yustyoking

 

I like women. Heap me together with the California rockers Louis XIV singing their song “Finding Out True Love Is Blind”: I like women in all shapes, colors, sizes and personalities. When I grew up in the Stone Age, this wouldn’t have been an issue. Times have changed. Today— as we all know— if you’re not gay, transsexual, transgender and ambidextrous, well, the creative world has no place for you. At all! This is understandable. Back in the day, the straight world had it good and “homos” suffered every conceivable indignity. Payback is a bitch! Now that they’ve got some turf to call their own, why should I expect them to share? I shouldn’t. They don’t.

This all happened so long ago, I feel I can now tell about it. I even checked back with the principals, chiefly the lady. “You want to write about what?! ” she asked. “F-F-F**k you, Kevin! You cretin! You idiot! You jerk!” she wailed over the phone, getting into it with gusto. Then she started to laugh.

“So I can write about it?’

“For God’s sake, Kevin, it’s water under the bridge. I’m an old lady now. I got grandchildren. Are you going to hit an old lady?”

“Am I going to hit on you? Sure, you sexy beast!”

“You write whatever you need to write. Give it your best shot, you f**ker!”

            Yes!

Louis CK can make a total idiot of himself on his comedy show and the man’s a hero. When I make a total fool of myself, why am I a villain?

 

****************************************************

 

At Moosegrave College, I wrote a column for our school newspaper, The Antler Daily. My classmates churned out boilerplate political rhetoric about “ousting the pigs” and “burn, baby, burn” and “down wid cabitalism.” I wrote creative little short stories that drove Skip, the poor editor, crazy. “Jesus Christ, Kevin!” he advised me. “Write like Mustafa X! Write like Pam the Spam Farrow! Read their columns. Twelve column inches that everyone can read and understand. ‘Burn down City Hall! Stop the war!’ Done! Half our readers don’t know what the hell you are saying! Short, declarative sentences, friend! ‘Storm the U.S. Capitol! Off the pigs!’ What’s so hard about that?!”

“But they already write that!’

“Kevin…” he growled, patience— and discussion— at an end. The clock was ticking. I wrote faster. By the time he discontinued my column, I had enough lyrical shorts to publish a small book. Since they all devolved around the main character, Ken Fernwhistle, I rearranged the chronology and created the chapters of a short novel entitled In Search of Solace.

Also, my classmate Jane Gaynor graduated a year ahead of me and she was already getting published in The New Yorker. “If Janie can crack the coconut, so can I!” I assumed.

Enter the dragon. I had two uncles.

Mitch, my mama’s very successful brother, was an academic, teaching at an Ivy League university. He smoked up a storm, showed up uninvited in our home and, upon reading my short stories, gave me this advice: “Let’s rap! If you wanna get published (purposely sloppy language geared to the younger generation), you gotta go t’ New York and sleep with an editor at a major publishing house. They’re all faggots. Once you pull down your pants and service the guy, he’ll help you learn the ropes and publish your stuff.”

This was an extremely cynical approach— to say the least— the equivalent of the Hollywood casting couch. Starlets complain that in order to get a part, they have to go down on their knees and bestow sexual favors on note-worthy producers. Uncle Mitch wanted me to accept a similar apprenticeship.

Sexually nervous as a child, extremely neurotic, I couldn’t do it. Let’s say I lacked maturity.

My other uncle, my dad’s brother-in-law, had two alternatives. Two! Listen, our family came from New Yawk, I felt blessed that we were so well connected. My Uncle Sy’s first suggestion was the Salzman-Shultz Literary Agency on Gramercy. I went to see old man Salzman who smoked Cuban cigars, squinted at me through the smoke and seemed to blame me that his eyes were red. “I’ll look at it,” he muttered, holding my manuscript by the extreme right corner like it was dog poo and he didn’t want to get his hands dirty. “Our reading fee is $75.”

Back then, that was a major chunk of change! I didn’t have $75. Very resentfully, my parents coughed up the money. “My son the starving artist!” ranted my dad. “The great I – am! Mr. Creative Writer! Hoo, hoo, hooee!” he laughed derisively. Swallowing my bile, I stood and took the abuse. I needed the money.

“This work,” wrote Salzman, “needs the guiding hand of a Mephistopheles, but has been carved out by some lesser mortal. Where the individual chapters need to be connected with cement, you have pasted yours together with water. Cracking at the edges, the center will not hold. Never has so much effort been wasted on so few results. People will little note nor long remember what you have written here. Your main character should be struggling against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Instead, a poor player upon the stage, he piddles away his time over internal musings that wouldn’t interest a frog. Assuming frogs can read, which, personally, I seriously doubt! No sale!”

Not wanting to be a grouch, I contacted my uncle. “Your tip cost me $75 and he doesn’t seem inclined to sell my manuscript,” I pointed out over the phone, long distance.

“Well, old Salzy is a macher of means, I must say,” said my uncle. “It’s not his fault that your creative talent is unsalable.”

Ouch! That hurt!

“You should try a different route,” said my uncle. “Go to LMNOPQ Agency on Broadway.”

“I don’t have any more money.”

“I’ll square the account.”

Well, that was a different kettle of fish. No one ever called my Uncle Sy generous.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” insisted my mom, sitting across from me at the dinner table. “You’re just trying for the wrong profession. You should be writing advertising copy!” Pointing to the label on the dessert tin, she handed it to me. “Squashberry Olde Tyme Key Lime Pye,” I read. “A delight on the palette, a joy to behold, with the luxurious ambiance of the Florida Cays.”

That’s my mom, always looking for a reasonable solution. She served us Canadian bacon for breakfast, to save us the schlep to Montreal.

After dinner, she handed me the Fred Steele catalog. He’s the Ralph Lauren of mail order. It flopped open to a color photo of what appeared to be an orange, plastic dustpan. The boldface text across the top informed me it was

 

************* The Jeffy Handy-Man® Snow Scooper! *************

 

Breathlessly, the italicized text continued:

Save wear and tear on back and knees this winter with the Jeffy Handy-Man® Snow Scooper. Simply scoop snow off stairways, porches and other hard-to-reach areas with the Jeffy Handy-Man.® Ergonomic handle, laboratory tested flat design. Choose any of three ultra-bright Find-in-the-Snow™ colors, Orange Maple, Powder Blue or Roasted Gold. $9.95   Made in China

 

When I told my folks that I wasn’t gonna do this thang, my dad sneered, “Yeah. As always, my son the ungrateful, lazy twerp!”   

 

*****************************************************

 

Sitting, nervously sweating in the waiting room, it felt worse than a visit to the dentist. I read the brochure. “We at LMNOPQ Agency are deeply concerned about the welfare of our talent. Ours is a very hands-on process, coaxing and nursing your book project through every step of the way from congenial first thought to finished product, gracing the shelves of bookstores everywhere. However, our involvement doesn’t end there, by any means. We track sales, make sure you get paid, seek foreign rights, help you file your tax returns, provide you with fresh ideas for your next endeavor and , if you so request, we will even help you spend your money! Ha ha! Hands-on, my dear, truly means hands-on!”

