about honey

D.J. Huppatz

Cruising back to Nassau after my arrest and subsequent release for obstructing a bulldozer in the last Irish rainforest, my thoughts turned to the fate of the high-vis goons who smashed the forest’s fairy ring. I googled it but there’s very little legitimate information (by which I mean endorsed by fairies) on the consequences of ring destruction. But if collecting dew from the grass inside a ring brings bad luck, they’re bound for eternal damnation. Also, it’s true what they say about the Bermuda Triangle—the satellite signal mysteriously drops out—so I’ll continue my research when we dock in Nassau.

No doubt you’re already scrolling this quickly in search of that dopamine rush you get when you confirm what you think you already know about Honey and me. I get it. It’s the price of fame. If Honey is in Zurich finishing her PhD in marine biology—and you’ve seen evidence online—who’s that with him on the yacht?

HOW HONEY AND I WERE FORGED ON THE ANVIL OF JAND

“It’s not that I’m a nihilism junkie,” said Honey, “but the world’s winking out.”

She closed her laptop, stood up, and shook out her hair.

“The planet’s unraveling and I’ve spent all my grant money on tattoos and vodka.”

She lifted her skirt to reveal a freshly inked bee hovering over a flower on her thigh.

“I need a break,” she said, “let’s go dancing.”

Next thing I knew we were at the back of a packed London club swaying to a Fela Kuti tribute band. On stage, a dozen musicians and dancers in silver and gold led the hypnotic rhythm. In a sea of rippling hips, bobbing heads and rowdy Yoruba chants, Honey was defending Fela for taking 27 wives during his reign as king of the Kalakuta Republic.

“At first, it was a performative critique of patriarchal hypocrisy. But he discovered second-wave feminism in prison, and upon his release, he divorced all his wives because—quote— ‘women cannot be slaves of men’.”

I was formulating a suitable response when I noticed the music had stopped and the lead singer was pointing toward us, yelling, “Over there!”

The spotlight swung around and landed on me.

I pointed at myself.

“Yes, you!” said the lead singer, “the Worst Man Dancer in all Jand! Come up here!”

The laughing crowd patted me on the back as they pushed me to the steps and onto the stage as the lead singer identified “the Best Three Woman Dancers” who were similarly shepherded onstage. Blinking in the lights, I was surrounded by the Best Woman Dancers in London as the bass began and the singer chanted Release Yourself, Unstraighten Yourself! Release Yourself, Unstraighten Yourself! My hips slipped into the syrupy rhythm, my fingers traced airy arabesques and when the horns kicked in, even the horizon of planetary apocalypse began to recede.

Then the music stopped, a wave of cheering, and the house lights went up.

Honey was gone.

HAILEY UNYOKED

On the yacht’s front deck, Hailey’s picking at the handful of pomegranate seeds she has for breakfast, and I wonder why I’m still paying for two chefs. She dips her sunglasses onto her nose and looks at me with her Tiffany-blue eyes.

“Now that I’m curating my own bubble,” she says, “I don’t think Nassau is going to positively impact on my business goals.”

I see where this is going. I sigh, butt out my cigar, and mix us another cocktail.

Hailey continues.

“The Year of the Feminine Ox is over. I’m unyoking.”

“To unleash your inner cow?”

Hailey smiles as she takes the cocktail.

“Spare me the bull energy. I’m on an upward evolution.”

“OK, I get it. But what about me?”

“Craft yourself a better life narrative. Expose your vulnerability. The salt in your tears is the same as the salt in the sea.”

I balance my cocktail on the deck rail and remember the cute capybara pics Honey used to send me.

BECOMING HONEY

I know very little about her childhood but this much is true.

Honey was born in a tiny village in the forest reserve of Spreewald, a tangle of hamlets connected by streams and swamps in an area of eastern Germany famous for producing the world’s tastiest gherkins. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a swimsuit model, but the lack of beaches in Spreewald meant limited opportunities.

“She won’t plait her hair like the other girls,” the villagers would whisper.

“She doesn’t even eat gherkins.”

“Why did her parents call her Honey?”

“Sweet as honey liquor?”

“Ha! Honey liquor? More like Honey Badger.”

