Cosmic Paniolo Sauce
The moon rose up and washed away Maui's hook, painting the sky silver, casting shadows across our campus lawn.
My kitchen shift has just ended. I am covered from chin to ankle with soot, splashes of gravy, and a fresh burn that still smarts, but really isn’t so bad.
The path to my tent winds through a dense forest of lauhala tree; a magical, otherworldly species with long aerial roots, trunks no wider than a burly man’s arm, each one topped with several pom-poms of long green leaves.
The natives here once relied on those lauhala leaves for weaving mats and baskets for trade with other villages. The trees are still here but the woven stuff found at markets in Hawai’i today mostly come from Indonesia.
I wonder what happened to those first people.
On some nights the sky is so clear and the air is so still that for a fast moment I figure that all the air in the world has up and left us, pissed off about how we've been fucking the planet. Adios. Sayonara. A hui hou.
I draw my next breath in slowly, cautiously, hoping for the best. To my relief the air is still here. Another chance.
Waves crash like thunder at the shoreline. Wild pigs snort and rustle in the bush. The wind is back, whistling then moaning.
It’s time to shower, wank off, and fall asleep.
I arrived in Puna, Hawai'i believing myself to be a staunch atheist. I still do, mostly.
To my genuine surprise, I'm beginning to converse with the gods, the ancestors, and the many animal spirits as if they are actual, breathing persons standing beside me. I’m beginning to understand how the original people who lived here, where I currently work and play, are actually still here. They are na aumakua and they demand of me to be seen and heard and respected.
To suddenly declare myself a polytheist wouldn't be 100% accurate, though it might be directionally correct.
This seems problematic at first. It was bad enough fearing the biblical god, and that was just one super disapproving dude (or three dudes, or two dudes and a hologram, or whatever). It took YEARS of meditation and drinking and promiscuous sex to ditch my shame of faggotry and other deviant behaviors. Not to be a party pooper, but I simply don't possess the energy (or desire) to manage the claws, hisses, and pursed lips from an entire pantheon of vain deities right now.
I'm too busy for that shit. I got a big ole journey to worry about! A journey in and of love. With more than one person; which triggers all kinds of scary feelings.
I’m grateful to find peace and inspiration in the bits I've learned about how my great great great great great great great great grandparents lived back in the days of Kamehameha and earlier. BTW if I haven’t been clear about this before, my paternal grandfather was 100% Native Hawaiian. I understand that my ancestors didn’t have a perfect society. Downsides to living in Ancient Hawai’i included partial subincision (Google it, if you dare), the kapu system, and terrible WiFi. But hey, at least they made hanky panky a lot. Like, a lot. With seemingly everyone. Marriage wasn’t a thing. You might even say that they really put the poly in Polynesian!
Inappropriate? Maybe. I apologize. Maybe. Na aumakua are watching so I will tread forward with caution.
I’ve yet to nail down credible academic sources, but casual talk-story about Native Hawaiian culture has me convinced that if indeed their deities exist, those deities are not prudes. Because my ancestors certainly weren’t, not until the Haole missionaries arrived. Among them was William Ellis, a key player in ruining sexy time for everyone, who in 1782 wrote this about Polynesians:
“There are no people in the world who indulge themselves more in their sensual appetites than these.”
To which I say: sounds like a fine bunch! And fuck you, Bill. Take your judgy religion and shove it up your ass.
To summarize: I suppose that if I do switch faiths (or adopt a faith to begin with), this set of beliefs, in na aumakua, Pele, Lono, etcetera, will be quite tolerant of lots of lovin’ and me being a giant slut, which is a great segway into:
Romance is Evil and I Hate It
I've been bitten by romance. What a pest. Where did I place my big bottle of emotional Deet? I could use it right about now. At a time of new beginnings and commitments to myself and my community, what room will there be for romantic love? I suspect this is where I remind myself about an agreement I made long before moving to Hawai’i: that in my next great journey of the heart I will not strive to make someone else happy or to hold a reciprocal expectation from him. No, instead my role will be to help him realize the best version of himself. And vice-versa.
Easy. Know what isn't easy? Telling this to someone special, never mind telling this to multiple special someones. Drawing boundaries early in a new romance feels like negotiating, which feels like business, which doesn't feel at all like love or any potential for love.
