Traditional Tomfoolery

RAIN DANCE

2006-06-05T07:15:00.000+03:00

CONTINUED from Zamfir.

Download this soundtrack . It has nothing to do with the text, just to prove that Rotem still has no taste.

'Get in!' she yells. The rain is wilder and the water looks dirty and rough.
'I'd rather keep my health intact,' I call back, realizing an instant later what a faux pas this was.
'Bitch!' she laughs, spraying my feet. She flaps about in the cold, in the waters that once carried her vomit and blood. But you never step into the same river twice.

A million of buzzing questions, and instead, I sit on a mossy slab of rock under an enormous willow umbrella. She climbs out, shaking her head like a dog, peeling off her shirt and wringing it in the rain.
She pulls on her boxers and pants, and stretches down beside me on the flat rock, dripping like an animal and as happy as a cub.

'I don't see the point of exposing different portions of yourself to the rain.'
She chuckles. 'You sound like Sara.'
'Shut up.'
She watches me. 'You've grown.'
'So have you,' I say, but when she cocks her head I decide she hasn't, and tell her so. 'You still have to up-to-no-good smirk.'
'I'm nearly 20,' she says proudly. 'I've spent so much energy reaching these digits, I forgot to grow up.' I giggle even though it's mighty dispiriting.

I watch her profile as she bends over to tie her laces, face submerged in shadows. I can stare comfortably, as she is lost in thought. Her expression seems sad; I know her body but now it shows unfamiliar scars.
There is one right where the bra strap goes, a cleft of dark skin - that's new. And one beneath her shoulder, rather twisted. I noticed the old ones when she leaped into the water: the slash at the buttock, the jagged cut down her back ribs, where the weapon must've bounced off as it cracked each bone, and the straight line down her thigh. This is what I want Vidoo to witness: an unwilling cutter. No, cuttee. Acts of external violence, violation of a perfect soft curve and a child's bone. Rotem would never damage herself.

When I think of child abuse I think of brittle bone crushed by a massive hand. Tiny skeleton, like a chick's or a rodent's, crumbling. I think of Rotem as a small child, the one I saw in the photos: tiny hands and feet, big bald head with huge hazel eyes, black Bermudas and a Bart Simpson tee. Striking forehead, a pout, a silence, an anger, add a slingshot if you will. I think of her pulverized under the violence of another colossus and my mind hurts. She does emit some enfant terrible airs, but maybe the bad-tomboy-on-the-block look is a cover-up façade of a more terrifying act.

The rain ceases as we begin our ascent uphill.
'You never told me why you came to Norham.'
Striding by, she plucks a tall weed. 'So I could meet you and the gang.'
'No, not the effects, the cause.'
'Cosmic predestination. An urge to celebrate Guy Fawkes' Day. I have no reason.'
'You suck as a bullshit artist.'
She turns around in her tracks to face me, spraying dew. 'Fine. I came to quit drugs. On my own. Among other things.'
I smile. 'Figured as much. What other things?'
'Alcohol. I needed to rehab myself undisturbed by authority.'
'What other things?' I repeat.
She doesn't reply. The grass is beaded with droplets which turn into mist as we pass.

In the car, she switches on the engine, and fixes a shot to a permanently-plastered contraption on her right arm. Then she rummages behind our seats, fishes a bag of blood, hangs it from the rearview mirror, spins the clear cord and mainlines it into her left arm. It's so macabre I feel dizzy.
She leans her head back.
'Some shit happened the Spring before Norham. Somebody died. I almost got arrested for possession, and I had a huge bout of alcohol poisoning.'
'You were 14?' She nods. 'So you were also gang-raped.'
'Nah, that happened at the end of that Summer. So by Springtime, I thought I was a survivor. Then everything crashed again and I had legal trouble. I was disowned. I knew no one could blow my cover at some crumbling godforsaken theological convent.'

'But you were carrying a few good kilos of shit. Why did you do that?'
'It wasn't mine,' she replies simply.
I remember discovering the nature of the heroin sachets hidden at the bottom of 6 grand Cadbury's cocoa cans, Rotem crying furiously because the principal ordered her to return the tins to the kitchens.
'And you thought it was some cursed smack or something.'
She grins. 'I didn't. But I needed your help, good pagan.'
'It was cursed! It got us into deep trouble.'
'I should really apologize to you about that,' Rotem frowns.
'Never mind. Now it all seems very funny, looking back.'
'The only amusing piece was selling it to that Aberdeen freak.'
I laughed, because I can still tangibly recall the relief. She never thought she could get rid of that crap that easily. 'You hummed Chariots of Fire all the way back to Norham.'
'No I didn't! I hate that tune. It's King of Geeky Themes.'
'You did too. Bellowed, actually.' And I have a flashback of a girl flashing a huge smile, skipping down red-brick alleys, hollering Chariots of Fire and splashing through all the greasy-rainbow puddles.

'If you come with me after Passover, I will tell you what happened pre-Norham.'
'Where?'
'Come to Germany, for a week or two.'
I shake my head. 'You keep doing that. You keep driving me into spontaneous decisions which could –'
'What?' she interrupts. 'Paralyze your career? I got you the bloody job – not to boast or anything, however you could afford a vacation, lest you'll burn out. And hey, I promised Vidoo to show her around Amsterdam. She wanted to see where one may order it with eggs.'
'Wasted maggot. Ok, ok, then what?'
'We'll stay at my grandfather's house in Frankfurt until UNICEF dispatches me again.'
I grimace. I hate that house. But information requires a trade system, and I will do anything for a piece of Rotem history.

TRAMPOLINE

2006-05-16T13:40:00.000+03:00

STOP. Before you read this post, download my soundtrack . You know you can, today.

I launch on a mighty PMS rampage.
I hate PMSing. Hate the way I grow so profoundly sad it's tragicomic. Hate waking up to find out that matter and antimatter have switched sides, that my stomach is hollowful of the world's emptiness, and that the universe thickly coats my void.
I hate brushing my teeth and feeling like after a night of bad sex. So bad it sticks beneath my fingernails, so I sit on the tub's ledge and whimper.
To clean my mind very carefully, with a Yaqui tale.

Once there were two Desert Girls.
One from the East and one from the West.
They journeyed as Desert People do, and since they shared a Desert Soul, their paths were bound to cross.
Soon enough, they met in a metropolitan area and settled a deal to cleanse each other until they shall be ready to resume their respective crossings.
The only problem was that these two Desert Girls were young and inexperienced, and their passion for one thing assumed the shape of another and so on, and within the first deal there dwelt a multilayered fusion of significance and none at all, and soon enough they were deep in trouble.
When one spoke of Coyotes, the other dreamt of Wolves. When one imitated the Condor, the other sang a Hawk. They owned different Demons in their hearts, some Wild Boars, others Cougar.
Their deal was exploding.

Things were getting so bad that they decided to initiate a journey together, to heal and relate. But they forgot their Demons and Familiars have mixed.
Once far from their city of origin, one Desert Girl suddenly saw her death. It was instant and sweaty and shot through her veins with all the mixed histories. The second Desert Girl understood this was the effect of their initial deal, and decided to make a sacrifice in order to save the Desert Girl.
The sacrifice included blood and submission. It was involuntarily and meant another deal was struck. The web of consequence grew thicker.
But she managed to save the Desert Girl's life. She brought her sustenance enough to last her until the next city, where she was treated and cured somewhat.
But their Demons mixed indefinitely. The revived Desert Girl was haunted forever.

'I wanna call off work,' I tell Benny. It's 4:30 in the morning.
'What's wrong?' I can hear him twist in his bed over the phone.
'Nothing really,' I say, feeling stupid. 'My fingernails are dirty.'
Now he's very alert. 'Tell me everything. What happened?'
'Nothing, dear Lord. I'm PMSing. I let you PMS three times a month, you can let me have some time off.'
'It's not that. You're welcome to take a break whenever you burnout. I don't find escaping smart. Wanna talk, instead of evading?'
'I can't talk about this,' and suddenly I'm very irritated. 'Talk doesn't solve everything. I'll take Vidoo to the desert for a few days. We'll learn about Virgo and Spike. Anyway, she wanted to ride a camel.'
I hear him scratching something. 'Ok, it's your call. But really, you're a terrible example.'
'I know. Did I wake you up?'
'Of course.'

Geoff drives us until the road turns white, and we wait for my friend Yedid'yah to pick us up. He's a camel driver with very blue eyes in a very red face. He comes hurtling with a trio of female camels. The heat off the dunes dries away the intensity of the void within me. I relax, and the camel heaves her butt up and knuckles off her knees with rough bleat.

When the Sun inches lower, I know I should warn Vidoo. When the sun hits the ground, absolute darkness falls.
We do not build a fire. Just the two of us, on the shoulder of a hill. The silence is heavier than all the grains of sand.
As far as I'm concerned, there is only one other person who gets affected thus by the desert. The other Girl, from the East. Her reality swerves radically too upon stepping on stretching plains, dreams and lizards merge in a hallucinated-but-not pyrotechnics of silence.

'Tell me a story,' says Vidoo in the dark.
I tell her about the Desert Man and Child who went off, one to die, one to deliver an embroidered pouch of herbs and a pipe. I tell her how the Man dried off in the sun and the Child smoked the herbs in the pipe and brought forth blue grass and mythological monsters.
'Tell me a scary story,' calls Vidoo in the dark, so I quickly tell her about the Talking Snake, and the one about the Coyote Woman and the Sack of Bones.
'A really scary one,' she commands.
So I tell her about the two Desert Girls and she keeps quiet.
Then she asks, 'Did the sacrifice include a lot of blood and submission?'
'No, but it's the idea of sacrifice. It's so out, to sacrifice.'
'Out?'
'It doesn't happen, or carry such weight. Of course, people lay out for each other when it comes to drugs, whoring around to sustain one another. But I was nearly dead and it was too symbolic to miss.'
'Get over it,' she says. 'It happens. Shit happens. All the time.'
'Nobody ever gestured such for me.' I reply, which silences her due to her share of neglect.

I lean back against the cooling hill, facing the stars at their full, frightening glory. I cannot cry in the desert. 'We are so diseased.'
'But beautiful,' says her silhouette from the sea-green horizon.
'But beautiful,' I agree.
'One day, you'll tell me the whole story?'
I swear to.

By dawn we trek to the Trampoline. I found it a few months ago: a lone trampoline on top of a dune, Middle of Nowhere. There is nothing more exquisite – even for a Desert Person – than watching a sunrise upon a trampoline.
We climb solemnly onto the taut fabric, and await the bursting sun.

BARBEQUE, ME N' YOU

2006-05-15T23:34:00.000+03:00

'Dude, this is like the world's greatest barbeque BO, man!' exclaims J.Z. as the gang sniffs the scene; dusk wafting with smoke and sparks. The whole town is barbequed.
Vidoo and I disperse firecrackers and glo-stix, while virtuoso MC Eddie raps a 'Bar-Yok-Hey' piece.

'I can juggle fireballs,' Freddie informs us.
'We don't care,' Benny replies diplomatically.
'But I really can, wanna see?' he steps towards the furnace.
Benny drags him back. 'Not now. You may use your cigarettes later.'
Freddie shoots me an imploring look, and I smile dazzlingly. 'Some talents better remain a legend, you know.'
'Hell yeah,' reiterates Mac. 'Imagine if Eddie ever went on air.'
'Oy vey,' I conclude as they hurtle unto the ashen ground, calling fair vengeance.

'I would love to die on this,' Vidoo points at the largest bonfire yet, a roaring brute of tires and school-benches. 'Burnt at stake,' she rolls the words on her tongue.
'I'd wanna die without needing salsa,' says Eddie, offering her a marshmallowed stick.
Suddenly I see the moon right behind the fire, camouflaged due to its flaming color. It's low, orange, and huge, slightly oval and disturbingly dimensional. I grab Vidoo's sleeve, speechless for a minute.
'Holy shiatsu!' hisses Mac appreciatively. 'Beastly!'
Earth becomes very quiet, and all I hear is the echo of crackling flames and the slow rise of the moon. A moon so violently golden, so pockmarked, like a burnt skull.
Houston, we have a problem.

Quick head count. And again.
'Ben, come here.'
I hear sirens. I know they are fire trucks, but premonition hits me like broken water.
'Dana, where the hell is she? She has a fear of fires.' As well as impulsive and self-harming.
We climb on a curb fence, scrutinizing the crowd, finalizing that Dana isn't present. Benny jumps down, instructing, 'Don't ask the kids. They'll get worked up. I'll go back to her dorm, and call you from there. Alert 2 counselors.'
He snatches Freddie's skateboard and kicks off. There is no way he could catch a taxi on these crowded streets.

Dana is the youngest child of an alcoholic father.
There is a twist to his personality: he happens to be a pyromaniac. Not the sort who get high on birthday-cake sizzlers. Upon dissipation, he would examine items with fire. It could be his dinner, dog or daughter's hand.
She developed a drinking habit early, together with pressing cigarette butts against her skin when stressed. Generally, she is a docile, passive girl who rarely commits to a decision with the same ferocity as her drug of choice: combustion.

A counselor contacts me, saying that Dana had a little incident, but Benny says it's all under control, should I be kind enough to get back soon, they'd love to see me. I call another counselor, asking him to supervise the bonfire-hoppers, and catch a ride to the dorm.
Dr. Patty is chain-smoking on the porch, with her favorite MDA crew. I rush to the kitchen, following a bloody trail.
Dana is bald, wrapped in a blanket huddling against Benny, who never touches a girl but must've bent his rule to adjust another. His arms wrapped tightly around her, he motions with his chin back to the porch.
'What happened?' I ask Patty.
'Slashed wrists. Nearly mutilated her scalp. Caught on act pretty early,' she smiles at me. I thank God for the moon. 'She's fine, just shocked. Apparently, Ben said she has Arsonphobia?'
I nod. 'We should've remembered it. Jesus, what neglect. We should've taken it into account, like potential asthma attacks.'
'What are you afraid of?' she asks, dragging on her cigarette.
'Malls and shopping centers,' I answer, perplexed.
'Imagine you took that into account every time you went out.'
'I'm different! I don't count,' I exclaim. 'But Dana is my responsibility.'
'Don't mention that word to a commissioned doc, ok sister?'
I nod.

Back in the kitchen, Benny rubs her fresh stubble. Her arms are bandaged and she's shivering.
'Hey Dan, nice 'do,' I say softly.
She looks up. 'Sorry, May.'
'Oh no, I'm sorry. We should've remembered. It's a bad day.'
'I like the bonfires,' she says. 'I looked at them from the window when my blood flowed. They aren't little flames of hatred.'
I clutch her hands firmly. She inhales the heady air, and continues. 'They're big and warm. They're like you two, they don't intend any harm. They like to party. They're beautiful. And just when I realized that, I also realized I'm going to die.'
Benny looks at me over her head, and we realize we can never express our appreciation for such a tribute.

