Posted on: Monday, March 14, 2005

ABOUT MEN

By Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writer

Culture shock is a jarring experience, I know, having gone from paradise to Iowa at the age of 17. But I never got to really see cultural confusion crawl across someone's face for the first time.

Recently, I flexed my home state for my former college roommate and his girlfriend, both natives of Chicago. Neither had been to the Islands before, so I knew I could have some fun with them.

My friend is one of the many Midwesterners who reveled in my disorientation eight years ago when I walked off a plane in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He and many others mercilessly pelted me with the standard questions: Did you wear shoes growing up? Did you paddle to school in a canoe? Does the sand blow through the slits of your grass shack?

Over the years I have been able to exact some revenge.

In 2001, some boys from Des Moines and Chicago flew in, and I introduced them to Waimea shorebreak in the winter. While they were beguiled by the scenery surrounding the bay, I told them the water was tame and ideal for swimming.

Thankfully, one of my friends knew how to swim. But after a particularly harsh set, one that caused me to lose one of my fins, I looked around and could not find the kid from Des Moines. A moment later we spotted a lone figure stumbling his way down the beach. Des Moines had been sucked over the falls and sent through a spin cycle.

As he got closer and we saw his red face and sand-filled hair, I lost it laughing.

"Very funny, Boylan," he said, visibly humbled.

Sharing paradise with a group of landlocked snow slaves is hardly revenge for months of verbal abuse, but the subtle twists innate to local culture are enough to spur brief befuddled moments.

The second night my friend and his girl were here, I tried to take them to Indigo to see a local hip-hop group, Microscopic Syllables.

Before hitting the show, we stopped at Murphy's for beers and dinner.

After several drinks, a fellow Iolani grad from 'Alewa Heights turns to my buddy's girlfriend and jokingly says: "I stay hungry! We go grind — you like?"

In the Midwest, "grinding" is the term used for close-quarter dancing (think gyrating human pretzel). Usually, two people who are "grinding" are very familiar with each other; if not, they are definitely closer afterward.

And that is exactly what the Chicago girl thought my boy wanted.

"Excuse me?!" she said, putting her drink down and getting up off the barstool.

"I don't even know you and I have a boyfriend!"

I couldn't defuse the situation because I couldn't stop laughing. My friend knows all about "grinding" (I shipped laulau, kalua pig, and Portuguese sausage to college) so he quickly calmed his lady.

By then, a waiter had arrived with the food.

"You want some poke?"

Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.