Ewoks & Alphas

“E-W-O-K” or Easy-Women-Of-Kailua is what the shirts-off, tanned boys would chuckle over green glass-bottles and reggae bumping from the stereo, those humid nights in Kapaa Quarry – that dump road that connects the Maunawilli-Pali-side to Kalaheo High. The undeveloped, marshy forest back there is where we’d be off-roading in the day, my white cousin looking just as brown as the rest of the boys after an afternoon tossed out of that lifted-bed. Noa was a good driver – always kept control and was a mechanic by trade – luckily no one really got hurt but he’d drop off the girls to wait with the beers and gas-station-bought-bentos if he was taking the boys for a rough rider. He’d be the one to teach me to drive (biting his tongue the whole time at my jerking the stick and my timidness to change lanes) although I’d never remember his teaching on how to change a tire or even how to deal with oil (I still suck at that).

“That’s why I knew you weren’t from here, baby,” the shark-sleeved tatoo wrapped around the shoulder, “You were NOT easy and you still give me shit sometimes.” Big grin.

Fun seekers. Rebellious for show. Flirty and bisexually experimental – that’s more the term. Ewoks were what I would experience as extra- confident, soft faced, sporty, beachy-chicks with sexed bodies and that play-babe-manipulative minds. My cute classmates sneaking a little whif of powder in the bathroom from each-other’s clevage with eyes on me like candy - was a bit shocking for me that first week of Kalaheo High in 04. Definitely not what I saw during the school days at the private schools I attended in Maui. Nor the constant cops on campus. Students stealing car parts from the teachers that failed them, students gambling, the weed (which wasn’t legal at all then), but mostly those sirens that came for the broken bones and bloody faces the guys would give each other every week. The fights just for being born a race (yes, local vs white) were sparked at random but it was avoidable if you knew how to shut up and not look at the guy puffing his chest out claiming blood land. However, the fights for love – those were deadly. That chill rising on the back of the neck - there is no way to stop the animal possession that takes over. A Hawaii boy at 16 is often with weapon hands in Hawaii’s fighter culture.

“Dude, I just asked her for the notes from class – that’s it, I didn’t touch her – ” was all the freckled Oregon kid got out of his gentle mouth before his jaw was snapped and his body lay limp, fractured rib, and the broken arm bone sticking through the skin. Clayton, a charming, handsome, local surfer didn’t give a damn if you were his classmate, friend, cousin – if it looked like his girl might secretly have something for you – five seconds is all you had. And if you a white talking to a brown man’s chick in these islands, even cops might choose not to save you in time… dark blood runs thicker than white man’s law here. In fact, my parent’s generation had a whole “kill haole day” designated to it – light skinned, well spoken, not born and raised would run home from school to flee the beatings, the insults, the sexual humiliation that was common entitlement in many Oahu towns where “upper-class” white neighborhoods were mixed into the local middle-class public schools. And from this, the social survival skill arose – the uncommitted sexual playmate, the Ewok – making herself accepted and free from the wars of alpha military white, alpha military black, and the territorial local alpha males. Not that there is anything to judge at that point… some things are so subconsciously functioning that we just must…

womanhood…

Escalates in social arrest, in desperation, in the racial alliance pressure that can inpregnant (trap), educate (be bullied for), segregate (for family alliance) or empower (for good or for evil) when teens become EWOKs… sexually aware of their power/burden/beauty/painful fate of women hood…

*Please note that this read is meant to be entertaining, not necessarily factual