Alpha males on the mainland

The woman who brought me to Kauai left the island about a month ago and now her second-in-command also announced his departure.  The opening team bails and new blood is brought in from the mainland.  When Bridget left, I moped for weeks, uncertain about the future of everything I had build here.  With Theron leaving, I'm mourning the loss of a friend, but am starting to understand what people have told me since I got here; There's always someone new arriving on Kauai.


Kauai continues to change me.  I've been hanging out with someone new, just a friend, and one night as I walked with him into the parking lot I found myself thinking that he better not drive a sedan.  I was ready to judge the poor boy on driving a normal car!  Somehow it's in my head now that real men drive trucks.  Imagine that ten months ago... I used to view men that drove trucks as scary Republicans on their way to a hunt.  It's the fucked up gender roles here.  Justin (new friend, and yes, he drives a truck) was telling me he visited New York City recently and he said he went to a club there, and "felt so alpha."  He said he was one of the biggest, most muscular guys guys there.  He said he felt like the only guy who'd ever been on a surfboard and he was full of judgment about it.  Even if they're skinny, the guys here are still alpha.  They hunt pigs, fish, surf, keep pit bulls, and drink lots of beer.  I wonder if I moved somewhere in the south or rural northwest US if I would change this way, or if it's the smallness of the population coupled with the absolute isolation.

Kauai can be a bit of an insider's club as well and I think that adds to the value morph.  The island makes  you fucking work for it and it is not easy.  Once you're settled though, the people here embrace you like nothing else.  I was out with some girlfriends last week and one of them had moved from LA about 5 years ago.  She said she still loves her friends back home but nothing compares to the friends that she has here.  It's true, in ten months, I have closer friends that I did in Denver.  Different kind of close.  Family kind of close, we're all in it together kind of close.

Secrets are impossible to keep here and I want to believe that keeps us honest, if not in action, at least in emotion.

Aloha.