By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Columnist

"Excuse me, sir, do you know where we can meet some women?"

They were four merchant-marine cadets in port for a day, and on the town for a night. A cab driver had shanghaied them from Waikiki, insisting that they would have more fun at Restaurant Row, but the bouncers at a club there had turned them away because they weren't wearing the proper aloha shirts.

By that point, they were pretty pathetic and desperate to find anyone who could salvage the evening for them. They either wanted a place to buy some inexpensive Hawaiian shirts or to drink where such fashion things didn't matter.

They needed someone who could help.

Instead, they found me, a nearly 50-year-old guy who has been married to the same woman for half his life and hasn't had to search for one in a very long time.

Oy vey, I thought. Have you guys got the wrong vampire. As they told me their story that Thursday night on the sidewalks of Kaka'ako, I really wanted them to succeed. My mind raced to remember hot spots I hadn't been inside in years: Duke's, Ocean Club, Scruples, The Wave, Don Ho's.

Those were all young people's spots, and thus places I no longer knew much about. Would they be turned away because of a dress code? Would the women be too snooty for a bunch of young sea hands? Would I be sending my clearly heterosexual visitors to some gay club by mistake?

Once I prided myself on being a young party animal who knew the ropes. Now, those days seemed a long time gone.

Still, I couldn't leave these visitors all alone on the back streets of town, could I? Where would the aloha be in that? They weren't interested in the kind of women you meet on Kuhio Avenue late at night, either.

Instead, I loaded them all into my Honda Civic and took them to the one place I knew from my college drinking days, Puck's Alley.

"There's a bunch of bars here, but I'm not sure what they're like these days," I said as we turned on to University Avenue and cruised past East Side Grill, Magoo's, Hot Lava. "All of them were called something else back in my time, but one of them should have some women looking for a good time."

Because I wasn't really confident of that, I offered one more gesture of friendship before we parted — a round of beers on me.

So we turned the corner and went to — you guessed it! — Anna Bannanas, where the beer is always cold.

There wasn't a single young woman in sight. There were, however, plenty of old guys just like me. Many of them were the same people I had been drinking regularly with, on and off, 20 years ago.

My new-found friends took it in stride, but you could see the disappointment in their eyes. This clearly wasn't what they had in mind for their night on the town. So we drank our beers, played darts, told some tales, watched a volleyball game on TV for a while and ordered another round.

Then I pointed them back in the direction of Puck's Alley, got into my car and headed home to Kailua, where my wife no doubt was beginning to wonder where I had gotten to.

By then, the guys on the town had disappeared into the night. I hope they got lucky that night.

In a way, I know I did.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.