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Honolulu is as I always imagined heaven would be—

Very beautiful, and very boring.

And just as Jesus deemed heaven should be, Honolulu is full of mediocre middle Americans, escaping from the purgatory they made their everydays, gorging on overpriced reward for lives neither really good nor bad: for coveting their neighbor’s wife and not doing anything about it, for texting “OMG” during American Idol, for murdering their own souls with a slow suffocation of healthy greed.

I walk to Starbucks, my white marble skin sponging in the humidity. The sky is harsher, bluer than the Pacific, the sun is unquestionably that great ball of fire early Christians denied it to be. And both boil the air hot as hell. I order a soy latte, and the price makes me wonder if I’m also paying a sin tax. But I’m trapped on an island that’s forever a vacation from reality; where else am I going to buy holy water for workaholics?

As fast as I can be, I’m back in my hotel room, writing these words to build my own heaven on earth, making myself slave away each moment, wringing work out of every second of now that makes up true eternity.

I pause, and look outside at the bright sky cooking unmoving bodies lying on the beach, those corpses of ambition, those—

Thighs. God, check out the cellulite on that chick.

I’ll do anything to escape heaven.

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My back’s flat against a black sheet of stage that’s speared with a pole, and warm air over my bare legs is like a comforter. A couple of two-dollar bills melt into one between my teeth, pillowed by my wet tongue. Lured by that make-out Monopoly money, a topless Japanese girl slithers over me, her skin powdering my nose, her head nuzzling my thighs, pausing. Then her hands massage my breasts as she crawls back, kissing me, biting the fake money into her mouth. She pecks me on the cheek, chirping, “Arigatou!”

“No,” I giggle. “Thank you.” As vulgar as the world might make watching naked, thin girls strip to buy clothes and food, Japan styles the experience as gracious, as graceful, as losing your virginity on your wedding night.

Only maybe more mildly mannered.

I sit back down at my table, with a hostess. Her eyes are wide, their slant exaggerated with false eyelashes and lips constantly curved up. “She good dancer, yes?” She echoes my declaration from a few minutes before.

I smile. “Hai!” I say, with a short nod. The only Japanese I’ve spoken my two days in Tokyo is “Star-uh-bucks-oh,” “Yes,” and “Thank you.” Excepting my Engrish chant while hunting for soy lattes, this seems to be the most Japanese spoken by the natives, too. With such soft language, what little I’ve seen of the megacity makes it feel feminine, despite city myths of men groping women in crowded elevators, in spite of the aisle of rape porn I stumbled onto in a six-story sex shop.

Tokyo is just too polite to feel fully dirty and urban.

Though the metropolis is dense with thin buildings nodding to the sky, heavy skyscrapers bending under the clouds, and a tower that flatters the Eiffel with its likeness, it’s urbane about its urbanity, completely clean, only littered with bowing trees offering to shade your stroll on the sidewalk.

It’s partly this prettiness that makes exploring Tokyo vibe like virtual reality: everything is blinking and bright and light and seemingly safe, so consequence-free. So I wondered through alleys, sky walks, and sidewalks, finally entering Kabukichō, a district that was hardly lit in the red it’s famed for: instead it was flashing yellows and greens and blues, and the whites of Japanese men’s eyes, against the gray of their European business suits.

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The Chinese stewardesses all have tightly wound buns, little flower buds of sinful jet hair. Their mane is night against their virgin white complexion, powdered perfect in a way only whores wore makeup a hundred years ago, when flying over an ocean was just a child’s dream. They all have one lilting voice, that graciously mangles English syllables: “Woul you cah for caffee?” They all twitter and nod like little caged birds, their perfect brows arching like a back on a bed: I’m here to serve you, those soft parentheses say between model smiles. They stroll smoothly despite any turbulence: the thousands of feet of air under their heels may as well be the wood floor of their grandmother’s house. Their skin-toned costume hints at the slim, naked body underneath, and when I watch one woman, I watch them all, leaning over a sitting man and smiling at his request.

