by Roberta Carwin
(2/28/01)

On a recent trip to the Aloha State I decided to make sex my theme: to think of myself as a sex tourist in a part of the U.S. that I find both strange and familiar.

Flying out from L.A., right before football's Pro Bowl -- a preview of Spring Break when revelers fill the Hawaiian bars and beaches -- there's an air of charged-up expectancy in the narrow plane cabin. Girls in bikinis! Cheerleaders! Guys warm up by swilling umbrella drinks and flirting with the flight attendants.

Sexy stewardesses, they're probably thinking. Everything feels a little retro that way.

I check my companions, Tommy and Mark, for any signs of locker-room attitude. Hard to tell. They're both asleep.

I wonder if I'm flying to Heaven or Las Vegas?

We're going to party with friends in Waikiki for a few days. I've read that Waikiki tourism counts for one-eighth the entire economy of the state. I believe it. The main drag reminds me of the Vegas strip. A new shopping mall, DFS Galleria, looks exactly like a casino inside. All that's missing are a few slot machines, and a bit more tacky decor.

The first night, we wander into a strip club called Deja Vu. It's dark and crowded. There are blue lights and the tables are squeezed in everywhere We're stuck in a back corner where it's hard to see the main stage, so we wind up mostly watching the other guests, who look like fellow tourists.

At least I'm not the only woman; there are a lot of girl/guy couples. Some of them buy dances for themselves. I notice that the younger couples will hire a dancer, then sit down to enjoy the dance together. The older couples -- usually Japanese-speaking -- act differently. The woman pays for the dance as a present for her man, then stays off to one side, laughing self-consciously.

"Oh, this is naughty!"

Tommy and I push our way to the front to watch a few acts. I especially like a small, delicate woman who does not strip, but comes out naked except for a pair of large black wings and dances to dark, stylized modern music. Dancers walk by, chatting with us. They're all attractive and friendly, but we decide not to ask any of them for a dance because Mark is still hanging out in the back, and he's looking restless.

Walking back to the hotel, I comment that Deja Vu seems a funny name for a strip club. Surely they mean to make you think you're seeing things you haven't already seen? The guys tell me it's doubly ironic, since Deja Vu is a chain all over the U.S., and maybe other places too.

We pass by the site of the old Woolworth's, where in past years we've spotted a lot of prostitutes, women and (to my eye) pre-op transsexuals. All we see now are menacing-looking police on motor scooters. Ah, yes -- last time I was here the major news was a crackdown on sex for sale. Maybe Honolulu, like Las Vegas, is trying to make sure we tourists spend our money on the taxed vices.

So much for swinging Waikiki. Tommy and I hop over to the Big Island of Hawaii and head for our favorite spot, Waikoloa Beach. To me, just being in Waikoloa is sexy. Stark black rocks, bright blue water. It makes you want to get physical. But this trip turned out to be sexy in a way I didn't expect.

They tell us the whale-watching is fabulous this week. We sign up for a tour on the catamaran Alala.

I've seen humpback whales before, but never so close: maybe a spout between me and the horizon, the slap of a tail. Today the huge animals are swimming right next to the boat -- we even see their dark shapes cross directly underneath us before they surface, spouting so close and so high that you can see rainbows in the spume. I even feel a few drops on my face when the breeze is right.

We sprawl on trampolines across the front of the boat listening to Claire, an enthusiastic woman with a deep tan and sun-streaked hair. She seems as excited as we are about the whales.

"Wow! Look at that! That's really close!"

I remember the Madonna video, Cherish, where her body, playing in the waves, seems to alternate with the body of a finned and tailed sea creature. Now I see Madonna's point. There's something sexually thrilling about the shape and sleekness of the humpback whales -- as expressive as a human body, but so much more powerful. The head and tail are so slender, the flippers so long and graceful, the body in between so massive. The sex organs can't be seen, but in a way, the whales themselves look like huge streamlined sex organs.

As soon as we get out of the bay, they arch up out of the water -- three or four whales at a time. A little girl, maybe three years old, laughs and screams with excitement as her father holds her up to watch. I don't scream, but I know how she feels: the sight is exhilarating in a way that races up and down my spine.

Which are the males and which the females? Claire says you can only guess by behavior.

"And it's all projection," she admits cheerfully. "You see one whale pursued by three others; you decide the front one is the female and the rest males because that's what males do, right? Pursue. Two adult whales and a baby? They used to assume it was a mother and child and another female -- like a nanny. Now they think the third is a male escort -- a guy hitting on the new mother. She's an easy mark, because she's got her baby to watch and, guess what? She goes into heat right after she gives birth."

How very chivalrous of the male whale. It gives new meaning to "escort service."

They used to call groups of guys following a girl "heat runs" but decided that sounded nasty (too dirty, too overt!), so now they call them "competitive pods." Projection again. It's nicer, I guess, to think of them as polyamorous households rather than gang-bangs.

But once you get into that mindset, the humpbacks do seem like humans -- just on a very grand scale and with their own kind of morals. Sort of like the sex life of the Greek gods as Homer described it.

There's no denying the aggression. The gestures are emphatic, crisp and always as dramatic as the whales can make them. Loud, too. The "tail slap" says, "Whack! Here I am!" like a dom cracking a whip in a leather bar. The "peduncle arch," that leap when the whale throws the whole lower half of its body clear of the water, says "Look how big I am!" My favorite is the "inflated head rise." The whale puffs his face up to exaggerate its size, for all the world like people sticking out their chests and tucking in their bellies.

Claire names the whale movements for us, then describes more of the sex rituals. Pairs like to mate with a group watching them. Exhibitionism -- or whales with no partners hoping to get a piece of the action? No one is sure. For that matter, no one has seen the whales actually "doing it" if you use the porno flick standard of seeing the in-and-out. No human has ever seen a live whale's erect penis, which is ten feet long, one foot around -- and S-shaped, Claire tells us.

"I don't usually share that," she appends girlishly. "This is just so exciting!"

I'm thinking, S-shaped? Tommy squints at me as if to say, "I hope this isn't going to set a new standard."

The whales strut their stuff for each other, but for us, too. At one point they even charge the boat, looking directly at us, slapping their tails and displacing water all around the boat. To see something so big, so close, moving so fast...

Claire says the tail slaps deliver a force of 5,000 horsepower. I finally understand why people get a charge out of riding those humongous motorcycles -- it probably makes them feel as powerful as whales.

Finally, the boat stops and Claire sinks a microphone into the water so we can hear the whales singing. She tells us that if you dive below the boat, you can sometimes feel the whale song throughout your body. I have to say, that sounds fantastic. She explains how the whales change their song, adding and dropping parts, and reminds us how much larger the whales' brains are than ours. Hey, intelligence is sexy too!

We motor back, looking around for the first time at our fellow passengers. Everyone is smiling and nodding at each other. (Was it good for you, too? Oh, yeah!). My legs, already unused to land, stagger me up the beach. I feel both energized and completely satisfied. Like I've just had good sex. There's nothing more I want to do.

"Let's go have one of those umbrella drinks," Tommy says. It sounds perfect.

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