VIVA LA VIDOO part ⅳ

2006-05-12T04:03:00.000+03:00

Continued from Viva La Vidoo iii

'No, I really can't,' I whimper. 'I'm twenty. I am a student. Unstable and quirky. I can't.'
'Convince me.'
'Can't do that either. You convince me.'
Rotem doesn't hesitate. 'You don't want history repeating. You can save a life here: she goes back to US, she kills herself. This isn't a guilt trip – this is about your capability, not responsibility. But since you can, you should.'
I say nothing, because it's easy for her to say. I do – Honest Injun do – want to help, save a life, a universe, relieve nightmares. However, the price is well beyond my field of competence.

I try to emulate Rotem in more ways than I'm aware of, but there are limits. I cannot commit to an act which shall transfigure my life.
'I am physically unable –' I try, but she cuts me off.
'I'll pay you, semimonthly. I've got a lawyer who can get us a smooth arrangement. She'll be yours before she's released here, once the medical insurance is sorted.'
The legalities frighten me, the procedures and offices and other bureaucratically Jewish fiends.
'I don't want to push or blackmail you,' continues Rotem. 'Only, I think you're the best choice. I did consider adopting her myself, but I can't take in anyone my husband would be unable to deal with later on. I would have, en serio. But I'm dying.' Now I can see her soul right there in those clear hazel eyes, and I hear my heart breaking, and she looks away.
'Just blackmailed you, didn't I?'
I nod, either way.

Back in her room, Vidoo is asleep. The Dr. has left. I wonder is she truly is BPD, but I swallow it as a worst case scenario, thus nothing would freak me further. Rotem sits on the edge of her bed, and I settle back in the recliner.
'What if I take you to consult with some psychologists and rabbis?'
I shrug, because too many circumstances are shifting out of control. Rotem slips out of the ward to make some calls.

The smoothest way to impose a decision is to argue against it, which happens a day later as the core staff members convene by the ER.
'You can't possibly think you can take her in,' exclaims Eliana, and Benny charges further: 'May, you'll wreck your career and yourself. If I would adopt every lovably suicidal case passing by, I'd be one myself.'
'But I have to,' I emphasize since I can't explain. 'She keeps asking if she's in NYC. The only way to relax her is to promise she isn't, and won't ever be.'
'That's a temporary commitment based on delicate circumstance,' Benny plays el inteligente. 'What if she OD or slashes wrists under your care?'
At times like this, I pull a Rotem. 'I will take full legal responsibility. See if I give a flip. I swear it will not decrease my vocational performance in any way.'
'It will,' says Eliana.
'It won't, precisely because my job is directly related to most of her trouble. She'll leave the current program, yet I'll find a way to fund a DBT [here] agenda for her.

'No you won't,' suddenly the voice in my mind embodies behind me. 'I will fundraise.'
My colleagues stare at Rotem, possibly since she's the first person to stand a few inches shorter beside me.
She resumes despite the glances. 'I'll give you an initial amount now, and VIP reference to two DBT directors in the US. Rest assured that nothing will impair May's functioning: I'd trust her with my life, and have had. Adopting Vidoo will only improve her act.' And they won't argue against that smirk, or the cheque.

Somebody calls my name down the corridor: Sara, my pillar of sanity, with a perfectly heliumed get-well balloon.
'We need to talk,' she admonishes. Whenever we 'need to talk', she is reproachful.
'We can't talk now,' I say. 'I haven't slept much the past fortnight. I won't be very rational.'
'That's ok, you never are. But since you're making a decision here that would affect the entire family, I thought I should intervene.' Shucks, I forgot she's like, my closest relative.
'Fine, but not now. Keep your opinions to yourself until I can rebut them.'
Sara blocks my way to the ward. 'What makes you think you can adopt her?'
'Nothing. Rotem? No, no, not Rotem!' I yell, since she is about to strangle me with the balloon string.

'Don't ever give me Rotem for an answer!' she hisses. 'Not everything Rotem says is irrefutable. Do you understand that Rotem is not a medium for logical discussion? She pulls averages way off range. She could quit drugs on her own, you couldn't. She may adopt psychotic cases, you cannot. You're getting yourself into deep mud here. And Rotem is not a proof of your success.'
'Wait. She didn't decide for me. She put my feelings into words.'
'Your feelings?' Sara is puzzled. 'You haven't slept for 10 days and you're basing judgment on feelings?'
'Stop catching me by the word,' I always get livid when someone mouths my self-doubt. 'I wanted to adopt her all along. It's like meeting Mr. Right. I know it.'
'May, Mr. Right is a myth.'
'Well, it's a myth you can materialize. With hard work. And I'm willing.'
Sara rolls her finger around the string. 'Why, May? Are you trying to right some wrongs? Are you trying to be heroic? Do you need some loving?' she looks up. 'Do you have to put yourself into this position?'
'Sara, I don't hallucinate anymore,' I say, fully serious. 'However, I know this is what I should do. This is not another message from an old Coyote Spirit. I don't care what you or anyone else thinks. This is my call. Not wrong, not right, not heroic. It's the position I'm in.'
She scrutinizes my eyes. Then she passes me the balloon, shrugging. 'We're talking different languages again, insomniac. Do what you think you should, and you have my support. I just hope you won't get hurt.'
'I am doing this because I was hurt,' I say, and she stomps her foot.
'Which is why you can't adopt her! Heck, May, just do what you want.' She marches down the corridor, as I yell some thanks for the balloon.

BUCKS FOR A SIN

2006-05-07T07:40:00.000+03:00

BEEP
First thing in the morning:
Sender: Shneider2
Message: yo.dont test us cos we smokd krak fri nite.here told u in advans.peace out
Sent: 05:14:22 07/05/06

I swing my legs out of bed, wash hands and check on Vidoo. Asleep, good.
As I boil water I call Benny.
'Got text?' I ask.
He grunts.

'G'morning, anyway. Schneider just confessed about some rock.' I cheerfully persist.
'Absolution, baby. Absolution,' he drawls. I hate waking up males at such magical hours.
'This is his umpteenth time running this routine. He know we'll test him.'
'You got my OK.'
'Cheers, boss. I just don't get why he'd announce it every time. I mean, does it make him feel more secure or something?' I sip my coffee, gesturing wildly to the phone. 'Do I care if he smoked crack or not? I do, but not in the way this is turning out to be. Smoke away your gray cells. Seek therapy. Bite me.'
'Know what I'm thinking?' Benny intervenes.
'Go ahead.'
'I think that for a woman your size, you talk quite a lot in the morning.'
Laughing, I apologize. 'Go back to sleep. You'll find the results on your desk.'

I pedal my pink bike to the center. Sunrise is humid and orchids waft heavily. For breakfast, Schneider and Co. each receive a plastic cup and line up by the john. Polo tests the steaming urine as I retreat to the office.
Schneider's natural spikes peek around the door. 'Can I talk to you for a sec?'
'Have a seat.'

He lounges, spreading his arms widely across my tiny desk. 'We're all positive.'
'D'uh.'
'And grounded?'
I nod. 'Plus, consider all your basketball matches postponed for the next 3 weeks.'
'Damn. Essays?' he asks comfortably.
'Of course. Due this afternoon. Decadence of act, future avoidance and prevention, the works.'
'And signed?'
'Schneider, this won't work if you're not committed to the program.'
'Don't get all corny, May,' he says. 'If not for the program, I'd be jettin' real stuff.'
'Now you're being corny. I don't care what you're capable of scraping. You're capable of quitting, so freakin' quit.'
'Yessir,' he grins.

I spin around in my chair and open the window. The night's moisture still hasn't left the world. 'Schneider, let's cut a deal. Two months you keep clean – real clean, codeine clean – and you get $1000.'
'No shit.'
'None whatsoever. On my honor.' Thank the fundraisers, punk.
'And if I don’t?'
'Then no 1000 bucks for you.'
'No, what do I do?'
'You mean, like a mutual bet? A reciprocal?' he nods, but this spins beyond my imagination. 'Name your price.'
He considers carefully. '50 bucks mean a lot to me.'
'150.'
'You're bad.'
I smile politely. 'That's my job.'

He watches me. His eyes are highly intelligent. I spend efforts on this kid because of his charisma, leadership and charm. Or in one word: potential.
I sense he has something else to impart, so I beckon him. 'You see,' he starts. 'I feel like a loser this whole time we're smoking, and then I feel better when I tell you.'
'I am not your biatch priest,' I remind him wearily.
'I know, but it's one of the stages of Teshuvah according to the Ramba"m, ok? It's Vidui Peh, which equals you, regret, amending the Maaseh and withstanding Nisayon.'
I stare, overwhelmed by – well, mainly by the prattling of rabbinical terms – then nod towards the door. '1000 bucks, Schneider, and an essay.'

Leaning on the doorknob, he announces: 'One day I'll come clean. I'll study well and respect myself. I'll make best use of my talents and be normal. I'll be more normal than normal: I'll be the best guy in the whole Yeshiva. I won't be guilty, and I'll do Yeshiva because I can face myself, not because I wanna be normal or respected. I will have a God, and consideration, and I'll be so fine, baby, that even you'd consider marrying me.'
Giggling, I remind him that all matches are pushed off for the next 3 weeks.

Yeshiva? Where the heck did that come from.
'Set your ambitions high,' someone once told me in a rehab. 'So you'll never be satisfied until you look back and see what a real person you are.'

ZAMFIR

2006-05-03T07:13:00.000+03:00

CONTINUED from Morris Mini. I suggest you download this as it would explain the title and the nostalgia. As it downloads, you might be interested in hearing this.

'Do you want to go back?' Rotem asks. 'Back to the Andes?' The sun hasn't emerged yet, as the little car zooms through the quickest route out of London.
I know the answer. 'No. Maybe to the parts I've not seen yet. Like, the southern Chilean sierra.' I don't want to go back because my identity shifted; my sustenance, my theology, switched.
I can't go back. You stash your fears somewhere, like TNT cylinders, and run away, knowing they'll explode upon return.

Rotem frowns at the early suburban traffic, then fishes a CD case from beneath her seat. 'Look what I've brought,' she flicks it open. 'Zamfir. If we gotta be nostalgic, might as well die from it.'
Gheorghe Zamfir and Ennio Morricone are two musicians she would listen to curled up in pain in the cellar, retching and bleeding, and during withdrawal. In those days of the walkman and coupled earphones, she'd plug us both into surfs of whistles and percussion. She decided that those were the soundtracks to my childhood, which should be an anthropologically correct assumption.

Now Rotem taps the clutch and whistles along, often adding Spanish lyrics. You do not want to be her passenger: she's one of those crackhead drivers who could prefer the opposite lane due to a northwesterly breeze.
Since I have so many questions to rephrase and calculate, I remain silent. The landscape washes past in bluish mist and bare black branches, small cobbled bridges and dark rivulets. Rotem rhymes nonsensically to a sweet melody and I know that she is sick, nearly dead, so I must be precise with my words, as I cannot reinvent a memory.
'Why do you want to visit Norham?' I ask, finding simplicity the best policy.
'Dunno. I like riding ghost roller-coasters,' she shrugs. 'I like chewing on pieces of history. And when I think of Norham, I think of you and cinnamon roads. You do not take Ezekiel to the Red Sea or Mandela to Bosnia.'

'What made it so significant, a "piece of history"?' I say, confused by all the attached importance. 'You could've gone to Sicily or Pretoria, with somebody who has left a more pertinent effect on your life.'
'Effect?' she looks at me, and yes, we could wham into an 18-wheeler now. 'You had pretty pyrotechnical effects on me,' she smirks. 'I'm going back there because it's a nesting ground and winter is thick. Who giveth? Norham is our childhood, mi alma.' When she speaks Spanish her locution is soft and engaging, calling one 'preciosa', 'mi reina', 'hermana'. 'Neither of us had much of a childhood. We were sheltered there, if you want.'
I don't get half of this, but it rings reasonable. Both of us fought for bloody scraps until then, alone.
'Childhood doesn't require a biological age frame,' she clarifies. 'I'm talking about environs and stage of development. Call it a late bloom.'
So am I calling on my childhood? 'You talk as if you're at least 70 years old. You're not even 20 yet.'
She just whistles, a flock of black-faced sheep swimming past.

She parks before the shabby dorm building, now desolate. The trees are bare, which shocks me since I left them in full foliage. I don’t know why this jolts me.
We stare at the buildings that were our home for a good few months. Ha! Gotcha. This wasn't our home, but a mere functionary place we visited between rolling in the hills and smoking by the river. Ain't nostalgic whatsoever.

Rotem pulls the car away from that eerie street. As we head for the hills, she replies, 'You should know it isn't about age. If at 20 you've undergone abuse, assault, initiated prostitution, violence and chemical commerce to some extent' – she chuckles at herself – 'then you've traded your soul a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times, and you've no age at all.' She hits the gas. 'What is age, rather than a convenient social group? Once surpassed – or at the edge of your collective definition – who the hell cares? You're so old you've never been born yet.'

We step out of the vehicle, red and small within the lush swamp of the hills. I forgot how low and vast the sky could be. It still smells faintly of cinnamon, datura, dope.
'At 16,' she continues, knees brushed by wet stalks. 'You were way out of the sweet sixteen league. Your survival skills, your abilities to concoct drugs and dreams, the fact that you're escaped though two continents and an ocean, and switched a mind-frame. At 16 you were past massive neglect, emotional and physical abuse, endured prostitution and dealing. You could be 37 to all I care, or 4.'
We trudge to the river through the wild graze, soaked to our shirts. The rain starts pelting as soon as we hit the bank.

Rotem, who at 15, daughter to a paranoid IDF officer, knew how to reconstruct a submachine-gun, mastered martial arts from 5 different countries, adapted languages within 10 days and traded drugs and her own soul during the 6 years prior to Norham – that child kicks off her boots, wriggles out of her jeans and boxers and leaps into the water pollution. So I figure Time doesn't matter anymore, because not a day passed since Creation, on the shores of the Hiddekel.

CONTINUED on Rain Dance.

VIVA LA VIDOO part iii

2006-04-26T17:55:00.000+03:00

continued from Viva La Vidoo ii

Confusion is a terrifying state, point blank. Semi-conscious Vidoo would spring up at the mere touch, and gape wildly at the attending personnel. Mutely, she shot us petrified stares, often mouthing, 'Where am I?', 'What happened?' or 'Who are you?'
She seizured and retched, and had to be tied down to the bed-frame. I kept repeating her name, location, and exclamations of love. Personally, I was crept out by this moribund phase, and clenched my teeth in fear and fatigue, and the correlations from my past.
Where am I?
'You're in the hospital, Vidoo. You're taken care of. It's ok.'
Where am I? Is this New York?
'New York? No. This is Israel. You're safe now. They're taking care of you. I love you.'
Is this NYC?
'God forbid, no. It's ok.'
She nods, leans her head back and dozes off. A few days pass.

