The Goddesses

One day, when I was about ten, I think, we visited my grandmother, who lived on the third floor in a small rundown apartment building in Tel Aviv. These were changing times in her neighborhood. When my grandparents moved in, it was a neighborhood of middle-aged Eastern European immigrants, many of them Holocaust survivors. Then, with time, the older people moved out of the neighborhood or out of the world, and suddenly my grandma’s house was located in the hippest part of the city.

That’s just a bit of background to explain how come when I was ten I looked out of my grandma’s bathroom window and saw on the second floor of the building next door two young women getting undressed.

It was amazing. They took their time getting undressed and then dressed again, moving from one room to another to try out various clothes, then taking them off again, checking themselves in the mirror, talking to each other naked.

Meanwhile, my grandma was yelling at my mother in French, and my mother, in turn, was asking me to stop running around the house. But I didn’t care. The women were moving from one room to another, so I had to do the same.

Then, when they finished getting dressed, they were no longer goddesses. They became just two women; two adults.

It reminds me of my girlfriend when I was sixteen. I remember the last time she put her shirt on while telling me we were through. I remember, button by button, how she changed from being my girlfriend to being just another person in this big world. With her clothes on, she was now someone who would no longer affect my life, other than through memories of youthful intimacy. And it felt weird, the way a few buttons made all the difference.

A year later, she sent me an anonymous love letter, but that’s another story.

A Story About My Grandfather

My grandfather had this big white beard that made words disappear.

Our family would go to visit my grandparents, my father's parents, and at first it was fine, even fun. We would pray and eat and pray and walk to the synagogue and pray and shake hands with the neighbors, and go home and eat some more, and pray just a little bit more. But then he would call me into his room, close the door behind us, sit me down beside him, and begin talking.

God, I wish I had been able to get what he was saying. I mean, I got a few words here and there, to be sure. Some words did penetrate that beard. I know the basic subject was religious philosophy. I know he sometimes talked about the wonderful service we were both a part of, even though for me synagogue meant staring at the walls, occasionally bending my body like the others to avoid embarrassing him and myself.

In short, my grandfather was this happy Orthodox Jew who liked to discuss philosophy and I was a kid who didn't care. Same old story everywhere you go in the world, pretty much.

But this one was different. I was living in England when I got the late night phone call, telling me he died, that he fell and held his wife's hand before she called the ambulance; that he peacefully asked her to stay a moment with him because he knew he would soon be dead.

Late night phone calls always mean someone is dead.

My mother was on holiday with her sister in Europe when he died, and when she returned, she talked to one of her old friends and told her that when she was away, her husband's father died. In turn, my mother's friend told my mom someone else died that week, a holy man who healed her broken arm.

It's still impossible for me to imagine that all these people saw my grandfather as a holy man. He immigrated to Israel illegally to escape the Nazis, spent some time in British jail, was a cook, a milkman, he got married and had children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, he had a big white beard that held on to bits of food like it knew something we didn't. He loved religion and philosophy. Apparently, he was also a holy man; a healer. Fancy that.

A Week Before My Thirty-Fifth, I Want to Make a Few Things Clear:

I can deal with the loss of energy, the loss of opportunities, the memory thing.

I learn to live with an uncooperative body. Like an old, dying car, where ice on the wheels means unresponsive breaks and a scratch on the windshield means a defective ignition switch, my body has become random; a decaying mystery. But I can deal with that.

I see myself through the eyes of my society and learn my social identity is shifting. I learn I no longer belong to one group of consumers but to another; a less demanding one, presumably less inclined to fall for the hidden persuaders of advertising. Passively and apathetically I welcome my new identity.

I can deal with all that. The balding hair, the headaches, the goddamn teeth, the strange spots on the back, the snoring, the heartburn, the allergies, the weight gain...

And I welcome it all, because life is a journey and my body adapts as well as it can, and every day is a new adventure, if not an external one, then at least I can find the beauty of it all through my own private transformation. Because after all, thirty-five is the new something-or-other, and maybe I won't be the President and maybe I won't even be Employee of the Month but I'll never forget my dreams and I'll never stop pursuing them, and I will not let a playful body and a confused mind stand in the path of my dreams. Thirty-five means nothing.

