What I knew about love was to do with normal things. Connections. Past and present. People. Land. Your own stuff, your food, what makes you laugh. A brother. Moonface. Home things. But as for that other condition? I wasn’t prepared. That other thing that jumps on your face, cracks you sideways, sends you spinning to the sky.

Ah, the tooth.

What most seamen want when hitting shore in foreign countries is either to be with a woman or be drunk, preferably both. For me, being a little backward when it came to women, I’d have to hit the bottle first and hold out hope that somewhere along the way there would be a woman. Never stone cold sober. No no.

However, the port of Honolulu was different. What I liked to do in Hawai‘i, which I didn’t do in other countries, was to leave shipmates to whatever they wanted to do, and go off on my own. On the first day I would shop for gifts to take home, walking the pavements and wandering about the marketplaces, where there were coloured fabrics, patterned shirts, shell necklets, and many other souvenir items for sale.

On the next day I would venture out, hoping to come across native men whose language was similar to my own. They were often from families who, a generation before, had been forced to leave their lands when large companies had come in and diverted water away from their gardens to use on their own ever-expanding cash crops. The native men had to leave most of their uplands and plantations and move shoreward, where they attempted to live on fish and coconuts and whatever they could grow. Before long they would be moved on again. The few who were able to get work had to travel many miles by truck to the city and back each day.

In the town, I would come across them raking leaves in the grounds of large hotels or sweeping pavements down in Waikiki. What I came to look forward to at the end of the day during shore leave in Hawai‘i was spending time with these men who seemed to be my kin, learning to speak with them, getting to know about their lives, sharing a cigarette, sharing stories, comparing life’s circumstances.

Late at night, after a few hours of good company, I’d go down to the beach, find a comfortable place, and with sea rolling in and a warm wind blowing, I’d sleep out under the stars, sometimes with a big moon for company. It was what I enjoyed doing after so many days and nights of confinement aboard.

Sometimes, if time allowed, I would leave the towns and seek out the fishermen.