Tahiti New Beginnings

I was on the road again and the feeling of leaving was intoxicating. I’d rented my small house to a friend I’d known in Port Moresby.  I had money in the bank. A fistful of traveler’s checks. My cameras. A documentary film proposal.  And a reel of my film to show potential backers.  I felt ready for another adventure. I was flying away, escaping, rising into the clouds fortunate and relieved to be alone and in another world.  Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport faded into the hazy distance and the blue Pacific Ocean glinted in the harsh Australian light as I headed for America.  I wondered when I might return. 

My plans were open ended, to travel to San Francisco, and then south to Los Angeles, keep traveling into Mexico and South America and then make my way back to New York City. I hoped money and support for my film projects would ensue. 

It’s a long flight to America from the other side of the world, almost twenty-four hours and I decided to break the journey in Tahiti. The Tahitian Islands are a French protectorate. The French invaded in 1842 and they still occupied French Polynesia when I landed at Tahiti’s Faa'a International Airport in November, 1976.

Oh Tahiti, such a spoiled and beautiful creature.The French colonialists came and tourists with pockets full of money followed. Your women, beautiful vahine, dusky and hair flowing to your shoulders and skin like honey and eyes that dance and shine.  I smell pungent frangipani and tiare the national flower of the island, precious jewels resting in dazzling settings in shiny, dark, green foliage, blossoms tucked behind your ears. Hibiscus blooms are shining in the shadows. 

I take a cab into town. Women perch on pinion seats of Vesper motor cycles which sputter, zoom and swerve. Lithe arms wrapped around the waist of their drivers. Legs delicately displayed, knees clasped tight their modesty beguiling. The streets are lined with small shops full of tourist curios and beads strung on display on the sidewalk. The pluck and strum of ukuleles floats from bars and cafes, windows are flung wide open and crowded buses push and bully their way through the traffic.

In the harbor I see expensive ocean-going yachts and in the distance, gray French war ships. The military vessels remind me that Tahiti is where the French test nuclear bombs. Between 1966 and 1974 Tahiti was subjected to fallout from 41 atmospheric nuclear tests conducted 720 miles away at Moruroa Atoll and Fangataufa, in the Tuamotu archipelago. And then between 1975 and 1996 came 140 underground nuclear tests at the same sites.

Herman Melville was imprisoned in Tahiti in 1842 and his experiences became the basis for his novel Omoo. Robert Louis Stevenson spent time in Papeete in 1888 and French artist, Paul Gauguin journeyed here in 1891 and stayed until his death.

I was to visit the Musée Gauguin on the other side of the island one rainy afternoon. I drove my rented jeep, hood down, feeling the spiced air and the warm rain on my skin, marveling at the beauty. The buildings and hotels were not tall pretentious monoliths, but sat low, obscured by coconut trees as the government had legislated. Everything was green and wet, the undergrowth tumbling down to the roadside and the local people, self-contained and diffident, going about their business as I left the bustle of Papeete and headed into the countryside.   

Gauguin was frustrated by lack of recognition in France and financially destitute when he arrived on the island in the late eighteen hundreds. He sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional". He made several attempts to find a tropical paradise where he might live on fish and fruit and paint in his increasingly primitive style. There were short stays in Martinique and before he found Tahiti he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.

His works of the period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an eroticized view of the inhabitants of Polynesia. He sided with the native peoples and made love to the women, clashed often with the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church. He died of syphilis, his body weakened by alcohol and his dissipated life. It was 1903 and he was 54 years old.

I stay for two weeks in Tahiti. I take deck space on a tramp steamer with the natives and their chickens to visit the islands of Raiatea and Huahina, eight hours steaming time from the capital. In the distance I see the clouded peaks of Bora Bora jutting out of the sea. I feel like a shipwrecked sailor, alone on a journey, meeting the flotsam and jetsam who live in beach huts under coconut trees amid tropic spender, runaways from the civilized life,

There is a young French couple on the beach. She is lovely looking and her voice is like music. He is just beautiful; slim, tanned with curling hair to his shoulders. They’ve worked at Club Med, around the world, but now they’ve dropped out and live in this small shack near the sea. We talk for a while in fractured English and then I leave them. It’s a bit strange to just leave like this because nobody else is here – just us - and it’s rare in this French colony to find people who speak English.  But I reckon they’ve come to get away  and I don’t want to destroy their privacy. I return to Papeete to prepare for the last leg of my journey to America.

