The First Time I Bought a Book (My London Roommates, Part One. Or is it Part Two?)

A while ago, I wrote a short post about my roommates in London. Someone suggested dedicating a post to each of these people. I don’t know about all of them, but here’s one post about my time in West London, a land of cricket and garage sales.

It took me a while to find this tiny place. During my search, I read The Loot every day and looked for ads. One of them seemed interesting. It was a cheap room in a nice neighborhood. The ad said “Men only.”

When I reached the house, the landlord showed me around. Here was where my room would be, and here was the common area where I would probably end up drinking Foster’s and watching Rugby with Australian dudes. Seemed good enough. “Just out of curiosity,” I said, “why ‘Men only?’” And the landlord, with no sense of concern, said, “First of all, men keep the house in better shape. And, you know how it is…you put a group of men and women together there’s bound to be problems and fights. That’s why I never let black people live here anymore.”

Anyway, so I kept looking until I ended up in Perivale with a born again landlord, a Christian South Korean guy, and a spiritual Polish woman (I wrote a little bit about them in that earlier post). It took me an hour and a half on the Tube to get to London for band practice, and I got sick of looking at sad commuters, so I went into an Oxfam store and bought a second-hand book. This was the first time I bought a book rather than have one given to me with an official recommendation, usually by my sister. It was Closing Time, and it included the sentence “Mere happiness was not enough,” which made me think about the meaning of life, and still does.

Meanwhile, there’s not much I can add about these three. I made the Polish woman cry. She was talking about the Holocaust and about how Polish people helped the Jews. I guess that’s what they teach them at school over there. And smart-ass me had to argue. Sometimes I don’t know when to shut the hell up.

There will be other roommates with better stories, I swear. Imagine Melrose Place on acid.

A Picture of Dennis Hopper

I said it would either be a picture of a baby or a picture of Dennis Hopper. Well, baby is not here yet. We're both ready for him to come, but I guess one of us is more eager than the other, especially after he heard about two labor inducing activities: intercourse and nipple stimulation (also known in layman's terms as "Titty twisting" and in laywoman's terms as "A labor inducing activity").

In other news, ABC says Maryland could be getting tabel games.

Next, either a picture of a baby or a long-lost meme. Or something else.

Some of My Roommates in London

A French man. Cool guy. We used to finish a bottle of Whiskey every day together. A French woman. She was his ex-girlfriend. She was so drunk one time that she fell asleep on the tiny highway divider outside our home.

A Spanish woman. She was cool. Two Peruvian ladies. They stopped speaking English when I tried to get them to pay bills. We had a big bonfire in the back and burned all of their stuff.

A few Israelis. One of them was destined for greatness but he was too complicated to achieve anything. He played me some of his songs and I had Dollar signs in my eyes, like Brian Epstein listening to the Beatles for the first time. We used to bring chairs outside and play music by the highway, him on the guitar, me on the harmonica, and wait for cars to get caught on the speeding camera. One day a few of us were sitting in his room, listening to music, when suddenly he got up and looked confused. “What was I about to do?” he asked. No one answered. He sat down again with a smile, saying, “Oh, yea, nothing.”

An English guy. He used to fall asleep with cigarettes in his mouth, burning holes in his bed sheets. The police followed him to the house one night because he didn’t pay his pub bill and I woke up with a flashlight on my face.

Two South African couples. One of the girls ended up marrying the French man, the other one, her first cousin, is now with the singer from my band. The South African boys returned to South Africa. What can you do. Actually, there was another South African. She taught me Yo ma se Chat. Other South Africans taught me Yo ma se falepte pus.

A couple from Czech Republic. They used to take showers together and giggle. He was a country boy and she was from Prague. This meant she was open and friendly while he was close minded and his best friend was a policeman with a mustache. Just goes to show things are the same everywhere.

Our landlord was an old man with a glass eye.

There was an Irish deaf guy. We didn’t have central heating, and his room was the only one without a radiator, so to keep warm he left his hairdryer on all day. He didn’t realize it was noisy, see?

I had a South Korean roommate, too. One day I thought, What if he had some South Korean lady friends he could introduce me to? So I asked him, “Did you come here alone?” -- “Three months ago,” he answered. “No,” I said, “I mean, are you here alone?” -- “I don’t know yet,” he said.

There was a Polish woman. She had positive affirmations all over her room and a large picture of a married couple taped to her mirror. That’s what I’m saying, see? Life is funny and sad at the same time. And it’s the same everywhere in the world. And it’s always been like that, and always will.

