picking up women of all ages.
And I grill them, while we drive. Some of them can't handle it: they weep, they lie, they sing along with the radio and show me their tits, and a lot of them swear they're in love with me by the time we get to the Kona Surf parking lot.
That's where I take them, no matter what they say or where they want to go. I take them all the way out to the end of Alii Drive and down the hill to that spooky little bay, and all the while I keep offering them a drink of hot gin out of a pint bottle with no top on it that I keep on the seat between my legs.
Most of them say they'll do just about anything, just as long as it's not drinking gin with a 200-pound bald psycho in an open car at high noon on Alii Drive
or in the Kona Surf parking lot. Which is where I always dump them. Except for the ones who drink gin. . .
A DOG TOOK MY PLACE
June 10, 1981
Kona
Dear Ralph,
Okay. . . Things are really different now. It took a bit longer than I figured, but I think the Kona nut is finally cracked. About six hours after I finished the last draft on driving the Saddle Road, I was sitting in the fighting chair on a boat called the Humdinger and locked into a desperate struggle with a huge fish -- and 17 minutes later I had it reeled up so close to the boat that I was able to reach out and shatter its brain with one crazed swooping blow from the Great Samoan war club.
Nobody patronizes me anymore, Ralph. I can drink with the fishermen now. The big boys. We gather at Huggo's around sundown, to trade lies and drink slammers and sing wild songs about Scurvey. I am one of them now. On the night we caught the big fish I was cut off at Huggo's, and last night I was 86'd from the Kona Inn for kicking the owner in the nuts, for no good reason at all. The last thing he said -- after inviting us for dinner and picking up the tab for $276 -- was "Why did you do this to me?" Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he sank down with a terrible groan on that black-rock ledge in the entranceway, where he stayed for an hour and a half and said nothing at all to anybody.
That's what I heard today, when I called to find out if he'd received the roses I sent, by way of apology. . . Yeah, it was that bad. It was the first time in my life that I ever sent a dozen red roses to a man.
The boys at Huggo's went wild when they heard the story. They laughed like loons and slapped me all over my back, and even restored my bar privileges. They don't like Mardian -- the man I kicked in the nuts -- because one of the first things he did after buying the Kona Inn was to walk into Huggo's, where the fishermen drink, and say he was going to put the place out of business in six months, and anybody who didn't like it could suck on his black belt.
He is very serious about his karate, and he will probably kick my head off my body the next time I go in there to drink. . . But I like those fine margaritas at sunset, Ralph, and the Kona Inn is the only place in town that will cash my checks for cash.
So much for that, eh? I think it's time to leave.
But before I go I want to tell you a fish story. The working title is "How to Catch Big Marlin in Deep Water," but I might want to call it something else by the time we go to press.
This is a weird story, Ralph. It has been weird from the start and it becomes relentlessly weirder with every passing day. They can't understand why I'm still here. And neither can I, for that matter -- except that it seemed to be working, despite the brutal expenses.
And they are brutal. Unless this book is a bestseller I will have to get a job out here as either a charter-boat captain or a real estate agent, or maybe even both. That would give me a foothold of sorts -- but