Then Rotem stands in the doorway.
The monitor beeping, the nurse calls, the ringing phones, die. All I hear for some elongated seconds is blood thudding through my heart, with a triple echo. Vidoo, groggy, submerged in valium and antitoxins, notices her too and raises her head. I am so relieved, I crash my head against my knees and cry.
Rotem squats on the puke-splattered lino before me and holds me tight. She smells good, of outdoors and mountains and wildflowers.
She sends me home and stays with Vidoo, and it all seems very natural although they've never met before.

I sleep fitfully, plagued with ongoing nightmares of Vidoo dying, or reaching for me in a Stephen-Kingesque zombie fashion, eyeballs rolling and convulsing grip tightening on my throat.
The next morning I return to her bedside, which Rotem has decorated with latex-glove balloons, monkey pictures, a hospital sheet canopy festooned with little fiesta flags she sliced out of puke bags. My knees are still jelly and blood pressure low. The psychologist is due to evaluate Vidoo soon, informs Rotem. 'She is able to talk now, eh chica?'
Within 24 hours, all tubes have vanished, just a single arm attached to the IV. She is still bleary and nauseous, but the improvement is way off-scale, which I fully credit to Rotem.
A doctor steps in, a brisk Australian gent, who questions us briefly and dismisses us out.

At the cafeteria, Rotem bares her arm, ties a cord and fixes herself a shot. Sometimes I'd rather forget that she is nearly dead herself.
'You gave Vidoo her life,' she tells me, leaning back against the wall, eyes shut. I don't know what medicine is inside that syringe, but it seems to cause much pain.
'I did what I was supposed to.'
'You didn't have to stay with her, repeatedly proclaim your love – even when she's unconscious.'
'I didn't do it for her,' I retort, then shudder because I get a chill. Rotem opens her eyes. 'I have nightmares,' I tell her.
'The Peyote Witch is trippin' badly?' she teases, but she's concerned.
I don't care anymore. 'It'll go away. Nightmares always ebb off. Thing I'm worried about is Vidoo's upshot.'
Rotem squares her shoulders as if she's been waiting for this cue. 'What're the options?'
'Most probably, she'll be dispatched home. The program, however therapeutic, cannot cater for her.'
'She's BDP,' says Rotem.
'Says who?' [Borderline Personality Disorder – see article]
'My humble diagnosis. Done some research into self-harmers the past few years. Thanks to my renowned maternal surname,' she grimaces, 'I had enough nepotism to maintain contact with some bigshots in the field.'
'Since when are you into psychiatry?'
'I'm not. I happen to be the psychologist's psychopathic kid. But I did want to understand what happened to Bella.'
GONG.

Never, ever, ever ever, mention Bella. Even the carefree have taboos.
Bella, majestic and brilliant - a colossus of a woman - was fervidly admired by Rotem, who found in her the accomplice/debate partner she needed so badly. In Norham, they were known as 'The Girls who Knew Everything.' They could recite Goethe, the Ri"f and Ali G, argue over Kadishman's sheep and Fermat's law. I knew this relationship differed from the rest Rotem held, as she pleaded to please that Hassidic desperada with a lopsided eye.
Then, Bella was kicked out. Enraged Rotem decided to follow suit, and covered for her roommate Tanya's kleptomania. Thus she joined the expulsion epidemic, her last act being the last straw. However, Bella died just before Rotem reached her.

Therefore, you never mention Bella in Rotem's vicinity, cry for me Argentina and all.
'She used to cut,' explain Rotem now. 'As well as slam her fingers in doors and windows. I preferred to ignore that as it confused me. Once I left, I tried to find out more. Felt guilty, I guess, and furiously curious. Had to trace her murderer, so to speak. I corresponded and spoke to a few notable in the field, and swallowed enough scripture to compose a thesis.'
This is unsurprising. She has a habit of researching life. She studies her enemy and lover until she is versed with everything, down to favorite urinating position.
'And you're saying Vidoo's BDP?'
'Merely suggesting. Wait for the doc's verdict.'
'If so, then we definitely can't cater for her.'
'But you can. Adopt her.'
'Who?'
'You. Her.'
I stare. 'I can't.
She gives me her famous smirk.

Continued on Viva la Vidoo iv

MORRIS MINI

2006-04-23T14:34:00.000+03:00

Although I'd rather stick to pre-drafted entries about Vidoo, I want to write about the UK. And Germany. And the in-betweens.
Rotem called daily to arrange a rendezvous, but I kept having urgent agenda to address. Of course, I am busy. I run the program. But as head-of, most of my actions are mainly gear-greasing, no more. Practically, I could meet her at any given hour. But I don't.

Vidoo hated both the UK and me for nearly 24 hours. Then she discovered Fiona, a tall, long-mascaraed, plump Goth, who smoked like a chimney throughout the Seder Night. According to Vidoo's scale, you gotta be to'ally nipple to chug a fag during a religious ceremony; you cannot possibly get any cooler. Well, theoretically you could, if you possess a depreciating Brit attitude and are vehemently, wholesomely, proudly depressed.
So Vidoo is happy. She wants to settle in London and be part of the Punk Scene. I haven't the heart to tell her it's dead, and Pink Floyd fandom is so emo, dude. But let her be. I gotta run faxes and speakers and rambles and paintball massacres. I don't have time to attend to my daughter's fresh smoking habit. Die, emo kid, die.

On Festival Saturday night, I sift through printed email, memos and facsimilieu. There were a few from Rotem, requesting to meet at King's Cross, or Victoria's, anywhere, the bloody Tate.
'How about I stroll there with a freaking rose and parrot-head umbrella, and search for her?' I say, suddenly pissed.
'Search for who?' asks Vidoo from her king-size. Although we currently reside in a swell suite [paid by sugardaddy Rotem], she managed to turn it into a magnificent pigsty bohemia.
'Search for Rotem, that's who!'
'What are you so pissed about?'
'I am busy; busy, busy. And she knows it. I can't just go have a cuppa and chitchat with any old ladyfriend.' I swipe at the paperwork, adding to the mayhem.
'It's not any old one.'
'Can't. Busy.'

Suddenly Vidoo is by the toilette dresser, whipping the rest of my papers off. 'Know what's your problem?'
'Entertain me,' I surrender.
'You are just really, really afraid. You don't want to love people, because you're so fookin' afraid.'
'Deep, guv'nor.'
'Wait, not finished yet,' she says self-importantly. 'You're used to losing people, right? Or, never having none. So obviously you're avoiding her because sooner or later you'll lose her. You've got some hardcore abandonment issues, just like you didn't want to take me in because I might die –'
'Not exactly –'
'Hold your gob, girl's trying to talk here. You are scared that one day there will be no Rotem, and you don't want to be alone in the world again. But you won't be. But you still avoid her, because you're scared. It's like being scared of dolphins, or a VW Bug. You should stop evading, over-protecting, reminiscing –' she chews her lip. 'I forgot what I was about to say. I'm not too good in following my line of thought. Must be all those drugs I dropped in the Sixties. Anyway, my point was: go see her.'
'I hate psychobabble, but I love you anyway,' I tell her.
'All this pop stuff is your fault, moron!'

Early next morning, the hotel phone rings.
'Fookin-ay', whinges Vidoo. She hears them out, and adjusts, 'Fookin-bloody-ay!' Someone is waiting for us in the lobby.
We storm downstairs in our bathrobes, and there she is by the upholstered armchairs: long black scarf reaching the back of her knees, old Wranglers, a torn tee baring her thin shoulder blades, and her trademark mustard boots.
It hits me that this is what I came back for: the chopped hair, the wide smile, the strong hug.

'Vida, could I borrow your ma?' she asks, after embracing her fully. FACT: she is the only person recorded to have ever done so.
'Get dressed,' Rotem commands. 'We're going to Norham.'
'What?' I struggle. 'I can't. I'm working. And where's your family? And how are we gonna get there, it's all the way up north!'
Rotem chuckles. 'I pre-positioned a substitute for you. Plus you're not really needed. My family will wait for us at Claridge's, and I'm going to drive you there. I bought a car.'
'Go on!' exclaims Vidoo, who turns to atypical gelatinous matter in Rotem's vicinity. 'Which?'
'Thata one.' She points at a small red thing, engine still going right outside the gilded doorway and annoying the porters. 'It's a Morris Mini.' Registering our shock, she waves us, laughing. 'I'm over my macho Suzuki period. I'm all mini-Zen now.'
I relocate my jaw, but Vidoo informs us that will never get there in that.
'Mark my words,' says Rotem with mock menace. 'We will get there in six hours, so we shall! Now get dressed, I'm waiting.'

VIVA LA VIDOO part ii

2006-04-17T07:30:00.000+03:00

continued from Viva la Vidoo i

When I tell people I have a teenage daughter, they give me the Look.
That is not unusual on their part, since I tend to be on the receiving butt of a series of Looks. But I do wish strangers wouldn't doubt me so unequivocally when I tell them I've adopted her, since I sport heavy self-doubt as well, and that just ain't too helpful. That 'But you are just 20' exclamation mark line is so three months ago.
And forget, just forget about telling them it was a drug-induced decision, if not for my sake then from the hazy viewpoint of two highly relevant persons, one of which being the adoptee. Then I'd get those killer Looks I try in vain to imitate as I brush my teeth.

The actual kablooie occurred a week before Rotem's Israel visit. It's been four months since Benny and I initiated a group-therapy program at an Anglo school in the area. I spent weeks getting on personal terms with the teens, and Benny ran the administrative.
Overall, they were a bunch of chemical-abusers, each to an individual extent, every single member originating in a religious home, and most supplementing mood-swings to an extreme which suggested varying levels of clinical depression.

Vidoo was different. No, she wasn't. I was different about her. Duh, a professional mistake, but then I never chose my profession. She was more accessible, possibly since her angst was overridden by savage sadness. She was rarely violent or socially inept. She was quiet, and listened to country rock and was to'ally hilarious. We spent long afternoons listening right through her entire CD collection, an exclusive snob club affiliating Janis Joplin and the Eagles.
We purchased Kojak the Beanbag together, we rollerbladed and laughed. It was impossible to hug Vidoo or verbally express her some lovin', but see if I care. Not so long ago I hated everybody too, and shortly before that, I was property of drugs and dicks just the same. Which is probably a good piece of training, since soon enough she began to impart some shocking anecdotes, especially at strategic times such as supper.
'Gross, Vidoo! I'm so off my pasta, you fat bastard!' Claire would yell.
'...And then I woke up in car and he said, "You don't remember anything, right? Right? You like those Quaalies, doncha?" and I was so high I just nodded.'
'Ohmygod you have such issues. Did you feel anything?'
'Nope. There is no evidence, except in my imagination. I am missing these two or three days of my life.'
'You should miss more, God willing. Gross. This bastard pasta is to'ally nil now. '
'Yep. And Quaas are so Seventies, could you believe it?'
I found myself loving her, sans reciprocal but to hell with it.

She told me she cuts, though I was aware. She was a recovering anorexic and hungry for silent medicated sleep, so she purchased some meds over the counter. In a kick of conscience Vidoo sat on Kojak and reported herself. Habitually she knocked on my door at 4 a.m. to dispatch off a razor, teary-eyed and confused.
I never had to deal with self-harmers before, and turned to Benny with some aggression, informing him of my incapacity. He laughed as usual, and said that Hell yeah I can. 'I heard it's a self-inflicted paradise,' he grins. 'Sometimes I'm tempted for an endorphin rush myself.'
Taking on Claire's cue, I replied that he's a to'ally diseased fat bastard.

Then she stole back the medication and overdosed. I found her at the last stages, blue lips spluttering brown foam, purple limbs convulsing, eyeballs rolling. Traumatized, I acted placidly. Called an ambulance, a Benny, an insurance company. Filled her details, replied thoughtfully, searched for evidence.
We followed her to the ER and remained with her throughout a crazy night of close death and seizures and valium. But when it was mid-morning and Benny had to leave, I decided to stay for another week, or at least until she gets out of coma.
The real reason being that I was afraid to sleep.

continued on Viva la Vidoo iii

VIVA LA VIDOO part i

2006-04-11T18:23:00.000+03:00

Here’s for the girl you meet down the street:
Cheers.
And: I wish we could chill together sometimes, before you die.

Here’s a Yaqui tale to illustrate why I am not being melodramatic:
One evening, many years ago, like 4 or 5, two girls were jumping on the bed, out of rhythm to Rammstein.
One was an Italian dopehead.
The other was an English Hassidic girl.
Then the Hassid flipped over and fell, and the Italian caught her clumsily, pulling her skirt a mite, and exclaimed, ‘Why, your thighs are all scratched!’
And the Hassid pulled up her skirt and retorted rudely: ‘So what? None of your business.’
So the Italian said, ‘But it’s gross. Why d’you do it?’
And the Hassid replied another question, ‘No one will ever see it, not even my husband.’
And because the Italian was afraid she was treading on glass, she swallowed that answer and never spoke of it more, not until many years later when the Hassid was dead and she herself wasn’t a dopehead any longer.

She told me that when I met Vidoo and a whole bunch of other self-inflictors.

Here’s another Yaqui tale, and as you all know, they’re all true stories, even the talking coyote ones:
Once upon a time, there lived a young girl in New York City.
That girl was fine and good and obedient. Maybe not obedient – she didn’t do anything wrong, nor did she do anything right. She was passive and quiet.
Yocheved was a little member of a big family, a little student in a big school, a little human in a huge world. And Yocheved drowned daily. Sorrow and solitude suffocated her life.
Days would pass before she uttered a complete sentence. Months before someone offered her a single good word. Years that she’s been left untouched by another soul.
So of course, she began to die.

Now this might as well be too melodramatic, and it is. But here is how people die:
They get used, and molested, even physically. Or just neglected. Therapy is offered in small or irrelevant sessions. They begin to pop pills. They can’t sleep, they can’t stay awake, they can’t breathe, they can’t stand the voices in their heads, they cut.
Then they might turn to other sources for pills, other forms of chemical silence and an expression of solitude.

Then somebody met Yocheved – now known as Vidoo, and decided to send her to Israel. Since her family were not ready to deal with her profligate ways, that person fund-raised her trip and tuition.
That’s where I come into the picture, as she entered one of the therapeutic programs I run.

continued on Viva la Vidoo ii

EUROMANIA

2006-04-09T13:03:00.000+03:00

‘Si-lent night! Ho-ly night!
All is calm! All is bright!’
At the top of her lungs, Vidoo shrieks her Passover carol.
‘Shut it, please,’ begs Geoff, trying to rest on Kojak the beanbag.

