Magazine Article	Articles Archive

The directions are remarkably similar everywhere in the world. Follow the path to the end of the beach, park, promenade, pier, mall, tracks, tunnel. Cross, climb, duck under, hop over, go around, or through the boulders, trees, wall, hedges, dunes, or caves. You've left behind the gated resorts, tour busses, families, children, world. Coast on your instincts and scope out the action.

Certain tourist trampled places have become world-renowned in gay circles. Such a spot on Maui is next door to Little Beach, one of the few places in the islands where "aloha spirit" wins over an archly conservative moral mindset (forget about all that Gay Marriage folderol) to allow nude sun bathing. The "enchanted forest," a dense thicket of Kiawe trees wrapped around the leeward side of Puu Olai, an ancient volcanic cinder cone, is an endless maze of footpaths through waste-high grasses, the quintessential, sylvan playground for queers.

View our poll archive

If you're gay and don't get it, you probably can't be taught. One theory is the degree to which you need directions, is proportional to the absence of knowing what to do when you get there. Straight boys learn early to hide their primordial lust behind "lines" and strategies acceptable to girls. Gay men don't have to. Whether they're highly selective, sport major attitude, or discriminate according to rarefied fetishes, they always know at the most basic level how the other guy's clock is wound. The word, recently sanctified by Webster's, is gaydar: a powerful symbiosis etched into our collectively horny unconscious.

Gay Arcadian sex coexists with small towns and big cities alike. The furtive realms originally (and still in much of the homophobic world) filled a bursting need for queers to connect, where, other than public bathrooms, no buildings stood to shelter their meetings. Now men choose them over safe and acceptable bars or clubs in cities as liberal as San Francisco or West Hollywood. There is something undeniably primal about a pastoral hunt.

In the park, no more than fifty yards from the front door of Danielle Steele's stately Pacific Heights mansion. In the hedges in front of the Louvre. On the beach under the Golden Gate Bridge in the afternoon. At the end of New York's notorious piers. By the trees below the Hollywood sign. At these and hundreds of other sites, men "play" in proximity to what would be a very disapproving rest of the world. Fortunately, they rely on an instinctive prime directive: If you're not looking for it, it can happen right under your nose and you won't see it or feel threatened.

When I romped as a visitor here on Maui, I too partook of the forest's delights. Adventure runs reckless through veins on vacation. Gay men from far corners let fly their inhibitions, as mandatory in some quarters as snorkeling or bodysurfing in crystal blue waters, whale watching, or the drive to Hana.

Deep in mesquite thickets "snorkeling," "bodysurfing," and "whale watching" take on entirely new dimensions. I told myself as a new resident, eager to shed the "haole" (newcomer) stigma, that my former gay abandon would have to cease. Surely small island locals must exercise more discretion than tourists who will never see their fellow bushwhackers again.

Then it always starts with a beachside seduction. Loitering eye contact over the top of designer shades. Nonchalant poses and gestures six towels away that just happen to flatter his best features. He gets up and walks to the edge of the green maze. A fatal glance over the shoulder before he saunters in seals it. The little head has now assumed control.

Time to take a walk and see what's up. (read: maximum tumescence in repose to full salute). There are feral tomcats stalking prey and spiders the size of nickels waiting patiently in webs spun across the trails. What harm can there be in observing nature? Many of the players in this ritual are amazingly self-deluded. They pretend to sight sea mammals on the open sea vistas while slyly monitoring for errant hillside "whales" that brazenly dare to cruise too close.

One such man who tracked my heels through a considerable labyrinth of lava and thorns (planted by missionaries to keep natives from going barefoot), stutteringly told me he was writing poetry when I asked him what he was doing. I felt bad but I knew it would cut him loose.

The whole gig is unspoken rules and silent conventions. Conversation is for getting to know people, finding a boyfriend, relationships. Out in the bushes it's Cowboys and Indians, Hide and Go Seek, Hunters and Gatherers. It's pure animal brain, adolescent, boy's play, recreational, safe sex (unless you're crazy).

There is no gay single's scene on Maui so most gay visitors arrive with a boyfriend or lover. Some pretend to hide their "adventures" from their partners. The accepted convention is to leave hubby on the beach while "taking a walk." Everyone knows the score, but they choose not to discuss it, at least in detail. It's silly because alliance exists on a different plane. Then again, feigned shame and naughtiness supply the erotic charge.

On any afternoon, a young man with his girlfriend or a couple and their children can walk down the very same paths and see nothing but trees, grass, birds, flowers and butterflies. The mischievous boys are hyper-tuned to shielding the straights from disconcerting sights. Ninety percent of the time it's the harmless, three-dimensional porn of a circlejerk. More than enough to station officers behind every other tree if the masses were to catch on.

Naturally, I had no intention of doing anything (yeah right), then suddenly (read: after an hour of stalking) the incredible guy from the beach appeared behind a tree. The coded combination of looks and gestures are beyond description. They are unmistakable and certain, no whispers of vacillation.

Suffice to say I got a lot closer, but it wasn't until I walked away, thinking much clearer (I won't say what happened in between), that I realized I had seen him before. I scanned mental files of all the new people I had met, in local shops, through friends of friends. What if he was a resident? What if I saw him again in a social setting?

Two days later I walked into a job interview and saw him on the other side of a desk. He stood (how different he looked in clothes), shook my hand and gave me the same look I had seen behind the tree but now with the tiniest little smirk attached. It flashed by in a micro-second but bullhorned volumes. "We've already met in a parallel universe," it said, "with its own measures of status (read: physical virtues), reality, and rules but in this world we don't discuss that one."

He was professional, friendly, even charming. Surprisingly, I was no more nervous than I would have been at any job interview. The dreaded moment had arrived and I lived through it and learned something. Erotic shame can be a powerful aphrodisiac, a low common denominator among foragers of enchanted forests.

In the light of polite society, when civilization or conversation intervenes, the animal level of male bonding evaporates as surely as a dream upon waking. Worlds that can't occupy the same space are guaranteed never to collide. My fear was for naught. The down side was he never gave me a job. Then again, he didn't hire me either.