At Captain Zack's In Hawaii Poem by Sidney P. Roberts II

She was a not large Japanese woman of an age that you should check her ID before serving her an alcoholic beverage. She wore a melony colored bikini top and God only knows what underneath the skirty, beachy thing she had wrapped around her round little Asian bottom. Her boyfriend sat next to her on her right and I was on her left and when he wasn’t watching she would turn slightly and bump into my right leg with a foot or a knee or the back of a hand. I never knew Japanese women were so flirty or fresh or came with such light colored hair but then that was probably like all the blonde Mexican women you see in the border area trying to be whiter, I suppose. Don’t they know how attractive they are in their natural dark state? If one asked I would tell her but so far none have.
I could see her boyfriend was a little dizzy from drinking and she told me she had never been to the mainland and asked me was it true what they said about how the ocean is so cold there that you need a suit. I thought about a few days prior when me and the troops were on one of our last days together and even after a week they never tired and kept going like some kind of Special Forces Kids Branch, if there ever was such a thing. We were at Imperial beach and Pretty Lady Tasha read prettily, however silently, to herself and considerably overdressed, on the lawn chair next to me in the sand that I sat on. Maria and the landlady’s kid were in the water on the boards for the first time with the waves pushing them into shore like they had been body boarding for years and Tasha next to me but higher up, me on my butt Indian style on the sand hiding my toes, and we smiled at each other when we saw Maria and Alberto ride the first wave in, giving us a thumbs up.
Malachy, youngest troop of the day, in front of me trying his damnedest to create a likeness in the sand of the pier stretching into the Pacific and needing water but not having a bucket to tote it with and he was being so modest about the whole thing not wanting to cause any trouble. He still doesn’t realize that he can have almost anything he asks me for. So I emptied the cooler and fetched some water and my toes were icy cold when I walked out into the surf. He got to make a more accurate representation of the setting and the feeling on his face when I said I liked it was heartwarming. Even though we joke about how he might be part shark, and even with my freezing toes and Maria and Alberto’s goosebumps and shivering lips, and even with Tasha in the jacket and my nipples hard and hair standing up, no one but Mal and I would admit the water was cold. I wished I had bought wetsuits.
Back at the bar, I told the touchy flirty Japanese woman without touching her back, “It’s kind of cold I guess, compared to here.”
Summer vacation was over and I started to miss my children again.