On My Knees (10 page)

10

Guy Is Here

I
really did have every intention of having an amazing time in Israel, and I was already off to a good start. One of my best friends worked for the airlines and had arranged a standby ticket for me. Some people hate flying standby, but I love it. I have always thrived on doing things last-minute and you can change standby tickets around at no charge whenever you want. I had booked my flight a few days in advance of the wedding so as to give myself a couple of days’ wiggle room and this way I figured I’d be fine in case I got bumped off. I also loved flying standby because it was a fraction of the cost of a regular ticket
and
if you got lucky, you got to sit in first class. I was flying low season so I was pretty sure I was in good shape. Plus, I made sure to fly on a day that the plane looked relatively empty. Of course, one never really knew until the very last minute if you would make it on the flight and things could change from minute to minute, but I was okay with that. If there wasn’t room and I got bumped, I’d just relist myself on the next flight. So while it was kind of a crapshoot, it was more than worth it and I’d never had a problem before.

As I had predicted, the flight went off without a hitch, and I was as happy as a pig in shit. I landed ten hours later and was greeted with love, affection, and a giant bottle of araq. Araq is the Middle Eastern version of pastis, which was suddenly my new favorite thing on the planet. It’s anise-flavored liquor and you drink it straight, with lots of ice cubes. It tastes so good that you forget there’s alcohol in it, which is obviously very dangerous. The party had officially begun. And it started the second I arrived.

It so happened that Talma and Yochanan, my surrogate parents, had just sold their house and with it, naturally, the garden that I had loved so very much as a child. My timing was impeccable. Had I not arrived when I did, I would never have seen that house again. In fact, had I not arrived when I did, many things wouldn’t have happened. I wish I remembered more about the actual wedding but the only thing I know is that at the end of the night no one could find me. It would be Talma who finally discovered me sitting in the corner with a yarmulke on my head and tahini all over my face, devouring a giant pita filled with falafel.

The day
after
the wedding I was so hungover I wanted to die, but the festivities continued. The Israelis are a lively bunch. Because the political situation is so explosive and the threat of death is such a big part of their everyday lives, they really appreciate life for all it’s worth. They’re constantly drinking and smoking and laughing and eating and any cause is a cause to celebrate. Marriage, in particular, is a big deal. Israel may be the most modern country in the Middle East, but it’s still traditional in many ways and it’s extremely family and community-oriented and everyone is always together. Long term, this would probably make me want to put my face through a pane of glass. Short term, it was really fun.

The day after the wedding, we were at Talma and Yochanan’s house in the kitchen, planning for another party there that night when Yochanan started screaming, “Where are my figs? Who took my figs?”

His twelve-year-old granddaughter, Mika, who was accustomed to his shenanigans, said, “I did.”

Yochanan continued screaming, “Why did you take my figs! Who gave you permission to take my figs? Were they yours? Did they belong to you?”

Mika rolled her eyes and was like, “Whatever—they’re
figs
.”

In order for all this to make sense you have to understand some of the history here. When the Nazis invaded Bukovina, Yochanan was three years old. In order to save his life, his parents put him on a train headed to Palestine by way of Bucharest. They made him memorize a fake name for himself as well as for them and told him that if anyone ever asked, he was to say that his parents were dead. Unbeknownst to him, his father had sewn a piece of paper into the lining of his coat with his real name and address so if anyone found him, they might also find the paper and could safely return him to them.

The train—filled with two thousand children, many of whom who were sick and starving and dying of typhus—stopped in a place called Botoshan where there was a Jewish community and Jewish doctors. (Where there are Jews, there are doctors.) Yochanan, even in the face of such grim circumstances, was apparently so charming and so adorable that one of the doctors actually took him home. Yochanan lived with this doctor and his family for more than a year and the doctor eventually found the paper in the lining of his coat. Miraculously, his parents had survived the concentration camps and Yochanan was reunited with them.

Somehow that piece of paper survived and today, sixty-some-odd years later, it hangs above his desk in a frame.

