sleeping like eighteen hours a day, and my whole body ached, because I was having a growth spurt. I was five foot two when school let out and I was five foot nine when it started again. And it was great. I wasn’t the baby anymore. My basketball improved dramatically. My mother started buying my clothes in the men’s department.”
I had some more beer. “So even though it was miserable, in the end I was better off. Maybe this is just the next step in my growth process.”
“It’s funny how society labels us. You’re a gay man, now, and I’m a widow. And you know, we’re not the same people we were a month ago, before we had these labels. So maybe the labels change as we change. Who knows what they’ll be calling us a year from now.”
“To new labels,” I said, clinking my glass against hers. “And to becoming new people.”
That’s what finally decided me. Just like sharks had to keep moving to stay alive, I thought we all had to keep growing and changing. Sometimes that growth hurts, and sometimes you had to give up things that mattered to you. My father had made sacrifices for me and my brothers, and though I’m sure they hurt him, he made it through. They made him the person he is.
My brothers had sacrificed for me, too. They had stood by me, taken chances and given me, eventually, their unconditional love. Even men like Tico Robles were willing to take the risk that some asshole would beat them up just because they were at a gay bar.
The next morning, Derek was freed on bail and he began to spend most days with his grandfather. Aunt Mei-Mei said that the two of them spent a lot of time together, driving out to Windward Oahu and walking the long stretches of beach there.
Tim Ryan called me at home that night. He congratulated me, and we talked for a couple of minutes about the choice I had to make. “Listen, Kimo, there’s one other thing I wanted to say.” He paused. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. The whole gay thing has been so hard for me, and I never had anybody who was there to help me through it. Now I realize I could have done that for you, and I missed the chance. I want to work on that. If I can just get a little more comfortable with myself, then maybe I can be there for someone else. I’m just not there yet.”
“I understand. But let’s try and be friends, okay? You’ve still got a long way to go before you’re a real surfer.”
“I’ll work on it.” He laughed. “And I’ll try to let you help.”
We hung up, and I sat back on my bed thinking. It was a lot of future to face, a new job, new relationships with family, friends and coworkers, and then, finally, starting on the search for what my parents had, what my brothers had. There was a saying among women, that you had to kiss a lot of toads before you found your prince, and I hadn’t kissed many toads yet, so I had some catching up to do. Maybe there was a prince out there somewhere waiting for me. At least, I had to believe there was.
I called Lieutenant Sampson the next morning and told him I was ready to come back.