Finding myself as erect as a tent pole, I could see why my uncle recommended this particular massage parlor cum literary agency. Yes!!! I am thinking.  I’se de writer! Put yo’ hands ALL OVER ME!

Apparently, the repeated bus trips from Maryland to New York were getting to me. A royal pain in the ass, how many lunches at Salim’s House of Kebob on East 27th Street was I expected to eat?

In small print across the bottom, the brochure announced, “We accept manuscripts in English, French and Farsi. No submissions in Pashto, Dari or Swahili, please.”

“Miss Darvish will see you now,” the snooty receptionist, wearing rhinestone-encrusted eyeglasses on a cord and dressed in a rose twinset, informed me. “Room three.”

Walking down the gray carpeted hall, I felt like I was on my way to an execution. Room Three. Timidly, I knocked on the doorframe. A woman behind a desk looked up.

And there she was, my Madonna! Parish Darvish, fresh from Tehran by way of Brooklyn.

“Come in, sit down!” she said, her fangs as pearly white and gleaming as the Big Bad Wolf’s. She was 30 years old, ten years older than me, amazing to look at, a glory to behold. “It’s very hard to launch unpublished authors nobody has ever heard of,” she explained graciously. “They’re a very hard sell. I’m only doing this as a favor to your Uncle Sy. He’s a crazy dentist, but my kids swear by him and their teeth look great, braces and all. Tell Sy ‘hi.’ ”

“I will! I shall!” I stammered, sitting, dumping my book bag incongruously on her immaculately polished floor. Desperately, I pulled out still another copy of my ms. Handing it across the desk to her, even I could see the way she sighed despondently. Another unpublished author! Another sheep in wolf’s clothing. Another amateur.

“Normally,” she pointed out, “I handle women’s literature. Romance novels, self-help books, that sort of thing.” The Brooklyn accent dissolved any pretense of upper class decorum. “I always say, ‘Never bring me a manuscript that hasn’t already been read and critiqued by at least five people.’ ” Arching her eyebrows, she waited.

“Half Moosegrave College has already read this stuff,” I blurted.

“Oh,” she answered, neither impressed nor unimpressed. “Let me look at it.” With me sitting there examining my fingernails, she proceeded to speed-read the material. “This will need a lot of editing,” she announced. “Here, page 23, you have a typo. What does ‘doobie’ refer to? Who is Harris? ‘Stoned out of my gourd,’ is that your coinage or common usage?”

I fielded her questions and sweat like a horse. Mercifully kind, she kept my manuscript. “I’ll call you with my comments,” she promised, confirming our home phone number in Maryland.

And she called! “Kevin,” she told me, “It’s good! You can go with this. Now, I want you to go back and develop the characters. You’ve got the thread, now I want the whole cloth. More, baby! Give me the rest.”

Sheisse! I didn’t know there was any more. Groaning and dredging, I extended the reach of my story, bulking out each chapter to what Parish considered “full length.”

“I don’t market short manuscripts,” she explained didactically over the phone when I told her my larder was empty. “You have to come through for me, Kevin. I need something the publishers can sink their teeth into. Not postcards, book-length manuscripts. Also, let’s up the thriller quotient by changing the title to In Search of the Solstice.”

I went back and wrote some more.

Yes, Amon DÜÜL II ‘s “Dance of the Lemmings” (Tanz der Lemminge) was one of my favorite record albums, but when you’re doing it in real life, it’s less fun.

Third time around, she said, “Okay Fernwhistle, why do you disparage Arabs?”

“Arabs? Oh! That’s not Arabs, that’s Abdel Gamal Nasser. In 1956, he nationalized the Suez Canal —”

“I know what he did, Kevin! I wasn’t born under a stone. You have to help me on this one, baby. I’m Moslem. Nobody wants to publish an anti-Moslem diatribe.”

“It’s not — What do you want me to do?”

“The Shahada says ‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.’ Bringing Nasser into the equation opens a giant can of worms. Blue pencil it, baby, blue pencil it! It doesn’t affect your storyline.”

That entire section got deleted.

True to her word, Parish got me an option on the property from Shondell Press. “We usually publish women’s fiction,” Oscar Shondell told me genially over the phone from New York, “but if Parish Darvish is your agent… Well, you are in good hands.” Hearing him chuckle, I almost expected him to add “… with Allstate.”

“I appreciate your interest,” I told him somewhat breathlessly. My God in heaven, it was happening! Hallelujah! I was going to ascend to the level of “published author.”

“Normally,” he pointed out, “we never take first-time authors. They’re very hard to peddle in the marketplace. People want to read books by the authors they know.”

“If you never take first-time authors, how does anyone ever get started?” I asked.

“As I was saying,” replied Oscar, “in your case, we’re making an exception.”

 

He delivered me into the liverish hands of his top editor, Margot Roitgart, a Ukrainian Jewess. “A nice Jewish boy like you,” she said over the phone.” What a shanda it is, that you defend the Arabs.”

“I don’t defend the Arabs— ”

“East versus West. Why do you tiptoe right up to the issue and never even mention the obvious? The Suez crisis. In 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser…”

Yada, yada, yada.

“Of course,” she added, “there’s a lot of fat that needs to be trimmed from your manuscript. Also, we’re changing the title to Searching for God in Strange Places.”

 

****************************************************

 

After the trimming process, I didn’t hear anything for six weeks.

“Call them,” insisted my mom through gritted teeth.

Stoking up my courage on cigarettes, I made the call.

“Oh, Kevin, hi!” said Oscar Shondell himself, when his secretary finally connected me. From his tone, you’d think we spoke daily. “Didn’t you get my letter?”

“Well, no.”

“All right, hold on.” When he came back on the line, he was all apologies. “Geez, we goofed! I don’t think Sharon— my secretary— ever sent it out. Kevin, the thing is, we’re letting the option lapse. We’re not going to publish. The thing is, I’ve had my readers look over your material and it lacks spontaneity. It seems tired and overworked. Sorry, but that’s how it is, old buddy. Next time, write something fresh and robust. All the best! And you will be getting this in writing. Bye-cycle!”

He hung up.

Shattered, I called Parish. “Hmmm, ha, hmmm, ha,” she hummed into the phone as I poured out my grief. “I’d heard something about this, yes. I thought you guys were working out the divorce amongst yourselves. I mean, I can call Oscar, but what good would it do? He’s already decided not to publish. Now, there are a couple of outstanding fees. The copying fee, two bicycle messenger fees, one reader fee and, of course, postage. I get it to $74.20.”

“Fine,” I howled. “Talk to my Uncle Sy.”

“I did. He said you’d handle it yourself.”

“I don’t have the money,” I wept into the phone. “I’m a senior in college. I don’t have the money.”

“Are you finished?”

“No, I’m Swedish.”

“What about your folks?” she asked icily.

“I’m already in hock to them for $75 for another literary agent.”

“Kevin,” she lectured me, “You shouldn’t be telling me that! Don’t tell me you went behind my back to another agent.”

“No, no, no, that was before your time.”

