| I’m not going to tell you the tale as it happened, I’m
going to tell it as I remember it. The present is a subway station in
time, and I’m just one of the many trains that pass through each
day. There I was, lying down near my roommate, listening to his slow,
hard breath, afraid he was going to die, thinking of the extreme outside
forces that brought me to this state of mind. Not long before I had been
a student in high school, thinking that nothing in the world could change
my lifestyle, or me. I was getting ready for my final exams at school; I wasn’t in the mood to spend my weekend studying, when I got an offer to go away for the weekend from my friend Shachar. He was an odd guy by anyone’s standards. He looked weird, but he was not ugly or distorted, he was just not bothered by his looks. He never spoke in class, but when he did, his ideas were out of this world, or almost out of this world. He would suggest in an argument that the solution to solving the world’s problems would be to destroy the world itself. Occasionally, he didn’t show up for class, but he was always forgiven for his mistakes because he was the son of a famous writer. His I.Q. was above 160-- he was a genius. At the time, I hadn’t noticed him before. It is so peculiar that I had gone to the same class that he did for three years, but still I did not know him at all. That’s why I found it strange that he approached me. He told me that groups of people were going to the kibbutz Geezer for the weekend, and he asked me if I wanted to come. Later I found out that it was a group of political youths that planned to do their army service together. They were to be taught how to live as a group, and how to create a new kibbutz. The idea was to make those young people experience the kibbutz lifestyle and make them fall in love with it. Of course, my reasons for going that weekend were purely selfish. I used to think of myself as a punk boy. I used to wear all black, had my nose pierced, and I judged people by the type of music they listened to. For me, people were divided into two groups. The first group were those who listened to any kind of heavy punk music, and I somehow found in that music a reason for my difference, a difference that I didn’t yet understand. The other group were those who liked the up-to-date disco music or the Hebrew records. I just knew that I did not identify with the second group not only because I didn’t care for that music, but also because I didn’t want to live within the “mainstream” lifestyle as they did. I found them conformist and boring. I knew I could never be part of the group I was invited to spend the weekend with, and for me this would be a one-time vacation. Yes, I could say that they were a group of very interesting people, but I kept my distance as always. I looked for reasons not to like them, and in every discussion, I made sure that they understood I was not a part of their clique. But after all it was hard for me to keep that distance because they seemed to like the same music as I did. They, like me, hated everybody around them, and I loved the way they treated each other. They were so open with each other. After all, I think that our naked swimming together the second night we were there left me with the biggest impression. The girl with the long blond hair and the smile of an angel who invited me to the naked swimming was the last bite. She broke me down and convinced me to withdraw from the Air Force, a very elite force, and join this group. My parents did not appreciate my dropping out of the Air Force. They knew it would be easier for me to stay alive if I were in the air rather than on the ground. They knew that if I were a pilot I would have a good career ahead of me. But I didn’t care. I was in love with that girl, and I was acting on my hormones. However, nothing ever came from my passion with that girl. There’s not much that I recall from the short period of time between the end of school and my joining that bizarre group. Basically, nothing held them together except their hated of the world they were living in. We all hated the army we were about to face, and the group of those “normal” music listeners, and the unstable country that we lived in. The idea that this group would be nursed by the army seemed to me absurd, but as I found out on those during warm months, absurdity was a major part of reality. For a while I felt secure in my small loving group; we kept each other busy with sex, as all young teenagers with no supervision do. This was something that made us feel “special”. We thought that the fact we were having orgies was unique and amazing. We were discovering the “joy” of life. At that point, my life resembled a Van Gogh painting. When I got close to look carefully at the details of my existence, it looked like irrational colors mixed together. A lot of friends who weren’t in our group came over to visit us. They were fascinated by our sex life and so they fell into our trap by being the first ones to test our new ideas. One of those poor boys was Alone, a very overweight guy who had the intelligence of a child. He believed every word our girls told him just for the chance that he might get “lucky.” When a calf is born, it does not have teeth, and it’s always hungry. It was one of those nights that the cool breeze had the effect of releasing all your inhibitions, and the moon was full. The sky was light blue and since it was late at night, most of the kibbutz members were asleep and we were free to be predator. Just the other night a calf was born and the girls thought that Alone was the right person to make an old myth come true. We fed Alone with an amazing description of the wonders of a calf’s abilities to suck. We told him that we had all tried it before, and that this would be the ultimate orgasm, the best experience he would ever have. It didn’t take much to convince him to go along with our scheme. We set out to meet at midnight near the calf’s stockade, and as the rumor of the “big show” spread around, we all showed up for the performance. Alone was excited by the possibility of at last becoming a member of our group. He thought that by doing this, he would at last get to enjoy the bond that we all shared. Yafit, the girl who knew where we would find that young calf was not around, and I, without losing time, forced the show to continue by pointing to the first calf I saw. Silence. Embarrassment. Pants went down. Calf runs over-- contact. The first 30 seconds Alone was showing