By the time she graduated high school, she had to get out of Spreewald. In those days, swimsuit models often started their careers with a degree in marine biology.

HOW I BECAME THE GREAT WRITER I ALWAYS THOUGHT MYSELF TO BE

And me? Honestly, it’s been a long journey. I began by posting YouTube videos—how to cut pizza with scissors, five-minute crafts with egg cartons, three ways to DIY no-sew sock puppets—and only began writing to win prize money. I’d promised Honey a new couch. It took a while to win my first competition and get that couch, but once I started winning, I became addicted.

With the advance from my first novel, I bought Honey a suite at the Amsterdam Hilton.

But the writerly path isn’t an easy one and I won’t pretend the journey didn’t take its toll. It still does. Last night, for example, I attended a séance in the back room of a restaurant here in Nassau. I wanted to ask John Lennon how he thinks we’re doing with world peace and drop a line or two about the fairy ring incident. He’s been contacted via Electronic Voice Phenomenon before but this time he chose not to show. I was disappointed but it was probably for the best as I don’t think he’d be happy with what’s happening in the world these days.

It was also good to get an early night as I need my sleep.

At dawn, a hulking man takes up a great wooden mallet and hits the great gong three times. A rich, metallic sound resonates through the islands of the Bahamas, calling all writers to work. Nassau’s a writer’s town: its peeling pastel decadence lends itself to nostalgic historical dramas, while the decrepit tiki bars and beachfront fish shacks are perfect settings for mystery scripts. I wouldn’t be the great writer I am today if I didn’t have access to all this inspiration at the end of the pier.

A SAMPLE OF ONLINE OPINIONS

“She looks like a plastic doll head I once found washed up on a beach.”

“That lip filler and hair piled up on her head make her look like a giant grouper in a wig.”

“Look I am not a fan, but I think she could do better than a dead-beat wannabe writer.”

“She’ll be yachting for billionaires after her new movie drops.”

“Wait, are Hailey and Honey the same person?”

“I’d never thought of that! You could be right.”

I DREW THE BORDERS OF KURDISTAN

I was summoned to Geneva last month as a special advisor to the United Nations to help settle the Middle East situation once and for all. As the turgid flatteries became heated arguments between old and nouveau imperialists, the blue-suited oil execs feigned a walkout before doubling back and doubling down. Negotiations like these are always painfully slow so I volunteered to help the cartography team.

My creativity was limited by the strict orthogonal lines on the Iraqi side (the blue suits got in first) but there was scope for little improvisation across the bottom of Turkey. I really hit my stride on the Iranian side. Inspired by Paul Klee’s idea of “taking a line for a walk”, I let the line’s inner logic guide me and I am particularly proud of how today’s Kurdistan border wobbles through the Zagros Mountains.

No one had yet figured out what people were going to do in this new state, so, in what I can only describe as a flash of inspiration, I blurted out: “Bees! Though beekeeping thrived in the region for millennia, with the Iran-Iraq war and expulsion of villages from the borderlands, not to mention new pests and lack of suitable forage, bees are now critically endangered.”

The next day, the blue suits presented a plan to introduce apiculture training and modern beekeeping equipment to villages all over Kurdistan so that their people can one day thrive in a honey economy. My work in Geneva was done.

I know what you’re thinking. Zurich was so close. Why didn’t I go?

Also, why would anyone study marine biology in a land-locked country?

THE COMING OF THE FAIRIES

For those of you who still doubt the reality of fairy rings, fear not. I’ve done the research. The existence of fairies, whose evolutionary lineage is the same as winged insects (closest, of course, to the Lepidoptera, or butterfly genus) was established by none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sir Arthur was, as you will recall, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, famed for deducing the truth and exposing liars, fakes, and forgeries. This very same Sir Arthur, in his classic The Coming of the Fairies, proved the existence of fairies.

In a small village called Cottingley, he wrote, through which tumbles a tiny stream known as Cottingley Beck, teenage cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths spent many a summer in the woods playing with the resident fairies. Then one day, when—as they told it—Frances “ticed” the fairies into their ring of stones with a dance, whereupon Elise, ready with the camera, captured dancing fairies for the first time on photographic plates. And the ring? Elise and Frances had the utmost respect for the old ways and would never disturb a fairy ring.

