Hotel Honolulu

77 The Last Laugh

On another average day at the hotel, under the lovely sponged- looking skies of Honolulu, a young woman checking in asked for a discount because she was a travel writer. Guests could be ruthless, but ones claiming to be writers were the worst. I was summoned to the front desk to adjudicate.

"What's the most recent thing you published?"

She did not say, I did a think piece for Forum on penis size. But she might as well have.

At lunch I was told an elderly couple from Baltimore, the Bert Clambacks, had wet their king-size bed; another couple, the Wallace Caulkins from Missouri, a late check-out, had swiped the hotel's terry-cloth robes. Keola had put a bumper sticker on the staff bulletin board, The Only Thing I'm Hooked On Is Jesus, and Kawika countered with one of his own: Hawaiian Sovereignty. Rose said she wanted to change her name to Meredith. "Or Madison. Or Lacey. Or Brittany. But not Rose. And also I want a DVD player." Nigel Gupta, a guest from California, defying the rules (No Glass Receptacles), brought a jug of ice water, a bottle of whiskey, and a glass tumbler to the pool. He tipped over his table, resulting in so many scattered glass shards we had to close the pool. Among the guests who protested, Bill and Maureen Gregorian demanded a reduction in that

day's rate and threatened a class-action lawsuit, since the pool was unusable. The elevator jammed; some guests were trapped for fifteen minutes; the thing itself was out of service for three hours. Guests had to be reminded not to hang wet bathing suits from the room lanais. A homeless man was reported wandering the corridors.

The homeless man was Buddy Hamstra. It was an example of how grim he had begun to look, how careless in his mode of dress, that the owner of the hotel, a multimillionaire in a dirty bathing suit and a Paradise Lost T-shirt, was mistaken for a tramp who had temporarily strayed from his shopping cart and his plastic bags.

Everyone found him funny; that became a theme. Without any effort on his part, he was rediscovered as a colorful character. This unasked-for comeback was so bewildering to him it made him furious, loudly so, resulting in more notoriety. "The old Buddy," people said, not realizing that his illness had made him seem clownish.

I waited for him to give me more material for his memoirs. "I'll tell you the rest later," he had promised. But there was no more. There was only pantomime, his blundering and shouting, and this unexpected excess energy made Buddy funnier than ever. He was angry at the world. Exasperated outrage is often the best comedy, for a protester's futile howls make him sound like a victim, the natural butt of a joke.

His cronies, constantly quoting him, attributed Buddy's new mood to the fact that he had found a method for getting rid of Pinky — to divorce her, give her some money, and send her away. The prospect of his new

freedom, instead of concentrating his mind and making him lighthearted, confused him and made him explosive and forgetful. He had difficulty with names. He called Pinky, at various times, Stella and Momi. His friends found this hilarious.

Peewee said, "We're having dinner on the lanai. Someone asks Buddy to pass the salt. He just picks it up and drops it" — dwops it — "into the serving bowl of soup with a big splash."

"Is that funny?"

"We couldn't stop laughing."

To someone who asked for pepper, he made a big sprinkling gesture with the heart-shaped jar of Stella's ashes. "Just like the old days!" his friends said.

The mayor of Honolulu visited the hotel on a publicity tour of Waikiki, which was filmed for a promotion by the Hawaii Visitors Bureau. Buddy gave the mayor a lei, a raffia bag containing a jar of Peewee's salsa, some macadamia nuts, and a Paradise Lost T-shirt.

Buddy poked my arm and told the mayor, "He wrote a book!"

A microphone was brought over. Buddy said, "It's getting drunk outside," and farted. The mike picked it up and amplified it, making it sound like a car backfiring, so percussive that people jumped.

The mike also picked up Buddy's explaining to the mayor, "I had an intestinal bypass, your honor. My table muscle."

Buddy turned his big serious doggy-jowled face to the camera as the bystanders laughed.

