The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure

by Jack Handey

“Oww!” I moaned, because it hurt.

My head started swimming. I began to shimmy uncontrollably, like Uncle Lou before the paramedics came. My whole body was heaving upward, like Uncle Lou when they applied the electric paddles to him. I began to curse hysterically, like Uncle Lou when he got the hospital bill.

IT FELT like elves were hammering nails into my head, but with no rhyme or reason. Then it felt like I was rolling around on a bed of thumbtacks. But this was no party game.

I was on a crashing airplane. The old man next to me was praying. Down and down we went. I started hitting the old man with a rolled-up magazine, yelling, “Pray harder, old man!”

I became a snowflake, drifting slowly to earth. I was different from every other snowflake, and they let me know it.

I became a mummy, driving a car. And I thought, Why am I driving a car? Then I understood: I was plowing down pedestrians.

I DON’T know if you’ve ever had a blow-dart hangover, but they are the worst. It makes you swear never to get hit by one again.

If there’s ever a time women will feel sorry for you, it’s after you’ve been hit by a blow dart.

I collect arrowheads, if I ever find one.

The palm trees began flapping around like Grandpa when the horseflies got him.

I thought about the pilot’s wife. Each night when he came home, she would be waiting for him at the door with a rolling pin. He had a bad marriage.

YES, DOCTOR Ponzari was dead, but it had come at a horrible price: I was lost.

If you get hungry enough, believe me, you will eat bugs. My friend Jerry found that out the hard way. He was slow getting the snacks out for a party once and we ate his butterfly collection.

you shouldn’t look into a geyser hole when it’s gurgling.

THE NATIVES called themselves Patangis. The chief told me that in their culture, it was an honor if your parents weren’t married, if you were a bastard. Then he asked me if my parents had been married. The whole tribe seemed to lean forward for my response. “No,” I said, hoping to provide the right answer, “I’m a bastard.” They all broke into convulsive laughter. It was the oldest Patangi joke in the book, but it still worked.

The Patangis said I was a god, and that only gods could climb up palm trees and pick coconuts for them. I insisted that I wasn’t a god, but they said oh yes I was. We went back and forth like that. Finally, I climbed about halfway up a tree trunk and fell off. They seemed to respect that.

The women had no shame about their bodies. Unfortunately, n...

THE PATANGIS threw a big feast in my honor. There were beautiful dancing girls, pounding drums, and a strong drink made from fermented saliva. I was treated to a special batch of fifteen-year-old saliva.

Is it wrong to lie because you’re planning to steal something? That’s a question probably only the philosophers can answer.

It felt like I was lying on a giant anvil, being pounded by a giant hammer. I wanted to shout, “I’m flat enough!”

Every cell in my body cried out, and every cell in my brain hollered back, Whoa, there, little pardners, let’s take ’er easy. My brain had become a cowboy!

WHAT KIND of a world was this, where people won’t help you carry expensive scotch but, oh, they don’t mind carrying water? Where a monkey pretends to eat something foul, just to trick you into eating it? Where heads are shrunken and feet are stunken? Where even after you explain to people that what you’re doing is yodeling, they still want you to stop? Where a mad scientist can apparently rent a helicopter, no questions asked? Where plants eat men, and men eat men, but a Patangi won’t let you play his drum because you “might hurt it”? Where you smell a flower and it smells you back? Where you look and look for your other shoe, and when you finally find it no one seems that happy? Where people don’t mind if you call mosquitoes “skeeters,” but they get annoyed if you call them “skits”? Where you would kill for a hot bath and slaughter everyone in sight for a bubble bath? Where a raccoon can hypnotize you just by washing his hands? Where a man weeping in the night is told to “stop cry”?

I had an orgasm in my pants.

Tadpoles of suspicion had been growing in my mind. And now they were full-grown frogs.

I’m good at sneaking up on people if they’re having sex.

It was like looking through out-of-focus binoculars, then throwing the binoculars away and seeing clearly.

WHY IS there always some jerk in every crowd who yells, “Get him!”

So many tourists, in the prime of their tourism, were cut down.

There’s something about the cool darkness of a machine gun nest, with the wind whistling through the nose hole of a skeleton, that really makes you drowsy.

I pulled up my pants once more and vowed that they would never again be used for evil,

One golfer couldn’t get out of the way in time, and the propeller cut off his arm. I have to admit, I laughed at the time. But now when I think about it I just chuckle.

I was sentenced to six months of community service. The service was to stay in jail.

I was making good money. And there were the little rewards. You never forget the look on a child’s face the first time he hits you with a blow dart. “I got him!” they squeal.

As I ran, I tried to help out where I could. I helped an old man in a wheelchair get out of my way and into a ditch, where he’d be safe. I helped some people carry some things out of a store. I led a group of young nurses into a dark culvert, where we huddled together for safety.