Leid Back

A couple of months back, I was feeling particularly awash in bitterness and frustration when I happened upon a notice for a three-hour hula class. Imagine that, thought I. Why not harness all my stress and tension and then unleash it upon a room full of unsuspecting Hawaiians.
"Hey," some might say, "what say you try kick boxing or cock fighting to assuage your pent up hostility?"
And I might answer, "But where, pray thee, could I get a fierce cock on such short notice?"
"True, true," the sages would nod.

Besides, kick boxing would require a whole special outfit which means an extra shopping trip to some hideous sports gear emporium, then the added pressure of regular pedicures so that I'm not kicking my hygienically-challenged feet into some one's face and getting sued for passing on some mutant strain of mersa and lets not forget the addition of multiple loads of laundry so as to keep the white outfit it's very brightest which is why I feel the need to punch someone in the first place.

So off to the hula class I went, unprepared and unapologetic. I was going to learn to hula, dammit, or else. Or at the very least, I would spend an afternoon hopefully surrounded by good peeps.

I rushed so as not to be late. Silly me. They were all late; the students, the instructor, late, late, late. But it didn't seem to matter nor was it acknowledged once they started to dribble in because after all, Hawaiian time is laid back time (think Southern California) and some how it hadn't occurred to me that there might be actual Hawaiians taking hula in Manhattan and that the instructor might also be Hawaiian. So in they sauntered and lallygagged and I followed them snorting and stomping on the inside as we dropped our bags and sloughed off our jackets and waited for class to begin.

Their faces were predominantly Hawaiian, wide with full mouths and strong horizontal noses. I might even say squarish features like Russians, except for the eyes which pleated upwards at the corners into semi-gaiety. Their skin was the color of roasted walnuts and their hair was thick, shiny black, mostly wavy and only on the tops of their heads. If you were to guess, you might suggest Puerto Rican, Cuban, Chinese, even Filipino, but they were a classic mix of Japanese, Chinese, Samoan and others that is Polynesian, that is Hawaiian. The women's bodies were startlingly different with every variety present and accounted for and the men were proud, unabashed and not all gay. There was a married couple in their fifties who hula'd together proving the old adage, "A couple who hulas together, stays together." He was small, much smaller than the more substantially built women of a certain stout stature, and she was small, too, with deep circles under her heavily lidded eyes. There was a scar on her cheek and her expression suggested exhaustion whether she was or not, but she was so beautiful when she smiled that I was reminded that all women are beautiful when they are truly loved.

Within moments the students wandered over and graciously introduced themselves. They had lyrical paperback novel names like Ila and Fawn, Nani and Cecilia, Masaki and Roxanne. Everyone was there; the Young Gay with the rippling biceps; the Old Man who seemed cauterized at the waist but either didn't notice or didn't care; the three Old Ladies and the three Young Gals, the Very Skinny Minis, and the Luscious Zaftig Ones, and lest we forget, the random Howlie Girl from Rhode Island who drives down and back every month for these weekend seminars. They were all present and relaxed and ready to hula and they couldn't have been nicer. Clearly this was no place for my prickly mantle of stress and hostility, so I put it away, gently tucked it into my shoes along with my balled-up socks.

Our teacher, June, was the loveliest and kindest woman I have come across in a long time. She was radiant and calm, not "Hey, man, it's all good" stoner-calm, just contented calm. It was unusual. It was peaceful. It was quietly magnificent.

The second thing I noticed was her age. Probably late fifties or early sixties. And warm, almost sunny almond-shaped eyes with a bow-shaped mouth. She wasn't wearing a leotard or full skirt as some of the other ladies were; big, colorful swaths of lime and yellow Hawaiian leaf or magenta and lilac flower printed cotton fabric gathered at the waist with large elastic bands adding at least 15 pounds to every waist. But no one cared an iota because there were no egos in the room. There didn't even appear to be any egos tucked into their shoes or waiting in the lobby for them to assume once class was over. Even the Very Gay Man had a certain sweetness scarcely found in the West Village as any Mary will tell you.

June had very short, close cropped hair and wore simple black pants and a long sleeved cream colored jersey top. No make up and no jewelry but for a simple gold chain necklace with a charm so tiny I couldn't make it out. Totally un-"dancerly", she did nothing to call attention to the fact that this was her class and she was the instructor. She never raised her voice and yet, we listened. We lined up in three staggered rows of four or five across and faced the giant mirrored wall, some 25 feet high. Behind us the opposite wall was glass, allowing for the city's humbled downtown skyline to share this crisp day's white cartoon clouds and sunshine with us. After a brief moment of June asking, "Now which dance did we leave off on?" and, "Should we do the Hi'iaka this time?" and "Does anyone remember how the arms start off with this one?" (because no one had written it down, including June), we began.