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Anyone who tells you money can’t buy happiness has a price tag.

The person who hates money doesn’t know money is just a tool you craft while working for whatever you love, that cash is a cache for independence, that printed paper paves the expansion of your horizon, that money makes for fun when you trade it for a vintage alligator carry-on, plus tickets to Hong Kong for your 20-something’th birthday.

Along with Chinese hookers.

I mean hookahs.

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Life should be an investment: relationships should pay you interest, one hour of work should buy you two more hours of pleasure, and –

This Missoni bikini should more than pay for itself.

You know, while you’re vacaying, some Catholic Daddy will see you sunning, Missoni bikini top tossed to the side, and the father will want to spend hours with you.

Talking about Jesus over a dinner that costs $207, tax and shipping not included.

That’s what I mean, you Pretty Woman.

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“What do you want to do today?” asks The Boy.

I look up from my laptop, my eyes trailing from the toe to the head of his figure stretched out on our hotel bed. “How about Starbucks?” My only real interest in Orlando, in most of Florida, was The Boy in wrinkled sheets on a work-day morning, between his business meetings. “What do you think?”

“I think we’re 30 minutes away from Disney World, so we’ve got to go. Have you ever been?”

“Disney Land, yes,” I say. “But not Disney World.” I see a flash of sticky heat, sticky hands, sticky public seats, but I blink, and decide, “Let’s do it.”

He buys the tickets online, and we shuttle over to a car rental company. The Boy feels his pants’ pockets at the counter. “I forgot, I don’t have my license,” says The Boy. “You’ll have to rent the car.”

I hand over my driver’s license. “So long as I get laid for this.”

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“Mind if I sit near the window?” The Boy, my boy, nods his assent, so I squeeze his ass and slip into the leather seat.

The jet slides inside the sky, and gravity pushes me against my chair: soft as a bed, I feel it from heel to head. We’re angling into the air, entering the blue blurring with the Pacific. I watch the earth fall off, like a silk nightie slipping to the floor, and the outside shrinks: the ocean waves smooth into regular rolls, then tiny splashes, and finally just a pretty pattern played up by the sun. Just a product for my pleasure.

We keep climbing.

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Lazy waves hum, cars chuckle over cobbled streets, and layered thick above this I hear tinny music piping through the hot air. I take The Boy’s hand and we walk deeper into Puerto Vallarta, the music growing fatter. Soon we intersect a parade swaying towards the chapel tower we’d heard ringing in the morning. I step in line with Mexican kids that barely hit the hem of my skirt, and a priest splashes holy water on the children, on me.

“Watch out that it doesn’t burn!” The Boy calls across the river of people.

I smile and nod, teetering into the church on vintage hooker heels. I stare up towards heaven, and see centuries-old paintings of Christ suffering, watching over a naive scene of natives singing his praise. I feel a presence focus on me, and I turn my eyes earthward: there’s a teenaged boy eying my legs.

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“Wake up, baby.”

I blink away a dream of hard blacks and whites, and the Pacific sun dances on my face and bells’ bright noise bounce through the room.

“Listen, it’s that church,” The Boy says. I look out the window, and over hotels crumbling into the blue air, I see a green hillside tiled with soft white homes, setting off the rusting iron crown of a church tower.

“Very charming,” I say. Then I sit up, listening more carefully. “That’s my iPhone’s alarm.” I turn it off.

“Oh,” The Boy says, and his voice is an echo of mine from last night, when we taxied into seaside Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and passed my personal North Star, Starbucks. “La estrellas bucks!” I cooed. “So we’re still in civilization.”

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My vacay is almost ended.

One more seafood burrito and not-so-skinny dip in the roof-top pool with The Boy, and we’re flying back to Cali.

Thank you, baby Jesus. Relaxing is too stressful.

Stories about El Nino’s and my Mexican frolics to follow.

XXXO,
K