I struggle to close my overstuffed suitcase, brimming with lettuce. I sit on it, but then I cannot reach the zipper.
Vidoo leans on Kojak’s backside. ‘Say I stay here in Israel, and you party with Geoff in England.’
‘Say you come with us,’ I grunt, playing Twister with the belts.
‘But I want to stay here with Eddie!’
‘How about I’d rather not waste any more pregnancy kits on a little anorexic paranoid? You can’t stay here on your own.’
‘We’ll use protection.’
‘Not even arguing.’
‘You suck.’
‘That’s my job.’
Geoff squints at Vidoo. ‘Does protection actually fit on the ugg?’
‘Shut up, labia.’ She scales her affronts according to genitalia, on a scale of 1 – 10, starting at ‘vulva’ and topped with ‘frikkin fallopians’.

‘Didn’t you say you wanna see Rotem?’ I try, opening her drawer and piling wifebeaters.
‘Yes. But I don’t want to have Pesach in the UK. I don’t want Pesach at all.’
‘You’ll get to drink awfully good wine,’ notes Geoff. ‘Trust May to order the best.’
‘She can order it here.’
‘Why are we arguing? Vidoo, pack!’
She flings me the bird, but get down to packing.
'Good dog,' I say, stacking our personalized Haggadas. 'Geoff, lend a hand, will you?'

I'm running a Pesach program in the UK. Benny spotted the position and called me immediately. 'I found a way to ship you to Europe.' Europe = Rotem, currently. She's in Germany, which isn't far off. Hell, we used to run away to Hamburg back then.
I would've surprised her, kept this a secret, landed on her doorpost with a bouquet of jimsonweed. But she doesn't have a doorpost. Furthermore, she knows my agenda even before I'm aware of its existence.
Of course, within the next 24 I receive a call.
'Heard you're heading this way.'
'It's been so long since I nearly died there.'
Rotem laughs. 'I suggest we sit down at some metro station, loaded with crack, celebrating the good old days.'
'Girl, you need therapy!'
She chortles, and it is so bloody good to hear her wholesome voice.
Damn right we're going to Europe, Vidoo!

NOTE: since I'm gonna be mad busy the next coupla weex, you'd be getting the history of Vidoo's relationship, in a few installements. Merry Passover and a bright night!

KNOCK KNOCK

2006-04-02T21:16:00.000+03:00

‘Guess what,’ yells Viddo. ‘Shira overdosed again!’ I am trying to rewrite this essay.
‘Did she now?’ I leave my gaze stuck on the page, gaze stuck on the page, stuck on page, finish this damn essay already.
‘Now you have to ask on what,’ says Vidoo, slumping on my bed and stirring all my papers, but I won’t let it unnerve me.
‘Antihistamines?’
‘Nope, keep guessing!’ she stretches her purple toes before my Organic Chemistry file.
Shira has been more of a pain than Vidoo, due to what might be some social retardation. She tends to overdose every other week, just to have somebody with her at the E.R.
‘Carbolith?’ That would be one mad heartache.
‘No!’ she giggles. ‘C’mon, c’mon! Guess!’
'Dunno, dude. Hamsters?'
'Vitamins!' she shrieks triumphantly, and topples over laughing.
'Get out!' I try to maintain a stern face. 'Where is she now?'
'Psych ward near Mevaseret or something,'
'Jesus.’

Eliana’s phone has a Crazy Frog waiting tone. Ah ding ding ding bing pssscht.
‘Howdy, girl!’
‘Hey Eliana. Heard about Shira?’
‘Where she at?’
‘On the red carpet to confinement.’
‘Boy. Say, Tom, wanna fax me her file? I’ll probably need to refer her.’
‘I can’t recall who’s her guardian,’ I say, suddenly nervous.
‘Nobody here. She’s gonna get shipped back.’
‘To Miami? She’d die.’ I’m certain. Our kids don’t last long once they leave Israel. This is why I adopted Vidoo.
‘Girl, you can’t take her in,’ says Eli. ‘She’s manic. Handle your own.’
‘Then we gotta secure her an overseas program,’ I say, mind racing.
‘I’ll research. Laters.’
Ba-bing.

Vidoo is not in the bedroom. She’s not on the beanbag, my favorite possession nicknamed Kojak. Nor on the stairs.
‘Vidoo?’ No reply. ‘Yo, wanna talk?’ I try the bathroom. I’ve removed all the locks, and getting used to record-timing my peeing. This is why I do not lock doors:
Vidoo, jammed behind the door, cutting above her nipple.
‘Hey chica,’ I say, and slide on the tiles beside her. She looks up, glassy-eyed. The whetting movement is growning fainter, but she’s still entranced.
‘They’ll detox her, and we’ll find her a program in the US, a good one. I’ll call Dr. Weasel.’ I ease my back against the tub, slowly placing my hand on her thigh. ‘Mad funny, vitamins. I mean, that’s just embarrassing.’
Vidoo sniffles. I look up: her gaze is conscious now, and teary. She drops the razor in my cupped palm. I reach over and hug her. She is so much taller than me, I am stunned and happy she’s my daughter
‘I’m sorry, girl. I’m so sorry.’
‘I hate that bitch,’ says Vidoo as I sit on her lap and sponge clean her scratches. ‘She used me and she’s so freaking dumb, attention-suicide.’
‘On vitamins,’ I remind her, and she giggles between sobs.
‘Let’s take a walk,’ I suggest. ‘Want to visit Eddie and the boys?’ He’s her current crush.

‘Yo women, wassup,’ calls MC Eddie from the rickety table tennis.
‘Hey gangsta,’ I greet, searching for Benny or Polo.
‘Heard about Shira?’ asks Vidoo.
‘What’s her deal?’
‘It’s a knock-knock joke. O.D.’
‘O.D. who?’
‘O.D. on vitamins.’
Benny snorts behind us, then switches expression to concern. I join him in his office.
‘I’ll call Weasel.’
‘You do that,’ he says, and shakes his head. ‘Vitamins!’
‘I’m gonna O.D. on humor one of these days,’ I inform him, feeling a dejected laughter rising.

PRIVILEGES

2006-03-31T00:11:00.000+02:00

‘This is not what you think this is,’ welcomes us Y.J., shoveling tomato-paste out of what might be a knee pad.
‘So what is this?’
‘It’s Y.J. and Freddy trying to make pizza,’ calls Schneider from his computer.
‘What’s that, Schneid?’ Asks Polo, the student supervisor, pointing at the fleshed-out figure on the screen.
‘My cyber hooker,’ he introduces. ‘Very hot.’
‘I also need one,’ I say, walk over and shut his visual. ‘Your computer privileges are out of order for three days.’
‘What the –‘
‘D’you want her to put a picture of your bent schlong on your MySpace account,’ continues Freddy, forking a string of cheese two feet long.
‘You will do no such thing,’ says Prince Schneider.
‘So do not debase other humans by ogling their privates.’
‘They put it there on purpose,’ he says vehemently, squeezing under my arm to reach for the power button. ‘This is not degrading. These people expose themselves because they are proud and beautiful people.’
I have no counter-attack except, ‘These people are crackheads. Now lay off.’
Something sizzles, and I spin around to see a flame sear in the microwave.
‘Whoa!’ roars Y.J. and snatches a flour-coated cup of water.
‘Polo!’ I shriek, and he pounces on Y.J.
‘You people need to rearrange your ass-skulls,’ suggests a soaked Freddy, ‘We was just making freaking pizza.’
‘Your pizza-making privileges join my computer ones in hell,’ says Schneider, sulking by the keyboard listlessly.

Polo and I climb upstairs to inspect room hygiene. ‘Schneider is one smartass,’ I note. When out of alumni earshot, I may utter the a-word.
‘Highly intelligent,’ agrees Polo. By the way, this nickname is a twist on the fact that his mother’s Polish, his real name is Herbert or something.
I am actually confused. I would not like anyone to watch naked humans parading globally, especially in the dorm kitchen; but on the other hand, this is such a small issue compared with what we must deal with daily. Let them play their cyber-hookers, see if I care. But I must care, since I am program director.

‘Polo,’ I say, and he looks up from a row of toothbrushes stuck in the couch fluff, fabric slits spewing foam. ‘I can’t be bothered.’
‘With what? Arguing with President Schneids?’
‘No, I can tackle him, and will, later.’ Tomorrow, we will discuss respect and prospect and all that jazz. ‘This hierarchy of troubleshooting. I used to get pissed when people focus on minor issues with the same weight they give more crucial ones. I can’t stand doing so myself.’
‘Poor girl,’ smiles Polo, and offers me a seat on the ripped sofa. I don’t want to know what they hide in there, keep your police k9s at bay. ‘I was also thinking this on my first term here. I turned to Benny’ – who then had some of my current chores – ‘and he told me he figured that by keeping a structured system, you maintain all the dilemmas at a controllable range.’
I squint. ‘This sounds like the Taliban lipstick prohibition to prevent promiscuity.’
‘On the contrary. See, these kids need structure. Claim to hate, but there is nothing they’d rather have than a couple of nasty rules - to know somebody is holding their world for them. When you give importance to their troubles, at whichever level, they will adjust to the system and function competently. The focus is not on control, but the sense of order, and care.’
Ping! ‘A bit like why I drug-test them every so often, not because I mistrust them, but because they need to know that we will test them.’
Polo smiles, then pulls out an empty pickle can from underneath his butt. ‘Damn, where are all those promised sofa donations? Girl, you just need to practice two things: tact, and perspective. And you seem to keep these in good track.’
Gee, thanks.

Right then the microwave sent a mighty bang upstairs. Freddy could be heard shrieking: ‘I swear this ain’t pizza again! Shit! This is my freaking burger!’
At least we won’t need to kosher another micro.

COMIC RELIEF

2006-03-28T02:51:00.000+02:00

When I am not dealing with cocky adolescents [excluding myself], or tour-guiding overweight Americans up Masada, or when I feel like taking a breather off my studies, I help my niece run her store.
Mainly, we sell maternity clothes and lingerie. And yes, we cater for the darker side of the White Jerusalem Ghetto, those of the mythical hole-in-a-sheet, them who sport the monochrome. Actually, within the given limits, I was surprised Sara ordered pretty chic granny panties, lacy.

Claire and I were sitting by the cashier desk, discussing our dead buddy Harry. Ever since his overdose, our kids have been unsettled. Well, there was drama prior to the tragedy, and ensuing, since as the law states: crises must come in pairs and trios. Nonetheless, Harry drew the line somewhere, reeking of crystal meth and fear.

Claire, 17, former Aussie, can compile an entire thesis about life's state of suckdom. I try to sympathize, attend to customers and write my own report on the vocalizations of a solitary subterranean rodent. And not Kafka. I am near the edge of my sanity.
Then a stout man rushes in, races up the stairs to our lingerie department, and when I yell after him, 'Can I help you?' he shouts back, 'No, thanks!'

'Hey,' notes Claire out of her misery. 'There's a guy up there.' We do not supply men's.
'Yep,' I giggle. 'Maybe he's looking into some fishnets.'
'You sell fishnets?' her attention sparks up.
'Dream on, punk.'
'Oh my God, you're gonna go up there and find him in a bra and knickers!' she exclaims, followed immediately by his call, 'Could you help me?'
Claire snorts, and I push her away. 'No, you can't come upstairs,' I seethe between sniggers, and race up. She shoots me a death-look of been-everywhere-done-everything-what-the-hell-I-should-see-this-too.

No, he wasn't in transgender underthings. However, he did ask for the biggest-sized panties we offer, black, five packets, please.
'It's for my wife,' he explains when I can't help tittering. 'She's pregnant. Very pregnant.'
I believe him, because it is known that I'm a difficult one to lie to. I just happen to decipher breathing patterns.
He pays and leaves, and Claire and I spend the rest of my shift chuckling, trying on nursing bras and house robes.
Thank God for comic relief.

DAILY.

2006-03-26T02:24:00.000+02:00

Kneeling before the sea, watching the jet skis whiz past, biting our lips in anger.

Schneider states, ‘They will kill the guy who dealt him the shit. They’ll slay him. Slay his very mother.’

‘D’you reckon?’ I reply, squinting in the sun.

‘What the hell. What the hell? What the hell!’ He goes through every possible clause emphasis, to indicate either his displeasure of my dispassion, or his overall apprehension.

I could say, I am sorry, Schneider. I could splash water at him or drag him overboard. We could laugh and swallow tiny reef creatures, but our hearts are so heavy we might drown, yet you won’t find us admitting fully to the sorrow.

The previous night, we ran an operation looking for Schneider and his small gang; all of whom are soft-core drug-abusers. Finally, they scotched my cell phone and we located them.

Benny and I dropped right by, to face a group of kids in their do-rags and baggies, hunkering on the curb, sobbing.

Benny eyes the scene as if he’s ready to drop dead, resuscitate himself as any regular guy who works at some godforsaken office telesaling transformers for Cambodian microwaves, and leave the site unaffected.

I am merely in a need of a good scream.

‘So,’ I kill some time, affecting a British accent. ‘You have all taken something, and now you are having a really bad trip. Splendid. Allow us to return home and feast on some shu-gah, baby!’

Benny kicks my ankle, and I nearly press the gas. ‘Dude,’ he hisses furiously. ‘These look like they would require some valium tranquilizers.’

‘I could hug them,’ I offer wearily.

Eddie, our quarterback who could be dared into dozens of steaks per guzzle, suddenly casts his threatening shadow against the tattered program van. ‘Yo, this ain’t no huggin’ and candyman situation. Somebody died tonight. So we are sad, and y’all jus’ let us be.’

I forfeit not. ‘Eddie, it’s important that you return with us. We could talk about it. Plus, you need to pack for Eilat.’

‘We ain’t going to no Eilat,’ says Schneider. When Schneider decides, so it shall be settled.

Benny’s inward groan is barely audible, but it conveys mine.

Yes, we did end up in Eilat, after a long drive during which we had to stop every 30 minutes or so to allow our kids to throw up and have their smoke break.

To watch a boy, retching matter-of-factly by tall cattails, illuminated by the early sun.

Duly spraying his toxic fluid on the good earth, flick a cigarette out, red against fiery sky, and exhale the image of his soul, dissipating in the cold.

You think that’s melodramatic? So do I. If your good friend dies of overdose, your father beat your mother to death and your bowels battle you daily – why not just entitle it drama, and leave the minutiae to grudges.

This is how I wallow in daily drama, this is why I would like to share it.

