I wish I had a photograph of the `Ahuimanu Park custodian. She was weed whacking again this morning on her side of the chain link fence; Lilith and I hailed her from the other, Kahekili, side. I told her I'd seen a guy under the octopus tree the other day who was clutching the frame of a drone. "Haole guy?" she asked. She said she'd kicked him out of the park restroom the other day. I don't know if it was the same guy, but a man had been hanging out near the kids at the school nearby. A teacher asked the custodian to shoo the guy away. "We need you to leave the area, because people are uncomfortable," she told him. He balked. "YOU NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE." That worked better.
She'd been weed whacking on the other side of the fence one day when a man ran by without a shirt on, as if to be admired. "I'm not interested in men," she said, jerking her head away as she remembered. "This all you going to do?" he asked, as he ran by the other way. "It's not even my area," she informed him.
"It's gotten physical sometimes," she said. "I look out for this place." A sturdy woman, her eyes glinting under a camouflage bandana, she laughed with wide open mouth before pulling down her plastic windshield. I so wish she'd let me take her photo.
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