“Well, I can absorb the costs, Kevin, but you should know that we are running a business here. It’s very irresponsible of you to run up bills that you then cannot pay. Frankly, I thought you were better than that.”

“So what should I do?” I asked, drained. “Kill myself?”

“All options remain on the table,” said Parish Darvish, hanging up on me.

When I told my mom, she said, “Bitch!”

When I told my dad, he said, “What she meant was, when you earn that money on your next summer job, you should call her and square accounts.”

“Huh?” I asked. “Is that what she meant?”

“Of course! What else could she have meant?” asked my dad, ever helpful.

 

I’m still waiting to become a “published author.”

 

I impart this knowledge now because I find myself in similar straits regarding my latest creation, Tolstoy’s Underwear. Never in the history of human events, at least not since cave painting, has such dynamic literary genius…  yada, yada, yada. Computers, laptops, iPhones, social media, the publishing industry is a constantly dwindling phenomenon. Sincerely,

 

as ever, yours truly, Kevin Feingold, Esquire, unpublished author!!!!!!!!!!

 

Dollar signs for eyeballs, no lit agent nor publisher is the least bit interested in my work. Listen, forget about writing one piddling bestseller! Anybody can do that! No, in order to join their stable, you gotta write one bestseller a year for ten years! They don’t even respond to my enquiries. A stone wall. Such is the world of publishing. If you telephone, the receptionist bawls you out for wasting her time by doing anything as stupid as writing a book!

Getting nowhere fast, I make a pdf file and blast it out to the 22 email addresses in my Address Book. I post it on my blog. I go on Twitter and drive everyone crazy by shamelessly hawking the book. I plug it on the MC Enthusiast chat room (no particular reason, I just like hogs), the Moosegrave College alumni website and the German polemics website Standpunkt.

The next day, with trembling hands, I click on my emails. “L’oeuf ” as they say in tennis. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Not even my cousin Ricky in Seattle has felt impelled enough to look up from other activities and acknowledge receipt of my masterpiece.

 

Tired of nickel and diming this project, I decide to turn to the one group of people who I absolutely know love books, the Book Place section of my local newspaper! Gotcha! I write a longish, very exact email:

 

Subject: Lance Chevalier loves it!

Hello, I’m an unpublished author living in Oxburg, Maryland. While out drinking the other night, I met a man named Lance Chevalier who really liked my book idea so much, he said he’d recommend publishing my screed to e-book publishing giant Tex Brazos. He says he and Tex go way back and my book is “The greatest thing since sliced bread.” Having already had some experience in the baking industry, I took that as a huge compliment.

Now the reason I’m writing 2 U is to include a pdf file, something which Mr. Chevalier and Tex Brazos do not yet have. Pls forward it to Tex Brazos! Hope you like them apples! I could send the pdf directly to the Library of Congress, but I don’t think they publish anything but government documents. Many, many government documents. Biggest suppository of documents since the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.

As my dear old dad used to say when confronting electrical repairs, “Don’t touch that switch!”

Which brings me to the next point of departure in this somewhat verbose but extremely erudite and lugubrious communiqué, namely…

 

It goes on from there for about three pages. Sheer nerves! Longest email I ever wrote. I figured, two months hence, I’ll get some lame brushoff like “Unfortunately, your work does not meet our requirements at this time. We wish you every success in your endeavors.” After a two month wait, right? Who among us writers hasn’t been through that experience?

Instead, I get an almost instantaneous response. Like, two minutes later. Wow! They must be hot for my stuff…

 

Subject: Thank you for your enquiry

This is an automated response. Please do not reply. Due to the high volume of traffic, the Book Place web address is no longer accepting unsolicited emails. Any future inquiries from you will be relegated to our spam folder. We wish you every success in your endeavors!

 

            Nej, men va’ fan?! as we say in Swedish = WTF.

 

 

 

♥♥♥♥BL♥♥♥♥BL♥♥   Introduction   ♥♥BL♥♥♥♥BL♥♥♥♥

 

Israel has been under the gun since its inception. As soon as the country declared statehood in 1948, seven Arab armies tried to destroy it outright. Israel’s relations with its neighbors have been touch-and-go ever since. What is alarming today are the number of Americans, many of whom are Jewish, who prefer to support the Palestinians over the Israelis. “Israel?” declared my brother-in-law Ricky. “That’s the last place I would ever visit.”

Since the 1980’s, I keep running into American Jews who say, “I hate Israel! I’m Jewish! Whenever Israel causes trouble, everybody blames me, the Jew!” These people seem to feel no allegiance to the Jewish homeland.

There’s also a branch of the ultra-Orthodox who believe that the State of Israel is a sacrilege, since it was founded without the return of the Mashiach, the Messiah. It’s disturbing when these hyper-religious individuals make common cause with Holocaust deniers and participate in their conferences.

Here in America, mainstream leftwing sentiment sides with the Palestinian underdogs in opposition to Bibi Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud government. What the Israel-bashers neglect is the historical context. Netanyahu came to power in reaction to the failed peace process. Ehud Barak of the One Israel party was elected by a landslide in 1999, specifically to implement a two-state solution. At Camp David in the summer of 2000 and again at the White House that December, Barak and President Clinton met and negotiated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. They offered Arafat a comprehensive plan with all the necessary ingredients for both peace and a viable Palestinian State. Rumor has it Arafat replied, “If I sign that, when I return to Ramallah, I am a dead man.” Instead of signing, he returned home and unleashed the Second Intifada uprising.

Palestinian anger knows no bounds.

That’s when the Israelis decided peace and a two-state solution simply weren’t going to happen. The pendulum swung the other way and they elected Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu. In a game of attrition, for every year that passes, less and less of the “Occupied Territories” remains available for a Palestinian State.

Meanwhile, the American Jewish diaspora’s animosity toward Israel results in such things as J Street, Open Hillel and the BDS movement. We get people like Bernie Sanders, an American Jew who, like many of us, sampled kibbutz life in Israel in his youth. Today, “Feel the Bern” Bernie portrays himself as a Son of Poland rather than a Son of Zion. My mom calls that kind of behavior “a self-loathing Jew.”

Recently, my favorite Jewish-American author gathered a coterie of world-renowned leftwing novelists and went off to the “Occupied Territories” to forage for material to an anthology that he and his wife are editing. The purpose of which is to illuminate the “grievous injustice” of the Israeli “occupation.” Using fiction to supplement fact, it should be hot stuff. The book is expected to come out in June of 2017, commemorating the 1967 Six-Day War which has led to 50 years of Israeli life in the West Bank.

I have penned this political satire in celebration of that unhappy publishing event. Enjoy!

 

xxxxxxxxxxxx  Peace Now? Very Funny  xxxxxxxxxxxx

 

*************  COPYRIGHT: Mycket skit, 2016  **************

 

Huddled with his family in their moss-covered wooden hut inside the confines of the shtetl, Moshe the Jew ached to wreak vengeance on the incorrigible hordes of the Black Hundreds. Stihopleti, that’s what they were in Russian, stihopleti, the worst kind of rhymesters and versifiers, making lame puns, weak honorifics and sorry odes to a nightingale in clumsy, oafish cadences.