"Hula," June commanded sweetly and everyone began to move our arms and feet at once. June alone sang in Hawaiian, her clear, round alto voice providing the only music we would need. No boom boxes, no amplification, just her actual, incomparable singing voice. I jumped in with both feet and arms akimbo, doing my best to keep up from the comfortable anonymity of the back row. My arms moved and dropped my hands into certain spots in the air for very brief moments before moving them on to the next place, always moving, liquid, moving, sweeping, never resting for more than an instant in any one place in time. Simultaneously, my feet moved constantly in a set side-to-side pattern whose groove became automatic until the occasional curve ball was thrown, but always back to the familiar shuffle. Like a room full of extremely graceful airport runway signal flag wavers, we danced.

Sometimes, when a new dance began, a large orange gourd was lifted and dropped, slapped and knocked in time to the chanting. Sometimes just the sounds of our feet rocking and digging into the floor, heels up and down, lent us the percussion for these mighty dances about strength and courage. Fists hit palms in time to stomping as we honored Pele, the fierce goddess of volcanoes. Expressions were equally fierce and focused and then for the next dance, our arms and hands became breezes, flowers and gentle rain, and our faces relaxed and smiled. One dance sings of effortless confidence and self-assurance: "I am a beautiful dancer, I have bright eyes and cheeks, graceful hands, lovely shoulders and I have made a lei for you with all my heart. I embrace you and give it to you with Aloha." It was during these dances that June never had to remind anyone to smile, because everyone was already smiling.

Occasionally June stopped to explain in English, "Your hands are birds, this sweep is the mountain, when hands come down around your neck, you are putting on a lei." Could my feet possibly be the waves? Who is the lei from? Why are we saying no to the god and the god of what? I had so many questions and I kept them all to myself because everyone else seemed to know the answers. But it was OK. I just replaced one question with the next, letting them leap frog over one another and then out of my head and kept dancing.

At certain parts of certain dances, everyone joined in singing the long, meandering, Hawaiian phrases which sounded to me like a mellifluous Native American dialect, with cadences and melodies sounding similar to those I recall from the TV show "Northern Exposure." June was up at the front, dancing away, heels digging, hips rocking and smiling. I hadn't expected to encounter sex so unabashedly during my hula class, but there it was. Hands stretched up, clasped behind our heads, upper bodies tipped back, smiling, eyes to the heavens, hips forward with right toe outstretched and pointed as we rocked side to side like Rita Hayworth nestling back into a haystack. And there's June, so fully engaged with her sensuality in this moment that I couldn't help but imagine her really enjoying a good roll in the hay. Hubba, hubba.

At this point I couldn't believe my luck in falling in with this merry band of hula dancers. I think it's pretty safe to say that Hawaiians are the calmest, kindest and most relaxed people west of the Hudson River. And yet, here they were in Manhattan on a windy, frigid Sunday afternoon. "What are all of you people doing here?" I wanted to say, "and why did you leave your sunshine and papaya filled oasis of mellowness and beauty to come to the epicenter of crassness and strife?" And why are you all so seemingly happy about it?

It took some time but I managed to piece a few things together by watching and listening during the "five minute" break which lasted twenty. I learned that this group of dancers had been dancing together all year long. They were students, housewives, employees and entrepreneurs and they'd been meeting for practices between classes because apparently there is a hula exam next month and a performance in May. They were given handouts at one point with song translations and would be required to translate as part of their exam. They were friendly, as is a group unified by a common goal, but not necessarily friends. I learned that June lives in Chicago and flies to New York once a month to teach beginners on Saturdays and advanced dancers on Sundays. And, you guessed it, this was a Sunday. But I had held my own over there in the back row and June had been delicately supportive and occasionally complimentary. I had felt no pressure, no competition and no judgment from a single soul in the room, including June.

And then I learned that June is a Zen Buddhist priest.

Ahh-ha. Got it.

A cloud passed and the sun strengthened and brightened with the vivid clarity it masters only in the early spring and fall in New York. The room filled, brimming so completely with simple voices and simple smiles, and sex and strength and grace and beauty that I thought the walls might begin to gently glow, buzzing from such unfettered joy.

I didn't know what else to do, not sure if anyone else had noticed. My eyes welled up and a hitch crept up my throat but I stopped myself. Then I turned back to June, my sexy Zen Buddhist priest Hawaiian hula instructor, and I smiled and kept dancing.