Ohana Ch 01

In Hawai'ian, "ohana" means "family." But they say it means more. It means not only the people you're related to, but the people you most care about, who make up your world. It is supposed to be the most sacred bond there is. I believe it, because for the shortest time, I felt it myself.

During World War Two, I was stationed on a cruiser in the Pacific. I am a Black man, but was passing for white. My father was Hispanic and my mother a light-skinned Negro, and since I inherited my father's hair and surname, I was able to get shipboard assignments that were closed to black sailors at the time. Of course, I was still too dark-skinned to suit most of my shipmates. My only friend on board was a big Hawai'ian named Malu Pahukula. We were both assigned to artillery, manning the big cannons, and often found ourselves working together. Because we were the only two non-whites on board, we became good friends. When we docked in Pearl Harbor, he took a day's shore leave to visit his family. "Come on along," he said, and so I did. He told me there'd be swimming, so I brought a pair of shorts that would serve as swim trunks.

His brother picked us up at the gate in a battered Packard, and we drove up the west coast of Oahu for about an hour. He turned off the road and we drove through some sugar cane plantations for a while, emerging on the coast.

In celebration of Malu's return, the family was having a luau, which I found out was a sort of outdoor feast featuring a pig that had been roasted in an underground pit. The food was plentiful, and Malu introduced me to the forty or fifty people who were there. They were all brothers or sisters or aunts or uncles or cousins, and I'd completely given up keeping the relationships straight after about the tenth introduction. "It doesn't matter," Malu said. "We're all ohana. And because we serve together on a ship, you're my warrior-brother, so you're ohana, too. So enjoy yourself."

After an hour, I began to relax. Around us was convivial chatter, all of which was in Hawai'ian, of which I understood not a single word. But the language itself was like singing, all flowing rhythms and music. The festivities reminded me of the church picnics my family attended back when I was growing up in Mississippi. Everybody was dressed in swimming clothes -- baggy trunks for the men and modest one-piece swimsuits for the women, as was the custom of the time -- and we'd swim in the ocean and then rinse the salt off with a fresh-water shower set up on the beach. The only ones without swimwear were the children, who scampered around nude, boys and girls alike. None of the women looked really comfortable in her swimwear, and I suspected that they seldom wore bathing suits when strangers weren't around.

One girl in particular caught my fancy. She was pure Polynesian, like all the attendees but me, and looked to be in her mid-teens, with small firm breasts filling out the top of her swimsuit. Her hair was long, straight, and as black as black could be. Her eyes were dark, too, with the slight fold of the Oriental that marks so many Oceanic peoples. She had beautiful legs, long and thin, and graceful hands. I asked Malu who she was. "That's Lani. She's my cousin. Actually, she's my cousin's daughter. It doesn't matter."

"How old is she?"

"She's going to be nineteen in September. I think she's probably the smartest one in the family. She reads the paper, and listens to the radio all the time. And she's the best dancer of us all."

At that point, the sun was setting, and some of the family got out musical instruments, including a strange sort of guitar that the guitarist held in his lap and played with a slide. There were also ukuleles, a fiddle, a kind of flute, and drums of different sizes and tones. While the musicians played, several woman and a few men danced to the sensuous sounds.

Then some other women came out, dressed in a sort of sarong. They moved to an open area that served as a stage, and started dancing the hula as an older man sang a traditional song in a voice that slid from tenor to falsetto as effortlessly as the women danced. I was spellbound.

Manu came over and asked me how I was doing. "I'm doing fine, thanks. Is that the traditional hula?"

"Well, it's the best we can do. A lot of those traditions were lost when you haoles took over. But the old people say that we have the spirit right."

"I'm not a haole! I'm colored!"

"Well, to us, you're haole, just the brown kind. It's a culture thing, not a skin thing. But tonight, you're ohana, too. We'll prove it to you."

"I sort of expected hulas to be danced by ladies in grass skirts and cocoanut bras, like the movies."

He made a face. "That's for the tourists. This is da kine. The real thing. But now you'll see something."