Ten Years

Ten years ago today we met. I already wrote about that day here, but ended that post with my date taking a cab back home.

I'll never forget, the next day, seeing Honey sitting outside the tube station waiting for me (even though I was early). We sat outside a bar, across the street from the Dublin Castle and then we went to see Swingers. That's our movie. We continued walking in Camden for a while and I asked her if she wanted to come over and watch TV. I swear that's what I meant, too. I just figured she was fun and it would be fun to watch King of the Hill with her.

We then listened to music and didn't talk much. Then "Broken Heart" started playing and Honey started to cry. And I said, "I'm going to regret this," and I kissed her.

I've tried to analyze this moment for the last ten years, and historians will continue my unfinished work, but I'm still not sure why I said that or what made me kiss her, just like she's not sure why she started to cry.

Did my kiss have anything to do with subconscious male chauvinism? Did I think she wanted me to kiss her because of some kind of male fantasy of a weak female saved by her superhero man? Did her tears make me feel stronger? Was my kiss meant to save my princess? That bastard Jung made me think about that. I read Man and his Symbols and realized maybe I didn't kiss her because I was a sensitive man but because I was an arrogant pig like the rest of them.

But I can leave all of that for the historians. Whether she cried because the idea of going back alone to America was breaking her heart or because on King of the Hill Bobby was forced to smoke an entire carton of cigarettes doesn't matter today. And whether I kissed her because I wanted to save her or because I wanted her to save me is also meaningless, after all. Because now, ten years later, the love of my life is smarter, funnier, and more beautiful than ever, and I've had the best ten years of my life, and our best days together are yet to come.

And she's pregnant, too, which is really cool. And more than likely, I'm the father.

Chicken Nuggets

Thank you all for your comments on the previous post. Now, it's not every day I can come up with something like that, so instead of trying to top the previous post I will just give you a meaningless story:

In London, my roommate had a friend stay over for a while. He was from a small Kibbutz and I was from Tel-Aviv, the big city, which meant we had nothing in common. Long story short, he finished my chicken nuggets. Not a big deal, unless you go down to the kitchen craving chicken nuggets only to find an empty box in the trash. So obviously, I did what anyone else would have done in my situation: I wrote a note saying, “You’re not in the Kibbutz anymore. Over here we don’t share our food.” Then, of course, I took out the empty box from the trash and with a large kitchen knife stuck the empty box with the note to his door. Obviously.

A minute later he comes home and sees a piece of trash and a note stuck to his door by a big horror-movie knife. And he looks at me and I’m ready for a fight, but he shrugs and hands me a family-size box of chicken nuggets he just bought at the supermarket.

It’s been a while but God help me, I still have a long way to go. At least I’m vegetarian now.

Tony Blair's Legacy - A PostGlobal Comment

Wrote a comment on PostGlobal. It's on the main page for now, which is pretty cool, I suppose:

I was living in London when Blair became Prime Minister. I remember the May Day celebrations that year. Finally, we all thought, finally we have one of us in charge. He was a man of the people, talking about labor rights, and about prosperity for all, and about education, education, education--meaning a reform of the public school system to ensure England would be again a world-leader. This was not to be achieved through colonialism and violent control over other countries' resources, but by looking after England's own resources: the future generation of scientists and thinkers, brought up by the public school system.

Then he put his son in a private school, and his moment was gone. He was no longer a man of the people, but one of the "Them" young people hated so much and overwhelmingly voted off power. He smiled his way into power, courting us all with the image of reform, but in the end we didn't matter at all.

His son went to a private school and England's children went to Iraq. That will be Blair's legacy. He rose up to power due to hatred of corrupt government only to redefine corruption. He gave us hope that our children were special, and then he sent them to die.

A Life-Changing Moment

On my twenty-third birthday, five months after I left the army and six months before I was supposed to start University, I received two postcards in the mail. One was from a friend on a trip to India, the other from a friend who moved to London, both telling me I had to join them. I remember holding the two postcards, one in each hand, rereading them and trying to make up my mind.

One postcard described sitting on top of mountains in India watching the sun rise, feeling lonely and complete. The other friend wrote about insane parties and new friends and about a band he had started and about being a part of the London music scene.

