Skirting Death in Paradise
Lessons in what not to eat from Italian foodies, a cokehead and a German bully on the North Shore
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why Mike wanted to eat the centipede. “Boil watah!” “Boil watah!” barked the barrel-chested German with a graying buzzcut. Our neighbor Mike was drunk again, and hangry. He was the sort of guy who randomly punched his friends with sledgehammer-like fists, temporarily paralyzing their arms. Nobody liked it and they weren’t really his friends. Mike didn’t know this, but everyone else did.
Attending the centipede incident was our motley crew of global surf gypsies. Though none of us had ever met before, the magnetism of riding massive, death-defying waves on Oahu’s famed North Shore is what pulled us together.
It’s a place where unruly chunks of water move fast through deep ocean and lurch up like steep mountains before they slam into the lava reefs protecting the island. It’s also where dreams are fulfilled and smashed, along with boards and bodies, sometimes all in the same moment. Surfers call it the Seven Mile Miracle. It’s a stretch of beach with more world class big wave surf spots jammed into it than anywhere else. It’s the Mecca of big wave surfing, drawing disciples from far and wide.
Our fellow worshipers assembled in a dilapidated flophouse directly across the street from the infamous Sunset Beach. The vibe of our pad felt like the united nations of surfing dirtbags. Flicking open the screen door to our place revealed all the things and smells you’d expect to find when you cram a bunch of dudes together in a house too small for a bunch of dudes.
There was Alejandro, the budding pro surfer from Spain. Thin and wiry, he spoke with the condescension of a sponsored surfer and loved to say, “Stupid Americans,” whenever he caught us watching TV. Midlife crisis Dave from Newport Beach also flitted in and out of the house, hopped up on cocaine most of the time. Randy, the house elder, was a board shaper from Rhode Island who surfed the couch more than the ocean. Then there were the Italian surfers who rode small waves by day and made the best pasta you’ve ever tasted by night. We were all there for different reasons. Some wanted to prove themselves in big waves, some were simply chasing a good time and others were running away from one demon or another back home. And apparently, all of us were there to watch a drunk German do stupid shit.
Mike’s face was now beet red, as if a python was squeezing his lower body, forcing all the blood up into his neckless head. He pounded his iron fists on the table, terrifying the shit out of everyone, while continuing to grunt, “Boil watah!” “Boil watah!” Cokehead Dave readied a saucepan, quickly assuming the role of sous chef. Our band of misfits was about to cook an oversized centipede, just to see if Mike would die.
It’s worth noting the savagery of centipedes in Hawaii. Though Hawaii supposedly doesn’t have any insects that kill, every local has a story about their 300-pound uncle who was bitten by a centipede that made them cry like a baby. The centipede we caught was Jurassic. We wondered what would happen if Mike ate it. Would he writhe around on the floor and squeal like an injured pig or would it send him to his grave? The North Shore is one of those places that tends to put you in life threatening situations on the regular, and that night was no different.
By day, the North Shore is deceptively tranquil. The scent of plumeria rides on the warm trade winds, palms sway, and juicy pineapples get sliced. All of this masks the warfare that takes place out in the waves. One morning, my travel mate Danny and I decided to paddle out at the gladiator pit that is Pipeline. It’s one of the most famous waves in the world because it’s big and beautiful, and because it kills people.
Just the sheer volume of water in the wave packs enough force to disintegrate human bones. All that water thinly veils an ancient lava reef that looks like a bunch of anvils poorly melted together. It’s pocked with holes that connect a series of caves that snake beneath the reef like subway system for fish, eels, and sometimes human bodies. Every winter season, Pipeline takes lives. Some drown by getting held under for too long, others hit their heads on the reef, and some disappear mysteriously in the caves forever. Nothing about the place says let’s go for a surf.
So we do. Because of course, all those horror stories are something that happens to other people, not us. My buddy Danny struggles with most aspects of real life, like holding jobs, acting professional in any way, or going more than twenty minutes without smoking a cigarette. At the same time, his thin frame, cat-like reflexes and quiet approach give him one of the smoothest styles I’ve ever seen. While I was busy catching a bunch of waves, Danny chose to sit deeper in the lineup and wait for a bomb.
After what seemed like forever, a dark lump of water on the horizon started marching and growing toward him, without another surfer in position. It was just Danny and a quintessential Pipeline A-frame about to meet face to face. In that moment, it was his to either fuck up or fulfill a childhood dream. I’ll never forget watching him stroke into that wave from deep, with a casual posture, but laser-focused eyes.
The late morning sun peaked over the Koʻolau mountains, causing thousands of sparkles to skitter on the face of the wave. In one swift and connected move, he transitioned from paddling to feet firmly planted on the deck of his board. As he dropped down the face and began to set his inside rail, I could see the section ahead wedging into a massive barrel. With the intensity brought on by seeing both the size of the tube and deadly reef through the clear water, he committed to the behemoth section. Watching as I paddled over the shoulder, I held my breath. A few seconds later, he glided smoothly over the back of the wave into the channel, hands held like a praying mantis. It was pure style.
My session was the opposite of stylish as Pipeline decided to feed me to the reef for breakfast. After catching a good wave and feeling cocky, paddling back out I realized I was about to be caught inside by a massive set. When this happens, two problems quickly flash through the mind. One is worrying about getting in the way of a local and ruining their ride. The resident alphas at Pipeline tend to view such blunders as attempted murder and behave accordingly in retaliation. It’s fair enough because they too are worried about thing two, the murderous reef. With a bit too much murder on my mind, I picked door number three and duck-dived my board as deep as I possibly could, hoping to tunnel under and through to safety.