But so help me God, the single curly coming out of my ear is unacceptable!!!

Mistakes

Aren’t things supposed to get better from one generation to another? Aren’t people supposed to ever learn? Or maybe it’s another thing altogether: maybe by repeating the mistakes of the past we learn to accept the limits of our predecessors and acknowledge their humanity, and as a result, we're able to forgive ourselves the inevitable repeated mistakes.

My father liked science experiments, so we had to like science experiments. A former meteorologist in the military, he liked to discuss cloud shapes. He liked politics, so we had to talk about politics. He liked to talk about his family history, so we had to memorize names. And in all of these things and in countless others, I’d failed him.

His disappointed face is something I always carry with me. Always the same routine. A sigh, his head down, an angry expression, and the ultimate blow: “Why do you hate your father?”

“I don’t hate you,” I used to say.

“Yes, you do. Otherwise you would do what I told you to do.”

I got used to that after a while, learning that this phrase meant the end of me having to do something I hated doing. Hearing him tell me I hated him meant I no longer had to know the difference between a Cumulonimbus and a Cumulus, I didn’t have to role-play as a journalist interviewing his favorite politician, and I didn’t have to learn about all the relatives who died in the Holocaust. That “Why do you hate your father” meant one thing: I was free.

But there was also pain associated with this sentence, and many times I’d tried to argue and explain that, well, there were things I’d rather do than be his lab-partner; that I was just a kid, and who cares about cloud-classifications when you can look at clouds for hours and find animals and monsters? And that, again, I didn’t hate him.

So why am I writing this now? Because the other day the new guy was having a good time with his mother—feeding, and playing, and smiling—and then she passed him to me when she went to take a shower. Now, as soon as I took him and started singing my favorite childhood song, his expression changed to suspicion, which soon turned to sadness. Soon, he was crying with the most painful, offended expression on his face. And I looked at him cry and thought about how happy he was with his mother just a few minutes earlier, and how come I couldn’t make him happy even though I sang him a beautiful song, and then I said, “Why do you hate your father?”

One Day I Cried

I wanted to write another one, this time a dedicated post about what I feel about circumcision, but even after reading this incredible article, I know we'll have to do it. I've talked to people at work, some of them had to do it later in life, whether for medical reasons or because at the age of 27, they were sick of being called Russell. I understand why some people think it's a horrible thing. I understand it all. But at least after talking to other people I know I'm not doing it for some random religious idea, but because I've come to believe it's the right thing to do for Jr.

And if he comes later in life to resent the choices I've made for him, and if later in life he comes to see this as the first of many betrayals, then all I can do is apologize in advance and reiterate my promise to always do what I think is right for him. There's no manual to life but the worst you can do is fail, which isn't a big deal, after all. Now, parenting--that's a different issue. He will trust me to take care of him, to guide him, to teach him, to love him, and to know him as the individual he will become, and failure is not an option.

So with that, I thought it was the right time to reprint this essay I wrote a few years ago. If you've read this far then I know you'll enjoy it because I used to be a better writer then.

One Day I Cried


One day I was playing with a girl from my class. Her name was Meital, and I liked her. This piece is not about her. It's also not about her father, who grabbed me by my ten-year-old neck and lifted me up, moved me around, carried me an inch off the wall, warned me never to come near Meital again, and dropped me on the ground. The piece is about my father, who ten minutes later told Meital's father that if he ever came near me again he would kill him. Meital's father started explaining what had happened, but my father told him to shut up, and that the conversation was over.

It's the same guy who laughed when I burnt my finger and screamed when I was four-years-old. I'm still scared of fire. The same guy that embarrassed me for years because he insisted on wearing a stupid furry hat when he started going bald. The other kids used to call me "The Russian." The same guy who told me every night to brush my teeth, until one night I asked him to say "Good night" once in a while instead of "Brush your teeth," and he smiled and said, "Good night." Then, when I walked to my bedroom, he shouted, "And brush your teeth," and laughed.

