Self Inflicted | Chapter 3

"The obvious thing to do was to follow his community to his next great adventure in New York, but, as has for time immemorial bound men to distant lands, there was a girl."

Amongst the friends Alexi failed to confide in throughout the drama rising within his psyche, were his two roommates, Tanooj Bhatia and Hector Elizondo. Tanooj and Hector thought that perhaps his work had just gotten busier. He had been coming home later and going to bed earlier, without hanging out like usual. They weren't estranged nor did Alexi act much different than normal, he just seemed to be in a constant hurry. It was like he should have been doing something else at all times. Even at dinner he wasn't willing to sit with Tanooj anymore, preferring--against their initial roommate vision--to eat in his room, and if he did eat in the living room, his restless left leg rose up and down at a tempo that rivaled the wings of a bumblebee. He responded to texts slower, turned down invitations to join in Tanooj and Hector's schemes, and eventually up and disappeared. It wasn't until Alexi failed to come home for the second night in a row that Tanooj checked FindMy and learned that Alexi had gone home to Illinois.
"He must have left on Tuesday," Hector said.
"Yeah, I guess he took the week off? Its so random its not his brother's birthday or anything, and he didn't even tell me! I would have given him a bag my mom left here to take back," Tanooj responded.

Tanooj and Alexi were best friends throughout their childhood. They were an inseparable duo, even getting disciplined together, with arms locked and buttocks raised. Tanooj, whose vision was far grander than his height, would come up with some random idea like to sing a song on the morning announcements, and Alexi would think nothing more important than helping make it so. They would campaign, collect signatures, and convince the assistant principal to let them do it. They worked in this way a dozen times, sometimes succeeding, and sometimes annoying their friends, neighbors, and families. In high school, Tanooj maintained his disillusionment with academic success, while Alexi, guided by his parents and his natural ability, followed a more conventional path. Their bond was strong despite this shift in willingness for parental rebellion, and stayed strong throughout the four years they spent apart when Alexi went to university.

Tanooj stayed in Illinois after graduating high school, spending two years in a trade school to become a welder. He worked at a custom fabrication shop in Peoria, but after just eight weeks he emailed the CEO his resignation letter, adding in PS that he would not be returning the Multi-process MIG Welder he had been given for anticipated weekend work. The company refused to send him his final paycheck as a result, which was worth less than the welder he stole. After a month of playing games, making music, and dodging the snide comments his father made about his supposed laziness, Tanooj decided that the life he wanted to live could not be found at 2953 Salazar Court.

He tried to convince his best friend to let him stay for a while, but Alexi dodged around the questions, uncomfortable with the idea of sheltering an entire extra person in his three-bed-one-bath apartment. Luckily his cousin Baabul, who attended The University of Hawaii at Mānoa, was more than happy to have him. He spent the next year and a half living on Baabul's couch, minutes away from the beach in Hawaii. The two lease owners agreed to let him live in their living room for $350 a month. With his welding kit he became a familiar face on Waikiki beach selling little barbecues he made with cheap aluminum. This didn’t net him quite enough money for rent, so he supplemented it with some good old fashioned door to door Dashing.

When his friends from around the country neared graduation, they told him excitedly that they were moving to New York. He was devastated when he realized his two patrons, and most of the friends he had made through them on O’ahu, would also be heading for the mainland. The obvious thing to do was to follow his community to his next great adventure in New York, but, as has for time immemorial bound men to distant lands, there was a girl.

On a moonlit night in a rooftop garden for Stacy Jang’s 21st birthday party, the woman in question saw Tanooj for the first time. Rather than see, she heard him, and was forced to look up at what could possibly make such a shockingly loud and sustained high pitched sound. For a moment she thought her father had somehow found his way here and was doing his trademark wolf whistle to let her know she’d been caught drinking and smoking despite being under age. Her heart, and the red solo cup in her hand, dropped to the floor as she whirled around expecting to see the thin mustachioed man who had raised her better than this. She saw instead a group of guys cheering at Stacy who was chugging a Smirnoff Ice on one knee.
“Oh my god I’m so sorry!” Isla said to the friends around her as she quickly picked up her cup from the floor.
“Jeez! That was a loud whistle, must have scared you!”
“Hahaha dude yeah wait, I swear to god I thought that was my dad whistling.”
“We’d all be dead,” her childhood friend Alana piped in.
“I know, I almost pissed myself. Do you guys know who that is?” she asked.
“Its one of Jason’s friends, he doesn’t go to school here, just living with them as a beach bum.”
“Which one?”
“The larger brown guy.”