delightful enjoyment. He was smiling and moaning, I have to say that we were surprised. But then the calf started becoming annoyed by the fact that he was not fed dispite his outstanding efforts of sucking. He started bumping his head back and forth. Alone tried to escape the upset calf, but this one was not so young and teeth were all ready part of his mouth. Alone started to cry out loud for help, but because we were so shocked from the development, we just sat on the fence laughing our lungs out. We did not realize he was shouting for help we all thought he just having a hell of a time. Just when Yafit showed up and told us that this was the wrong calf, we rushed to help the poor guy from the jaws of the calf. Strangely enough, from that event I came out as a hero. Like the barbarians, I was the one to show the most cruelty to the “enemy” by pointing to the wrong calf, even if I didn’t plan it ahead of time. For the group it was a good reason to give me a crown. At first I thought I would be the one to be blamed for the accident, and I felt ashamed and sorry for the fat guy. I almost found myself identifying with him, but very soon I was surfing on the new wave, forgetting all about him. Even though he was not physically harmed, he was so disturbed emotionally because he never showed his face again. The admiration to my behavior led me to grasp an open position in the group. I was elected to be the leader of the group, and as such, I handled all the money problems and soon all the social problems as well. I guess that was the reason why my roommate, Shachar, chose to wake me up in the middle of the night, telling me he was committing suicide. I was a good friend of his but the fact I became authority in the eyes of my group made me more like a guarding mom, something I guess he really needed in that moment. “What are you talking about? Let me go back to sleep,” my reaction was, while I was pushing him away from me, trying to go back to my shell position. He said that he swallowed 20 sleeping pills, and he was about to die. Half awake, I turned over questioning him to prove to myself it was just one of his maniac games, a false alarm. When he answered my questions in a begging tone, a way he would never do, I knew he was not pulling another trick on me. It seemed that his high I.Q. drove him to insanity. Early that night he was again asking himself the most unanswered question in the world, “What is the meaning of life”, and, I guess, the research ended with disappointment. He decided to swallow the sleeping pills he had stolen from his mom. The minute the information registered in my recognition, I jumped out of bed, ran to the kibbutz dining room, forced him to drink five glasses of milk, made him throw up and again, to drink five glasses of milk. He sat down to relax. “No,” I said. “I want you to walk around, just don’t fall asleep on me. If you do I’ll kill you.” I was nervous like I had never been in my life before. My mind was burning all my fuses, trying to come up with the right answer for that unexpected problem. “I’m going to call for help,” I said. “No, I don’t want anybody to know of this. If the army will hear of that, they will dismiss me from the army and I’ll be screwed for life.” He added, “You know I would not find any job,” “O.K.” I said, “but just don’t even try to close your eyes.” “Go on, tell me a story,” … “I want to know you are still with me.” “I’m tired, I have no story to tell, let’s go back to sleep.” After an hour and half of arguing on the sleeping subject, I decided that if he can argue with me, he might be able to sleep without dying on me. I told him that the only way I’d let him go back to sleep would be with me in my bed. That was the longest night I ever had in my life. I was lying down beside him, putting my ears on his head listening to his slow breaths. Every time he stopped for a second to snore or missed a breath, my heart was missing a beat, and I was waiting anticipating his next breath. I never revealed his secret, but still, until this day I’m carrying with me a heavy thought: what would have happened if he had died on that night? Would his parents find my reason for keeping his secret from the army reasonable? The most terrifying thing about it was the fact that when I spoke to him later, he was upset that I had saved him. When I asked him, why he woke me up? He answered that he just wanted to say goodbye. We never spent time as we used to before. I kept myself occupied with work, I kept my position in the group but I spend less and less time with them. Shachar and I did not have a lot to say to each other any more. When you arrive to the kibbutz you are assigned with an adopting family. I found myself spending my afternoons with them. They were supposed to make you feel more related to the kibbutz members and help you integrate with them. Most of those forced connections were a disaster, but again my case was different and I found myself drifting into a new painting, this time of Picasso’s latter works. It seemed like everything I did had a hidden meaning for something else beside the reality I saw in front of my eyes. My group did not appreciate my distance from them, and since they could not do anything about it, they started spreading rumors about my relationship with my adopted mother, Batia who was eighteen years older than I. She was just divorced and she had two beautiful children. The older boy used to be a troublemaker in the kibbutz. He caused trouble to everybody around him, and even his mother couldn’t control him. When I got into the picture everything changed. I used to sit with him and make him do his homework. He always wanted my company and I knew I could use my popularity with him to put him back on the right track. Batia couldn’t show me more than she did how pleased she was. I found a common ground with her and we started spending all our evenings together. I became almost like a father to her children, and knew I would be checking their homework before they went to bed. They called me an endearing nickname and refused to go to sleep if I did not put them under the covers. I saw less and less of my friends from the group, who now started to look at me with a wicked smile. I loved the idea of being a father. I loved the unconditional love the children gave me and I liked the long talks into the night with Batia. One time I guess we drank too much wine while we were having our nightly conversation and we ended up in bed. She then admitted that she