A month later I moved to London. I went to the parties and met the new friends. I learned to play bass guitar and joined the band. I dyed my hair purple. I found myself in the first ever “Reclaim the Streets” demonstration, and just before the police came, left to get my ears pierced. I called my parents and told them I wasn't coming back. I went to Glastonbury Festival and saw the sun rise over the green hills. I fell in and out of love. Moving further from the city and forced to commute, I started reading on the Tube. On a trip to Amsterdam, sitting alone in a coffee shop, I wrote my first short story. I danced in a cage in Heaven club, and made out with drunk girls in Camden Town. I found out things. I sat in a room and listened to Mogway and Beethoven and stared at a world map, watching the oceans move slowly with the music until morning came and the world stood still. I met my American Honey and here I am in Baltimore.

What if I chose differently? And maybe even if I had chosen to go to India rather than London I would still be sitting here, with my Honey sleeping upstairs, struggling in her sleep to stretch her legs because Buddy and Ginger are so goddamn needy. Maybe I didn’t have a life changing moment on my twenty-third birthday because no matter what, I would have been sitting here at this exact same spot, writing this exact same sentence.

Song Lyrics

I used to care about song lyrics. It’s not all bad, don’t get me wrong. For example, I’m happy I don’t get excited over Billy Joel’s lyrics anymore. “They’re sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone.” I copied that one into my high school planner and circled it a few times for effect. And also Dire Straits: “There's so many different worlds, So many different suns. And we have just one world, But we live in different ones.” It rhymes, it’s catchy, it’s got it’s own inner logic, but… Thank God I’m not a teenager anymore.

But what about the good stuff? The other day I played “Cars” by Built to Spill, and remembered sitting in the rented appartment in London in my early twenties, listening to people talk about the beauty of lyrics, and I remembered them playing that song again and again saying they, too, would like to see movies of their dreams. That, I miss.

Maybe it’s not about age but about the weight of life. Unbearable lightness my ass. You move a few times, sometimes in the same city, then across the ocean to another continent. You deal with jobs and with crazy bosses and insane co-workers. You search for love. You drink. You smoke and spend the rest of your life trying to quit. You have sex. You spend time and energy trying to have more sex. You buy stuff. You lose pens and lighters. You deal with the plumber and you argue with the cable company. You always get screwed by the local garage. Always. You get sick and healthy and sick again. You do your taxes.

And then, before you know it, you forget you used to wish you could see movies of your dreams.

Life is funny like that.

The Dublin Castle

While the singer went inside to talk to the promoter and give out our demo tape, I stayed in the pub and had a pint and a cigarette. Suddenly an American girl looks at me and asks if she could sit next to me. It was early afternoon and there were a lot of other free tables, so obviously she made a conscious decision to sit with me and talk to me and have a drink with me because I was cute or whatever.

However, when she tells the story, she didn’t even see me, but had already made up her mind to sit at the first empty table. She came to check out a band she read about on Time Out, and she was early and uncomfortable so she ordered beer even though she hated beer, and she sat at the first empty table, determined even when she found out the table wasn’t empty because she had already made up her mind and was self-conscious and had to sit down before she exploded, and the young man sitting there looked harmless enough.

She had just finished college and was taking time off before starting law school. Now, a few days earlier I put an ad for a roommate in a local store and at the bottom I wrote, “Law school students need not apply.” I’m not proud of it; it’s just that you get to meet so many of them and they’re all the same, going to law school because it’s a good, solid, respectful job, and most of them don't think for a second who they really are and what kind of world they want to live in.

But she was different. She wanted to go to law school because she sincerely felt that even though the world was in many ways a bad place ruled by bad people for bad reasons, anyone can make a difference, large or small in other people’s lives, and for her law school provided the opportunity to make the world a better place.

I was in love.

Later that evening my date showed up. Anyway, the three of us went for a walk by the canal in Camden Town, and we told jokes and stories, and then my date took a taxi back to the hotel and I married the American girl and moved here.

Center of the World, Again.

When I was twenty-two I was standing on a bridge in Camden Town smoking a cigarette, and I saw a group of tourists walking up from the street. They took some pictures of each other standing by the canal and then one of them pointed the camera at me and took a picture. I had long, purple hair at the time, and I was wearing a purple silk long-sleeves shirt.

I’m not embarrassed. I was young and had to distinguish myself somehow, so for me at the time it meant having silly hair and silly clothes and a cigarette.

Anyway, these people were taking pictures of me, thinking the best way for them to describe to their friends back home what Camden or even London was like in the ‘90s was to show a picture of a young man with a cigarette and a purple velvet shirt that matched his hair.

