Mahu Fire by Neil Plakcy Page B

faggots!’ And then I smelled shit. I looked through the window at the pavement outside the building. A half-dozen paper bags were split open, and there was brown, mucky goo spilling out of them.”
    He handed me a piece of brown paper bag, with writing on it. “There was a note, too.”
    I read, ‘Faggots deserve to die,’ scrawled with a pencil in crude block letters.
    I took notes on everything Robert said, and promised to file a report. All the time he was talking, I kept looking at my watch, worrying that I wouldn’t have enough time to get home, get showered and changed, and pick up my date.
    Harry had encouraged me to invite someone to the Marriage Project party, and I’d deferred until a week before, when I’d been having drinks with my friend Gunter at the Rod and Reel Club, a gay bar in Waikïkï not far from my apartment. I’d mentioned the party to Gunter, complained about having to get into the tuxedo I owned but tried never to wear.
    “I’ve got a tux,” Gunter said. “But you can bet I jump at any chance to wear it. I think men look more handsome in tuxedos than in any other clothes.” Then he smiled at me. “Even better than in no clothes at all.”
    Gunter was a “friend with benefits.” We had sex every now and then, when no one else was available, but mostly we were friends. “Come with me, then,” I said. “Be my date.”
    “Serious?”
    “Serious as a hot dick on a cold night,” I said, repeating back to him one of his favorite expressions.
    Since then we’d talked a couple times about the party. Gunter was about as far from marriage-minded as a guy can get, but the party meant free food and booze and a chance to look his best, and there was nothing wrong with that. I was pleased I’d been able to make him so happy.
    By the time I got home, he’d already left a message on my answering machine, saying he was ready, so I jumped through the shower and started pulling on my tuxedo. When we went to my cousin Mark’s wedding, which was black tie, my parents had bought it for me, over my complaints. “I’m never going to wear this thing again,” I’d said, while my mother supervised the fitting.
    “Every man should have a tuxedo,” she said. “Just in case.”
    I sometimes think she and I live in different worlds. In hers, people go to black tie dinners and dance until dawn, drinking champagne cocktails and flirting like they’re in some old movie. In my world, people commit murder, they force teenage kids into prostitution, and they shoot chickens, which start to stink in the hot sun. The two worlds don’t go together that well.
    I clipped the black satin bow tie on just as I was ready to leave, then stopped to look at myself in the mirror.
    I considered myself lucky to get the best genes from my varied ancestors. Black hair and skin that tans easily from the Hawaiians, a slight epicanthic fold over the eyes from my Japanese grandfather, just enough to make me look exotic and dashing. Solid lines in my face, good cheekbones and a strong chin from my haole grandmother. I’m normally not vain about my looks, figuring it’s all genetics, but that night I had to admit I looked handsome.
    Gunter shared a small house with a roommate, just outside Waikiki proper, behind Diamond Head Elementary. I pulled up in his driveway and walked up the front sidewalk. The orange and yellow hibiscus blossoms on the bushes by his mailbox were already closing up, and the evening sky was shading from pastel blue to lavender above the mountains. The pervasive smell of smoke still lingered, and I hoped we’d get that rain sometime soon. In the distance I heard someone pounding an ipu gourd and chanting rhythmically in Hawaiian.
    Gunter came out the door. “You look gorgeous!” he said, stopping to admire me. “Who knew you dressed up so well?” He put one finger on my chin and turned my head from side to side. “Darling, you need somebody to take you in hand and bring out your