And indeed I did. Lani came onstage, dressed in a loose-fitting silk sarong, and began to dance. If I thought the other women were graceful, it was nothing compared to her. Her hands and arms and hips moved in sensuous patterns, telling a story in a language I could not understand, but I knew that it was a beautiful one. And through the sheer fabric, I glimpsed a body that was just starting to ripen into womanhood. Her small breasts pressed against the fabric but moved underneath it, unrestrained by a bra. She turned slowly, and I caught a glimpse of her nude body through the fabric, silhouetted in the light of the tiki torches. Her hands traced languorous arcs in the air, palms up and then down. There was not a single gesture that was licentious or suggestive, but the overwhelming impact of sensuousness left me deeply stirred. I found myself dabbing the tears from my eyes.

"See? I told you she was good."

"You're right, Manu. I've never seen any dancing like that."

"And you probably will never see it again. The tourists don't want that sort of dancing. They just want dancers to shake their hips and their tits."

"They're idiots. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"See, you're thinking Hawai'ian already! C'mon, brah, let's get some drinks."

Due to the language barrier, I spent most of my time with Malu, Lani, and a few others who could speak English. Lani, in particular, kept checking on me from time to time to make sure I felt at home. I complimented her on her dancing, and she blushed. "We women learn to dance as soon as we learn to walk. Men, too. I'll do more dancing later. You will like it, I'm sure." This she said with a wink and a smile.

As the evening progressed, I noticed a distinct change in the atmosphere. Was it my imagination, or were people flirting more with each other? There seemed to be a lot more hugging and kissing than before, especially after all the children were put to bed. The sun must have been down for three hours when the musicians and dancers returned to their places.

One of the older men got up and addressed the crowd, speaking in Hawaiian. At once, people started removing their bathing suits. I looked at Malu, and he smiled and nodded to me, even as he was slipping off his own trunks. So I did the same. I was worried that the sight of all this female skin would get me hard, but then I noticed that most of the men were already at least half erect. Malu's own penis was big and thick, in proportion to his frame, and already standing out proudly.

There were six dancers, all naked. Three were men, and three were women. One of them, the slimmest and most beautiful, was Lani. My heart leapt as I beheld her naked body for the first time, with her young breasts and the slightest tuft of black hair over her vulva. I could feel my cock swelling to hardness without me touching it at all. The musicians started to play, and the dance began. This time, it was frankly erotic, with the dancers caressing themselves and each other. All three cocks were hard, bobbing as the men danced. The men would stroke the girls' breasts, pinching the nipples, as the girls would make circles of their thumbs and forefingers and slip them over the men's cocks. My own cock was so hard and sensitive that I couldn't bear to touch it, for fear of cumming.

I noticed that the audience, lying on blankets on the sand and watching the performance, were also paired off, man and woman, caressing each other but taking care not to cause the men to ejaculate. As they fondled each other, they continued to watch the dance, which was getting bawdier by the minute. Now the girls were plunging their fingers into their cunts as they danced. The boys moved up behind them and cupped the girls's breasts as their cocks rubbed the area between the girls's vaginas and assholes.

I realized that I was watching something extraordinarily rare: a fertility or mating dance of the sort that had been practiced on these islands for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and still took place out of sight of Western eyes. I desperately yearned to be on that stage myself. Although I had always thought of myself as strictly heterosexual, I found myself looking at the bouncing penises of the young men as much as the jiggling breasts of the girls.

When I thought I could bear no more, the music changed. The stringed instruments and the flutes fell silent, and there was only the pulse of the drumming. The boys and girls switched places, with the girls now behind the boys. An older woman with large, low-hanging breasts came up to them with a large wooden bowl. The men stood before it and, as we all watched, each girl stroked her partner's cock until it erupted in a flood of jism, spilling into the bowl. Then she set the bowl on a table and, squeezing her breasts, expressed a little milk into it. Then all the men in the audience got up, their own cocks leaking pre-cum.

Malu came over and took my hand. "Here's where we come in, Mike. Just do what I do." We stood in line with the men, stroking our dicks to keep them hard. As each man came up to the bowl, the older women masturbated him until he came, adding his own load to the bowl. After all the sexual tension, I came in a flash, the intensity of the orgasm causing my knees to weaken, and I sagged momentarily. Then I recovered and relinquished the bowl to the next man standing with his own cock aching for release. There were a few women in line, too, and I wondered what they were doing there, but soon found out. They were lactating, and each added a drop or two of mother's milk to the creamy mixture in the bowl.