Rivka, Moshe’s devoted wife, wiped her callused hands on her tattered apron, clucking reassurances as she brought earthenware bowls of borscht decorated with symbols of the kabala to the table. The air was heavy with a mixture of cabbage and dumplings. “Shoo!” she cooed, “Kateesee! Pshol von!” She swatted at a housefly bearing the lost soul of some dearly departed. It was a Thursday in August, crickets singing in the fields, thunder caps amassing on the horizon. Moshe had been hammering window frames and planing doors since 5 o’clock that morning, bent over the lathe in his dusty workshop, beads of sweat dotting his fevered brow. His clothes smelled equally of sawdust, mold and sweat.

A golem, he decided, frothing at the mouth uncontrollably, hands trembling in anticipation. He would fashion a human-like figure of clay from the river, recite the Hebrew prayers and breathe life into his creation. Then those hounds of the Black Hundreds would fear him, quaking in their black leather boots, rattling their puny sabers, uttering oaths under their breaths and patting the flanks of their horses as they desperately called upon the spirit of the Tsar to protect them. In iambic pentameter, no less!

Mah nish tah-nah ha laila ha-zeh, why is this night different from all other nights? On this night, Moshe the Jew redeemed his soul, laying the cornerstone to the framework of a plan so blindingly grandiloquent, Moshe could barely speak of it, in a whisper, even to himself. His pact with G-d, Moshe lusted after revenge.

 

♥♥♥♥BL♥♥♥♥BL♥♥♥♥BL♥♥   1   ♥♥BL♥♥♥♥BL♥♥♥♥BL♥♥♥♥

 

Say what?

You don’t become the greatest Jewish author in the English language without struggle. Barry Lipowitz knew what it was to struggle, searching painstakingly for le mot juste, the perfect adjective, the best past participle, a truly resplendent verb, when creating his masterpieces. Mining the libraries, newspaper archives and elderly residents of the Jewish communities of Brooklyn for material to his epic novels, Barry reminded himself of what his dad always said, “Only through suffering can you become great.”

Oh, how Barry had suffered! Owner of Hiram’s Used Cars & Parts, chugging Schlitz— “The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous”—  Barry’s father had left nothing to chance: He made sure everyone in his household suffered equally, assigning chores, badgering and sniping at them from morning to night. “Such a shiftless, lazy lot I have been blessed with in this family!” Hiram bellowed many an evening, smashing a meaty hand on the dining room table’s damask tablecloth. Barry wanted to be a schreiber, a writer. He couldn’t wait to leave behind the parochialism of Wisconsin. “You, Barry! Tomorrow I have six cars I’ll let you wax for me. And don’t spare the elbow grease, my boy. Only through suffering can you become great!”

And behold, the magic worked. He became “the greatest Jewish writer of his generation,” to quote the New York Times. Barry knew he had the Devil’s own luck. Timing is everything. Born after Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth but before Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer and Gary Shteyngart, for a few short years in the 1990’s, Barry Lipowitz had the entire field of Jewish-American lit all to himself. Fuckoutahea!

Going where the work is, Barry moved to the Big Apple. The big publishing houses were in New York. Magazines had their headquarters in New York. Unless he intended to write for Playboy or the Sears Roebuck Catalog, Chicago was of no interest whatsoever. NYC was the place. It made his fortune.  Ever since completing his bildungsroman “Look Homeward, Bagel” straight out of college, Barry was considered the epitome of Page Six chic. It wasn’t his fault: Nature abhors a vacuum and Dave Barry insists on writing humor and living in southern Florida. (Plus, Dave Barry isn’t even Jewish. His wife is Jewish.) So forget happy. Despite impedimenta,  our hero drives a Mercedes, functions as a poster boy for Ted Baker leather derby kicks from London, lives on the Upper West Side and has Graydon Carter on speed dial. He’s just as at home texting Kanye as he is talking with Alan Dershowitz. What more could anyone ask???

Manhattan ain’t Milwaukee. Barry earns extra coin composing nouvelle vague translations of classics like Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”— in Barry’s translation  Le soleil peut se lever sauf moi— although his French Canadian friends complain that Barry’s translations give them migraine. He has better luck translating Polish – English. Tomes like Polski Polutski Totenlager, a rare chronicle of the Holocaust examined from the Polish industrial perspective: how many tons of Polish steel, how much lumber, number of jobs created in liquidating the Jews, the effect of aerial carpet bombing on the Polish construction industry, etc. As a niche market, Holocaust lit is the gift that keeps on giving.

When Hitler murdered six million Jews, the world lost half a million writers. An entire subcontinent of literature was smothered in the cradle. Sans Adolf, we’d already have a cure for cancer, colonies on Mars and several million books in the style of Franz Kafka. Our loss.

And, of course, Barry also translates German pornographic novels under the pen name Ani Weinstein. Good money in pornography.

All that extra moolah helps pay for Barry’s meds: Imitrex for migraine, Zoloft for his obsessive/compulsive disorder, Prozac to control his autism and pyrimethamine treatments for Late-Onset Tay-Sachs disease. “You piss,” commented his Uncle Morty, “some of the world’s most expensive urine.”

The only people more into medicinal marijuana than Barry are empty-headed pot heads stumbling around the ‘hood with short term memory loss. They may do more blunt than Barry, but he surpasses them in enthusiasm. His dealer has even christened a new, high-end variety B. Liposuction in Barry’s honor. Until the Twin Towers fell, Barry liked to get stoned and take the elevator to the roof of the World Trade Center. The golden lobby, the whooshing ride, the dizzy elevation, the sky towering overhead and the view stretched out below were awe-inspiring. “Worth a toke,” he posted on the early travel site for pot heads TrippinUSA.org.

Because, of course, Barry is edgy. Who wouldn’t be, with a Ukrainian fireball for a mistress, and her threatening to release his emails, fmails and gmails on social media? He can commiserate with Hillary. He already has over 100,000 followers on Twitter.

As a denizen of Manhattan, he professes a burning nostalgia for all things 1980’s or from Crazy Eddie or the UK. Yellow plastic 45 rpm record inserts. His Sony Sports Walkman. Oxblood leather-bound drinking mugs.

Naturally, Barry teaches Creative Writing at NYU. Among other topics, his course Short Story 101 is a major draw. The intro:

“What makes a great short story? A great short story is one written by the editor’s nephew. All that love, joy, pride and affection make the words jump right off the page! ‘Bravo, Billy! You are an accomplished author!’ As for the rest of us, in the next thirteen weeks, we shall examine tips on how to express your thoughts and get into print…”

The course goes downhill from there.

Published in the New York magazines, Barry can’t understand how lesser lights can survive without a direct lifeline to New York editors. What is life but a series of business lunches and editorial meetings? True, the Avast Publishing empire now puts out a paltry 20 titles, but acquisition and consolidation have been the name of the game since Ronald Reagan was president. None of this can be laid at Barry’s doorstep, a 12-room duplex apartment on the Upper West Side overlooking the park. Magazines pay him in yen, riyals, shekels and Chinese renminbi, whatever currency dominates the bullion market of the moment.