One day, in the car, he told me a story. A fairy tale, perhaps. A young Prince was having a ball in the palace. While he was standing by the door, welcoming his guests, he accidentally farted. Yes, farted. Everyone started whispering: "Did you hear that? Who...? You think...?" After all, the future of the country was at stake. Suddenly, a poor young woman, one of the Prince's maids, approached the group of distinguished guests, lifted her head, and said, "I was the one who farted. It was I." Naturally, the Prince was so moved by this gesture, that he married the woman the next day, and they lived happily ever after.

In my father's tale, the Prince married the maid because she said she farted. I mean, this guy doesn't make any sense.

One day we were watching television, and he said the conductor in a weekend talk-show orchestra used to be with him in the army. Then, every Friday, the family would sit in front of the television at 8 pm, and every time David Kriboshe's face appeared on the screen, my father would say he was with him in the army. I thought it was sad that people saw themselves in the context of others, and I thought I wouldn't be like my father when I grew up. I would be somebody. I would be the reference point.

When I'm a father, I thought, I would hug my son every night and tell him how much I loved him; and I would never hit him; and I wouldn't spend family meals alone in front of the television; and I would always know how old my son was, and who his teachers were; and I would never wear silly hats to embarrass him; and I would set a good example.

And one day I got home from the army and cried because my friend died from a landmine in Lebanon. My father took the backpack off my shoulder, put it away in my room, and asked me to follow him to the car. We drove to Jaffa and sat on a bench in the old city, overlooking the peaceful skyline of Tel Aviv. We sat there, and I cried, and he hugged me and cried, too, because his son was suffering, and he couldn't handle this first experience of watching his son carrying so much pain. And I realized nothing was his fault, because he didn't know better; because there was probably a moral in that story, and she was now a princess; and he was just worried about my teeth, because the dentist took away his when he was twenty; and I could see the helplessness in his sad eyes, and I realized he was crying in my arms just like I was crying in his.

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.

Dude, Where's My Hair?

First of all, thank you all for sticking around and commenting this past week. I was away in suburban Boston for about a week for Honey's father's family reunion.

• A few cousins and I kicked a ball around and decided to have a friendly four-v-four game of soccer. I learned a few things: 1. I don't know the meaning of a friendly game (sorry, Steven). 2. I'm very very old. The game started with me running up and down the field, passing, blocking, kicking... like I was ten-years-old again. Two minutes later I said I had to become the goalkeeper. A minute later, even that was too much. I was lying in the field waiting for the vultures to collect. And here was this Steven, a man in his forties, running like it was the most normal thing in the world for a grown man to move about freely. I'd like to think the kicks he got from me were genuine attempts to get the ball and not just products of my tired body and jealous soul. I need to get in shape.

• About a hundred people there, most of them strangers to me and many of them strangers to each other, each standing up in turn, introducing him/herself and explaining the connection to the family. I had about twenty minutes to think about what to say. I was going to say my name and then say it had been almost exactly ten years since I met the first member of the family (Honey), and how great it was to be a part of the family, and all that, but before I got the mike, it was Honey's turn. "My name is... I'm the daughter of..., the granddaughter of... [standing up], and as you can see, I'm on my sixth month, soon to give birth to the newest member of the family." [Applause]. So what's a man to do? Was there anything else I could have said other than, "My name is... [now pointing at Honey's belly]. And I put it there."

• A distant cousin, on the way back home:

"I heard you lived in England for a while. What were you doing there?"
"Nothing much. I was playing in a band."
"Oh, really? What instrument?"
"Bass guitar."
"Ahhh, that's great. Me and my brother were talking the other day about how each part of the female body is a different musical instrument. Like, the head is, you know, and the breast is a snare drum, Tss, t-t-tss, t-t-tss, t-t-tss, you know? And the ass in like a bass guitar, gau, gau-gau, gau-gau, doom doo-doom doom doom. Know what I mean?"

And we still had 700 miles to go to Baltimore.

Fifteen. Summer Vacation.

I was fifteen. It was summer vacation. I was sitting outside talking with three friends, when someone mentioned the secret everyone else knew.

