Or, how I met the vomit whisperer

Kathleen and I just got back from a vacation in Kauai. We shouldn’t have gone. We’re very close to re-releasing an “author’s cut” of The Cowboy and the Vampire: A Very Unusual Romance, with a slick new cover, and a second edition of The Cowboy and the Vampire: Blood and Whiskey, also with a new cover. And all of that work is in preparation for the release of our new book, The Cowboy and the Vampire: Rough Trails and Shallow Graves.

We’ve still had a LOT of work to do to meet our self-imposed deadlines, but the need for a vacation trumped business plans.

It was our first time to Kauai and we did all of the expected touristy things: hiking, snorkeling, laying on the beach, drinking too much (Hurricanes are delicious and mildly addictive), reading and getting sunburned.

But this is not a travelogue — it’s a story about a vomit whisperer.

We took a boat tour of the Na Pali coast, a rare stretch of the island inaccessible by car where steep cliffs — 3,000 feet tall and cloaked in emerald foliage, the tops obscured by ominous clouds — plunge mostly straight into the sea. There are no beaches of note, only tremendous waves crashing against the wet rocks. There are two ways to see it: by air or sea. After our shared experience “terri-flying” around Denali in Alaska (during which the passenger behind us yakked into a 50-gallon trash bag) we opted for the sea.

We booked a cruise from Chantel, the concierge at the resort, even though she warned us with wide, serious eyes that the sea would be rough, so rough, in fact, they might go the opposite direction and simply putter around in calm water for some snorkeling. We took the chance. And the captain of the boat took the chance, aiming us for the Na Pali coast.

Before we event left the office, our crew warned us the ride would be rough, and yet 60 of us — pale and sleepy as the dawn broke — stepped willingly onto the catamaran of doomed breakfasts.

One woman became seasick, literally, the second she stepped on board. It was not a fortuitous start. She spent the entire four-hour trip pale and miserable, sitting at the back of the boat, huddled under a blanket and clutching an “aloha bucket,” as the crew cheerfully called the 2-gallon plastic buckets. She never puked though. She never puked.

The trip started smoothly. We stopped and snorkeled in some calm, sunny water where I came face to face with a sea turtle, and we could hear whales singing underwater. But after that, the sea grew angry — like an old man with ill-fitting dentures — and things quickly deteriorated.

The swells grew in size and the boat began to pitch and haw on what seemed like 50-foot waves but, more likely, were about eight feet. One by one, passengers began losing the battle against nausea, and our cruise ship turned into a spews ship.

An unfortunate teenager started us off. She erupted unexpectedly, catching all of the queasy passengers off guard. She was surprised and mortified and spackled her clothes with so much vomit, the crew rushed her to the back to hose her off. She sat for the rest of the trip, crying and taking solace from her worried parents.

Next came The Angriest Puker in the World, an older man who seemed outraged by the fact he’d become sick. He vomited over the rails with an ear-splitting, roaring scream each time his stomach contracted. His wet shouts rattled the boat and sent nearby sea birds to wing.

The irritated husband of the first bucket clutcher was next, surprised his stomach lost the battle first. We tried not to watch anyone actively vomiting for fear of losing our own tenuous grip, but I happened to glance behind and saw his aloha bucket half full of what looked like beer, but more likely — given his brown-stained fingers – some sort of vast and unholy mixture of bile and nicotine.

One woman puked with a machine-gun like staccato, another with a quiet efficiency that barely interrupted her conversation.

When we travel, I like to read a history of where we’re going so this time I read Kauai: The Separate Kingdom, by Joesting. I learned Hawaiians are natural born seafarers and in the early days, they were prize additions to western ships, though one observer begrudged them their ease as the interisland ships pitched and the natives crouched happily on the deck eating poi (taro paste) and smiling good naturedly while western men and women tossed and stumbled and vomited.

That was certainly the case on our little boat. The entire crew, naturally, was quite comfortable on the heaving boat, but the two native Hawaiians were utterly at ease. The largest of the two, especially, padded around with cat-like grace incongruous to his bulk, tattoos and fierce countenance. I forget his name – something short that ended in “-ki” or “-ku” — but I remember he was a kind, gentle soul and an empathetic vomit whisperer.

He made a continual circuit of the boat, taking a reading on the faces of the distressed and disturbed, distributing aloha buckets just before disaster struck. A woman in front of us — one half of a newlywed couple — was on the fence the entire time. Her partner was an excellent wildlife spotter, splitting his time sighting breaching whales, playful dolphins and obscene-mouthed manta rays and comforting his new wife.

She was pale and miserable, but gamely held on to the contents of her stomach. As the boat pitched and bobbed and the captain struggled to keep up his patter of factoids about the Na Pali coast for a ship full of largely, at this point, uncaring and inattentive passengers, the vomit whisperer padded up from the deck below, scanned the pale, worried faces and honed in on the woman in front of us.

“You ok?” he asked.

She held out her trembling hand and made the universal symbol for so-so. He smiled, nodded and handed her a bucket. She smiled back, then unleashed a mighty chunky rainbow of puke as if possessed by the very demon of gluttony (editors note: that would be Beezelbub).

I’m not sure if he knew it was coming up or, by his proactive kindness, simply gave her permission to throw up. I just know that in that one moment, based on the volume produced, he put those of us around her into his debt forever.

Once we sailed out of the stormy petulance of the Na Pali coast, things calmed down, but the damage was done. The boat limped back to Poipu with a lot of empty stomachs, many uneaten sandwiches and many unconsumed Mai Tais. I’m pleased to report our Mai Tais were not among those.продвижение