This latter knowledge always astonished Kelly, for while the girls were with him they could think of little else, and if the world had women who were better at sex than the wahines who came over to Hawaii on the Moana Loa, he concluded they must be real tigers.

Invariably they confided how wretched their lives had been with their haole husbands, how the men were not interested in them and how unsatisfactory sex had been. Pipty cent too bloody takai.” And they passed to other equally important topics.Īs Kelly became better acquainted with American girls, he felt sorry for them. “You speak da kine da kine? Right, blalah, price too moch. “Oh!” Florsheim sang in a high, descending wail of recognition. “Whassamatta you, stoopid? You akamai good too much da kine da kine,” Kelly growled, adding with a chopping motion of his right hand, “Da kine chop chop.” “Kelly blalah, wha’ da kine da kine you speak?” Florsheim asked idly. “Me t’ink high too much, da kine pipty cent,” he mused. Of course he must also speak degenerate pidgin, as on the afternoon when Kelly was protesting the price of cube steak at the corner drug store. No other was allowed, and if a man couldn’t play sakura, he couldn’t be a beachboy. Any beachboy was hailed as the day’s hero who could scrape together enough money to buy a fresh box of sakura cards, and through the long hot days the gang would sit beneath coconut umbrellas, playing the silly game. The other pastime that he and Florsheim loved was sakura, a crazy Japanese card game played with little black cards that came in a wooden box with a picture of cherry blossoms on the cover.

Hawaii by james a michener