May 3, Houston: The big one -- the Inprint reading -- occurs at the Alley Theatre on Monday, May 3. Do not miss it or you'll be sorry. I'm not kidding -- I'm going to say the craziest, most intellectual yet hilarious stuff I can think of, and I'll be sharing the stage with the ultra sexy Oscar Casares, too.
June 24, Houston: I'm one of the peeps scheduled to read at Poison Pen, at Houston's famous Poison Girl bar. Besides me, everyone there will be ultra, *super* sexy. Come see me and drink!
June 26, Washington, DC: I'll be reading at the American Library Association conference. Come on down.
My other blog: Go read my the Houston Chronicle parenting blog (or my ChronMomBlog, as I like to call it) and make sure my kids won't resent me more than other kids resent their own parents.
Buy my new novel, Lone Star Legend. Already did? Well, buy a few more for your friends, then. :)
Monday, June 29, 2009
Partners inLest you think my honeymoon was nothing but the drama surrounding the Epic SCUBA Fail described below, I will assure you now that Hawaii is every bit as awesome as everyone says. I kind of already figured, in fact, before we even set off, that it would be futile to try to describe such a well known travel destination, or even to photograph what’s been photographed so many, many times by professionals.
What was unique about our trip to Oahu, then, was something Dat-and-Gwen-centric: the additional evidence that we make a good team.
WARNING: FRUITY, SMURFY, SACCHARINE WORDS AHEAD.
Part of the reason my
Late one night, a couple of years back, the Houston freeway known as 290 was closed for repairs. That’s our normal route home. Our alternative was a long, parallel, four-lane road called Hempstead.
Hempstead is one of those industrial roads that’s mainly frequented by 18-wheelers. So it’s not only lined with giant metal buildings full of giant hunks of metal, but also the occasional pancake house and strip club.
When you drive down Hempstead in the wee hours of the night, you’ll see that a few of the buildings are lit up and full of moving machinery, and so presumably full of men who eat pancake specials and give parts of their paychecks to strippers. If you like, you can peer into the buildings, analyze the vehicles in their parking lots, and imagine all sorts of stories.
From the middle of Houston to the edge, it’s a long ride down Hempstead. We rode slow and silent for quite a few minutes before Dat pointed out, “We’re on an adventure.”
“I was just about to tell you that!” I said. Because I really was. Because we’re always on adventures, me and Dat.
So imagine us as those two people, but riding down a freeway under mimosas the size of mainland oaks and trees that dangle mangoes, in our rental car that was upgraded to a convertible for cheap. Imagine us walking down beaches full of tourists from all over the world, as well as locals of every flavor. Every other person there has a story – some that they told us and some that we had to construct on our own. And everyone has cameras, and you get to see what they think is important to capture with them. And then you trade cameras with strangers and hope for the best. Even when they can’t frame a shot for crap, it’s a memory preserved for you.
Memories preserved in me, all jumbled on a page:
Oahu = very beautiful plants, mountains and shoreline surrounding thousands of structures from the ‘70s and older, all peppered with tiny slivers of new-new expensive stores and rentals.
Every single person there is mixed or in a mixed couple, and it’s the only place I’ve ever been where absolutely no one gave us a second glance for being a Caucasian chick with an Asian guy. We were even mistaken for locals, once by an irate tourist seeking King’s Hawaiian bread and once by a snooty salesman in the Ala Moana shopping mall. I felt like I was in the idealized future of my fantasies, where everyone is mixed and no one can hate people based on ethnicity. And it really seemed that no one in Oahu did. But it was more than just that – all the locals were well versed in multiple cultures. And they were all obviously proud of their fellow peeps. It was beautiful.
Everyone asks how the sushi was, and we never even tried it. We didn’t get the chance. Mostly we ate in Chinatown, where the merchants were having a contest to see who could offer the cheapest dim sum. Everyone there spoke Cantonese (even the Vietnamese people) but told us they were learning Mandarin. They have “bubble tea” there, but it’s mostly bubble slushies. Our cha siu = their char siu. Our dried plums = their li hing. Chow fun = look fun. Red bean = “black sugar” or azuki bean. Yellow bean = non-existent. But everything was good and fresh – especially the plates including ginger. A lot of the restaurants used noodles from the one noodle factory that still made them by hand. And they were so, so good. I never appreciated chow fun until I ate it in Honolulu, y’all.
The way all signs in Houston are in both English and Spanish? Is the way all signs in Honolulu are in English and Japanese. All the employees at the mall spoke Japanese. All the Japanese people carried LeSportsac bags, and you could get the knock-offs of them in Chinatown.