After all the men had cum, the woman filled the bowl with oil and mixed it into the cum and milk. Then she said some sort of prayer or incantation, and set it down in the middle of us. Each man anointed a woman with the oil, spreading it onto her skin and rubbing it in. Then she did the same for him. The symbolism was plain: two life-giving fluids, male and female, mixed together to sanctify the union of man and woman. When my turn came, Lani was beside me and asked me to be her "partner" although she didn't use that term, but a Hawaiian one instead. I smeared the mixture onto her lovely little breasts, her arms, her beautiful legs, her pussy, her ass, and her back. Then she took some and gave me the same treatment, taking more time than necessary with my cock. I was getting a little bit hard again, and she smiled and hugged me. Then she went away, and another woman came up and hugged me.

That was the start of what was a grope-fest that must have been an hour long or so. The sight of all those bodies, male and female, shining with oil in the torchlight, is a memory I'll take to my grave. The sexual tension was always in the background, but since all the men had just climaxed, the edge had been taken off our lust. Instead were warm feelings of love between all of us. We men could hug and kiss women, relishing the feel of their silky-smooth bodies on our own, without feeling the urgent need to force our cocks into them. A woman might take my hand and put it on her cunt, and let me stroke it, but when she felt a climax approaching, she would move away and find another partner. Similarly, a woman might grab my cock and stroke it for a few minutes, just to get it at maximum hardness, and then let go and refuse to touch it until it softened again. The men and women would dance together, making the most suggestive gestures imaginable but never allowing their bodies to actually touch.

As members of the crowd caressed each other, I saw Malu and Lani doing the same and talking to each other. I couldn't tell what they were saying, of course, but I noticed that Lani glanced my way and nodded.

As you might imagine, the friendly intimacy eventually gave way to a rising lust, and the flirting became more aggressive. At that point, Lani reappeared beside me. "I'm going to dance again. Please sit over there with my cousin Puanani, in the place of honor."

Puanani was an older, riper version of Lani. She had full breasts with dark nipples, as dark as mine. She kissed me and said "Aloha," and then guided me to the place where I was to sit. There was no chair there, but there was a sort of backrest that I leaned against. Then Puanani leaned back against me, and let me put my arms around her. My hands cupped her full breasts, and I kneaded them in time to the music as she stroked her hair-covered quim with her hands. My cock was rock-hard again, as was every man's. Most of those cocks were being massaged by each man's partner. Indeed, Malu had two of them, keeping them both at the edge of arousal as they kissed him and stroked his massive cock.

This dance was shamelessly erotic. It was accompanied only by two drums, their rhythms weaving together in counterpoint. Lani's naked body shone with the oil I'd smeared on her, making her tits glisten in the torchlight. She danced alone, moving through the crowd, flirting with each couple as they lay on the ground, arm in arm. She would straddle them and pull her cunt lips apart so they could see her hole. She kept every couple stimulated, on the cusp of an orgasm, with a touch or a squeeze or by dragging her cunt along an arm or leg. Then she'd move to the next couple, masturbating as she went, her fingers at her nipples or her cunt. I ached for her, as I have never ached for any woman before or since.

Finally, Lani danced up to me. She whispered softly in Hawai'ian to Puanani, who kissed me, arose, and took her place next to one of the drummers. At that point, one of Malu's consorts left him to sit at the side of the other drummer. I scarcely noticed, since my eyes were locked on Lani. Her face was a mask of lust as she grabbed my hand and put it on her breast. I pinched the nipple, plump and hard. The drums crescendoed as she straddled me, positioning her crotch just an inch over my aching cock. And then she squatted down and plunged my cock straight into her cunt, wet and unbelievably tight, and gave a long keening wail just as the drums stopped.