Needless to say he had a crazy childhood and, as such, is excused for his insanity. And believe me that almost seven decades later there is some serious residual insanity. Exhibit A: The fig story. Also, as a Holocaust survivor, he categorically
refuses
to throw away food. In fact, right after he flipped out over the figs, he tried to feed me a rotten olive. When I protested, he started screaming, “Olives cannot be rotten!”

And then he shoved it in my mouth. I think he was right because even though there was a moldy film on the juice the olives were sitting in, the olive tasted fine. When he forced me to admit there was nothing wrong with the olive, I was like, “But still, who wants to eat a moldy olive?”

Yochanan screamed, “There is no such thing as a moldy olive!”

Understandably, Yochanan has a different relationship with food than the rest of us because the rest of us were never starved nearly to death. He is constantly cooking obscene amounts of food and hoarding things in jars and cupboards and if he catches you trying to throw something out, he goes completely ballistic. You are also never
ever
allowed to say food is disgusting. This is grounds for him to go completely ape-shit crazy. So these are the things we have to tolerate. He can be totally impossible but he’s been through so much and he’s so much fun and so brilliant and lovable that it’s really kind of easy to overlook his insanity. Plus, he’s really funny.

For example, after the olive incident he had a huge fight with Talma for throwing out six rotten tomatoes. I was sitting in the garden, which was adjacent to the kitchen, and he sat down next to me with the bag of rotten tomatoes that he’d rescued from the garbage and said, “I think I am going to get separated. I’m much too busy for this aggravation. I have many interests—in art, in literature . . . And I have many friends, as well. I simply don’t have time for this.”

Unbeknownst to Yochanan, Talma was standing right behind him and obviously heard everything he said. She was like, “Really? You know where the door is, Yochanan.
Please
go.”

Yochanan, with a shit-eating grin, didn’t skip a beat. He said to me, “You know what the problem is? The problem is that in the past few years, she has become very assertive. She wasn’t like this before.”

Talma met Yochanan when she was sixteen years old. Yochanan was a couple of years older and used to race up to her on his bicycle and unzip her sweatshirt and race away. Shortly thereafter, she lost her virginity to him in a bomb shelter. Other than the fact that Yochanan fought in three wars, they hadn’t left each other’s sides since. They were both in their late sixties now. The mere thought that he could survive one day without her was laughable.

In fact, I was laughing so hard and was so amused by all this, I didn’t even realize that the garden had started to fill up with people and was buzzing with activity. All these people had arrived and they were eating and drinking and laughing and then I heard somebody scream, “Guy is here!”

Inexplicably, I suddenly felt like I was having a full-blown out-of-body experience. I had no idea who Guy was. I had never even heard his name before. But the second I heard his name—I swear to God—I actually felt the earth move. Maybe on some subconscious level I thought of Lori’s brother, Guy, who had been killed on 9/11. I honestly don’t know. But I had never experienced anything like that before in my entire life.

And then I saw him.

And all bets were off.

He was literally the most beautiful human being I had ever seen. He had smooth, mocha skin and jet-black hair, speckled with silver. He had crazy long black eyelashes and dark-brown eyes that were deep and soulful with just the slightest hint of a twinkle to let you know that he was more than just a pretty face. He had that sexy I-haven’t-shaved-in-a-couple-of-days scruff and I liked his teeth. Most people in the Middle East—most people in the world, including certain dentists incidentally—have heinous teeth that are brown and crooked and rotting out of their heads. Guy’s teeth were not perfect, but they were almost perfect. He was tall but not too tall and I could tell he had a sick body. He was muscular the way a runner or soccer player is muscular. And he had a great ass. And while there was something gentle and shy about him, there was also something confident and incredibly sexy. He was seriously drop-dead gorgeous and I could not stop staring at him. He kept catching me staring at him, which was mildly embarrassing but it also meant he was staring at me. I decided right then and there that I needed to have my way with him.