I was in love with Tahiti and wondered if I should leave at all. Life was so easy here. Sitting at outdoor cafés in the cool of early mornings. Sipping café au lait and breaking freshly baked crusty French bread slathered with creamy beurre. Watching the locals, their floral patterned sarongs and colored shirts, hair shinning, moving slowly and quietly smiling  At dusk near the wharf, eating  ceviche, the briny taste of fresh raw fish marinated in lime juice with hot spices, sipping Hinano beer.  One evening I met a local journalist interested in my film and he invited me to show it on the local television station. And then he invited me to the local yacht club’s annual ball.

I remember the last day, attending a church service at the LMS church. The London Missionary Society spread their gospel throughout the Pacific and though I was leery of their proselytizing and zeal to interfere and change what seemed the perfect life, I loved the old familiar hymns. Sitting in the midst of those lovely people, listening to their music struck a strong chord somewhere deep inside.  I began to weep. It was like weeping with a woman you love, weeping because you are leaving but still loving her. A fruitless weeping that makes you feel no better at all – just terribly sad.

The women’s choir seemed from another time and place, dressed in flowing white cassocks with small black hats perched atop their flowing black hair. No longer were they the beauteous, idealized goddesses I’d seen on the beaches, in the bars and on the streets.  There was an innocence and transparent splendor in their simple harmonies that warmed my soul.  I wished I had their belief and trust but could not find it in my dark heart. My sweet and bitter tears flowed and I shuddered with gratitude to feel and connect with their simple faith. The music penetrated my very essence. After the service I went outside into the bright sunlight, smelt the clean fresh air and walked back to my hotel feeling uplifted and sublime.

I was staying in a hotel straight out of a Graham Greene novel. The paint was peeling, the windows were shuttered, the overhead fans slowly circling and the fragrance of sweet frangipani drifting in the air. It was my last night in Tahiti and I jumped into my rented jeep and headed for the yacht club ball.

As I turned a corner that night and stopped at one of the few traffic lights in town, I heard the familiar strum of ukuleles flowing from a bar across the street. The windows and doors were flung wide open and soft yellow light spilled out onto the sidewalk. I could see the patrons inside, tall, beautiful Tahitian women, dressed stylishly, sitting on stools or standing talking and sipping their drinks.  As I entered the bar they turned as one  and smiled and invited me to join them.

I was in a kind of paradise, sipping strong liquor, surrounded by exotic creatures who might easily have slipped off a Gauguin canvas. I could have stayed all night but had my appointment at the yacht club ball.   I invited two of my new friends to join me. By now I was well primed for the party and we clambered into the jeep, one beauty beside me, the other crammed in the back and soon we arrived at the yacht club.

The party was in full swing and the champagne was flowing.  I sat with my two companions and noted the furtive glances aimed in my direction by some at the table. I was a stranger in town and I’d had a couple of drinks – I was firing on all cylinders - I didn’t care and I took to the dance floor with gusto.

As the night drew longer and the party wound down, I held my partner closer and kissed her hard mouth without reservation.  She was tall and languorous in my arms and I felt an urgent need to return to my hotel.  It was late now and the streets deserted as we left.  We were drunk and aroused and we rubbed against the dew-laden shrubs and decorous bushes that lined the entrance to the hotel as we swayed down the narrow path to my room.

I shut the door behind us and reached for her as she threw her head back in supplication as my hand found her crotch.  But what was this? I felt the swelling of her sex and suddenly realized this was no vahine, no woman of the night, no analog to the paintings I’d admired in the Musée Gauguin, this was a man dressed as woman, a Tahitian transvestite. “Il a homme,” I exclaimed in excitement and shock. But alas, is was too late for discrimination. My lust knew neither man nor woman. My desire was such that I forewent convention and plunged in – fools walk in where angels fear to tread.

As dawn broke my two companions left leaving me with head thumping and a kind of virginity broken. I smiled at my naiveté and realized why the Tahitians at the ball had watched with such interest and knowing smiles as I’d danced and held my partner close that night. I felt a kind or elation and pride at my performance for I had done as I felt, without judgment. Soon I was to pay the price.