Maybe I Had the Wrong House?

I had this kind of weird, slightly disturbing, but yet highly amusing situation happen to me on Friday. It was weird because it was a human moment that involved involuntary false assumptions and dead wrong perceptions of a harmless situation.

I have suggested that there exist sticky situations, particularly those for which one has volunteered, that for all the risks involved are ultimately exhilarating, even life enhancing. There are others, usually unbidden, that are merely creepy. Although one survives them, one feels violated by them and they leave a bad taste in one’s mouth

My girlfriend of several months Rain and I had made plans to see each other after she got off work and we would have her awesome to have house to ourselves for several hours, a rare treat when you live in a community.

About an hour before I was to be at her house I drove down our two lane road to the country store to get a snack and do the right thing and pick up the always in demand twelve pack.

About halfway to the store, someone who looked like Rain came barreling down the road in a car that sure looked like Rain’s in the opposite direction. In the seconds as we recognized each other with a small fleeting wave and then passed each other, I noticed that she was really having what appeared to be a severe yuk um up with someone in her car. I couldn’t see the passenger, but what’s not to like about a deep belly laugh, while tooling down the coastal road?

I need to get in on that funny, I thought.

About an hour later I got to the house, or I should say, a house that either looked like Rain’s house or is where Rain’s house should have been. I parked on the street so I was kind of quiet coming up the driveway, and halfway up the stairs I threw out the apprehensive and uneasy “helloooo?”.

I perceived that there was some rustling or confusion on the porch above about what to them was possibly a stranger intruding on their privacy.

Fuck! I panicked that I had the wrong house, as they all do kinda look alike in these parts.

I should mention that at the top of these stairs in a small porch where several banana trees give enough privacy to allow Rain and I make an the occasional attempt at partner yoga and a lengthy savasana.

But lo and behold, as I looked down to our special yoga mat, there was a slightly tipsy Rain in a  skimpy and scanty little number, looking at the computer of a workmate named Roberto’s art pictures.

Now this workmate is a serious player, mind you.  He is also quite a bit younger than Rain and several decades younger than me and in an interim kind of way, he is her boss. Roberto has been on a roll the past several weeks with the yoga babes that fly here from LA.

Over beers, Rain and I have heard extensively about the exhaustion he faces with so much sexual drama.

It should beg the question of why on earth would these two be so relaxed on the mat together?  

Simple answer: I must have the wrong house.

I had trouble comprehending this image, because it was exactly where Rain and I  usually sit, were probably getting ready to sit, yet someone else, not me, was hanging out in Papa Bear’s spot.

Uh, wrong house? A Rain look a like? Right house, another vortex?  I thought.

Maybe a doppelganger?

They honestly seemed taken back that I was standing there. Rain kinda scooched a few inches further away from Roberto; not that they embracing or anything, mind you. They just looked very content and comfortable with each other, like this wasn’t the first time that simply good friends were just hanging out in tropical bliss. And really what is the matter with that?

The fascinating thing to me was that this slight scooching and the surprised delight at my presence were so involuntary, so instinctive.They were feeling instincts so deeply rooted in the cellars of human consciousness, so fundamentally human.

Maybe embarrassment, maybe some slight vague discomfort triggered the body’s autonomic nervous system causing it to default into automatic mode and their faces reddened with that special guilty blush of the completely innocent.

Through yoga, I have learned that the human/animal autonomic nervous system has two parts: the sympathetic "fight or flight" and the parasympathetic "rest and digest" or "feed and breed" system.

It was like their brains knew that the whole scene kinda looked bad and their bodies reacted accordingly- sympathetically.

It is an entirely understandable and inherently unavoidable instinctual reaction when one finds oneself having a painful feeling of humiliation and distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior, even though there was absolutely no wrong or foolish behavior.

It has been going on so long in the human experience that it brought to mind an episode in the Garden of Eden, buried in the mists of time, when God came home one day and finds his people wearing fig leaves.

Who is this couple?

Where the fuck am I?

The woman who looked like Rain got up off the yoga mat and sat next to me at the table. This lady, if if it was Rain, and it sure looked like her, then gave me a dramatic hug.

As far as I knew, I was the stranger and she was giving a meaningful hug to someone who had just meandered on in to a stranger's house with a six pack in each hand.

Huh? Is this a movie?

Maybe even you unhappy reader;  maybe even you may be at a point in your movie one day, whereas you require an exit strategy. Should, as sometimes happens, the person that you are seeing, does something, well, awkward.

With as  much experience as I have in these matters,  I am all too aware that one can neither split or force the offending party to decamp without precipitating a hellish, gut wrenching, guilt ridden, tear splattering scene.

AWKWARDNESS WE DON'T NEED HONEY BUNNY!

Uh, in times like this my friends, it is more than time to do the ye ole Leake skedaddle.

Wanting to avoid a scene and really there was no scene to make, as they were just hanging out, and I had the wrong house, or the wrong Rain. But how to get out of there and get to the real Rain in the real Rain house?

Over a few beers, four seemingly endless hours of small talk ensued and finally/luckily, Rain asked me if I could I take Roberto home, as she was too drunk to do it.

Awesome! Exit strategy without the drama!

I waited in the car for what seemed liked 15 minutes while they evidently had a final discussion and Roberto got in the car and said that Rain was mad at me for not saying goodbye.

How did they get to talking about the dude who had come to the wrong house?

WOO-WOO!

This part of Hawaii can be so strange, so many parallel universes, that I didn’t know what to make of this twilight zone moment. Was the situation, were they even real?

Now, looking back, I can’t even remember where the house is where this (maybe) happened.

But tomorrow I am going to find it and hope I didn’t miss several days.

Alas, I rewind.

I hope it is still going to be Friday again and I am going to go to the country store and the real Rain and I are going to hang out afterwards, you know, like in an Einstein time warp.

Rewound time. We are gonna do a do-over. We're gonna try this thing again.

In other news:

Part of the old inner circle comes back for a visit. Here Jaimie and Brendan, who have been cheffing it up in Wyoming and as of late Saint John's VI, join Lilly and me for a visit, on their way to chef it up in Kauai. Look forward, sweet reader, when we go to visit them in their new digs on that beautiful island

Brother Charles came for a surprise visit in April. Here we caught up on the hike out to Shipman Beach

The lava flow 61G continues to dramatically flow. I have hiked out the~10 miles four times, here with my friend Mike. Never get tired of it. Different every time.

People come by sea...

by air...watch Helicopter View August 19,2016

to see the Big Island getting bigger. Here the new delta known as Kamokuna. At the time of these photos, the new area was judged to be 12.9 acres by the USGS.

When does non-conformity become conformity? There is a certain non-conformist uniform that is worn by some in the tribe here in Puna, including, but not limited to: man-buns, glass only water bottles, massive sleeve tattoos on twenty something yoga babes, man bags filled with essential oils and all manner or crystals, beads and trinkets draped from extremities.

So when a contrarian like me puts on a party shirt like this and leaves the man bun at home, it never fails to become a chick magnet. The approaching attitude is often "check you out with this....uh...this...this shirt!. 

I was wearing the shirt at a sort of costume party recently and a young lady wanted to know if I was Conway Twitty? 

Although I have to give her kudos for even knowing who Conway Twitty is, after I said uh....no, she became confused and said "so are you just dressing up like you...you know, do you dress like this everyday"?

Here visiting former volunteer Jaime, a calculus teacher from New York, has a chuckle at, what is it, a conforming non-conformist? 

 As this site serves as a diary of sorts, here is Tyler at Open Mike Night giving me a bit of a ribbing.

Tyler Chef Ted Standup

Thanks for stopping by