LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 36

Our tour continued to a clothing-optional beach down a short, steep, lava
trail, where I became preoccupied with finding the right level of nudity.
Options ranged from fully fig-leaved to totally naked, to totally
naked and painted. In the drum circle, women were mostly barebreasted, though heavily accessorized. When I asked if this were some
kind of festival, Jeff told me that it was just the weekly Sunday morning
drum circle, held following ecstatic dance.
On the beach, people were drumming, gyrating, smoking, nursing beers,
nursing babies, and sitting in small circles, doing what Jeff said was
“processing.” Given the popularity of polyamory on the Big Island,
processing was a Sunday morning activity as common as drumming or
ecstatic dancing. Processing, as far as I could tell, meant that everyone
talked about every feeling they had about everyone having sex with
everyone else. I had the sense that a certain kind of eye contact was
involved in “processing,” perhaps a type of listening preceded by an
adjective, like “active,” or “patient,” or “radically empathetic.”
Hardly anyone was swimming, but I’ll choose pretty much any activity
over processing, active listening, or a drum circle. I decided to take
advantage of this safe space to swim like a man, in just my board shorts,
while maintaining some kind of shield to indicate that I would be
celebrating my own sexuality as a party of one.
We waded into the thundering surf and swam past the breakers. It was
only when we were just far enough out to make getting back a project
that I realized the ocean was a not a safe space. A strong current pushed
toward a jagged promontory. The shoreline sloped steeply, and you had
to scale a forty-five degree ramp to get clear of the waves before an
insistent undertow sucked you back out.
I watched an older man eating it in the breakers over and over, getting
tossed and slammed like a rag doll, trying to crawl ashore. When some
other naked beachgoers finally pulled him out, his nose was bloody. I
had never seen waves hurt anyone before.

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