On another public occasion, the Waikiki Hotel Association's Annual Prize-Giving, at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Coral Ballroom, Buddy stepped up to receive an award for the Hotel Honolulu: honorable mention for dessert, Peewee's coconut cake. He stumbled, took a fall, knocked over a tub of anthuriums, and landed near the first row. Snatching at the flowers for balance, he ended up on his back with fistfuls of blossoms. That was the memorable detail that made people laugh.

He became famous for his public stumbles. He fell at a Christmas party, collapsed on the beach at a surf-meet blessing ceremony, keeled over at the Merry Monarch Festival. He was not hurt, but in any case his new fame as a clown outweighed any of the injuries.

Our Aloha Chili Cook-Off entry was Peewee's Serious Flu Symptoms Chili. Buddy went up and down the street among the chili stalls, sampling the competition. When a camera crew from KITV asked him for his comments, he vomited on their hand-held microphone. Claiming to be dizzy, he sat down on a small girl's origami. Hearing that we lost, he screamed abuse at the judges, one of whom was the governor's new wife.

He gained more weight. He let children poke his arm to show how they left dents and finger marks in his puffy flesh. With children around him, prodding his body, he seemed dazed but happy, like a big hairy toy.

"Pinky's agreed," he said to me. I knew what he meant. He added that, apart from the money, her only stipulation was that she be granted United States citizenship. She had now satisfied the residence requirement.

When her citizenship application had been approved, and the swearing-in day came, we all went to the federal building downtown, to make Pinky believe we were on her side, but in reality to support Buddy. Lester Chen, Kawika, Peewee, Tran, Trey, Wilnice, Fishlow, Keola, some of the girls from Housekeeping, Puamana, Sweetie, Bula and Melveen, his best friends Sandford, Willis, and Sparky Lemmo, and Rose and me — nearly the whole Hotel Honolulu family attended.

"Think of it as a farewell ceremony," Buddy said, helplessly farting, drowning out his own words with his backfiring.

We watched as Pinky, in a new dress and wearing a white hat and white gloves, took the oath and saluted the flag with a throng of others. She looked serious, no longer a young picture bride of long ago from the Great Expectations Agency video, but a grown woman, thin-faced, her big teeth bulging behind her lips like a mouthful of food.

Seeing Buddy staring, she turned away.

"Best sex I ever had," Buddy said. "Know why? 'Cause she's wacko." His eyes were glazed, perhaps with the memory of something unspeakable. Then, seeming a little jarred by this, he said, "I'm not going to get married again. Just play the field."

Even haggard, he looked happier than I had ever seen him, beaming at the prospect of his new freedom.

The citizenship ceremony was much more heartfelt and solemn than I had expected. I was impressed by Pinky's upright posture, the tremulous way she held her head, her nervous clasped hands. There was pride, too, in the others, an assortment of people old and young, mostly Asian, with a sprinkling of Pacific islanders and a few grateful-looking Europeans. Their seriousness and close attention made the simple occasion into something momentous and gave allegiance — a word that was repeated — a powerful meaning. New Americans — Pinky, of all people!

I prayed that Buddy would not pull one of his stunts, to upstage Pinky. I was so intent on this prayer and the progress of the ceremony I did not hear him fall, though I heard the loud laughter and "It's Buddy!"

In the commotion I saw Pinky staring in fear. The citizenship candidates looked alarmed, as if a protester had invaded the ceremony. I did nothing. I felt only annoyance, the sort a repeat offender inspires in his long-suffering friends. I raised my eyes and sighed.

But Buddy's closest friends were laughing hard. There was a variety of laughter peculiar to people who found Buddy's stunts funny — the rowdy hooting of oversize boys. The explosive, defiant sound of it was intended to irritate anyone not in sympathy, those who found Buddy childish.

Pinky bit her lip. She turned away from Buddy and toward the Stars and Stripes, her hand raised to complete the Pledge of Allegiance.

Buddy lay among the metal folding chairs he had brought down with him in his fall. He was vaguely smiling, as though in triumph: froth on his lips, his cheeks splashed with his own green slobber.

"Give him mouth-to-mouth," someone said.

"That's just what he wants you to say. Stop encouraging him."

"Cut it out, Buddy. It's not funny anymore."