Ohana Ch. 01

"Poly what?"

"Polyamory. The missionaries often mistook it for polygamy, but it wasn't. Polyamory is when sexual favors are granted to anyone in the clan, as though everybody in the clan is married to everybody else. I'm amazed that they let you participate. That's something that outsiders never see."

"Well, Malu said that I was his warrior-brother, or something."

"Then that explains it. But when he died, that relationship ended. That may be why the Pahukulas you found didn't admit to knowing him. Or more likely, your Pahukulas came from one of the other islands, as I've said, and moved back after the war ended."

So that was that. It's as though they never existed, except in some dream of mine -- a dream of an island Paradise drenched in sex and free love, with willing women and friendly men and food in abundance. I'll keep dreaming that dream, I'll keep it alive in me. And I'll never forget Lani, the girl-woman with the perfect body, who stirred my lust in a way that no other woman could hope to match, who might have borne a half-black baby the very next spring. He'll have grown up strong and well-loved in that ohana, my own ohana, where she and her cousins still wait for me, ready to dance their dance of lust and love.