Young people from all over the world come to New York and to London and to San Francisco in the hope not merely of having a good time and having their quirks accepted by a community of bigger freaks, but often in the hope of defining what makes these places what they are. I didn’t move to London to be a part of something, but to dictate the definition of that something.

Now I live in a small city and I’m ten years older. In my community at the moment I’m usually happy to go to the grocery store without getting into a fight, and finding a parking spot close to my house on my way back. I wish I could say it’s just about getting wiser and understanding the real important things in life, but I somehow feel there’s a bigger problem here. Sometimes I feel there’s something wrong with losing the will or the need to define the world on my own terms.

My Life

After my three years of disillusionment in the Israeli army, and before I was supposed to start college, I took some time off and went to visit friends who had moved to London. There, I painted my hair purple, got another earring, learned the secrets and the meaning of life (whatever it was, I forgot), and started playing in a band. I decided not to return to Israel for school, instead, learning true life lessons in a life of independence and risk-taking. It was random.

I've never worked in an amusement park, never was a scientist, never was a porn star or a model, never was an athlete, never was a politician, never led a group of hikers up the mountains of Nepal, and I never will.

I used to be twenty-something

Investing so much in youth seems to have taken its toll on me. In my twenties, I thought of myself as a part of the generation. Forget about Boomers and The Greatest and the Gen-Xes. I was the one whose job it would be to define my generation. I read Dorian Gray and thought I had some essence of eternal beauty. My opinions mattered most, while those of my peers were a distant second. Out of the picture were opinions of TV talking-heads, dead philosophers, people who liked Jazz or Classical music, people without a TV, people who talked about mortgage rates, law-school students, people who smiled too much, and anyone over thirty.

I befriended a thirty-two-year-old man with a sober view of life, but he had a wife and a son, and he was born ten years before me. I wanted to make our friendship work, I really did, but there was no way a guy like me, with so much of his identity determined upon seeing himself as a part of a particular generation, with so much invested in his twenty-somethingness, could hang out with such an old man.

I tried once. I went to visit him in Cambridge and met his wife and son. His wife didn’t love him, and his son scared me, so we went for a walk in the university. All around us were young people riding bikes, with their sparking eyes, full of ambitions and dreams, and I thought it must have been so sad to be him, surrounded by mirror images of his youth, the train passing him by every waking hour. We sat in a bar and he had a sad laugh. He talked about his wife. His friends didn’t like her. He asked me, “Isn’t my son beautiful?” I nodded, and he said, “I guess every parent thinks his son is the most beautiful kid in the world.”

I believe pity is partly a matter of power over others. When I pity poor starved kids in Africa, I acknowledge my situation is better than theirs, and with my pity comes at least the possibility of helping them. As long as I can help them and they can’t help me I maintain my power over them. And so, my pity over my friend's perceived dead-end world was perhaps an attempt by me to reinforce my superior position in life.

I had no idea.

The Devil in My Cereals

When I lived in London, I used to get mad at my roommate for eating my cereal. Oh, I knew better, but I couldn’t help myself. Knowing it was wrong of me to get angry, I would wake up in the morning, after he had already left for work, and I’d notice the box wasn’t placed in the exact same spot I left it the day before. It wasn’t money, or the fear of running out of cereal or anything semi-logical as that. I simply let my ego take control of me. I was mad because I wasn’t asked; was not given the opportunity to sit in my royal chair and be the benevolent roommate that says, “Of course you can take some of my cereal. What’s mine is yours.”

Then one night we went to a club. We were each wondering the club by ourselves for a while when I saw him sitting on the stairs next to an Irish guy. I wasn’t close enough to hear what that man was saying, but he seemed to take the conversation very seriously, lifting his finger and moving it decisively. He was having the most important conversation of his life. Sitting next to him, my roommate was laughing himself to tears. He gestured for me to come closer and said, “I don’t understand a word he’s saying. He’s been talking to me for an hour.”

Some time later, it was just the two of us again. Two friends in an unknown territory. Lewis and Clarke. And I felt ashamed of myself for the way I had felt before. There were real moments in life, like sitting in a club with my best friend, and there were fake moments and emotions, like worrying about cereals. Things started to make sense.

The next morning. . . . Is there even a point in writing what followed? It's unbearably clear and predetermined, isn’t it? Human, all too human. I mean, is there anything better after a long night of partying than eating an overflowing bowl of cereal? I hated him as my ego resurfaced. That bastard finished my cereal. And you know what? It wasn’t the cereal; it was the principal.

Whenever you talk about a principal to justify your feelings you can be sure that in this battle the Devil has won.