Chapter 51: Confessions of a Wisconsin Beauty Queen
"Tell me how you, Hawk and Matt hooked up," Aly asked as she filled my glass.
In the mood to share, I told her everything. I even told her about the encounter with the Emiko and Kira Kokura.
"I'm so fucking boring," Aly said with awe.
"Noah at the golf course sounded hot and Hawk said you had a drunken thing with two guys down by the river," I said doing my best Chris Farley. I was that drunk.
"The river stuff is all lies," Aly confessed. "One of the two guys passed out drunk and never got out of the car. The second guy puked on the sand a couple of minutes later and then passed out too. But Noah was the real thing and I can get used to Hawaiian boys." She smiled probably thinking of Rudy Kahakaloha.
In my drunken state, I tried to focus. I marveled at how exotic Aly looked as she casually pushed a lock of her sun streaked blonde hair away from her beautiful Asian face. The judgmental part of me said ... dye job totally.
"You came to check me out today," Aly said.
I moaned and covered my face in shame. "Busted," I said trough my fingers.
Aly laughed. "I checked you out a week ago. I'm just a better spy then you."
"You lied about something else besides the river thing," I said returning the embarrassing favor.
"About what?" she asked with a frown taken aback by my abruptness. So was I for that matter. I blamed the wine.
"I Googled you. You lied to us about being the runner up in the Miss Wisconsin contest. You were crowned Miss Wisconsin. You were the runner up in the Miss America contest."
She sat silent.
"Why not tell, why keep it a secret?" my drunk brain demanded to know.
"People treat you different when they find out you're a beauty queen," she said with a crestfallen expression. "When I met Hawk, I wanted him to accept me for more then my looks."
"But you used your good looks to seduce him," I stated flatly.
Her face scrunched up then relaxed and went neutral.
"Okay, here's the God's honest truth," she said. "Hawk is my type, intellectual, tall, blond, athletic and I fibbed about my beauty queen career out of insecurity." Aly rolled her eyes. "This is going to sound sooo stupid. The three of you are so interesting and not just because of the sex thing. Hawk is a globetrotting archeologist, a living Indian Jones and a world class surfer just as a side thing. Matt is a writer, a deep thinker with a sharp wit. You are a practicing artist, beautiful, dark and edgy. Even your tall friend Meka is so fucking intriguing. Alyson Reese the beauty queen? Just didn't seem to fit." She sighed and seem to deflate on her end of the sofa.
My God. This beautiful woman really is insecure. And all this time I thought beautiful people with insecurities were an urban myth.
"Isn't Alyson Reese the genetic doctor ... whatever somewhere in the picture?" I asked almost irritated.
She reached for her glass and took a big gulp.
"Would you like to hear the sad strange and probably very stupid story of a beauty queen from Wisconsin?" she asked sheepishly.
I looked at my wrist pretending I had a watch.
"I got the time and you got the wine."
She nodded refilled our glasses and I listened.
"I grew up in a small town call Hill Forest twenty miles from Madison, Wisconsin. I always wondered about the name of the town because there were no hills anywhere to speak of and no forest for miles around. Perhaps the town fathers were wishful thinkers or maybe they had a sly sense of humor. I would bet on the former though. From its onset, the town of Hill Forest was staunchly Evangelic, ultra conservative with Tea Party leanings leaving little room for ironic humor.
Ballinger College was our little town's claim to fame voted as the number one Evangelical college in the Midwest. Ballinger was my destiny. After high school, I was expected to enroll there, major in something pointless and marry an up and coming Evangelical minister and hope that he gets a TV ministry.
My father is Korean-German and my mother German-Swiss. Both are tall and I got all the height in spades and somehow, I got my mom's blond hair. Being a tall blonde Asian chick in Wisconsin didn't seem so strange. Nearly half the population in Hill forest is tall and blonde, not many Asians though. Everyone assumed I had a little Russian in me so I managed to blend in well enough. Here in Hawaii though, I'm a sideshow freak.
"Just like Debra Cho in your story," I said.
Aly laughed. "Anyway, my destiny was seriously altered when on a lark, I entered the Miss Wisconsin contest. To make a long stupid story short, I won. My family was very happy for me mostly because a scholarship came with the honors of being crowned. Everyone assumed I would put the scholarship toward Ballinger. And I planned to ... right after the Miss America contest in Vegas.
To show you the kind of hick I was, I thought Madison, Wisconsin was wild and breathtaking. But man oh man; the city of Las Vegas was a completely new universe of sin and temptation. Two chaperones, hand picked by my parents from my local church, accompanied me. But a wild hair had worked its way up my butt and I lost them every chance I got.