"You know an electric shock? Well, it's like that but it starts at your feet and quickly climbs up all the way to your head."

"Why would I want to have an electric shock?"

"No, no. It's like that but it feels good. You just feel the electricity in your body but it doesn't hurt or anything."

"And all of you do that?"

"Where have you been? We've been doing that for a year now."
"I've been doing it since I was twelve."
"You have to try it."

So I went home and filled up the bath, thinking, How would I know when to stop? But you find out soon enough, don't you?

More Army Stories 1991-1994

We emptied out his aftershave and peed inside the bottle. I took this photo a second before he realized what was going on.

Honey wishes I still looked like that. I think when I shave my head she still sees that person. Suspended disbelief I think they call it. I should shave my head more often.

My parents came to visit me one Saturday in the desert. It may have been the first time my father drove on a Sabbath. There wasn’t much to say, and if there was, we didn’t know how to say it. My enthusiasm for the army was gone by then, and I still had two and a half more years to go and two funerals to attend.

Ten

Got tagged by Wandering the Ether to list 10 random facts. Here goes:

1. They thought I was border-line autistic when I was a kid. I used to read the phone book for hours. Then my mom got me a football for my 5th birthday and I started making friends.

2. I was an average football (soccer) player, and I grew up to be an average student, an average bass player, an average backgammon player, an average writer, and an average looking guy. I got me an above-average lady, though. I guess I have an above-average luck.

3. Honey complains I misrepresented myself when she met me because I had hair and I was in a band. I say she misrepresented herself because she was holding a pint and she doesn’t drink. Objection sustained.

4. I’m afraid one day I’ll start snoring and Honey will make me sleep on the couch. Then my transformation into my dad will be complete.

5. My dad was an officer, a real army man, but he wanted me to join the IT department in the Israeli military. He said he knew people. But I wanted to be a fighter just like him (or better, to be honest).

6. I heard the explosion that killed my friend in Lebanon and thought it was fireworks. Then I saw the helicopters and realized something bad happened.

7. I never cried like I did the next day, and I never will.

8. Then, at other times, I’m cold and distanced in the face of others’ pain, and when I wake up from my daydreams I think maybe I’m still borderline autistic.

9. I can’t help closing my eyes when I hear Leftfield’s “Storm 3000.” Thank God, there’s still some hippy in me.

10. Won some money at the Borgata last week. I was on a slot machine bonus round and I stayed there for a while. A small crowd surrounded me, and with Honey by my side... I don’t think she’s ever been so proud.


Now, I'll tag my three latest links:

1. Cafe Leone
2. East Med Sea Peace
3. The Other Side of My Head

As usual, feel free to ignore this tag. That is, if you're EVIL!

My IKEA Story

Last year, during my five months of unemployment, I went to a job interview for a call-center rep. position at IKEA. By then I had already been rejected by many places, which didn’t do much for my self esteem. I mean, you call Comcast costumer service and think, What kind of idiots are they hiring? Apparently, not this one.

During those five months I learned to readjust my values in order to play the game of employment-seeking. If on the first interview I thought they would obviously see my genius (can I use my mom as a reference?), by the time of my triple-digit interview I learned that I wasn’t fired from my last job, but that “The position ended.” I learned that I wasn’t simply a cashier in a store but a “Senior Sales Associate.” I learned I had people skills! Yes! And I bought a suit. I was ready.

So here I was in the hub of Swedish Minimalism, waiting for HR. I was sitting on a low sectional IKEA couch. Do I need to describe how ugly the couch was or can you already imagine it for yourselves? Good. Now, they had two items on the coffee table: Time Magazine and the IKEA catalog. “Is this a test?” I thought as I started leafing through the catalog of urban decay.

I repeated to myself: Inexpensive products for people who love designer furniture or It has everything for everyone or even the original Affordable solutions for better living—one of these mantras was getting into the interview. I was going to get this job.

So here comes this elderly lady, shaking my hand like she was a ghost, doing the ol’ “Did you have any problem finding this place?” (Another thing I learned: They don’t really care). And we go into a tiny room, and she slouches in her chair and asks me to tell her about my past experiences, so foolishly I start doing just that.