Though that was an accurate enough description of Tanooj, it left out everything his anchor to Hawaii would one day come to recognize and love. It left out the messy faux hawk hairstyle he wore, his strong aquiline nose, and his powerful brow ridge which kept his joyful eyes in permanent shade. It left out Tanooj's big, obvious face. It was a face that you were certain was a face; it was striking, wore no mask, and revealed exactly the inner state of the man who wore it. He laughed heartily and often, he talked loudly, and he spoke of a future so grand you could not help but believe it was coming. Everything about Tanooj was so large that she'd completely forget their height difference, until he'd reach up to kiss her on the forehead.

On the night of their first meeting, the man drawn by mop brush repeated that his major was "the pursuit of maximal fun" to the eight people who asked him the classic university ice-breaker. He further explained that he sits under an umbrella on Waikiki beach and sells little grills in between surfing, making music, and delivering food--even having once delivered a Thai curry to the very person who'd broken the ice. Tanooj, and Isla's romance did not begin that day, but she had left with a positive impression of him.

When, a few weeks later, Isla, Alana, Stacy, and two other friends had a beach day, they remembered that Baabul and Jasons's roommate sold barbeques to tourists on Waikiki beach, and couldn’t help but search for him amongst the public. They started near the zoo and walked north hoping to find either a less crowded spot or their new acquaintance.
Alana saw him first, "Hey! Tanooj!" she shouted, waving her arms in the air.
He did his trademark screeching whistle in joy when he recognized who the group approaching was. They set up their towels right next to him and spent the day howling advertisements at anyone who dared to walk within a 30 foot radius. They sold 14 units, double the amount he had sold in his entire three month operation.
“You should come by more often,” he laughed and handed each of them 35$ bucks as their profit share.
“No, no, keep it!”
“We had a lot of fun!”
“We’ll be back for sure,” They all laughed.
Isla was the only one to take the money, “I’m not as saintly as these four,” she joked, “and next time, we’ll agree on the hourly rate beforehand!” She texted Tanooj that very evening, the first message they had ever exchanged, to treat her to boba with the money she had helped him earn.

That first cafe date was the beginning of something fiery and absolute. Their lives were conjoined instantly. There were beers on the beach, weekly movies, and hours of time spent together. They began coming as a set piece to friend’s parties and events. They even worked together to put on a monthly musical open mic next to Tanooj’s spot on the beach where they could sell skewered fried squid on his grills. Isla found in Tanooj a positivity about the future, a certainty that things would be alright; the environment, her family, her upcoming exams, everything, would work out. They would work out.

The apparent truth neither of them dared to speak aloud was that their relationship was definite only while Tanooj lived in Hawaii, but what if he moved away? Isla was a year younger than Tanooj, and anyway a native Hawaiian who planned to stay on the islands after college to be near her family, while Tanooj seemed to have no certain plan for what the next year might bring. For the first several months, that reality needed not be reckoned with. But as their relationship neared the one year mark she began to feel his restlessness. The friends from Tanooj’s year were all graduating, including his roommates. Maybe it was time for that conversation.
“Where do you plan to live after Jason and Baabul move out? What if you got a place with Koa, he’s looking for roommates to live with him in that new high rise, Park-something.”
“That’s probably too expensive.”
“You’re gonna have to wheedle your way into someone else’s living room then,” she laughed.
“OOH!” he exclaimed pointing to a bar with a sign for a pool table across the street, “Lets do your 21st here! Pool would be so fun.” And the conversation moved on.

Several weeks later she brought it up again, “My uncle sent me this great apartment for sale in Kalihi. It needs some fixing up so it's way cheaper than you’d think. Only like a hundred ninety thousand.”
“You want to buy a house?”
“No, you! Or maybe together if it makes it cheaper, but we couldn’t tell my parents about that, obviously.”
“Hahaha yeah we are NOT co-signing a mortgage, your parents already don’t like me as it is. Imagine now you’re in debt together with some mainlander with no steady income.”
“Okay, Okay obviously, but it's kinda doable I feel like.”
“What kind of rate would they give me, no education, no money, I don’t know about that.”
“You gotta live somewhere.”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll figure it out later.”
You better, she thought to herself.