As a New Yorker, Barry is constantly amazed to meet unsuccessful writers who live in burgs like Philadelphia, Cleveland or even Duluth. Of course their writing can’t be any good! They don’t live in New York City.

Barry knows writing. His most famous book, “Sonic Dicks,” mashes Portnoy’s Complaint with Moshe Dayan. All of the neuroses, cultural inhibitions and taboos of Judaism erupt in a cataclysm of embarrassment. “No one,” writes critic Chaim Solomon, “since Philip Roth, does it better.”

Barry’s latest creation is a superhero, part human, part amphibian, called Frogman.

For some reason, the U.S. Navy has complained.

Frogman’s secret identity by day is the loudmouthed, anti-Latino real estate developer T. Rump.

For some reason, Reince Priebus of the Republican National Committee has complained.

Froggy lives in Anywhere, U.S.A. The State of Indiana complained.

Frogman plays in a supergroup, The Republicans: “Lyin’ ” Ted Cruz on vocals, King of Cool “low energy” Jeb on guitar, “Little Marco” on bass, keyboards by Kasich, Frogman on drums. Their first album, Don’t Pull No Trump, goes platinum.

When not staving off rampant 14-year-old girls, Frogman toils on a secret history of Atlantis.

“Not since Donovan has soft core had a more adept practitioner,” T. Rex wrote in the New York Times, equating Barry’s prose with Leitch’s music. Hey, when you got it, flaunt it!

 

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NEWSFLASH, NYC – The world-famous author Barry Lipowitz is going to once again engage with his public, this time employing revolutionary wordsmiths and scribblers in a visit to Israel to write The Great Anti-Israeli Novel, short story, polemic, poem or other (check one). He announced his intention this morning at Cicero’s in the Village. Travel will be in June 2016.

The money for the trip comes from his completion of the screenplay to the tentpole movie Apocalyptic Frenzy 2. Release date TBA. To Be Announced.

Benji Books is publishing. Barry won’t travel without a pre-publishing agreement and a written contract. “We’re all Jewish,” insists CCO Marvin Fleischmann, your short, rotund, goateed and balding classic New Yawker. Duds by Sabatini of London. His office is a third carbon copy of Graydon Carter’s at Vanity Fair, right down to the teak bookshelves. No Canadian gonif  is going to outdo Marvin Fleischmann! “Judaism isn’t the issue,” insists Marvin. “We need a pin big enough to pop Bibi Netanyahu’s balloon.”

“Shit yeah!” agrees Barry, dressed for success in JoS. A. Bank. “We trippin’. Na’ mean? We want to use fiction to go where non-fiction cannot easily tread. We want to do for Israeli politics what the anthology ‘In the Field of Fire’ did for Vietnam.”

“Never heard of it,” exclaims Marvin.

“I have,” says Dan White, CFO at Benji Books. “You’re going to write science fiction?”

“No, no, no,” insists Barry, deeply shaken. Science fiction??? Jesus sweet flushing Christ! “No! We want to let each author’s Israeli experience determine in what direction his or her writing shall go,” Barry gulps. Hmmm, still not enough. “There are over 600,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Somebody has to pay them a visit! We’re seeking the Maya Angelou of the pro-Palestinian movement. The Uncle Tom’s Cabin of Israel. The ‘I have a dream… Let my people go!’ conundrum. What effect has the BDS— the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement—  had on the Israeli economy… at street level? Israeli apartheid. Occupation of the Left Bank. The separation barrier. Military tribunals. Child inmates in Israeli prisons. Nightlife in Hebron. West Bank hip-hop. Palestinian soccer teams,” he stammers hopefully, blushing.

The moment of truth.

“We’ll do it!” Marvin decides.

YES!!!!!!!

Examining the sales figures for Barry’s books on a paper in front of him, Dan White chews on a No. 2 pencil, makes calculations in the margins, hums and haws, and finally says “Okay, I’ll add your project to the year’s budget.”

Never has success tasted so sweet, at least not since the last time he got a publishing agreement.

“I take it our purpose is to expedite the peace process?” asks Dan White.

“What?” scoffs Barry. “Peace now? Very funny.”

“Still, Nathan in France is not that enthusiastic over a translation,” Marvin complains.

“Oh? What percentage did you offer?” asks Barry. He loves the minutia of book publishing.

“Money’s not the problem,” grouses Marvin. “The Jews of France are getting chased out of the country by armed attacks from Muslim fanatics. The last thing Nathan wants is to fan the flames with a book critical of Israel. Sorry, Barry, but there it is. Bad timing.”

He can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“We can print in France,” continues the publisher, scratching his beard energetically, “but sales must be limited to other countries in the French-speaking world: Mozambique, Morocco, Tunisia, Quebec.”

“Meh!” complains Barry, putting his feet up and lighting his Turkish meerschaum pipe in the shape of a lion’s head, using an engraved, refillable butane lighter that is the pinnacle of retro chic. “Meh and double meh!”

Barry’s gang are to be the guests of Crazy for Peace, LLC. “The Crazies” take a holistic view of the peace process, combining Kropotkin anarchy with contributions from the oil industry.

Compare them to Peace Now, which developed out of the 1978 Israeli-Egyptian peace talks: Faced with the collapse of negotiations, 348 reserve officers and soldiers from Israeli combat units published an open letter to the prime minister advocating for peace. Thus was born a movement, as tens of thousands of Israelis expressed their support. Eventually, Peace Now became convinced that the only viable solution is the creation of a Palestinian state adjacent to Israel on the land captured in the 1967 war. Undeterred by suicide bombers, the First and Second Intifada uprisings, the 2014 war in Gaza or the current wave of stabbings, Peace Now continues to advocate for Palestinian rights in opposition to war and military occupation.

Crazy for Peace can’t be bothered with all that. Instead, they invite Barry Lipowitz and his Israeli wife Erit Sameach to gather a group of like-minded leftwing authors and come visit Israel to “see for yourselves the horror of living under the occupation.” As a PR move, as an antidote to the rightwing Likud government of Prime Minister Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, as a cudgel for peace, beating it into people’s heads with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Barry knows he’s lucky to have Erit. He met his future wife, a stunning brunette, when speaking at Columbia’s Hillel. He grilled her the entire time, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She sat in the front row with her dynamite gams crossed, smiling through his entire speech, smiling, until the Q and A when she raised her hand and asked “Why do American males think their sexual hang-ups will interest female readers?”

Ouch! How do you answer that? Clueless, Barry fronted a response, referring genially to “Goodbye, Columbus” and “Portnoy’s Complaint,” Saul Bellow, John Updike, and the long tradition—  since Sigmund Freud— of mixing genitalia fixation with sexual misunderstanding.

The gene pool of Vienna has produced some amazing-looking women. Fashion model beautiful, Erit’s facial features don’t really add up: the high forehead, the enormous hazel eyes with heavy lids, a fleshy nose, a chin like a golf ball. With such bizarre components, you would expect disaster. Instead, people go gaga over her. An ugly duckling, she was taunted as a child. She stalks through her adult life like a Viking.

