The First or Maybe the Second or Third in a Multi-Part Series about Sex in Hawaii!

The Truth About Tiki

Tiki.

You probably know him, at least vaguely, or have heard of him, if  you ever visited the islands. At least you might think you know. "It's that crude carved-face thingamabob that more or less resembles Arnold Schwarzenneger with a broken nose and a horrendous case of rosacea." You see him everywhere: on hotel signs with names like "Kon Tiki Resort" or "Tiki Shores"... restaurant signs with names like "Tiki Hut" or "Mystic Tiki"... bars with names like "Tiki Lounge" or "Blue Tiki.". Thanks to Don Ho, Thor Heyerdahl, and the magic of wood-like textured plastic resin, Tiki has risen to the status of the "American god of recreation." Just who is this Tiki guy, anyway, you ask, and why doesn't he take tetracycline or something?

Amazingly enough, the word "tiki" does not exist in the ancient Hawaiian language. However, in the language of the first Polynesians, the Maori of New Zealand, Ti'i, or Tiki as you know him today, means "first man," or "personification of man." Which is why the traditional tiki necklace has a little carving resembling an infant male curled up in the embryonic position. How do we know it's a male? Read on, brave soul...

Flashing forward a few hundred years to Tahiti, we find Ti'i, a.k.a. "the Wonderworker," no longer an infant, but still regarded as the first human, by and by of the masculine gender, who took as his wife a goddess, Haina. For the benefit of you worshippers of the handy-dandy multi-purpose all-in-one deity of the wandering tribes of North Africa, Tiki was to a Polynesian as Adam is to you. Only, he got to marry a goddess, not just some fruitarian local girl made out of his own rib. Of course, all men from that day forward have always sworn on a stack of Windows Resource Kits that they also married a goddess. Until the midlife crisis thing, anyway, when any female under the age of 24 suddenly becomes a goddess. Enough about that, however, midlife crisis is only a myth. Like the notion, harbored by certain anti-spiritual revisionists, that Tiki the Wonderworker had rosacea.

In a modern dictionary, you'll find Tiki has lately been reduced to "grotesque carving of man on house." How the mighty have fallen, you say. One minute, wonderworker and personification of man; next minute, grotesque porch decoration. Of course, there are certain female readers who are this moment disrespectfully muttering "how can you tell the difference?" or "two definitions for the same thing."

Yet a third dictionary definition for the word tiki is "phallic symbol." Now we're getting somewhere.

To the ancient Maori, the word "tiki" identified the male sexual organ of the god Tane, who created the first woman. What would be more logical than naming the first man after his most distinguishing characteristic? "Tiki roa" (roa meaning mighty) was the original word for penis. "Tiki poto" was the word for clitoris. Just so no one goes away disillusioned, Maori dictionaries also contain expressions such as "huri popo", translated as "public sodomy", and "pa kika", or "female with enlarged clitoris mounting another female."

The legend continues...

While Tiki and his daughter were living together he told her one day that he was going out to catch fish. He asked her to follow him later with a basket for the fish. 'You will come to the beach,' he said, 'and go to a place where you will see a flock of birds hovering about something which is sticking out of the sand. That will be the place.' And so Tiki did as he had told her, she went to the beach with her fish basket. She saw the flock of birds and also something standing up above the sand. Thinking that it was their pointed stick for stringing fish, she took hold of it and pulled. And Tiki, who had covered his body with sand, jumped up crying, 'Who's this, pulling on my ure?' And he laughed at her shame. When she saw that it was her father and that what she had in her hand was his, Tiaki reproached him: 'O Tiki, this is a dreadful thing that you have done, a most horrible act of yours!' And he laughed at her again; and she called him 'Tiki the slimy', and 'Tiki the rigid', and 'Tiki the trickster.'

So the next time you see a row of carved or cast resin tiki's sitting rigidly on a shelf, best not to hang out. Make your way calmly and slowly in the direction of the plastic bobbing head hula doll dashboard ornaments. And it wouldn't hurt, as nonchalantly as possible, to hold your copy of "This Week on the Big Island" behind you as you edge away.

So, you ask, how did his nose get broken? I don't know about you, but I'm not going there...

Copyright (c) 2001, Dennis L Foster, Inc.