I am about to drown in it.

UPDATE

2006-03-24T22:32:00.000+02:00

Incidents occurred since the blog was closed. Some of us reunited, if only briefly, and some live together on the same street.
Respecting Rotem's wish, our story will not be told.
However, my life is too much of hype to miss expressin' about.
So here I come, Tomboy/May/Datura, to rip my life out.
Because the chase is better than the change.

CLOSING BLOG

2005-10-14T12:20:00.000+02:00

Due to the request of our main protagonist, a.k.a. Rotem, to be deleted off this blog, we sadly announce the closing of this account, and a soon erasure.

'Rotem', we hope you understand – "chap" – the impact you had on our lives, and despite your constant denial of being G-d's little catalyst, we want you to know that we appreciate everything you ever did/said/thought/provoked/loved to us.

We pray daily for your full recovery and "baby-poppin'" activities, and much success in all your countless – insane – endeavors.

For a minute let us cut the bureaucratics:
Go kick some international ass, and don't you swallow none!

We love you
T.H., E.H., B.A, and all those who followed this first-hand.

PS Want your mystical can-opener back? COME GET IT!

Ahoy, Sissy!

2005-10-12T15:21:00.000+02:00

One very gray morning, very gray – the sort which sheds darkness instead of light, that blurs through the curtains at a pre-sunrise world, in a dreamless fever – Rotem crouched by my bed, fully dressed, booted and coated. In a whisper, she woke me up, her emergency goose-bumping me.
ROTEM: I just wanted to tell you bye. I'm going, I'm going with May.
ME: Where…where are you going?
ROTEM: I dunno. Just far away. Not here. Someplace she could treat herself.
ME: What's wrong?

She wouldn't tell me. She just hugged me, polyester coat seething against my nightie, she whispered violently weird love, strange ferocity of assertions. I was too bewildered to read into any subtexts then. I wasn't used to associate and decipher, or analyze characters and gestures. Along those adolescent milestones, just around the corner where you start critically dissecting your parents' choices, you also begin to discover a psychological Britannica of issues that are way, way over your comprehension and capacities. But you keep thinking you can handle this, you sure can.

I look back now, embarrassed. Granted, in 10 years I'll look back again and eat my foot. How could I have thought I could deal with somebody else's drug trouble? How could I have possibly dealt with anthropological issues that confound most researchers?
Wow, was I crazy.
ME: I want to see her.
ROTEM: No you don't. You don't, you don't!
But I stood up already, searched for my robe and slippers. I stared: Rotem was in trousers; what if somebody sees her? She stomped her foot, restless.

We raced down the dim corridors, down the deserted front steps. May was sitting on the bottom one, Sara at her side, eyes circled darkly. There was frost on the path, but May shivered as if she was electrocuted, and kept tugging at her body.
SARA: She threw up by the senior class door.
ROTEM: I'll go clean. Watch her for two more seconds.
Sara looked at me silently. She was dressed in what seemed to be yesterday's clothes. I asked her if she's leaving, too. She said no, she is staying. She is vice president. She has to explain what happened. I asked what happened. She eyed me wearily.

SARA: She's undergoing withdrawal, from drugs. But to everybody else, she's eloping with Rotem. We can't treat her here, she'll get everybody into serious trouble. They aren't capable of such cases. Rotem says she might know of a place of two where she could get some help. But all you know is that they ran away.

May muttered something, repeatedly. Sara ignored. The ice flashed bleakly under their feet. Rotem leaped downstairs, helped her up, smoothed her hair away from her face. May was crying now, in high rasping whimpers.
Sara stood up too. She gazed at them expressionlessly; the amount of stress she was under must have been unbearable. I felt entirely out of place.
ME: I want to come with you.
ROTEM: You're bloody mad.
ME: I have to. I want to.
ROTEM: Shut up. Go to sleep. You never met me. I love you.
ME: Wait 5 minutes, I'll get dressed.
ROTEM: Blow me!
ME: Just wait! Five minutes! I'll pack some fleeces and socks!
Rotem pounced on me, fizzling with rage, telling me to keep away from what I can't deal with, that she loves me, that I should forget what I saw here, that I'm a wonderful girl, that she'll kill me if I followed.

May screamed. It was a quiet scream, but it hushed us inadvertently.
ROTEM: See? We have to go. You stay here, be good.
ME: When am I gonna see you again?
ROTEM: In Hell, shall you be so lucky.
ME: Please? Please Rotem, when am I going to see you again?
She looked away, she looked at the hedges before the front yard, dark and frosted. She looked at the sky and the red streetlamps. When she looked back at me, all the drama ebbed away, everything was alright - her smile was back in place.
ROTEM: Gimme your address in Copenhagen, it's Hanukkah vacation soon. We'll hop by.
ME: You will?
ROTEM: Yuh-hu. We'll go to Tivoli World, and the Guinness Museum. We'll rock the town. Just don't eat any #%$*, little Alice.
I nodded. Rotem placed her arm around May's shoulders, pseudo-kicked Sara's crotch, wished us a courteous farewell, blew me a kiss, and charged down the path, jerking May along.

Sara sighed, and walked up the rounded stairs. She urged me to come on in, she has to lock up. We heard Rotem shouting gleefully:
"Ahoy, sissy! Whatcha got in your mouth sissy?"

How strange life is, at 5 a.m. in the morning.

The Skeleton Bull

2005-10-10T17:55:00.000+02:00

'I've been calling you for two weeks now,' he voices disapproval.
'I am sorry, I was on vacation.'
'I see.'
'Yes. In Sinai,' I wonder who this man is across the satellite. 'Can I help you?'
'I doubt it,' he intones a smile. 'I have a package for you.'
'A package for me?' what the hell, I'm an abandoned case, no one sends me anything. 'Where from?'
'Uzbekistan.'
That name rings a thousand bells, beats a hundreds gongs, blows a million trumpets.
'You're shitting me!'
'I shit you not, young lady.'
'Oh, I am sorry,' I blush over the receiver. I have countless questions, but I opt for the simplest: 'When may I pick it up?'
'Any evening at your pleasure, I'd be delighted to meet one of Rotem's friends.'

I take the bus to Tel Aviv. I'm fidgeting with my ticket, my hair, my dress, my whole self is twisting with excitement. I got a package. I got, and y'all suck!
Last I've heard of her, she was heading to Uzbekistan. Why? Because it's what she does. She heads to a place, raises some hell, heads to the next place, arouses some demons, heads the next. She should have a Master of Arts by now, in Global Hellraising.
Everybody said she shouldn't go anymore, that she's half dead, that she's irresponsible. I could just hear her saying, 'I don't give what everybody says', and stuffing her backpack, marching down the road, jutting out a thumb.

A very fancy Tel Aviv villa. This guy must be loaded. He is an Italian in his early 50's, one of those men born with quality, who know how to wine-taste from birth. He's glad to meet me, would I like something to drink, beautiful Fall we're having, his son is in the air force, could he interest me with some –
And I look up, and I am so sad and needy and want my package, now, now!
He gives me the manila-covered parcel, soft content. I unwrap it.
It's a beautiful afghan blanket, with patterns and flowers - the Moonflower. I need to cry. One of the bordering patterns is actually painted, as if an afterthought, with handprints. I inspect it, size the marks against my own hand, and I recognize it.
'It's her blood,' I tell him, not shocked.
He scrutinizes it; he dons fine silver-framed glasses. 'It could be,' he agrees.
'I know blood when I see it!' I insist.
I remember her wiping her face and painting the walls with her dark life.

There is a note. It says:
"First Woman,
Don't be fooled. I didn't make this blanket. This other woman did. She milked a goat, rode a horse, slaughtered the goat and cooked its meat under the saddle. In her free time, she made you this. Her free time is now yours.
Happy Birthday. All the free time in the universe.
Be aware that I love you.
Which means I think of you.
Rotem, and Wolf."

'Who's Wolf?' the Italian inquires.
'Clueless here, but it might mean a mate, though. A male one. If she said "Alpha" it's like codename for a fuckgal.' I blush grandly. He chuckles.

He shows me a painting she made for him. It's nearly five feet across, depicting a bull. It's made entirely from earth, mud caked with her natural passion. He tell me he had it especially sprayed so it won't crumble, and hung to the wall in a slant, using metal wedges, so it won't disintegrate down.
'Everything she makes is very fleeting, very evolutionary, recyclable.' He notes. We gaze at the aggressive beast, and he dims the light. 'Look now,' he says. I can't see anything unusual, so he points out that now it looks like the skeleton of a bull. He darkens the room further, and indeed, a jagged anatomy appears, a dead bull standing.
'I have to go now,' I tell him.

I sit on a bench somewhere, burying my face in the bloody blanket, and cry like I haven't in all those long arid months. I weep and smell the prairies; I sob and taste the blood.
Somebody is thinking of me. Which means they love me.

Squirrel Thing

2005-10-05T04:26:00.000+03:00

So Rotem became my partner, and I was promoted to Junior Head of Kitchen Staff. Most difficult part of my title was opening the dining hall doors before the meals; I could be trampled to death. Girls get hungry, you know. Once, a small French girl was rammed to the floor, and I treated her back in the kitchen, bandaging her knees and washing her face. I thought she broke her nose.

Rotem would hang around the kitchen when I was there. She'd juggle anything - eggs, potatoes, sponges - recklessly, and tease everyone incessantly. She laughed when the little French girl shrieked, hopped on the counter, sat at her side, embraced her and murmured in her ears tales of the Serengeti.
Everything always seemed so out of place, so entirely out of context when juxtaposed by Rotem. Everything was trivial, teasable, source of endless mirth.

She was always under some detention or another, and she used to trade them about, make deals with the counselors, end up at my side armed with yellow gloves, a mop half a meter taller than her, and a massive smirk. She would snatch the soap and trickle it on the floor in zigzags, then use it as a dancing surface. She drove them all insane, singing absurd Spongebob songs:
"Wish I was back in Texas,
The ocean's no place for a squirrel!
Wish I was in Texas,
Prettiest place in the world, oh no!"

She would offer to open the hall doors for me. She loved 'The Charge of the Light Wildebeest', as she called it. She would climb the sinks by the door, over to the towel shelves. swing unto the fluorescent cagings, and raise the door-bar with her feet. The girls would rush underneath her as she hung over from the ceiling, shrieking like a monkey on ecstasy. Unbelievably, they ignored her; the uproar they raised rushing for the plates and pots overrode her devilries.
ROTEM: Wow those Jews hags need their fix! It's like World War Three's coming up tonight, or our very local September 11th!

She would scrub the pots for me, push the trays, order the heated food-trolleys. She wouldn't rest for a second. She would stand on the service table and yell over their clamor.
ROTEM: Eat, faggots! Eat all the potato puree you can! Fill your brains with some worthwhile starch!
They ignored her. They ate with such noise and relish, piled their plates again and again, saved pasties and bananas, swallowed their bread with huge bites, drowned everything in mayonnaise.

Back in the kitchen, she would munch a tomato and chat to the cleaning ladies, Norham Vikings she called them, burly women with red faces and bellowing laughter.
ROTEM: Jesus, you ladies leave the plates coated with mayo!
VIKING: Ye Jews eat a lo' o' mayonnaise, ai?
ROTEM: What the hell, we invented the Egg! But you just spray it all with the hose, that ain't no cleaning!
Truth be told, that was the highly hygienic conduct: the dirty dishes were placed in racks, then rinsed forcefully with a hose. That's it. No wonder we all got food-poisoning. It was cheaper that way – same as employing for free all the students, brainwashing us into considering it an honor.

The best part was stealing a couple of apples after an evening-shift, sitting on the meat shed's roof, under the early stars, and laughing at all those carnivorous girls, their hilarious complaints [soap-soggy bread, oranges in the soup, potato peels in the rice: yes, you may blame Rotem], and just loving life, in general: an ocean or not, Texas or not, squirrels or without.

Ohne Dich

2005-10-02T14:14:00.000+03:00

I wasn't elected class-president, yet vice; hence, I aided in matching up study-partners. I followed Rotem's suggestion, and paired May up with Bella, an English girl 2 years her senior who wanted to study alone - May would exist for mere bureaucratic functions. Apparently, Rotem had a good eye for the funny streaks on the alumni list, and although I thought she was fairly friendless, the truth was she was well sought-after and integrated, much to my aunt's chagrin, who wanted the beast all for herself.

May wasn't jealous of Bella as she clearly was of Alicia. She considered the former light-years out of her league. Bella was exceptional, a genius, rather flabby with one slightly lopsided eye. She had a wicked sense of humor, and very graceful movements. The Rotem-Bella affair – if you could call it that – was a rough, nippy transcript, resurfacing every once in a while with a massive blast, like a sudden sperm-whale hurdling out of the ocean.

"You German, German whore," Rotem used to sneer into her blond hair, jerk it back, make her grimace. Bella would retort foully, pulling Rotem further, deeper, with a slight underscore of abuse which they both seemed to enjoy.
Could you make love under 60 seconds, and fully come?
It's been done. Bella was a celebrity of sorts, with a contradicting collection of cachets under her cap. For one, she was famous all over London for scoring highest on her German Language exams, and for being kicked out of her [BY] school for exceeding thus at their curriculum. Her lineage was rammed with esteemed rabbis and philanthropists, her mouth full of Rammstein.

I think that was her highlight in Rotem's eyes. She was fascinated with the rolling German, the evil words which sounded so aidl by a slight marring of accents. "It's Yiddish," Bella used to explain to those who raised a brow. "It's a Yiddish poem I wrote. Listen, now." Rotem would die of mirth.
On the massive shabbos table, Bella would exchange words in chassidish songs, and chant about bodily fluids. Bella could swear at anyone, unnoticed. She could be wicked, undiscerned. She wore the everygirl's skirt, the common blouse, the demure shoes. She tied her hair in a reserved bun, concealing livid wits. Rotem lapped at her with quick, breathless twists of tongue. No sweetsounds, no sighs. Under a minute, Bella would come with a roar, Rotem would flip backwards, roll off the bed, winded.
Ever wondered about the fusing of brilliant minds? Electric.

I was aware of the ways in which my roommate pleased others. I ignored, thinking that if I did - I might forget - I could pretend; that by facing it, it could be overlooked in my mind. She was fully-fledged evil, willing to do only good. I hated her so, and craved her to reach once over, touch my hair, and flinched when she did.
Bella wasn't even remotely bisexual, she recently told me. She needed the jolt, and was grateful for the adventure otherwise known as Rotem. Around the dorm, Bella was notorious for being the girl who 'knew everything about everything'. She could lecture about Tennyson or GM foods, and her sole match was Rotem, who didn't spew much. They had no place in seminary, no let-out for their intellect and energy. If Bella was frustrated, Rotem could be said to be suffering.