That was the signal for the mass fucking to start. There was a flurry of motion, women opening legs, men lying between them to bury their cocks in the wet, waiting cunts. The women without partners (there being more women than men here) fucked themselves relentlessly with what looked like wooden dildoes. Lani bounced up and down on my cock as she strummed her clit and I pulled on her young nipples. She climaxed with another wail, echoed by the wails of other climaxing couples. I felt her cunt squeeze my cock, and my own orgasm swept over me. My cock pumped its semen into her womb, each pump a flash of golden ecstasy that flashed from my cock right down to my fingers and toes. Then she was lying on top of me, grinding her nipples against mine, and whispering a flood of words into my ear in a jumble of Hawaiian and English. I caught the words "Aloha" and "Thank you" and "I'm so happy." I whispered words of my own back to her as I hugged her and stroked her back and kissed her neck.

We lay that way for a few minutes, with only the sound of the surf and the cries of lust from the other couples breaking the spell. When I had finally gone completely soft and slipped out of her, we got up with the other couples to rinse ourselves in the ocean. Then followed another session of dancing, post-coital touching and caressing, leading to more building excitement and arousal. I noticed that the pairings were completely different this time; evidently nobody felt they had sole claim to anybody else's affections. No effort was made this time for simultaneous orgasm; each couple or threesome took its own time to reach their climax. Lani by this time was with Malu, and I watched in disbelief as she took his massive organ into her vagina with ease. A woman in her forties with heavy, low-hanging breasts came up to me and, lifting my hand, pressed it to her breast. I ran my palm against her fat nipple, while my other palm stroked her mons. She smiled and her own hand went to my crotch, lifting my ball-sack. We teased each other for a while, and I half expected her to break it off and seek another playmate, as was the custom before, but instead she hugged me hard, lay down on a blanket, and spread her legs. Pulling her cunt lips apart to expose her gaping hole, she gave me a look as if to say, "What are you waiting for?" That was all the invitation I needed, and I gave her a good long fucking. Her pussy was a bit on the loose side, possible from childbirth or the previous cock she'd just had in her, but she knew how to pleasure me just the same, writhing and letting my cock rub against different parts of her vaginal wall. She was in no hurry to cum, and neither was I, so we'd sometimes just hug and kiss and whisper endearments to each other, and listen to the cries of passion around us, as my cock nestled inside her cunt. Eventually, though, her body movements told me she wanted a climax, so we increased the tempo until my cock was like a piston in her cylinder, plunging in and out. She came with a scream like a wildcat and raked her fingernails against my back. That set me off, too, and I emptied my balls into her with a scream of my own. Then we drifted off to sleep. I did not dream, as I often did, of naked women on sandy beaches, because I had just been among them waking. I had seen Paradise in the flesh, and there was no need for me to visit it in my dreams.

I awoke; the sun had just come up over the hills, and somebody was shaking me. It was Malu. "We gotta get back to the ship, brah." I kissed my still-sleeping consort, whose name I never learned, and got up. The sun was coming up, and birds were singing. Still nude, I bathed in the ocean and rinsed myself under the shower. Then I put on my uniform and found the shorts I'd shucked off the night before. Malu and I breakfasted on fruit left over from last night's feast, and then we climbed back into the old Packard for the long trip back to Pearl.

Malu told me that I was welcome back any time, but I was never able to take up that invitation. When we returned to base, he received orders to transfer to another ship, and that was the last I saw of him. We kept in touch by letter, until I got my last letter to him returned to me with the words "Deceased Return To Sender" stamped on the envelope in purple ink. I found out that his ship had gone down, and he was not among the survivors. As for his family, I no longer had any way of making contact with them. I stayed in the Navy for the next twenty years. About ten years after the war ended, my ship made port at Pearl and I took the opportunity to go to Honolulu and make some inquiries. I found a few Pahukulas in the telephone book and called them, but none of them were related to Malu's people.

There's not much more to tell of this story. Many years later, I was dating an anthropologist and told her the story of my "ohana." She expressed doubt, but did some checking and then called me.

"You know, I found out that even up to World War Two, there were pockets of people in the Hawai'ian Islands who kept to the old ways for a long time. They were pretty much gone in Oahu by mid-century, but they were still on the other islands, and some of these families moved to Oahu during the war, because that's where the jobs were. With many of the men in the service, the plantations and ranches needed all the help they could get, so they imported them from the other islands for the duration and sent them back when the soldiers returned home. I think that your group was one of them. You said that few of them spoke English or had much contact with the outside world. And their sexual behavior is consistent with the polyamory often found in cultures like that."