Sure, love is supposed to be hard and stuff but it's also supposed to be magical with award-winning set design and thoughtful lighting. That's what everyone has ever told me.
Especially the movies. And poetry. And Boys II Men. And 1990's R&B in general but especially the "Always Be My Baby" music video. Goddammit I love that video with its summer camp theme.
I've taken residence at what is essentially a year-round summer camp for adults. So as far as I'm concerned the next love of my life is supposed to be waiting for me here, swinging on a tire under the monkeypod tree. We're supposed to go skinny dipping late a night and then sneak into the kitchen to steal marshmallows and semi-sweet chocolate chips by the handful. Then we’ll cuddle in a hammock with boners, gazing into each other’s sleepy, smiling eyes until we’re both fast asleep.
He'll like me for being brave and fit and especially for my sick guitar skills (that I don’t have in real life but I do have in this fantasy).
We’ll ride horses and shoot beer bottles with a shotgun. I’ll lasso the sun and moon and all the stars for him. I'll be his cosmic paniolo and he'll love me forever.
Thanks, MTV, for warping my expectations about courtship and what being a good partner means. To top it all off, there wasn’t a blip in any of your music videos about happily loving more than one person at a time and nobody becoming a jealous, raging asshole about it.
Blech.
Back to the realm of here and now, I could continue moping about how very much in love I might be with this guy, and that other guy, and him over there too, and how it's completely unfair that they don't all merge into one perfect composite boyfriend for me to hold hands with while we make laps around a roller rink.
Or maybe instead, na aumakua will help me find the courage to tell each of these men about my heart in full, even at risk of appearing like a selfish lunatic or a confused floozy. And maybe after complete disclosure I'll discover the strength to deliver my unabashed, undiluted self to each of them; the way I imagine my ancestors would do. This involves me being a good listener. Challenging them. Consoling them. Cheering them on. Holding them close, one at a time, and whispering into their ear, “I'm whispering into your ear. Also, I love you.”
COSMIC PANIOLO SAUCE
A whole long time ago in the 1830's, Kamehameha III recruited a trio of vaqueros from California to round up a bunch of cattle that had been roaming wild in Hawai’i. The vaqueros taught the people of Hawai’i how to be ranchers and ta-dah, Hawaiian cowboys became a thing. They are known as paniolos.
Circling back to my fantasy of being someone’s paniolo, their cosmic paniolo to be specific, got me thinking about what that might entail. Step 1: get a horse. Step 2: become an astronaut? Or a demigod?
Shit. I may be reaching too far.
I have a better, more practical idea to fulfill such a dream: a midnight stargazing picnic with grilled skirt steak, a bed of sturdy greens, and a stellar tropical sauce that I totally lifted from a friend. Mahalo, N.H.
Note: N.H. and I cook for 100+ people at a time. Use math to convert the following for smaller yields. Or just make loads of this sauce and freeze it for later.
Ingredients
Skirt steak and dino kale
½ cup garlic, minced
2 or 3 handfuls cilantro, stems and all
6 to 8 quarts pineapple, large dice
3 ripe papaya, seeded
1 ripe starfruit
3 to 4 cups dried fruit: dates or raisins, etcetera
6 to 7 Kaffir lime leaves
2 nubs ginger
1 ¾ cup lilikoi puree
½ bottle ume plum vinegar
Lime juice
Sea salt
Cayenne
Method
Rub skirt steak with sea salt and freshly cracked pepper. Set aside.
Sautée garlic with coconut oil (or whatever oil) and freshly cracked black pepper. Add remaining ingredients, except for the lime juice, and heat through but not to boil. Purée with an immersion blender or a counter top blender, etcetera. Finish with lime juice, sea salt, and cayenne to your taste. Let sit.
Fire up your grill, or your broiler, or your cast iron skillet to super high heat. If you don’t have access to any of those things then maybe choose some other protein for your paniolo picnic.
Chiffonade your kale. This should take a minute or two, max.
Grill your meat. Let it rest before dicing. Tip: If you’re trying to be my paniolo you better not overcook my steak.
Say you’re actually going on a picnic with this. Fuck yeah! Pack everything separately to assemble on site. Why separately? Papaya and pineapple are both super powerful tenderizers; they’ll break down the contents of your meal, severely wilting your kale and possibly mushing up your steak a bit, in the matter of an hour or sooner.
Assemble using common sense. Add accouterments as you desire.