Locals in Oahu seemed to come in two sizes: manapua-eating size, and surfing-all-day size. Guess which size I’d be if I lived there? Yeah. :) Hawaiian food is sweet and rich. I normally love sweet/rich food, but the Hawaiians had me beat with their sweet fried chicken and their two-starch plate lunches and the buttery, buttery fried sandwich bread. No, we didn’t try poi, because we didn’t go to any luaus. The McDonalds in Hawaii Kai advertised fried taro pie, but no, I didn’t try one. I was too stuffed with coconut manapuas (kinda like round kolaches or baked bao) and the hole-less Portuguese donuts called malasadas. No, we didn’t try the shrimp trucks. I feel like we disappointed everyone back home with the fact that we skipped the tour-book stuff and mostly ate Chinese food. But it was good, so I don’t care.
The groceries and gasoline weren’t much more expensive than in Houston. Only a few random things, like orange juice, were expensive. They sold hard liquor in the grocery stores. They sold Japanese candy at every drugstore. The Wal-Mart was a little more expensive and had less selection than Texas Wal-Marts. (Yes, we went to the Wal-Mart just to see if it was different from our Wal-Mart.) The Old Navy, however, was exactly the same. Stores with only Japanese stuff were 3,000 times more expensive than the other stores. The sales tax was, like, 0.0001%.
That’s all. I’ll stop here because it sounds like I’m obsessed with food and ethnicity and money, I know. But I don’t know how else to describe what we did there. I mean, we spent most of the time driving around the edges of the island in our rented convertible, saying “Oooooh!” and “What if we lived there? Or what if we lived there?” and “OMG, can you imagine if that was your elementary school?” and clicking zillions of pics of everything that’s been photographed a million times before.
And being on the beaches, beaches, beaches that, no matter how much better or worse they are in relation to each other, were all five gazillion times better than our Gulf of Mexico’s. Hours and hours just staring at the clarity of the water and wanting to cry over it. Marveling over the rocks and the vicious undertow. Holding up handfuls of sand to each other and picking out our favorite individual grains.
And, you know. Having adventures together. Incidentally being in love. I can’t describe it better than that. I can only say that I can’t wait until we do it again.
Because we will, some day.
Labels: culture, gluttony, Hawaii, married life
6:08 PM #Comments:
Gwen,Big congrats to you and your family. I am a long time reader (remember when that fake trailer park housewife stole your stuff and went on Roseanne!), and it has been my pleasure following your adventures to this point. You've come so far, personally and professionally- it's totally inspirational and junk!
# posted by
DeeJay : 8:45 PM
Thank you, DeeJay, for the good thoughts and for reading for so long.
God, yes, I remember that crazy drag queen. Remember Xeney found the pictures he tried to hide on his site, with the parrot perched on his... limb? :)
Good times!
# posted by
Gwen : 9:09 PM
I haven't been a reader as long as Owen, but I do remember the Altima and the bad apartment!
I live in Honolulu, and it just makes my day to know that you had such a wonderful experience here on the island! Be glad you didn't do many of they typical tourists things, as they are overrated and usually overpriced. If you found malasadas and fake LeSportsacs, I'd say you've pretty much found the best of Honolulu :)
# posted by
Angie : 9:52 PM
That will teach me to preview...I don't know WHERE I got Owen from!
# posted by
Angie : 1:04 AM
This is a beautiful and really, really sweet post.
# posted by
jagosaurus : 6:54 AM
What a great time you had! Makes me happy just reading about it. In my opinion, Food is one of the best parts of travel.
And you don't have to scuba dive! It's okay not to.
M.R.
# posted by
: 7:54 AM
Lovely. This is lovely.
# posted by
That Chick Over There : 9:28 AM
Sounds like you had the perfect honeymoon.
I have never seen such a confluence of attractive men as in Hawaii and I'm not talking about the tourists. It seems like all locals are pleasant and attractive, especially the men.
- maggie
# posted by
: 12:39 PM
Malasadas? Is there a large Portuguese contingency in Hawaii? Mmmm, malasadas!
# posted by
Marci : 2:44 PM
I am so glad you guys had fun, you are kinda crazy in love though, eh?
My boyfriend is Mexican (and very brown) and I am whiter than driven snow, and I live in the Woodlands. I never really see anyone looking at us. My sister in law is married to a Japanese man, she recently moved here from Chicago and says she has never felt more comfortable. I drag my kids, nieces and nephews who are white, half Japanese,one half black and one autism all over. If anyone had the nerve to give me a look, fuck them. Gwen, sometimes, I think you are a little ,tiny bit too sensitive about that issue.
Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the US. That is why I love it.
I've never been to Hawaii, but man, would I love to go.
You guys would love the beaches of Jamaica. It's heaven with really good food and coffee. And the people there love Texans.
Tracey the woodlands
# posted by
: 5:20 PM
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