My sister once asked me about the sexual digression back then. I told her it was outnumbered by goodwill and boredom, that it went unnoticed, that it was rare. Whatever bloomed in those cellars, showers, closet-rooms - was out of bounds for those who were satisfied with life as it were, who had a steadfast, prescripted destiny.

It wasn't an issue. You couldn't go to the matron with an unnamed case of odd love.
Maybe that is how this life is directed, where what cannot be identified by your own means is what bothers you most, but you cannot turn to a deity with a nameless cause, neither for eradication nor inauguration.Maybe that's why everything is falling apart at the seams, and the goodgirl's skirt is torn at the back of her mind. Maybe Destiny isn't actually as vegetarian as everyone made her to be.
Maybe that's why Elka can see herself as a killer, Bracha as a free-ranger, Alicia a lover. Maybe we ran out of definitions.

"You can't demoralize Bella," Rotem imparted all those years back, from the windowsill. "Because she can lick up a Rammstein like no rabbi ever slapped forth a Ramban. She has Zeppelin teats, anyhow."
Anyhow. She got her part of the deal, and I made her partners with Alicia.

Bloody Desert Snow

2005-09-29T12:57:00.000+03:00

I spent over a week in a desert, origins of my people.
What people? Did my people pound darbukas or water drums?
I shouldn't have gone to the desert. It chills me to the bones. I see lizards in the greetings, and a sun which smirks, swirls around an axis, turns black and shatters.
I feel stoned in deserts, regardless of my inner chemistry.
Didn't the Jews place a veto on Egypt for hundreds of years? I should do so too.
No more deserts.
Was mad fun, though. I have never dune-skied, wonder how I missed that out.

I had visions. Not mirage, not fata morganas - just memories, and other histories, of other people.
Five soldiers doping on a jeep, I am outnumbered by insanity; says who I am sane. There is nothing under the sun.

Once, I was a desert girl.
One day, I met another Desert Girl, from foreign plains. She said, 'Desert Girl, you are the most beautiful girl I ever met.'
She said, 'Desert Girl, marry me. I'll be King, you'll be Queen.' She laughed, like the Sun. She had her ways to track animals and hunt down birds of unbelievable wingspan. She shot all my angels, her cave paintings haunted me, her total lack of lust wrecked my meridian.
She drew all over my body with earth and sand and blood, and said, 'Desert Girl, tell me your story.' She said that she didn't have any story of her own, and that she left her desert because it went cold. There is snow in the Atacama, too. Sometimes.

Then one day, my body went limp, because I was missing my ulterior sources of life. I shivered in the city basements, without Suns and Moons. No one could help me, because all I really needed were some authentic drugs. So the other Desert Girl came to my corpse, washed me, dressed me, ignored my vomit and laced my boots for me. And we both took off across Europe, to find my track out of former lives.

That's why I don't go back to deserts. When I do, I remember old women smoking, and young women licking papers into tubes, and sniffling. Back there religions are one long, rattling, unceasing Peyote Song.

We were squatting in a train station, Rotem in her dungarees, and I had a red pompom on the woolen hat which wasn't mine, and the rain came slushing down the stairs, and we had all the time in the world, and all the sickness in the world.
That's why none of us is ever immortal.

Poor Twisted Me

2005-09-23T03:36:00.000+03:00

Moira says, girls used to cut themselves at her seminary.
I tell her, that in my seminary girls didn't do that. We weren't that progressive.

Moira is the Woman in the Office, the Launcher of Gossips, the Coffee-Maker, the undeniable Head of State. I can't stand her. I tell her we didn't have knives, we weren't masochistic, we weren't aware of such 'Issues' - we didn't hate, in general. We called everybody 'dearie' and 'silly' and 'nebach'.
She smiles benignly, utters a sentence where the keywords are: that; kind of; frum. Damn right.
Of course, she is so deliciously progressive, so I tell her that I grew up in a place where the biggest word a girl my age could pronounce (but possibly misspell) was "microcosm".

When I go home, I search for my old diaries. They're brutally dull, at their best. Here and there the odd list of forgotten chords, or the occasional attempt at portraiture. Mostly, degenerate poetry and italicized feelings. Those feelings are very simple. They convey nothing of the confusion back then: single words, asterisk-bound, glitter-penned. Oh, that relief.
At their worst, those diaries are plain embarrassing. I don't like looking through them. To read through my development, hatching out of my Yiddish dino-egg, obtaining the odd era's terminology, 70's slang here, late C19th Socialism there. Humiliating.

At one point, I stopped using nebach and exchanged it with twisted.
Within the limits of a 16 year olds' vocabulary – slightly bilingual at the edges, visibly so at the Yiddish suffix – I couldn't come up with a better expression; Twisted. Twistedig, to conjugate?

It hit me back then, like a revelation short of the halo and popping bulb and hereafter crude deliberation: twisted, this dorm life is twisted.
Then on that metal-framed bed, springs creaking up a sin, the classic lumpy mattress in the prearranged darkness of the autoswitch, I realized how twisted that dorm life was. I didn't think much about it, but stretched my stockinged toes and wondered about my roommates' share of mirror universes: a home with a basement and macaroni-cheese, a blind cousin, a kugel, a trip to Israel. Everything so rare now, so dusty.
There you are, sharing a life, a piss, a tub-sized pot of rice with half a 1000 other girls, mutating your habits into one family of common goal, running the same streak of humor and twinsets, filing your boundaries shorter and nail-polishing them. How twisted.

I want to sing to Moira, because I was so underprivileged and frum, and so insular and backwards:

"Oh it's too good to be
All this misery
Is just for oh poor twisted me
Poor mistreated me
I drown without a sea"

[Metallica, Poor Twisted Me]

Because I once tasted love, the real sort, dark and pulsating, bleeding in the dorm cellar and shivering with fright at intimacy.
Because although I was brought up within those who never utter informal sympathy, where parents kiss not their child in public –I have a true animal imprint on my soul, memories of spine-rattling giggles.
Lust and cross-gender and Issues and psychosis were never a grand, discussable part of my life, and for that I am oh so happy, Moira.
Oh for the twisted me!

The Devil's Candidate

2005-09-20T01:20:00.000+03:00

If we considered ourselves lucky to endure May's blunder, we should've thought again. The Menahel announced that within a week, the freshmen shall vote for a class president who will determine pairs for study-partnership. May would be easily exposed if matched unsuitably, and we could both be expelled. True to her act, Rotem leaps to the rescue.
"I posted your name on the candidate list," she stated nonchalantly.
I jumped. "What? Who in their right mind would vote for me?"
"Seriously," noted May from her corner. "Who'd pick such a friendly, caring, adorable blonde like you?"
Rotem swung towards her, glaring. "Not if you push a hand here, lazy!"

By the next morning, each and every billboard in the dorm was redecorated, tastefully so. Tanya was to spread the word that I was the one who placed her aesthetic efforts. That afternoon, a petition with my forged autograph whirled its way around the campus, enlisting girls to help me tidy up the messy suitcase rooms. By the time 'my' organized trips to the local old-age home went public, I was quite the celebrity. From a little-known, snotty American with a frown, I turned into an admired merit to the freshman class; even the matron greeted me upon passing by.

Thursday evening, an hour before the verdict, both May and I couldn't control ourselves, raking the carpet in circles. Rotem teased us, until I exploded at her, and wondered if she had any better ideas to pass our time. "Sure," she said. "Let's go to the riverside park. It's a 10 minutes walk." For the first time, I conceded. We nearly ran to the park, and finally, I was able to breathe in some fresh air.
We stood on a low hill gazing upon the river, shimmering salmon-pink and peaceful.
"These waters head right to the sea, all the way to Europe, all the way east. Maybe they even rain in Japan or something," speculated Rotem. "Innit pretty?"
"Yes." I said dryly.
Rotem laughed, and tapped my back. "You're quite a woman, Sara. Too bad you can't stand me. You are a real match sometimes." May giggled.

"Come over," Rotem yelled from on top a grassy ruin, and she cartwheeled behind it. "I wanna show you where I saw…" her words dissolved in a terrific echo. May and I slipped carefully downhill until we leveled at the cavernous wreckage of an ancient bridge.
"What did you see here?" whispered May, but her voice bellowed nonetheless.
"A rrrrat!" yelled Rotem, her voice rolling vigorously. "The size a great cat!"
"Wonderful. You spend your valuable time here looking for rodents. How worthwhile," I noted wryly from the entrance to the derelict bowels.
Rotem laughed, and fingered the archaic rocks. "Check this out, must be centuries old. Got caked by coal, though."

The river spun fiery, so close. It lost its pink tints, and brimmed with heady stench and inferno, reaching out to consume the sun. It painted the ancient walls with the fingerprints of hell, slight and sheer. The brittle canes at our feet felt scorched.
"This is psychedelic," said May. "I'm getting a headache." Rotem watched her, both their profiles flickering with reflected fire.
As the sun's edge was gradually consumed by the river, Rotem spread her arms and roared a magnificent aria, reverberating Latin and spilling a soul over blazing waters reaching east.
I have no idea what she sang. Dizzily, I watched a sizzling flock of birds arrow down into the sun, tall canes whistling along.

"Stop!" yelled May, and shook her violently. "Stop it! Stop!"
She did, but May couldn't hush the vile echoes. She clamped her ears with a grimace, and Rotem giggled uneasily.
May fell into a kneel, and wept. We stood at her side, speechless as her sobs rung dryly and a cold breeze stroked our spines. I couldn't reach for her, and Rotem wouldn't.
"Let's go back to the dorm," sighed May, when the river was blacker than the sky.
The moment we entered, we were duly informed that I wasn't elected to be the president. Rotem breathed an oath.

Blasphemous Rumors

2005-09-16T21:26:00.000+03:00

This will be hard to tell.
There was a time, not long after we got married, that rumors started oozing about some illicit relationship I had with a girl back at seminary.
I know who spread those hushes; I know who could step low enough, in envy and loneliness, as to wreck any other budding relationship. But this time, I felt they chose the wrong victim.

My fresh husband was devastated. At first, not a word about what he heard. Then, gradually, questions popped here and there. Within a month, he decided to pack it up and stay at his sister's for a while, till records get sorted.
Terrified, and 14 weeks deep into pregnancy, I had no idea what to do. We lived in Israel then, and I didn't know anybody; anyone who could help, that is.
So I started asking around, fishing for old baits, clues of whereabouts, and then, one bright morning at the Haifa University campus, a studded Russian girl told me where Rotem could be found, under a new sort of alias, doing social work with post-Soviet juves. Another Russian, nearly 2 meters tall and modeling a long, curly ponytail, told me he could contact her for me, which he promptly did, trusting my broken housewife appearance.

Her hair chopped and in back in torn jeans and checkered shirt, she seemed sadder than ever, but still that smile. We sat on a bench at the Afulah bus station, noisy Arabs clustering about. She felt my belly, happily. She told me of the horses at her new homestead, and paragliding.
It took me a while to spew my trouble, but when I did, she exploded.
ROTEM: nothing of the sort! I never touched you!
ME: that would be a lie.
ROTEM: no, I never touched you. Kapish? I never – entered – you.
ME: but still…
ROTEM: still what? How about spreading $#*@ about every single French chick in that nunnery, and the way they mauled each other? How that?
ME: it doesn't help, us two knowing the truth. And in some circles, that truth is worthless according to their standards.
ROTEM: know what? Leave it to me. Just go back home, do some laps in a mikveh, and expect –
She glanced at me, stifling a chuckle.
ROTEM: Gee I forget. You will have a beautiful child, Alicious. Just go home.
I took the next bus to Tel Aviv, watched her waving from the corrugated rooftop, until the hills of the valley blocked her from view.

"I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors
But I think that God has a sick sense of humor
And when I die I expect to find him laughing"

[Depeche Mode, Blasphemous Rumors]

Three evenings later, my husband returned, sheepishly and pale. He said that a certain female appeared in the parking lot under his sister's building, and made it very clear to him that if anyone was at fault, it was him, and that I am as innocent as the next ignorant victim.
She had a way in making sure her points were seen through, and I never cared about the steps she took. I was thrilled to have my family back, at whatever cost. I needed to have someone right there with me, even if their smile wasn't half as bright.

Cappuccino Gossip

2005-09-09T17:15:00.000+03:00

Elka and I meet over a croissant one morning, before she heads for work.
"How was Michal's wedding?" she settles besides me, ordering a cappuccino.
"I saw Bracha, the senior who used to discuss 'Michtav M'Eliyahu' with me. She's divorced."
"I know, I've heard. She left him within a month."
"How?" this is the wrong question. "Elka, she was the best of her year, and he was the top of his yeshiva. They need some guts to do that."

Elka's coffee arrives. "Just to show our girls still got some quality! Remember Yehudis-Malka? From Antwerp? Slept in a room across yours?"
"Little redhead, aerobic-buff?"
"That's right. Well, she is divorced, and," she leans forward, conspiring, "is pregnant. Imagine that, living in that Chassidishe pressure cooker, with a child, divorced." She leans back, sipping her cappuccino.
I am hurt. "That tiny orange peel? She's divorced? How could she make that move?"
"You made similar moves. I am divorced. Sara, there is an increase of those so-called moves by seminary graduates."
I have a hard time believing that. Our girls, we were so sure of ourselves, so satisfied with the direction of our lives, at any level.

"Look," Elka says, "My boy, he was the one of the best. Great mosmid, lovable macher, impeccable style, good family," she flips her spoon into the cup, spraying the table with mud. "He was a great son of a bitch."
I stare.
"Don't raise those eyebrows!" she laughs, licking her spoon.
"You defined his mother, not him."
"Good! She has a lot to answer for!" She smiles at me. "I don't hate him anymore. I don't feel anything. There were days when I called your aunt and just sneered my entire obscenity stock, because whimpering alone wasn't enough."
"You talked to May during that?"
"I had no one. Imagine staring at the bathroom mirror one morning, and seeing a woman who is ready to kill her husband. Dramatic as that. I had no one, not even myself."
I don't know what to say.
"It's always been the secret rule of the game, hasn't it," she says, looking away. "Not having anyone. Being utterly alone, with you inanimate decisions and dreams as your only company. It's the only way we ever played."

Big Mamash

2005-09-07T15:55:00.000+03:00

I clutched May's sleeve and dragged her aggressively through the crowd, raced down the corridor and into a shower cubicle. I locked the flap and seized her shoulders.
"I don't know what to do," I said, to no one in particular.
She squirmed lightly under my grasp, venturing a smile, "I am sorry; you did warn me not to cuss, I forgot."
"What good is it now?" I fumed.
The tiny yellow stall, hair-clogged and steaming with venomous vapors hindered my thoughts.