had wanted me for a long time but she was afraid I would refuse her advances because of our age difference. I thought to myself that my fantasy of having sex with a mature woman was at last be coming reality. I didn’t find her particularly attractive, but for me, fulfilling my fantasy was the primary goal. I justified my behavior by saying that I was just a teenager. I loved and respected her as a person and it was fitting for me to play the father figure to her kids. We knew that no one in the kibbutz or outside of our “family” would understand, so we kept our little secret. My friends in the kibbutz were always asking me about us, but I kept denying the truth. I became more assertive in my position in the group. I started caring if my group members showed up to work or not. I used to wake up in the morning and make sure they were all awake. I think that the idea of making me integrate with the kibbutz was full success. But I can not say that about the rest of my group. They hated everything around them, and they saw me as an authority figure from which they had to hide the truth. Salvador Dali would have been the right person to paint my feelings of reality at that point. As much as I tried to give meaning to reality by keeping attention on small details, the overall picture was too far from being logical. My friends, as if getting revenge for my withdrawal from the group, started pulling tricks on the kibbutz, and as I guessed: Sachar was the one leading them. Late at night some members of the group got inside the kibbutz store and stole food from the refrigerator. That act was not so logical since they could have gone in the daytime and gotten it for free. After all, we were part of the kibbutz and all they had to do was take whatever they wanted and just sign the name of our group. We worked in the kibbutz and we had a budget for anything we wanted to buy. I think their major idea was to pull off this prank without my knowledge. But I knew the facts all along. Every time they made a raid on the store, the head of the kibbutz would come and tell me of the events that were to occur. Did they really think the kibbutz would not notice if 20 pounds of cheese disappear from the store? Every time it happened I used to apologize in the name of my friends and sign the expenses we owed. Three times It happened before I made it stop. The only thing I had to do in order to make the food raids stop was to tell the gang that I knew about their stupid game. When my mother came to visit me in the kibbutz, she met Batia. We spent all that weekend together, my mom, brother Omer, Batia and I. It was a custom to bring your family over to see the way you are living, and so we all spent time to get to know each other better. Yes, Andy Warhol put it down on canvas the way I felt being between my lover and my mom, who was just five years older then she. I felt like I was pushing the definition of art almost to the edge of a cliff. I just knew that my mom wouldn’t find my situation artistic and most likely would call it a fake solution. She did not say a thing that entire visit, but the minute she was alone with me, she asked me if I had an affair with that “grandmother.” My mother is the most blunt and direct person I know. The way she was able to solve the puzzle was beyond my understanding. Little should I say about her finding the situation upsetting. I asked my mother how she knew, and she just said that it’s very easy to read love on an emotionally immature person. She never said any more than that, but I already knew how she felt about it. When I think back, I still try to understand if she was referring to me or to my lover. At the time of the event, I looked at myself as a grownup person and I took her remark as a personal insult. But after that visit I decided to tell Batia that we could not continue having the relationship we had before. We had an unpleasant conflict that ended with my leaving her house very upset, but not before Ztve, one of my group “friends” showed up. I told Batia that she could easily find a replacement for me. Ztve was a handsome guy who by that time had got almost all the girls around the kibbutz into bed. He had a girlfriend at the time but he thought that if I could get Batia, he would not find it hard to do the same. So I was doubly upset when I left Batia’s house. I didn’t know if I had done the right thing, and most of all I was jealous of the thought that Ztve might use it to his benefit. Later I found that he did try, and that Batia told him that he would never get to be what I was. Ztve and I became enemies for a while. I always asked my sister why I never fell in love, why I did not feel the passion I kept seeing in the movies. She said that I should not worry and the thing would happen by itself. So, there I was on New Year’s Eve in the kibbutz pub, drunk like all my friends, trying to decide which of my group’s girls I should kiss. I knew they would like me to do so, and I had my fun thinking of the possibilities. The time got close to midnight, and we were all stoned. The count down started and I was ready to make my first move when somebody grabbed me from behind, turned my face, and forced me into a French kiss. It took me three seconds to realize that it was Ztve who gave me the kiss, there, in the middle of the pub, in front of everyone. I pushed him away from me calling him a stupid faggot, kicking him, and shouting as hard as I could. He ran out of the pub, leaving me to face the laughter of my friends. I found myself thinking of the fat guy we had mocked months ago. I went back to my room to sleep, reliving the event, looking for reasons. I couldn’t find even one to satisfy my logic. I did not know why, But my heart kept beating like crazy even hours later. The next day I was acting like I was fine with the event of the night before. I was cool. Ztve said that he did not have any recollection of the night before, and that he was acting the way he did just because he was drunk. But in fact, I think I was so disturbed because of the way my body reacted to his kiss. I was upset that my body didn’t listen to my mind. Part of me wanted to kill him for what he did, but another part of me was excited and confused by his unexpected actions that night. I guess, I was forced to confront my own demons. After that event, I felt I had to express myself somehow, and I did it in the only way I knew how. I sat down and wrote: Identity / Intercourse
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