground and the smell of the Earth’s insides burping out under your feet. I stood there, illegally and entirely alive. It was one of the best nights of my life.
I kayaked past the buoy once, not knowing it was the final barrier before the current stops being polite. Took me two hours of hell to paddle back 100 yards. I almost drifted to Tahiti. That day, I learned what it feels like to lose control.
China Wall. That’s where this skinny hippy chick decided to take me. The second I saw it, I knew I was going to have a problem. It was just this goddamn lava rock plateau with a cliff that dropped straight down, a dare for idiots to jump into the churning swells between the big waves that came in like freight trains, ready to smash you into pulp.
But I was young and filled with that particular brand of horniness that overrides every survival instinct a man is born with. So, naturally, I jumped in right behind her.
The water was deep, violent. You had to swim like hell away from the wall to keep from getting crushed by the next set. So you’re out there, treading water, the ocean trying to kill you while your bodies touch in the chaos, waiting for the right moment to get out the same way you came in.
But the exit… Christ. That was the real bitch. You had to time the swell just right, let it carry you up before the next big breaker came in to use your body like a battering ram against the rocks.
I got it wrong. Got slammed, bruised, dragged across the sharp stone. Ripped a fingernail and a toenail clean off. The last of my dignity got washed away in that goddamn surf. I finally made it back up onto the rock, my whole body shaking, legs and arms trembling, with little streaks of blood mixing with the saltwater, tracing maps of all the places my body had paid the price for that stupid, horny descent.
The point of all this?……..Hell if I know.
Maybe it’s that people think Hawaii is all Aloha and hula skirts. And it can be. But if you’re paying attention, it’s also a goddamn gauntlet. It’s beautiful and brutal. It gives and takes like a moody lover with a knife behind their back.
I think the island taught me that near-death is just part of living right. You don’t feel the highs until you’ve almost hit the lows. You don’t taste the wine right until you’ve nearly choked on seawater.
And sure, the sunsets were biblical. The moonlight kissed the water just right. But it’s the scars that make the stories. It’s the panic, the chaos, the holy-shit-I-might-die moments that remind you you’re alive.
You want wisdom?
Here it is:
If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I’m still here. Still writing. Still kicking.
And I’d do it all again—just with maybe one less bottle of wine and a little more sunscreen.
