I made my hotel and flight reservations yesterday. I’m going on vacation during Thanksgiving week and picked Hawaii more or less by default. May passport is expired, which keeps me from most of the real fun to be had around the globe. Whale eating in Japan, dynamite fishing off the Great Barrier Reef, and refugee fondling in Darfur are all beyond my reach. So Hawaii it is.

I need to get away. I haven’t taken any vacation since I reentered the work force full time over three years ago. What I need is to hang out in a place by myself where nobody knows me. Maybe, just maybe, the time away will release a few of those creepy crawlies I’ve had bottled up inside my head.

Admittedly, there are probably more cost-effective means to this end. Renting a cabin up north might have done the trick. I could spend the days staring out at the ocean from a cliff face, looking deep and insightful as the sea breeze gently wafted through my graying locks of hair. Passersby noticing me might even assume my thoughts were on more elevated topics than machine-gun wielding female wrestlers coming to abduct me in their leather bikinis.

Or if I opted for a more social venue, I might have gone to a fantasy-foosball convention at a Day’s Inn in Fresno. Good times could be had partying down with attendees, whom I’m guessing are made up in large part by telemarketers and the odd shift manager from a rendering plant.

Alas, neither of these options would suffice. Where’s the adventure? Where’s the romance? Where’s the opportunity for hula upskirt? Hawaii promises all these things, or at least it would if I were the one writing the travel brochures.

I’m counting on divine providence to make mine a fulfilling and memorable vacation. However, I already have two strikes against me.

First, I’m staying at a respectable hotel near Waikiki Beach instead of a Honolulu flophouse frequented by crackheads and the insane. While my lodging choice lowers the chances of having all my possessions stolen below 100%, it also carries the risk of boredom one finds in the company of solid citizens.

The second strike is that I signed up for transportation to from the airport to the hotel and back. This may be convenient and economical, I’m not much looking forward to being herded into the back of a shuttle bus where some Iowan’s Midwestern fat spills over into my seat.

I might just take a taxi instead. This would be more expensive but well worth it, as it has been my experience that drivers know much about local attractions not found in any guidebook. When he looks into his rear-view mirror and sees me give him the signal (palm of the hand against the chin, tongue darting out between the index and middle fingers), he’ll know that I’ll be looking for a little something extra during my stay. In no time flat, I’ll have offers for grisly souvenirs from the USS Arizona or to be taken to a clandestine nightclub where the stage show includes a Samoan transsexual crushing a luau pig to death with her thighs.

However things turn out, I’m sure I’ll find some way to debauch myself. I seem to have a talent for that.