The wave picked me up and slammed me on the reef like a WWF wrestler. Bear hugging the rails of my board, I was pinned flat on my back to the bottom. Heavy water violently swished and swirled. It felt like laying down on the bottom of a swimming pool while The Rock stood on my chest and Conor McGregor jiu-jitsu pretzeled my limbs at the same time.
Thankfully, the chunk of reef under my back was more like a flat boulder than pile of bowling balls coated in broken glass. I also got a deep breath before being thrust below, allowing me to stay calm while the buoyancy of my board shot me to the surface. Gasping, humbled, and still shaking, I paddled to the beach, thankful to be back on dry land with the lazy palm trees.
I’m not sure why macadamia nuts ended up in Hawaii from Australia, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t so that a coke head could pry one open in the middle of the night. Dave was on another one of his missions. It was his thing. Do copious lines of blow, let a maniacal idea grip you until it’s either done or the drugs wear off. Last week it was a sporadic, midnight run to Femme Nu, a popular strip club in Honolulu. This time, Dave had realized that a sizable macadamia tree hovered over our house and was dead set on harvesting. It didn’t matter that it was two in the morning. Tonight, “We’re roasting macadamias,” he declared.
There was only one problem. These luscious, buttery tasting things are guarded by a Fort Knox-like shell. At first, our whole mob jumped in to help crack the case. The kitchen was canvased for just the right tool, but nothing seemed to work. After about twenty minutes, we all gave up in favor of sleep, deciding it was more important to surf Sunset Beach than it was to eat its macadamia nuts. Except for Dave. He had the tenacity and focus only displayed by a lion, or a middle-aged coke fiend, picking over his kill.
Dave brought the same mad scientist intensity to boiling water for screaming Mike and the centipede. After all the yelling and fist-pounding, Mike looked like a guy who just walked out of an underground fight club, his face all pulpy and drunk with pain, holding an odd grin. His eyes were open, but he was in some other realm of consciousness. Staring at him, I could see the little boy exiled deep within. I pondered the turning point that must have sent him down a darker path but didn’t have the pieces to complete the puzzle. I couldn’t imagine what our Italian housemates thought of all this.
The recurring joke with the Italians was to ask them every evening where they had surfed that day. Their answer, Freddyland. The irony made us chuckle every time. Freddyland happens to be the smallest and junkiest wave available on a coastline overflowing with big, perfect waves. But to the Italians, who only brought small wave boards with them (to the big wave, big board Mecca), it was really the only sensible option. Around the house, the Italians were mostly quiet and polite, except when it came to food.
Beyond their small wave boards, the Italians also traveled to Hawaii with a 3-gallon jug of extra-virgin olive oil from their grandmother’s farm. The North Shore isn’t a big town, but it does have a rather large grocery store, with a rather large selection of olive oil, most of which is likely from Italy. It’s also important to note that traveling with surfboards, which is akin to traveling with airplane wings, doesn’t ever lead one to think about also carrying along a 3-gallon jug of anything.
To them, food wasn’t just fuel for surfing, it was everything. It was tradition, lineage and terroir — the taste of the ground from which the food is grown. Up to that point in life, I was fine with shoveling whatever food into my mouth made me full, fast and cheap. The Italians had a system for everything with their food. It had to be grandma’s olive oil. Pasta nights, they insisted, must be alternated with salad nights. Garlic, and every other ingredient for that matter, had to be added to the pot in just the right sequence at just the right time. Whenever I offered to buy ingredients or offer a helping hand, my gestures were taken as borderline offensive. They’d quickly wave me off with a swift and firm, “No, no, no, in Italy, we do it this way.” And all this fuss opened up a portal to a food dimension I never knew existed. Every dish they made was a masterclass in the culinary arts. The Italians didn’t know shit about surfing, but they were teaching us everything we needed to know about good food. Mike was doing the exact opposite.
The crew hovered over the pot of boiling water on the stove watching Dave stir the centipede with a chopstick. What started out as a gag was getting real, and quick. Some of the crew really wanted see Mike eat it. Others started waking up to the reality that he might actually die and that they might be held responsible. After all, they just came here to ride a few waves, not go to jail for life. Checking faces around the room, it was a split screen of curiosity and panic tethered by adrenaline.
Then Mike suddenly rolled out of his chair at the kitchen table, his sweaty, oversized body thumping onto the floor, eyes rolling back in his head. Dave immediately turned off the burner and stepped away from the stove muttering something huffy to himself. A wave of relief washed over the rest of the crew, knowing we didn’t have to go through with it. Mike and the centipede laid there limp, one on a dirty linoleum floor, one in hot water. Game over for both.
Apparently for Mike, boatloads of booze and the mayhem of the meal was just too much for the big fella. We left him in the kitchen to sleep it off. Just as quickly as things escalated, the crew downshifted into the living room, watching MTV with Randy. It was just another day of confronting death in paradise.
The following morning, Danny and I packed our bags, making room for the next crop of foreign surfers moving into the house. The weekly exchange. As we motored along Kam highway bound for the airport, we wondered what the next batch of surf gypsies would be eating, and who would be cooking for Mike.