Then Rotem calmly tapped on the plastic door, her mellow r's rolling: "Open the darn door, Sara."
May wriggled, reaching for the handle; I rattled her to remain silent; that she-monster was the last thing I needed.
"I know you are in there. Open up."
May's eyes grew frantic.
With a single click, Rotem unlocked the catch and stepped inside. "Here," she turned to me, brandishing a coin. "You can keep my lucky tuppence."
May actually whimpered, albeit gratefully. "How's Tanya?"
"She's cool, but you're in deep shit. The head counselor is marching out there, looking for you. You have a rendezvous arranged with the principal."

I released her shoulders. "She can't go there."
"I'll blow the whole trip," cried May.
"You will go there and talk the honey out of him," said Rotem.
"She can't," I seethed.
"Can't she?"
"No, she can't," said May. "She can't pretend on close-up. She can't even speak German."
"Say Booshah," said Rotem. May blinked.
"Say," ordered Rotem, "Boo-shah."
"Boo-shah."
"That's 'shame' in Hebrew.
May rolled it on her tongue, "Booshah. Shah-shame. I will."
"Boo," Rotem glared at her, "Like, 'booing'; shame. Now say, Mamash."
"Mamash."
"Ma-mash. That means, 'very'. These two share the 'sh' factor."
"Booshah. Mama-sh. Very. Like, 'Big Mama'. Very much."
Rotem smiled. "I like the way you're thinking."

To my utter surprise, May internalized over twenty such phrases in no time.
"Now go," said Rotem. "Tell the rabbi you're mamash sorry, that your sense of achrayus is mamash overriding you now. Tell him it was all evildig spontaneity having the better of you, but you're working on it –"
"Avoidas hamidos," concluded May.
"That's right, baby. Go baffle 'em!" She opened the door, and May sneaked out. "We'll be a-waitin' on the roof."

I have never been on the rooftop before, the sky so vast and low, so rich and reachable.
"She'll be alright, that smartass," commented Rotem from the edge. "I am not worried about her." She looked up at where I stood, unsteadily on the slates. "It's you I am worried for."
"Spare yourself the energy," I retorted dryly.
"Tough gurl, hu." noted Rotem. She toed around the frame, clinking at the gutter. "May might be naïve and obnoxious, but she is a born survivor. You, my pretty one, are different."
I forced down a gulp of air, stared at the bleak mesh of gray roofs interrupted by wiry lamps and antennas. Like a fist, rising inside my throat with incredible speed, pushing my truths out. The breeze was sharp, pulling my tears. Rotem's hazel eyes searched me charily.
For a moment, I almost shared something. Then, I swallowed the urge and said coolly, "May is a criminal."
Rotem said nothing, perhaps disappointed.

Cod-Liver Magic

2005-09-04T04:45:00.000+03:00

I will tell you the visible difference between a child and an adult:
Having a purpose versus searching for one.

When I was a little under 5 feet, with a soul the color of under-broiled Ayahuasca, I had a clear aim in life: surviving the year without anyone realizing my origins and ignorance. Together with that - or perhaps the cause of - was my strong desire to please Sara.
Today, I am a little over 5 feet, yet aimless.

I almost pulled my act through.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur passed with little provocation; on the first I feigned fever, the latter I passed on Rotem's bed with a pack of granola bars buried between the bedframe and the wall.
Following Sara's unconditional order, I wasn't to share my conflicts with Rotem, but she couldn't care less. She wasn't curious; her needs summed up were having a good set of 60 minutes followed by 60 more.
But the butterflies in my stomach grew into chattering cockatoos, nipping harshly at my ribs. She noted my pain, but had Sara's puckered lips in register.

Then one evening, on the rooftop, she turned to me shyly, and rushed down a speech as if long-prepared: 'Look, I don't know a thing about your past, or who you are. But I want to help you in whatever parade you're on. I think you and I are not that different, compared to the rest on campus, and that somehow, I might know a few tricks that could help you.'
'Like what?'
She stared at the rooftops. 'Like, say you bring over another Budweiser sixpack –'
I cut her off, flushing. 'That was a one-timer only, I swear!'
'Regardless,' she tried to follow her speech as politically correct as she could. 'Say you're thirsty for real sugar, and we go out to drink. We really could hitchhike, no one would know. But on one condition only –'
I interrupted again, nerves tickling, 'What?'
'That you take a cod-liver pill before we leave.'
I was stunned.
She flustered, 'Say we order, dunno, Whiskey Sour –'
'I'd like that,' I smirked.
'Then we drink some, but our stomach's coated with cod-liver oil, so it plain washes through. We could down a fair amount of stuff with slight side effects, and little to none hangover.'
I swallowed the information slowly. 'Anything else?'
'I could teach you Hebrew,' she offered, avoiding my eyes.
I scratched at my knee. 'I don't even know how to read and write well in English,' I mumbled. 'I never went to school.'
'Neither have I,' she said, suddenly beaming her full, wild smile at me. 'Chill, learning two languages in one go is easier. Veni, vidi, vici.'
And so it was.

But all hell broke lose the day I bellowed an obscenity in class.
It was a very stifling morning; the rabbi droned relentlessly in a small room congested with over a hundred girls. Rotem was scribbling furiously in her notebook, sketching jackals and gulls and dragons of all sorts, and Sara was sitting primly beside me. Alongside her sat Tanya, her tiny roommate, gawking at the walls.
The heavy yellow curtains were drawn close, and dust coated the roof of my mouth. I counted the ratio of blond heads against brunettes, and tried not to choke due sunlight deficiency.
Then, Tanya sighed vocally, and slipped elegantly off the bench. Rotem sprung up and leaped over the table to clasp her feet and raise them, flouting rabbinical presence.
I slid under the table and reemerged at her side, to encounter the palest of faces, slithered with veins and empty eyeballs. I straightened, and yelled at the back row: 'Open the windows, bitch!'
And the world went dark.

Heaven & Hell

2005-08-30T01:43:00.000+03:00

"The lover of life's not a sinner,
The ending is just a beginner.
The closer you get to the meaning,
The sooner you know that you're dreaming.

Well if it seems to be real, it's illusion;
For every moment of truth,
There's confusion in life.
Love can be seen as the answer,
But nobody bleeds for the dancer."

[Black Sabbath, 'Heaven & Hell']

Things are at a low state when you wish to crash your guitar, yet not because you're Gene Simmons, but since you cannot use it, and its case collects dust and mighty moths. Bats too, perhaps.
I was losing my footings, but unsure of my confusion, either. I hated, but for no reason I could rationally account for. Either this was the journey every authentic metallist must undertake, or those were my hormones combined with homesickness.
Above all, I wanted to be friends with Rotem again.

Not long after our ordered separation, I noticed her little sidekick stalking me. Nobody knew much about her, because she was different. She had ladders torn in every single pair of tights she owned, and some claimed she scratched them purposely. She wore clothes much too big for her, skirts rolled up to reveal heavy military boots. Worse of all, she paraded an unbelievable amount of chains and bracelets, none of which was the acceptable reserved gold thins.
I knew she was snug with Rotem, but since I had to take heed while discussing her with my friends, I couldn't learn much about her.

Then one afternoon she burst into my room, leather necklaces and all, a package in hand.
MAY: You're Alicia, right? I'm May. I got something for you.
She gazed about the room, scrutinized briefly the photos I putty-stuck to the walls, the decorative cushions and my neckline.
MAY: Here, this is a tape Rotem made for you. She said to tell you it's all the pieces she could think that would interest your recent form.

I took the tape, unsure of what to say. The girl felt entirely at home, stooping before a picture of my family, hands on knees, butt swaying carelessly. She swung around decisively, and announced I should speak to Rotem.
ME: I can't.
MAY: Why not? Rotem likes you, don't hurt her.
ME: I didn’t want to hurt her. I am not allowed to see her.
MAY: Why not?
ME: Because the principal and the matron said so.
That sent her quick tongue flying to the unbelievable zone of silence.

MAY: Why? She isn't evil. She's a bit dykey, is all.
At the time, I had no idea what 'dyke' meant, but I tired to explain - as best as I could – that one should follow one's rabbi's orders, be it right or left. It was my first time ever playing devil's advocate against myself, and strangely, it brought me to near-tears.

The small girl threw her head to the side, agitated to no end. She squinted at me with sudden rage.
MAY: Well then, maybe you should reconsider listening to those rabbis! If someone in that lofty position think they can restrict your friendship because they're petty enough to judge by unwritten standards – you should rise above that! Just because she's the only one here who knows that punk isn't tone-deaf emo doesn't mean some bearded folk can ban her from heaven, wherever the hell that is! If this is what being Jewish is about, then I don't want to be one!
She blushed suddenly, kicked the back of her knee expertly, and mumbling something about her niece killing her, dashed out of my room.

For an instant, I blundered, wondering if she had a valid point. Then dismissed her incoherent verbals, and crashed the tape with a chair's leg, mashing the thin plastic into the decaying carpet.

Gloom

2005-08-23T22:03:00.000+03:00

Within a month since arrival, Rotem and my niece, May, have pledged undying love to each other and spent every possible moment together.
The three of us were shunned, each for a differing reason. Rotem was part of the lex non scripta, 'Hate Your Neighbor Lest She Corrupts You', which in retrospect seems awful. I cannot imagine how she survived the humiliation; the singular girl among 500 others who actually bred an honest, fearless heart, balked at because she was an odd sock.
I hated her too.

May had no friends simply because I didn't allow her to make any. No one was ever supposed to expose her non-Jewish roots, extreme Hebrew ignorance and some side evils, like smoking and other unmentionables. An affable person at her worst, May learnt to make do with only Rotem and me as her sole allies.

I, for one, brought my friendless state upon myself. My fears and pride mixed with a high dosage of introversion ensured I passed entire days without muttering more than a few complaints at May, regarding her misconduct.

At night they would sneak through the window to the roof, chuckling there for hours. I would lay awake, endless moon glooms staining the peeling wallpaper, floating past the other two empty beds.
Rotem hasn't slept even once in her bed since the day she arrived; I doubt she owned a pillow. She slept on the roof, and used her actual corner of the room for homework or painting on the wall. Gradually, the space under her shelves filled with tiny handwriting, poetry verses and sketches of horses. The single person to occupy her bed was May, who tried to avoid her overpopulated room under my command.

"Sara," Rotem would approach me, "I want to take a walk with you."
I would refuse.
She would come again and again; she would sit for hours on the vacant beds, glaring. I was terrified.
"You wet your bed at night," she would seethe at last, resigning. "I know the smell of ammonia." So she would storm out.
Which wasn't as inadequate an argument as it might appear.

Strange times turned weirder once our third roommate finally appeared, a tiny Russian with candy-floss hair and fearful, protruding gray eyes. May fell in love with Tanya, as she always does with anything as tiny as her and cocker-spaniel-reminiscent. Rotem took charge of the lost soul, firing the room with her fierce humor and rock ballads, my aunt bounced on the beds, cart-wheeling; and I cringed in my corner, silently disapproving.

One night, I woke up under Rotem's crouching shadow at the edge of my bed. She slinked off the moment I sat up, and bounded towards the rooftop. The next morning she apologized, but I knew I cried in my sleep.
I found a new poem on her wall that day, either for me, Tanya or May - we were all haunted. I memorized my initial shock:

Somehow
she is barred
with a sheer sheet of glass
I could crack it with
a flick of a finger

Yet
splinter her soul
with a myriad
of bleeding projections
of flimsy defense

Malka Drama

2005-08-17T15:39:00.000+03:00

At sixteen, you're melodramatic as a definition of being.
You have to shrink back into your 16-year-old mind, in order to find out how hurt you could get.
When I consider it now, I don't think I've ever been as hurt before, and it still tingles at the base of my nape, twitching my fingers reflexively.
You have to be 16 to be truly hurt.
Above all, hurt the fact that I had no one to turn to. This was done for my own good.

The matron called for me. Regulation Panic rushed through me the second the counselor informed me so, moist hands inclusive. I spent 10 minutes deciding on a shirt. Obviously, I knew this was a Rotem-related case, we shouldn't have gone guitar-tutoring.
My friends, self-entitled so after mere 5 weeks of coexistence, decided to head to the matron and complain that Rotem is having a bad influence on me.
Of course, they did so because they cared, because they felt responsible for me, because I didn't seem to heed their insinuating remarks.

MATRON: I am afraid we have noticed that certain girls here seem to have a bad influence on you. I would suggest, this being the very beginning of your seminary life, that you change the course of conduct, and make new, better acquaintances.
ME: I am not sure what you're talking about.
MATRON: I think you do know. Alicia, Rotem Navon is a rather special case here. I don't think you deserve your reputation being ruined.

There, magic words been uttered: 'case' and 'reputation'. You cannot pronounce these without triggering a chain reaction of submission and adjustment.

Later that day, Rotem comes in to practice guitar, which turned into a very Romeo-&-Julietesque episode.
ME: I am sorry Rotem, but I don't think we should continue this.
ROTEM: Why? Black Sabbath has better chords than the others I've shown you.
ME: No, I mean seeing each other.
ROTEM: Funny that. I'm a bad influence on you, right?
ME: Sorry.
ROTEM: Nah, just feel free to borrow my tuner any time. Ciao.
ME: I am really sorry.

She couldn't imagine just how sorry I was.

"I'll be walking the streets tonight
Just trying to get it right
It's hard to see with so many around
You know I don't like being stuck in the crowd
And the streets don't change but maybe their names
I ain't got time for the game 'cause I need you ... this time"

[Guns N' Roses, Patience]

Preppy Goths Galore!

2005-08-15T21:43:00.000+03:00

May I entitle 'preppunk' as my own coined term? Guess not, though too lazy to search through http://www.urbandictionary.com/ archives.
Bear in mind that besides my brother's family, I haven't been acquainted with other Jews, not to mention, orthodox.
In the beginning, everything was preppy-goth.
The entire seminary population was dressed in black, occasionally marred by grim blinks of color. I found that enthralling, contrasted by demure shoes and jewelry.

Unable to contain myself any further, I race to Sara's room - a mere hour after she left me alone to unpack - stumbling past oversize suitcases and ribboned packages.
'Christ, Sara, they're comparing hair-driers in there!'
She ignores me, folding blouses, color-coding them with pursed lips.
'The chicks in my room are all showing off their blow-dryers like they're some fucking submachines!'

'That's kinky,' says her roommate.
'Ain't it, hu?' I spin towards her. 'They're all so preppy-punk!'
The girl laughs. 'That's the greatest bloody description I've heard lately! How many girls have you got?'
'Six more. We're set up like hospital beds.'
'No shit, you got the Seven-Up!' She explains that Seven-Up is the derogatory term for the largest amount of female hormones possible to squeeze into a single room in this country.