And she’s an author in her own right. Her latest tome is entitled Three Shades of Green: An Ironic Portrait of the IDF. Over 600,000 copies sold. On this trip, she intends to write about the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, where Christian Phalangists closely allied with Israel massacred between 762 and 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese Shiites in three horrendous days of slaughter in September 1982.

 

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At Kennedy Airport, Barry leaves a sulking Erit in the waiting area and crosses the concourse to the bookstore. Finding his latest novel in paperback, he brings it to the counter. The olive-skinned young lady in a hijab standing behind the counter raises her bar code scanner like a black plastic ray gun. “Do you want to buy that?” she asks.

“Actually, I’m the author,” Barry blushes, showing her the Annie Leibovitz photo on the back cover. “That’s me. I always check sales at airport bookstores.” This doesn’t seem to impress her much. Hmmm. Giving her his most boyish grin, he starts over. “How are sales?”

“You want to know how many copies of that book we’ve sold?” she asks, a bored expression on her face.

Really, the quality of sales help these days…! “Yes, please,” he replies.

Waiting, he watches her beep the bar code with her laser gun. He watches her check  the computer screen above the cash drawer. “We’ve sold 23 copies of that book since we got it in on April 12th.”

April 12th! ONLY 23 COPIES in TWO MONTHS!!! Obviously Barry needs to contact Marvin Fleischmann at Benji Books right away and demand a major ad campaign. “Thank you!” he sputters, anxious to get away from this place of catastrophic ignominy. If only there was someplace he could go hide his face, red with shame, but where do you hide on an airport concourse teeming with people, baggage, children in strollers, flight attendants and janitors, all milling around? Everywhere you turn, people! Barry slinks into the Men’s Room and locks himself in a stall until the tremors subside. Should he take a Xanax? Nah, he tends to zone out. He might miss his flight.

Seated in the EL AL aircraft, he and Erit share the courage of their convictions, wearing matching blue denim jackets and slacks. It’s who they are. While Erit angrily turns the pages of fashion magazines, Barry stares at his tablet, reviewing his list of participants. He frowns. B.L. & E.S., Patrice Gerard the Black Muslim, Sir Razor Babcock from Wales, Ethiopian Oso Buko, Erik Andersson the Swede, journo Roger Kaminski, poetess Oki Nawa from Japan and fashionista Barbie Quint. Are these the ideal candidates for this writing challenge? Could he have chosen better? Are they going to write the pants off him, filling him with regret? If they win the Nobel Prize or a Hollywood screenplay, will they share it with Barry or will he become a footnote in history, a mere asterisk? “Oh, I remember him, he helped Oso Buko become the renowned international author he is today. I have no idea whatever happened to old Lefkowitz,” people will say. Gripping his stylus in a palsied hand, he wonders and worries, rivers of sweat soaking his collar, a vein in his temple pulsing madly. If the plane crashes today, the world will mourn his passing. Who can say that will still be the case a year from now? What new works are Englander, Safran Foer and Shteyngart cooking up?! But, of course, Barry knows he shouldn’t tempt fate by dreaming of plane crashes. Let others worry and dream of train crashes! He’ll worry and dream of winning the Nobel Prize. Although Swedish meatballs give him aggravated bowel syndrome. And he’s not sure which capital has the most beautiful women, Stockholm or Oslo. A 30-foot motor launch would be good to own, touring the fjords of Norway, surrounded by leggy Norwegian blondes in bikinis. Or not, as the case may be. Is it true Icelandic women are frigid or is that just the climate? Do Finnish women come equipped with wi-fi and, if so, what is their bandwidth? What did Hillary know and when did she know it? All Barry can do is sigh and say, “Thank G-d for Google!”

 

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Erit fidgets, napping fitfully. Barry reads Englander’s latest book. As far as Barry is concerned, the dude is a total twit, always focusing on the most mundane aspects of human life, employing literary devices that died with Papa Hemingway. Turning the pages of a first edition, Barry discovers a typo on page 14. And a misplaced participle on page 27! And the dude calls himself a Jewish author! Had he suffered for his art? Englander had never suffered like Barry had suffered. Barry had been forced to eat pork in high school. Pork chops! Ribs! Barry had had to eat ribs. He knew what true suffering was all about. Ribs.

They’ll be landing in Israel in time to celebrate Shavuot, but how do you celebrate Shavuot? Barry checks the anthology section of his digital calendar. The holiday commemorates G-d giving the Torah to the Israelites assembled at Mount Sinai. What possible noisemaker do you use to celebrate that??? Aha! It’s also a celebration of the first fruits of the season. You bring Bikkurim—portions of wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates— to the temple to be burned in sacrifice. Quelle horreur! he muses. That and $10 will get you a frappuccino at Starbucks.

A member of their team, chrome dome mulatto lawyer Patrice Gerard, author of The Art of the Spiel, sits two rows back, looking more hip than Al Pacino. Dressed in a $2,000 suit, an ardent follower of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, he takes pride in being gangsta. Telegenic, he does guest commentary on TV talk shows. He’s also very tall. Annoyed at Hillary for wiping clean her email server, he suggests loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I ain’t squintin’, Hillary Clinton! This campaign, other people pay the Bill un-amended. Listen, bitch, no pun intended. Amidst the crowds an’ all the cheers, H.R. Clinton should go to jail for a hundred years! Whether or not she’s pilloried, obstruction of justice, yer name be Hillary.”

“Word,” declares his seat mate.

When the stewardess rolls the snack cart down the aisle, Barry absentmindedly requests peanuts and a Diet Coke.

“We’re all out of peanuts,” replies the stewardess, busy popping the tab on the Coke can and filling a plastic cup with ice.

“Get the fluff outta here!” Barry tells her. “Real talk, didn’t you restock the plane in New York or somethin’?”

“Well, we’re not really out of peanuts,” admits the stewardess with a pained expression. “EL AL no longer serves them since so many Americans have peanut allergies.”

Well, well, leave it to Bieber! These Israelis are definitely yanking Barry’s chain. So much for Israeli democracy, the great, liberated Israeli people, the booming Tel Aviv economy, he thinks, settling for pretzels. You can’t even get a token bag of peanuts!

 

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That first evening, jet-lagged, they are the guests of a lefty Israeli screenwriter named Dan who looks like a shoe salesman with glasses. Barry met him at a writers’ conference in Chicago about a million years ago. Dan takes them to a trendy Tel Aviv night club just off the beach. “Traditionally, Israeli war movies portray soldiers as victims, deeply scarred by the violence they experience,” he tells them. “Carrying on the Polish tradition, angst and ennui are very big in Israeli film.” Considering how successful Dan has been as a screenwriter, with credits up the kazoos, Barry keeps his mouth shut.

Erit shares no such scruples. “Really?” she demands archly in Hebrew in that voice of hers that can damage fruit at fifty yards. “What of the true victims of Israeli violence? Children blown up in drone attacks on the beaches of Gaza, in clear view of the international press? Whole families whose homes are bulldozed to punish a single miscreant. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza reduced to rubble!”