My bewildered chaperones sent back shocking reports of my deplorable behavior: staying out all night, going to clubs and parties, drinking, making out with guys I hardly knew, but no drugs. I wasn't sure if they tested for drugs in the Miss America Pageant so I played it safe staying away from all that. Anyway, my parents were totally freaked. But since they were so far away, they could nothing about my bad behavior.
"Ironically, I lost to Miss Hawaii. And like every other pageant runner up in history, I burst into tears, but unknown to everyone in TV land, I was crying tears of happiness. I wanted to be first runner up. I didn't want the grand responsibility of being Miss America, I simply wanted to add more scholarship money to my war chest.
"My parents picked me up at the airport. The local press showed up and I was glad for that because it put off the stern lecture that was coming. An impromptu homecoming parade was granted for my return and I waved and blew kisses like a true beauty pageant first runner up. After the parade my parents sat me down for the talk.
The first thing my father asked was, "When do you plan on depositing your winnings into the joint account?"
I told them, "I opened a new account at a different bank.
"What do you plan to do with the Devil's money?" my father asked.
I said, "I suppose that if I had put the money in the joint account then the money would have belonged to God?" I thought the comeback was quite clever. My dad turned red and my mom gave me dagger eyes. Since I was clearly in the shit house I added, "I'm not going to Ballinger. I'm enrolling at State College." As expected, they flipped.
"You are under the Devil's influence for using your body to make money," my father said. My mom stood behind him nodding her head looking disappointed.
"You guys just gave me a stinking parade for using this body!" I screamed at them.
Things got real ugly after that. All of my animosity and dislike for my misogynistic, oppressive, religious upbringing bubbled to the surface. I said some pretty awful things ... and so did they. I walked out of my family's home away from my old life and into my new one. I've been walking ever since."
Aly sat silent for a few seconds before continuing.
"After that day every decision of my life was a direct polar opposite of my Evangelical religious up bringing. I declared myself a science major throwing my hat on the side of secular godlessness. I went out of my way to pick a study that encroached on God's exclusive turf, human genetics. Even my decision to do my doctorate here in Hawaii was because of my childish rebellion."
"Really?" I asked.
"In my sophomore year in high school, I joined the girl's basketball team. I played center of course and we were damn good. The team was invited to the Hawaiian Islands to play in a tournament. Everyone lost their minds when we got the word. My father was dead set against it saying that the Hawaiian Islands was a place good Christian girls should avoid, calling it a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. He complained to the school board and had the trip squashed. You can imagine how popular that made me with the team. Anyway, I finally got to go to Hawaii." Aly sighed and somewhere between a smile and a frown she downed the dregs in her glass and filled it again.
I reached for my glass too and said, "My grandmother once told me that the best tomatoes come from bull shit."
"What?" she said with a laugh.
"If more people used their anger the way you have," I told her seriously, "there would be less dysfunction walking the streets."
"So what about you? Slave to your up bringing too?" Aly asked mostly joking.
It was my turn for a bitter laugh.
"Yeah, pretty much," I said. "Two older brothers and being the youngest and female in a Japanese family, I was expected to achieve in school then marry well, but mostly I was pretty much ignored. As long as my grades were high and I didn't whore around and take drugs, I was left to my own devises. When I declared myself an art major in my second year at San Jose State, my parents paid a lot of attention. They flipped and demanded I pick a useful major like business, science or English, anything but art. In the serious majors, I could find a husband with a good career to take care of me."
"They actually said that?" Aly asked wide eyed.
"No but I bet they thought that. I was so pissed at them. My whole life I've been an artist. From kindergarten on through high school I did nothing but art. How could they be surprised at my choice? I should have whored around and took drugs because apparently no one was paying attention. Anyway, they were so ticked off they refused to pay my next year's tuition. Betty, my best friend at the time, pleaded my pathetic case to her parents and her father offered to cover my tuition. My parents eventually paid up." I sighed and sat back in the lounge chair. I took a sip of wine and then said, "They've come around ... mostly."
"So you're shouting at your family, look at how GOOD I am and I'm screaming at mine look how BAD I am."
"We're a pathetic pair," I said with a hollow laugh.
Aly leaned forward and clinked her glass against mine. We heard footfalls on the wooden steps outside and moments later the guys entered.
Aly said, "Let's get in the hot tub."
Chapter 52 From Room to Room