Sara has a room of 3, but the third member hasn't shown up yet. The second one, however, is awesome. Her name is Rotem, and she's Israeli.
Sara says, 'I already picked my shelves and drawers, and my clothes take an exact third of this closet.'
Rotem says, 'No prob. I don't own hanging shit.' And pulls out a drawer, unzips a trekking pack, her only baggage apparently, and thrusts her personal belongings – toothpaste, socks and canned plums all in a jumble – with such careless ferocity that Sara is alarmed, pretends not to have noticed, and concentrates on folding her shirts with great dedication.

'You hate your roommate, right?' I ask sweetly at dinner, and I swear that if it wasn't for her manners, she'd have slapped me.

Norham United

2005-08-14T18:44:00.000+03:00

Michal's wedding is as glorious as nerve-wrenching.

I am assigned to the 'seminary-friends' table, feeling odd in my corduroy skirt and blouse – which I've found flattering till juxtaposed with the classy suits and glittering wigs, same as yesteryear.
My prevailing existence as the single Single hovers over the entire table; my fingers are free, my cell-phone is short of close male relatives, and somehow I am ashamed to my uncovered hair roots.

Alicia plummets beside me, screeching the baby's Mitsubishi to a halt on the marble floor. "Hey darling," we kiss.
She greets everyone else around our table, and I blink mirthlessly, having caught sudden amnesia.
"Oh my God," she whispers in my ear, while tweaking a piece of my roll, "I feel so thin compared to most. My hips are still sweet."

"Sara!" an intimidating female form towers over me, apparently affectionately.
"Hi," I say, anxiously searching my cerebral yearbook.
"Bracha, how're you?" Alicia springs to my aid. Heavens, it's Bracha, my self-appointed mentor, warmly accepted then. I reach up, gather my last drops of character and hug her meekly. She accepts it warmly, now.
"Still unmarried?" she notes, as she settles opposite me.
"She sure is, and loving it," informs her Alicia, stealing the last remnants of my roll.
I am single, out of choice; those who care, do not bludgeon me with offers. Those who know, remain silent. Obtrusive are the well-intentioned strangers.
"Well, I am glad to hear that," says Bracha. Throughout our small-talk, it dawns on me that she is divorced.

I dance without a heart.
Michal is beautiful; her plethora of sisters are garbed in pina coloda satin concoctions, an old relation square-dances, limbs reverberating.
Alicia tugs me as I canter around at the outer, slower circle. "I have to feed Rena, come along."
Oddly enough, we find ourselves at the hotel's roof, starry and projector-beamed by nightclubs. Odd, since rooftops were our legacy, a reason lousy enough to summon a principal-parents call, not good enough for expulsion.
"I was thinking Norham United would be perfect," she says, ordering the blanket over her breast and Rena's head.
"Norham United?"
"The local soccer team, you know," she giggles. "The one May would be rooting for. We could just call the town 'Norham'."
"Way too obvious," I state. "Is there such a place, anyhow?"
"Who cares. 'Norham United' sounds perfect."
"I just hope you're not going to start fabricating players now."
She chuckles. "No, I'll leave May to that."

Miss Taboo

2005-08-12T04:42:00.000+03:00

Since the second week in seminary, when I got sick from my initial gastronomical culture shock, I haven't once talked to Rotem.
I am not sure why, but we treated each other like the complete strangers we were – except for what I considered a magical hour with that freak – and it bothered me deeply, an emotion I refused to express.

I hung out with my friends, girls I have previously met at camp. Rotem didn't 'hang out' as much, merely disappeared daily after class. I would pass through her room on purpose, by chance, but encounter nobody except her snooty American roommate, Sara.
I wanted to talk to her again; she was cool, she wasn't self-conscious and she was hilarious. Plus, she knew her guitar. I spent hours at night wondering what she thought of me, what her family is like, what's her opinion on different issues.
I couldn't discuss her openly with my friends, since she has evolved - within a mere month – into a taboo.
Maybe because we couldn't categorize her, she wasn't a 'rebel', since her nails were short and her lips gloss-free, non-smoking. She wasn't a pseudo-intellectual or an affected foreigner nor an angst-ridden Israeli like the most. She was just carefree, and wore the same torn khaki skirt day in, day out.

And then, one day out of the blue, Rotem turns to me, asking if she can borrow my guitar.
ME: Sure, why?
ROTEM: I thought I could do some tutoring on the side, to make some peanuts.
ME: Really? You could teach guitar here? I mean, kids here want to learn?
ROTEM: You make it sound like they never seen a guitar, and walk around playing harps with a halo.
ME: No…it's just that….it's a great idea.

Rotem felt we should make this a partnership, where we both search for students, advertise, teach, and divide the money accordingly.
It wasn't long before the hours I spent mulling over her turned into entire days.
My first unholy liaison.

Emperor's New Gear

2005-08-11T16:28:00.000+03:00

On the plane from JFK heading to London Heathrow, Sara hands me a bag of clothes. I must have been in some rotten cargoes and ripped top, and she was primly dressed in black, as usual.

I remember it clearly, because it was my 1st time flying. I got high from the roar of the flushing can, and spent a considerable time pondering on where it all went. I stripped to my underwear and checked Sara's goodies, not before I lathered myself with the free onboard soap.

From the bag, I fished a black silky skirt, a white t-shirt, another black skirt – of canvas-like texture, long sleeved black shirt, stockings, white camisole, thin black knit, and a ponytail holder.
Baffled, I reflected the order of dressing while maneuvering into the tan stockings. I've never worn such things, and they were sexy to boot.
I had no idea as to the rest of the garb, which goes under what. Can you wear a camisole over a knit?

Before we landed, Sara and I had a row about the shoes. There was no way on Earth I would totter around in the flat pumps she proffered me. I loved my combat boots, and thought they gave my overall appearance a gothic touch. She relented at last, as we zoomed into the cloudy zone that was United Kingdom.

When we finally arrived, there was nothing to see but a grim set of hills. I have never experienced such a September.
'Jesus, Europe sure stinks.'
'Never say Jesus,' warned Sara.
'Yes ma'am. But Europe sure sucks. Now, how do we get to Our Lady of Preppies? Do we just walk there? Is it uphill, with walls?'
'Barbed wire,' she said. 'We're taking a cab.' And she hailed one, black with emblem.
'Oh milord,' I groaned. 'We're taking a fucking cab. Do we wave from the roof, as well?'

The Reason Why

2005-08-09T21:26:00.000+03:00

May called to give me her visa number, so I can purchase Michal a wedding present on her behalf. I described how on the shower we had most corners of womanhood: the mother, the bride, the divorcee and the interminable bachelorette.

She wasn't aware that Elka separated. As roommates, they led a hilarious but obnoxious set of a love-hate relationship:
Elka would blow-dry her hair at seven in the morning, and May would refuse to tidy up on weekly basis.
Elka would host a flock of twittering friends and May would yell Jazz tunes all evening.
However, Elka would crawl over to May's bed to cuddle during quarrels with her friends or parents, and May would feast on Elka's endless supply of jelly babies.
By and large, I think they were both relieved to be rid each other's presence at the end of term.

"Remember how Elka would preach that she would marry no one but a man? A manly bloke with biceps and a shimmering hat?"
I do remember. Truly, the guy I saw accompanying her at the wedding a year ago was reeking with Yeshivish masculinity, narrow tie inclusive.
"I am sorry for her," said May as an afterthought. "I am sorry for everybody there."
"Why?" after all, we discussed this once, and she agreed it was good that she spent time there.
"I can't place a finger on it, except for some feeling of lost opportunities. Which nobody is aware of," she adds. "And a total lack of choice. Which everybody completely oversaw."
It's not like her to philosophize thus. "May, have you been thinking much about it? Is something bothering you?"
"I am not sure," she says. "I am just sad lately. And a little without an aim. Which I never had, but now it nags me."
"Have you spoken to Rotem?"
"She is a bitch. She told me to think hard about life back then, and about who I am now. And party."
Typical Rotem advice. However, I have been dungeoned into thinking about our seminary past ever since the bridal shower.

This needs mulling over. It has been years since, so the retrospective could enlighten some elements of our personality which have faded by now.
Also, I am in dire need of the recklessness which shone over our sunless days there.

Thus, Alicia (Mrs. Tantrum) and May (Datura) agreed to syndicate this blog. Maybe we will surprise ourselves.

Pot Luck

2005-08-08T12:10:00.000+03:00

My luck lays in the fact that the seminary we attended did not launch prior interviews, but mainly based their decision upon hearsay reputation, principal's recommendation and your family income.
I had none of the above. However, with philanthropic money, and a little rabbinical push, anything could be done.
Hence, I entered an ultra-orthodox seminary without knowing a word of Hebrew, borrowing all my skirts from my niece, Sara, who is nearly twice my height.

Sara hated me. All of a sudden I barged upon her life, a crackpot of a family member she never knew existed, and who wouldn't shut up for a second.
I am a very lucky person. My stars are aligned happily, I can drink beer with scotch by the gallons and remain sober, and I can catch on languages quickly.

Luckier I was, though, because I was so ignorant. I dared everything, because I had not a single worry in the world except keeping favor in my brother's eyes, who lived across the sea and didn't phone his daughter much.

I was luckiest because I have never loved yet in my life, and because everything occurred in Europe, which I still treat like a colonial myth of hidden castles and colossal train stations, echoing.
Oh, and the cabbies.

Victims of Change

2005-08-05T20:03:00.000+03:00

I didn't know how sick I could get. I mean, physically sick. I threw up 5 days in a row. Had I been home, my doc-maniac of a mother would have dragged me to the hospital.
I am sure the lack of kitchen hygiene caused it, combined with filthy mite-infested carpets, beds, curtains.

I did my research on mites that year. I knew everything there is to know, considering my age group and location. We were examined upon the data as to how prevent consuming them, Halachically.

Here are the images which came up as I Googled "mites":

Anyway, I was transferred to the alleged sick room, where you get soup delivered agreeably warm by your very own room service, a crew of three cross-eyed Belgian girls and one Israeli chick under detention.
But, whereas the Belgians retreated back to the holes they came from after wiping up the cherry-concentrate trash they spilled, the Israeli remained by my side, trying to convince me my soup is poisoned.

ROTEM: You're blonde. They'd like to kill you, just to prove how gullible you are.
ME: Why prove someone's gullibility by killing them?
ROTEM: What better way?

I couldn't think of any. But since she claimed I looked like Britney Spears but stupider, our conversation somehow maneuvered to music. Here we hit a very common yet completely foreign grounds.
ROTEM: Who is Benny Elbaz?
ME: Oh my gosh, he is Israeli, have you never heard any of his hits?
ROTEM: No. Hell, you're Danish, have you heard Metallica?
ME: My dad disapproves of them.
ROTEM: Damn. How can you disapprove of &%#@ quality?
ME: It's disgusting. Hey, if you go to my room and bring over my guitar, I can play you some Elbaz songs.
ROTEM: You have a guitar?

So despite the obvious fact that she fully despises me, she decided to attach me to her set because I owned what she coveted most. She raced to my room and brought over my acoustic, and wouldn't let me touch it until she presented me with some Judas Priest.

"Takes another drink or two,
Things look better when she’s through
Takes another look around,
You’re not going anywhere
You’ve realized you’re getting old,
And no one seems to care
You’re trying to find your way again,
You’re trying to find some new…"
[Judas Priest, Victim of Changes]

It wasn't like I got hooked on Pink Floyd because it's the thing you do. I still can't stand them, or Simon and Garfunkel or the Beatles. But I did see a very easy way to shout myself into existence.
Who am I kidding, I am a fully converted Metallist.

Der Alter Maid

2005-08-03T11:11:00.000+03:00

"It's just a weekend, you could afford some time off," moans Michal.
"Exams, know how it is. I got three midterms coming this week." I explain.
"Well, you're missing one anyhow. It's my wedding," she declares ceremoniously.
"I'm aware of that."
"Come on, girl! You're no fun," she wails. "It's just a Friday night to Saturday night. You'll have time to study."
"Who else is coming?" by asking this, I know my physiology 101's fate is sealed.
"Just you, me, Elka and Alicia and her baby."
"What about their husbands?"
"Dave is in Toronto for a week," that explains Alicia's case. "And Elka is divorced, of course."
Of course?
"Of course."
"Great! So I assign you to make two salads and a dessert for the morning, could you?"

It's been a while since we went out together. Neither of us hops on rooftops anymore, probably discarded bed-bouncing as well. 2005 deluxe mattresses are no fun.
They decided to hold a shower, all-girls night at Alicia's, so I pack books, vegetables, and search for a decent set of pajamas. On my way there, I purchase the creamiest-looking cake.
Of all three, I am most anxious to see Elka. Last time we met – at some obscure wedding a year back - she was obese, wriggling within pointy stilettos, and married.
The screams reach beyond the apartment. I sit on the staircase and chew on a carrot, awaiting the baby's fury subside.

"Hey rascal," Alicia opens the door, adjusting a bra strap.
"You fed her again?" bawls Elka from the kitchen. "Are you insane? What are you doing to your child?"
"Don't tell me how to be a mother," she retorts, and groans at the size of the truck-tire cake. "You had to, right?"
Michal springs on me, followed by Elka. They are all glad I came.
"Sara, you're beautiful!" announces Elka, stifling me with kisses. "Heard from Rotem? Or May?"

I do hear from May. She is my aunt after all, albeit 15 months my senior, and a good deal of a hellraiser. May talks to Rotem, who by now has managed to break down all the barriers and turn into a fully-fledged Jew on her own, sans acoustics.
"I miss Rotem so badly," notes Alicia. "Remember when she crashed my guitar? And then smoked the wood pulp? Is she still that insane?"
"She wasn't insane," declares Elka, in that very Elka manner of I-know-better-period. "I spoke to her, she is happy. And she is glad I made the move and got divorced."
Be sure that Rotem would advise for that motion.

I have little notion of how it is with other alumni. I have no idea what the bonding is like at other institutions.
Perhaps, having spent months on end caged with those certain individuals, fighting and submitting to the devilries of May and Rotem, the rabbis, the matrons, the counselors and fellow disciples, perhaps I have begotten myself a very tangible, breathing, organic sort of past.
Maybe I am too chicken to let it go.

Use Your Illusion

2005-08-02T16:37:00.000+03:00

"Thought I could live in your world
As years all went by
With all the voices I've heard,
Something has died.

And when you're in need of someone
My heart won't deny you
So many seem so lonely
With no one left to cry to."

[Guns n' Roses, Don't Cry]

First stanza, she said, is what counts. The rest are just for endorphins' sake.