“That’s true, but the Palestinians in Gaza aren’t that keen on letting us use their demolished neighborhoods as film sets,” Dan points out, taking a sip of wine to hide his smile. “I keep waiting for Gaza Films to make Attack of the Mole People.”

“Well, really…” replies Erit self-righteously. It’s so hard to find an Israeli intellectual you can converse with! Everybody talks non-stop and no one stops to listen.

A writer is firstly an observer of human behavior. Barry gazes around the crowded room, observing. At the bar, he notices a three-way conversation among patrons who look the worse for wear. “Here’s mud in your eye,” says an American dressed in desert khaki.

“This, too, shall pass,” replies an Aussie, perspiring in a charcoal gray suit.

“Por la patria,” insists a Spaniard, dressed in chinos and a designer work shirt.

The plaque above the bar says “We trust in Jehovah. Everyone else pays cash.”

Bellying up to the bar belligerently, Barry accosts them. “Kanye tell me?” he asks. “You claim this is the Jewish homeland, but 20% of the population are Arabs.”

“No one denies there are Arab citizens of Israel. They have their own representatives in the Knesset,” nods the Aussie agreeably. “London has a Muslim mayor, mate, but I wouldn’t hold my breath about anything like that happening here.”

“Listen,” insists the American blearily in a flat mid-western drawl. “There’ve been Jews in this part of the world for 3,000 years. It was the Emperor Hadrian who, in 79 A.D., expelled the Jews after the Bar Kochba uprising. It was Hadrian who changed the name of the place from Israel to Syria Palestine, in an effort to eradicate any trace of the Jews.”

“Don’tcha know who the Palestinians are?” growls the Spaniard. “The Palestinians are the Philistines! Same dudes as in the Bible. Samson and Delilah. No wonder the Palestinians won’t give an inch! The Jews are the ones who brought down their temple! They’re holding a 2,500-year-old grudge!”

Faced with such a compact wall of opinion, Barry takes his drink and returns to his own people, “Who’s the bloody yank?” buzzing in his ears.

“I’m going to write a screenplay about Hillary Clinton,” Dan proposes. “There’s plenty of angst and ennui there.”

“People say Hillary’s transgender,” exclaims Erit. “That’s why she wears the pants in the family. I don’t know, I’m not a gynecologist, but still…”

“She’s a cyborg,” suggests Barry. “As seen on TV.”

Wandering in from outside, Sir Razor Babcock, part of Barry’s entourage, sits down at their table. A John Cleese look-alike, a Welsh nobleman and acclaimed Holocaust denier— affectionately known as “Shiraz”— he is the author of over 200 thumbnail biographies of theatrical cast members published in the British edition of Playbill. Additionally, he is author of the seminal study Hitler – Man, Machine, Mayhem. Based on Hitler’s incarceration as political prisoner in the fortress at Landsberg in 1924, Shiraz’s work breaks new ground psychologically. After all, it was at Landsberg that Hitler dictated the ever-popular book Mein Kampf. In English, My Struggle. Until it expired in 2015, the copyright was owned by the Bavarian state government. Frowned upon in America, Mein Kampf remains a major read in India, Russia, Sweden and Turkey. A new, annotated edition has just been released in Germany. Hitler’s original title was Men Discovering Love in the Trenches. His advisors in the National Socialist German Workers’ Party talked him out of this. Instead of passionate homoerotic encounters, editor Rudolf Hess insisted Hitler focus on politics, international relations, race, national aspirations and revenge. Good old Hitler! What he lost in magazine serialization, he more than made up for at the ballot box. “Erzählende-  oder Sachliteratur?” asked Hitler. Fiction or non-fiction? Having had some success getting published in the Südbayerische Zeitung , a wannabe novelist, he’s a young man with a temper who has his whole life ahead of him. So what if the Beer Hall Putsch didn’t go so well? He’ll know better next time! My Struggle also marks the last occasion he ever takes advice from his fellow party members. After that, everything has to be done his way. He even designs the uniforms for Hitlerjugend, the Hitler Youth. The rest is history.

Heavily fortified on anti-depressants, Shiraz gaily shouts, “Bring on these sheenies and we’ll all have a bundle of fun!”

“I know who you are, I’ve read all your books,” exclaims a tall woman with breasts like twin tennis balls pushing against her blouse.  Approaching their table, she hands over a napkin for Barry to autograph. “Your novel Milwaukee helped me survive secondary school…”

“Delighted, delighted,” Barry assures her, scrawling his name.

“…and not in a good way,” finishes the woman. Taking the napkin, she stalks back to her table.

“Well, really! ” demands Erit, morally indignant for the both of them. Barry just assumes it’s a typically booze-fueled misunderstanding.

The entertainment is a young troubadour with a mountain of black hair, a wide open white shirt, a Star of David nestled amidst the hairs on his chest, black slacks and de rigeur leather sandals. He plays a 12-string, double-necked guitar, plugged into a Marshall amp. Puffing his P’s into the microphone, he belts out Israeli rock standards Barry has never heard of. On the break, he comes to their table. “Mee-zeh?” he asks Dan, smiling ferociously.

“A very well-known American writer. Greatest Jewish author since Pierre Salinger. Big money deal,” explains Dan, incandescent with postprandial glow.

“Hello,” says the performer, taking a seat next to Barry. “How do you like Israel?”

“We don’t! We’re here because internationally, Israel is a pariah. United Nation’s resolution 242—”

“Eh! Always the same kvetching. You are in the homeland of the Jews!” exclaims their new acquaintance. “Never again will Jews climb into cattle cars to be killed. Anything Israel does is based on the simple fact that most of our neighbors want to murder us. You don’t like that? Tant pis! Too bad! Nobody asked you to come!”

“We’re guests of Crazy for Peace.”

“Ugh!” grunts the entertainer. “Crazy for pizza.”

“No, no, Crazy for Peace,” Barry corrects him didactically, only to see that the dude is laughing at him. A group of Israelis come by and interrupt, informing Barry that the entertainer’s nickname is Jimmy Poisson, “Jimmy the Fish.” As slang,  they explain, it can also mean “Jimmy the Bully” or “Jimmy the Fag.” Barry doesn’t like him any better for it.

“Crazy for Pizza runs ads in the American Jewish press criticizing American armchair generals for their resolve to fight to the last Israeli,” exclaims Jimmy. He doesn’t look happy.

“What’s wrong with that?” demands Barry.

“Nu? I assume Crazy for Peace already has a plan to get the Palestinians to the negotiating table without preconditions. I assume Crazy for Peace also has a workable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that guarantees both Palestinian sovereignty and Israel’s security. Bravo! Such brilliance should be rewarded. Please share the details!”

Oy gevalt! What a bully! Where does this guy get off knowing what’s in the American press? That’s the problem with the Internet, everybody examines everybody else’s dirty laundry. “Solutions are the responsibility of the government,” insists Barry.