That’s how it was back then.

IN WHICH HAILEY’S HAIR HIDES ALL THAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD

She’s due to fly to LA for her premiere but Hailey takes one more selfie on the yacht.

She smiles as she looks down at her phone.

“My True Self, shining from within,” she swipes. “I’ve sent it to you. As a memento.”

She walks along the pier and, just for a moment, that sun-bleached hair, piled high on her head, blocks from view all ten stories of the good ship Celebrity Equinox so that the world’s longest rollercoaster floats like a mechanical squiggle in the crystalline Bahamian sky.

BEE DAY

Yesterday, the 20th of May, was World Bee Day, named in honor of the Slovenian pioneer of modern apiculture, Anton Janša. Janša not only started stacking hives in drawers but painted each drawer with a quirky scene: saints posed next to hives buzzing with bees; a bear in a carriage drawn by chickens; and my favorite, a beekeeper walking his pet snail.

Yet Janša was not the first apiarist. On the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsular, 7500 years ago, a cave painter, tired of boars and deer, painted a human figure halfway up a ladder, gaze fixed on a beehive above.

As well as remembering Janša and the First Honey Gatherer, I tried to contact the Chinese Premier on World Bee Day. I wanted him to reconsider his position on Winne the Pooh. Who doesn’t love a Bear of Very Little Brain? Even when there’s a little black rain cloud hovering over the honey tree, he thinks, and I’m floating up on a red balloon towards disaster, I’m driven by a singular purpose: “I love honey.”

There. I’ve said it.

OUR FUTURE LIFE TOGETHER

I’d been rehearsing the speech in my head all weekend.

“Just prior to living happily ever after, how about we tie the knot?”

I imagined an intimate space decked out with candles and a hidden photographer poised for epic reaction shots. I even ordered Box Sox, a pair of socks with a built-in pocket to store your engagement ring box so it’s easily accessible when you get down on one knee. A box in a jacket pocket or your jeans is a dead giveaway—especially if the day involves horseback riding or adventure sports—and the advanced fibres of Box Sox absorb sweat which is a bonus because I’ll be extremely nervous. 

After Honey says yes—which, given the candles, hidden box, and photographer, is likely—we’ll jet to Vegas, rent a pink convertible, and drive to Tunnel L’Amour where jumpsuit Elvis will officiate a short but heartfelt ceremony and present us with commemorative champagne flutes as we eat fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Rhinestoned flames of love leaping up his flares, Elvis will wave us off with words of wisdom.

“When things go wrong, don’t go with them!” 

Or we’ll complete our nuptials on horseback in the crinkled shadows of the Carpathian Mountains or elope across the stream to Gretna Green (in liberal Scotland) where the blacksmith will strike the anvil with his hammer to forge our bond then we’ll stay in bed for a week in Honey’s suite at the Amsterdam Hilton in button-up pyjamas and when we tire of room service I’ll go out gathering and bring back a bag of those cute Dutch pancakes and stand at the door and cup my hands over my mouth and holler, “Honey I’m home!”

DAMAGE CONTROL

There’s snow on the Hollywood Hills already but where’s Honey?

I’m afraid she’ll miss my interview with Oprah. I figure if I can just tell my truth, sit-down style with big O and she believes me—and I’m sure she will—then the world will too. I’ll speak not only about my hurt but (as Oprah explains) so many other people’s hurt. I’ll fall back into the couch in pain (the world’s pain) and Oprah will lean forward and take my hands in hers and look me deep in the eyes, nodding seriously, and say “you’ve got a lot of work to do,” and I’ll nod as tears begin to well in my eyes and in Oprah’s too and then Honey steps out from behind the curtain and all three of us hug until the commercial break after which we gather around the piano and I play “Imagine” and the studio audience sings in unison, the lights go down and—just for a moment—the world is one.

Photo of D.J. Huppatz

BIO: D.J. Huppatz lives in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Recent fiction in Exacting Clam, Fugitives and Futurists, Variant Literature, and Gone Lawn. Author of two poetry books, Happy Avatar (Puncher and Wattmann, 2015) and Astroturfing for Spring (Puncher and Wattmann, 2021). He also writes about design and architecture. Bluesky: @djhuppatz Instagram: dj_huppatz