At the end of the interview she says, “Looks like you’ve lived an interesting life,” which in English (or Swedish) means You’re not what we’re looking for. So I ask, “What kind of person are you looking for?” and the elderly lady from IKEA raises herself slowly and lifts her finger to accentuate the last words of the interview. “We’re looking for someone who could sell, Sell, SELL.”

And that was it.

A Mistake in Brooklyn

In mid-2000, we visited some friends in Brooklyn. I had some wine and quickly got drunk. A few hours into the evening, we heard a car honking. Our friend went out and was met by a neighbor angry about her car blocking the driveway. Our friend quickly ran back inside, took her car keys and her dog—meaning to take it for a short walk after she moved the car—then ran back outside and put the dog in the back seat. But even after parking his car, the neighbor continued to yell. Apparently, she answered. He lost it and tried to punch her in the face. She moved her head forward and the neighbor hit her dog instead. Distressed and shocked, she went back inside and told us what happened.

Drunk and over-confident, I went outside to face the neighbor, but the closer I got, the more I realized how big he was, and by the time we faced each other and he was holding my shirt collar and me pretty much on tip toes reaching to grab his, I knew there was no turning back, and I kind of knew I was in trouble.

When the man realized Honey called the police he simply let go of my shirt and walked away.

Twenty minutes later, two police officers came, a black man and a white woman. They took a statement from our friend and walked outside to look around. Did anyone know the man? Had anyone seen him before? Suddenly one of our friends shouted, “There he is, he’s getting into his car,” pointing at a person getting into a car at the end of the darkened block. The car pulled out and started driving toward us and the police officer moved to the middle of the road, took out his flashlight, and waved it for the car to stop. The car continued. Now, the officer was waving his flashlight with one arm while the other was pulling his gun out. Suddenly, the driver realized what was going on and slammed on the break. When the officer aimed his flashlight at the car we saw an old couple with their hands touching the roof of their car, shaking.

“Sorry,” my friend told the police officer. “It was dark.”

“Well,” he said, in a city still reeling from the Amadou Diallo shooting, “Now you see how mistakes are made.”

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.

So What's New in My Life?

It’s funny how you live your life and go with the flow or sometimes actively pursue goals as if you know what's good and bad, and you move from one place to another and buy things and leave things behind, and you love and you hate and you attach a meaning to everything, and you go to school and learn to think only to find out you know nothing, and you smoke and you quit and you smoke and you quit and you smoke, and you grow a beard then shave it, and even a mustache for a while, just for fun, and you get slightly older each day, funny how that works, and the pieces of the puzzle, and pardon the cliche, start coming together only to form a greater unknown.

And now you're in your mid-30s thinking you've established something. You’re married and you have that house, and you have the doggies and more books than you’ll ever read (but not in a pretentious way, you’re simply a slow reader), and finally a stable job and you have the closest thing you’ve ever had to a schedule, and you sit back and relax and think you’re finally in control.

But you never really know when something amazing is going to happen.

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.

The Forum

A friend of mine did the Forum. Maybe it has other names in different countries but it’s the same thing: You go there and admit you’re afraid of people and then you discover you are merely a part of a whole and that everyone is fragile and that you should confront your childhood fears instead of ignoring them, and then you call everyone you’ve ever feared and hated (which means everyone you've ever known) and you tell them, “I forgive you.”

So pretty soon people started to get really annoyed by her forgiving them.

But her life got much better. Facing the world with no fears, she started a business, got a divorce (she later called her husband to tell him she forgave him), rented a place by herself, quit smoking, and exercised.

These things don’t usually last, and soon she was back to her old all-too-human self. When you’re a part of a religion it’s easier to adhere to certain guidelines, but when you’ve just learned something and then you're thrown into the world, all it takes is that one experience you didn't prepare for, and you go back to what you know and trust, fearing people and keeping your feelings inside.