I excused myself from the table, did some quick investigating, and discerned that Guy was one of Roy’s best friends and I had apparently met him at the wedding. It was a testament to how drunk I was that I didn’t even remember. When I returned, Guy sat down at the same table Talma and Yochanan were sitting at and Roy joined us. We were having a fairly inane conversation that I wasn’t paying attention to because I was fantasizing about tearing Guy’s clothes off when Roy said something about how Guy was a really good cook and that he was particularly gifted when it came to fish. Yochanan started shouting, “I am a great chef!”

And then he started telling Guy that Guy may think he knows how to cook fish but Yochanan could teach him the
real
way to cook fish, the
best
way to cook fish and on and on it went. Guy, for his part, took all this quite well. Had I walked into someone’s home and been greeted by such a raving lunatic, I’m not sure how I would have reacted. It’s not like Guy knew Yochanan. It’s not like he had ever met him before. It’s not like a strange man wasn’t lecturing him on something he obviously knew a great deal about. But he took it. And he didn’t take it the way most people take it. He took it—differently. He was so laid-back and chill. He was like,
You are obviously a fucking lunatic and that’s fine but if you want to cook me a fish dinner so you can prove to me that you know how to cook fish better than I do, or so you can prove to me that you can cook salmon and I’m going to think it’s trout, I’ll be more than happy to come over for dinner.

There are few things sexier than a man who has nothing to prove. I was so turned on that I would have seriously had sex with him right then and there. But Guy was really kind of shy and we didn’t say more than a few words to each other that day.

A few nights later I went out with Roy and a bunch of his friends to a bar in Tel Aviv. Keeping in mind the year I just had, the fact that Roy had just gotten married and had a pregnant wife at home, and how infrequently we saw each other, it was a big deal to be let out like this. And I, for one, had every intention of making the most of it.

The bar was crowded and dark and smoky and people were dancing on the tables and soon I was one of them. I was having the time of my life. At some point, this guy named Sammy started hitting on me relentlessly. He was kind of ridiculous, with his wife beater and his gold chain. He was almost a caricature of himself but I thought he was sort of hot in a cheesy macho kind of way. Plus, he was mildly entertaining, so I played along. After about fifteen minutes of this, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Guy walk in. I was like,
See ya later, Sammy.
My night is about to get interesting
. Guy sat down at the bar and I sashayed my little ass over and sat down right next to him.

He was even sexier than I remembered.

As it turned out, he was also painfully boring.

I could not have been more straightforward in my intentions had I dropped to my knees in the middle of the bar. I mean, as far as I was concerned, I was making it pretty clear that I was interested in him. In fact, until he opened his mouth, I was pretty much ready to leave the bar with him that instant. But for some reason he wouldn’t stop talking about parking. He droned on and on about how it had taken him forever to find a parking spot and how the parking situation in Tel Aviv was so terrible and on he went until I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I was so bored and underwhelmed that after about twenty minutes of this I actually got up and walked away. As luck would have it, I found Sammy, who was standing pretty much exactly where I’d left him and was thrilled to see me. We walked outside, sat down on a bench, and proceeded to make out for what I thought was about half an hour.

Next thing I know it’s two o’clock in the morning and I am wasted, sitting on a bench in a foreign country with some guy I just met who is trying to convince me to come home with him. If Sammy looked ridiculous after several drinks in the dark lighting of the bar, now that I was more sober and essentially sitting under a streetlight I wanted to die. My araq-induced stupor and my excitement over being at a tacky bar in Tel Aviv led me to believe that Sammy was hot, when he was in fact
not
hot at all. Sammy, as it turned out, was the very opposite of hot. He was the kind of guy you
think
is hot when you’re wasted and in a dark bar in a foreign country—contextually hot, as it were. Had I found him in New York City, it would have been in some cheesy club in the Meatpacking District and he would have been from New Jersey. Or worse, Staten Island. I could try to make this sound better than it actually was, but if I’m really going to be honest, I had just made out with a character out of a Sacha Baron Cohen skit.