They danced around his future living situation over and over, neither admitting there existed a universe where he would leave. There was some doubt in Isla’s mind, but to ask it point blank would be to question their ongoing romance. Tanooj himself didn’t know what he would do. If he asked Isla about it, it would just devolve into her convincing him to stay—and she’d succeed. He knew that much. His heart would not be able to bear her tears if he wasn’t resolute in what to do.

"BIG TANOOOOOJ," Isla announced as he entered her apartment, "oh my god you are so wet," she laughed.
"Dude I just ran five miles, I'm dying," he croaked out, falling and laying on his back in the entryway.
"Woah! Today's supposed to be a rest day, why'd you do such a big run without me?"
"I need to train to catch up to you, otherwise we won't be able to race side by side in the half.
"Bro chill out, I'm not gonna leave you behind. We are supposed to be running together!" she scolded as she went to hand him a paper towel to dry his drenched face.
"Yeah, I guess so but still."

While Tanooj showered, Isla felt a sickening color rise up in her chest. She didn't realize he would be pushing himself this hard. Did he resent her for asking him to join her fitness hobbies? Was she making him feel ashamed about his weight? Why was he doing so many things alone lately? Did he want something that she wasn't providing? Or was this some kind of last big hurrah? Like a checklist for him to complete before he leaves the island? Or does he have some kind of notion that if he can't keep up, then they weren't meant to be together and he could leave. Isla kept finding increasingly damning reasons for his perceived behaviour, and imagined what it would feel like to hear him say some terrible final goodbye.

He noticed her gloom when he exited the shower.
"Dude I can barely walk," he said laughing and crashed onto the sofa beside her, hoping to lift her spirits with his half-feigned physical comedy. She sighed in anger, blowing hard enough to lift her bangs.
"Why'd you push yourself so hard!" Isla said.
"I wanted an excuse not to walk tomorrow," he continued in his joking manner.
"No really, we don't even have to run the half marathon. It's not important."
"I may never be able to run again," he pushed on.
"This isn't a joke. Like, I love you as you are Tanooj, don't push yourself because you think I want you to."
"Not everything is about you, I always give everything I do 110%" Tanooj replied, getting slightly upset.
"You literally compared yourself to me!"
"Yeah I know but not in the sense that I am a loser right now! I just wanted to catch up faster. Don't put words in my mouth."
Tanooj felt slighted, like his weight was a problem for Isla, or rather that his weight was something that should have been a problem for him.
"What the fuck? You never tell me anything, what else can I do but try and decipher what the hell you are saying," she responded, revealing a deeper, yet unexpressed hurt.
Tanooj looked at her in disbelief, "Are you serious?"
"Yes! Everything is always "all good man", but sometimes its not! And its always so sudden, why are you getting mad at me for trying to make sure you're ok!"
"Cause you're not making sure I'm OK, you're upset at me for no reason. I just went on a run."

Their fight continued in that way for some time more. A few days after they had made up, a similar argument broke out again. That peace lasted for only a few hours before they found yet another reason to quarrel. It wasn't until their fourth bout that Isla could no longer maintain the pretense of their definite love, and found within herself the courage and language to express how she was feeling.

"I feel like you've been pulling away a lot recently. And you keep dodging my questions about the future. I am really worried that you will leave Hawaii," she said baldly.
Tanooj didn't respond for a while. When he furled his brows to think his eyes looked especially dark, and today they looked a hateful gray. He looked away, watching Koko, Isla's cat, stretching in the corner of the room.
"I wasn't trying to pull away or anything," he said at last, "I've just been trying to come up with an answer for myself."
"Well what is your answer?" Isla almost whispered.
He held her arms and looked at her firmly, "I... I really don't know yet."
That was enough for Isla. She knew he would leave. That he wanted to go. She pushed him off and left the apartment despite Tanooj's protests. That’s the problem with outsiders: they never intended to stay in the first place.