I think at one point in my life, after I was fired from my job and started reading The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, I was also on my way to come to terms with the world, but shit happens and before I knew it I was getting angry at people for stupid stuff and getting offended because I lost the little humility I had gained after getting fired. Like Flannery O’Connor said, we could all have been good people if there was someone there to shoot us every minute of our lives.

It’s not easy, living right. Or maybe it’s the easiest thing in the world.

My First Cigarette

On a routine patrol in Lebanon, a friend of mine stepped on a Hezbollah landmine and died along with five other soldiers. Two weeks later we were sent to that same spot to prove the IDF could not be deterred. My transformation into an outsider with no trust in authority began during that briefing.

But I went into Lebanon like I was told to do, and walked around the beautiful land filled with unexploded landmines from a thousand years of war. Lost in my thoughts, I walked in a straight line, trampling over fences and crop on my way to nowhere.

Then I felt my right leg stuck. My left leg was free but a tight wire was stretched over my right leg and I suddenly realized I was going to die. To this day I’m not sure if there was any way for me to stop or if I just let myself continue because after two years in the army I just didn’t care anymore. So I pulled my right leg up and waited for the end.

Back in the camp, I lay on my bed and thought about it all, or maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. A new guy came over and asked me about the patrol. He offered me a Marlboro Red.

Just in Case

Is it time to expose more about myself?

I’m a vegetarian. I like Nutela.

I confused Netflix by giving “Dude, Where’s My Car?” 5 stars. What can I say? It’s a modern Odyssey.

I pierced my left ear when I was in the army and my right ear a couple of years later, after the first ever “Reclaim the Streets” demonstration in London. These were both small acts of protest. I don’t wear earrings anymore.

I don’t get poetry. I don’t get opera. I don’t get young Republicans.

I overcame my fear of fire when I started smoking. I quit smoking for a year but now I smoke again. Smoking a cigarette after a long break is like peeing in a swimming pool. You know you shouldn't, but it feels so good.

I grew up near an airport, which gives me the ability to tune out loud noises and silly conversations about nothing.

Unless I die for someone else’s sins, I'll probably die one day for no good reason.

I’m too goddamn sensitive. I’m losing my energy.

My New Job II

So in my new job I have to wear a tie. You know this world exists, and you know some of your neighbors live in that world and follow its deranged logic, but until you step into this environment you have no idea what’s it really about. Apparently, ties have to match your clothes. Your shoes as well. Everything has to match.

It’s this whole new culture that exists under your nose, but unless you’re a part of it you simply have no idea what’s it about and how prevalent it is. You just live your own life as if it’s the only possible way to live, not thinking for a second there are others all around you who do heroin, or sharpen their teeth and dress like vampires, or practice voodoo, or have crazy orgies, or wear ties.

I get compliments on the ties Honey bought me. People ask me about brands and stuff. I search for a label.

“Nautica? Is that the brand? Nautica?”

“Ahh, Nautica is good,” they say.

One of the guys straightened my tie today. Apparently this thin piece of cloth has to be centered.

Personally, looking at tie patterns make me dizzy. I’m not even mentioning fun ties; that’s a whole new type of evil I’m too scared to get into. What’s going on here? Who randomly decided men can only look professional if their upper body is divided symmetrically by patterns? I would have loved to be in on that meeting.

Love

1997. Watching The Orb play in the dance tent in Glastonbury Festival. After “Little Fluffy Clouds,” a young woman turned around and asked if I could hug her. We hugged for a moment and then continued dancing. We walked around for a while. She told me she was so excited earlier and so alone that she had to hug someone, and I looked harmless and I had kind eyes, apparently. We met her friends. We ate fries. Her name was Joe. She was studying in a college in Canterbury. We walked for hours in the warm June evening, surrounded by love. In the end, we hugged again and kissed and said goodbye.

I’m happy it didn’t go any further because it was so special and so uniquely perfect. But on the other hand, if we see love in front of us how dare we let it go? Two months later I met my American Honey and this time I held on.

Maybe love is the key to happiness rather than a goal in and by itself. Of course, I don’t know anything about anything, so there’s a good chance I might be wrong. Maybe love is the goal, and happiness is found in serving love. I digress.