Jimmy looks at him. Once. Twice. Raises an eyebrow sardonically. “Piss off, Jack!” he declares. He then excuses himself to play another set. This time he includes Buffy Sainte- Marie’s The Universal Soldier and John Lennon’s Working Class Hero. The audience gives him a standing ovation.

According to the Theory of Transactional Analysis, people must know their position in the social hierarchy, otherwise chaos ensues. People are nice to Barry. Six blockbusters on the New York Times bestseller list does that. When people are rude, Barry dismisses them in his own mind as ignoramuses who have yet to crack open the New York Times bestseller list. Did Jimmy the Fag write The French Lieutenant’s Jewess? No, he did not! Barry did, netting a cool $750,000 advance in a bidding war that left blood knee-deep in the corridors of New York publishing.

Jimmy the Fish is followed by an Israeli grunge metal band called Psyche & the Delics. “Very poppy in the West Bank,” explains Dan, shouting to be heard.

Obviously, it’s time to get gully and show a little street cred. Exhibiting his Argonite-5030 wristwatch by Shinola of Detroit, Michigan with a Star of David embossed on the black leather strap, Barry explains, “I know what it is to return to Capistrano. Other American Jews sit at the Pesach table and proclaim ‘Next year in Jerusalem!’ I say ‘Do the bossa nova!’ That’s all she wrote… Disco!”

Dumbfounded, the other patrons just stare. Never underestimate the star power of a Shinola watch! Reliable in any situation.

That night, under the covers, he and Erit screw passionately, holding onto one another for dear life. “Israel does this to me,” she whimpers, covered in sweat. “The contradictions fuck up my bodily functions something awful.”

 

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At the breakfast table the next morning— rolls, hardboiled eggs, hummus, tomatoes and coffee— conversation is subdued at best. Rounding out their little group—  there, but nowhere in evidence— is Manhattan’s very own Barbie Quint. A syndicated columnist in the world of fashion, she’s  also a notoriously late sleeper.

“Look at this!” exclaims Oso Buko excitedly, his ebony black face glistening in anticipation. Having flown in from Ethiopia, he shows off a newspaper he purchased in the airport gift shop. “The front page of The Washington Post! A photo proclaiming ‘We love you, Muhammad.’ See! We are making progress already.” He seems incredibly proud.

“Få se,” replies Erik, the Swede. From Umeå in Swedish Norrland, he’s been invited along to give the European perspective. Economically dependent on Arab oil, the European Union hates Israel. Barry expects Erik to focus on war crimes. “Wait a minute,” Erik points out, examining the photograph meticulously. “This is a funeral cortege for Muhammad Ali.”

While they hope Oso’s behavior may provide much-needed empathy— he is, after all, from Ethiopia and Ethiopians have heart— the gloom that descends upon the group is palpable. Passing the newspaper from hand to hand, they discuss options. It still isn’t too late to convert the trip into a vacation holiday at a beach resort in Netanya or Eilat. In the end, they decide to persevere.

 

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The Tel Aviv landscape seems very jarring, a mix of cars, blinding yellow sunshine, hustle and bustle, window displays, high fashion, glossy new buildings, decrepitly old ones, towering high-rises and four-story apartment houses shaped like shoe boxes with rusting balconies staining their façades. This sure ain’t Brooklyn, Toto!

“Hello. I’m your guide,” says a clean-shaven young man. “Benny Ben Ami.” Barry can see that the young fellow is the perfect choice for the assignment: Seared in the crucible of war, he’s dressed in Abercrombie & Fitch. “How do you like Israel?” he asks Barry.

“We like it just fine,” Barry answers, tired of fighting.

“Ha! What do you know?” scoffs Benny. “You’ve been here less than a day and you think you know the place? Rak rega! Just wait. No work for the younger generation, prices skyrocketing, endless war. Get used to it!”

“We’re here to protest all that,” complains Barry.

“Protest all you like, it won’t change a damn thing,” insists Benny sullenly.

Welcome to Israel, thinks Barry with a sigh.

Emphasizing the multi-cultural aspect of their visit, Crazy for Peace holds the welcoming ceremony in a Druze village halfway up Mount Carmel.  At this elevation, the air is refreshingly cool. A constant breeze, strong enough to snatch papers from their hands, hums in their ears. There are goats everywhere. Static from a P.A. system mounted on the bandstand wafts comically through the nearly deserted village. Barry’s group sits, huddled, on gray metal folding chairs originally cadged from the IDF. After five minutes of embarrassed inertia, Barry arises and climbs onto the stage. Approaching the microphone, he does the honors, breaking the ice:

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he declares. “And especially ladies…” Holy thirstbucket! Right away, he loses half the audience, the female half. He can see it in the spazzed out expression on their faces. Not kosher! Not kashrut! He’s got a lot riding on this speech. Scrambling, he explains himself. “You are the ones who read magazines. You are the brilliant minds attuned to the subtleties of American fiction. Remember, our ideology unites us. We are so far left, we consider Putin a reactionary… Chill out scrap!” Fucked, he gives it up and resorts to his notes, proclaiming, “K-i-x. We are Kix LLC. Kikes investigating existence. Kix. We are here in the Middle East— or le Proche-Orient, if you will— seeking peace. Some seek it here, some seek it there. It’s certainly a thrill. We’re crazy for peace! But enough about us. We’re not here to preach, but to learn…” Having said that, a captive audience, Barry drones on for another 25 minutes, listing Eastern European villages destroyed in the Holocaust, outlining the latest John Kerry peace initiative, comparing the rolling hills of the Galilee to his wife Erit’s breasts. He extols the quality of Jerusalem’s hashish and the strides made during the presidency of George H. W. Bush. “Synergy, the production here in Israel of commemorative tile plaques depicting the windmill and Wailing Wall of Jerusalem reached its peak during the George H. W. Bush administration. Those were the Good Old Days, followed by oppression and uprisings despite the Balfour Declaration or the Oslo Accords. Peace Now? Very funny.”

They still haven’t recovered from jet lag. Barry can see that Erit and the others keep nodding off. Quickly getting down to specifics, he announces: “As writers, people often ask us ‘Do we need G-d?’ I ask ‘Does G-d need us?’ Do we contribute anything special to life uptown?… Not a tirade, just a dissertation. As the late Muhammad Ali once told us, ‘The man who has no imagination stands on the Earth. He has no wings; he cannot fly.’ Now there was a storyteller! ‘Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee!’ Or was it vice versa, ‘fly like a bee, sting like a butterfly…’? No doubt the answer will come to me.

“We Americans are willing to free eight dolphins from their imprisonment in the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland, yet we allow the Palestinian people to remain under the yoke of Israeli aggression. Just because The Protocols of the Elders of Zion turned out to be a forgery by the Czar’s secret police, that does not absolve us Jews of all guilt.

“In conclusion, let us dedicate our efforts to the world’s most oppressed minority,” Barry proposes grandly.

“You think Palestinians are the world’s most oppressed minority?” asks Roger, nailing down any ambiguity. Red hair tufted like a squirrel, he wears a perpetual scowl on his sun-tanned face.

“Well, no— ”

“Black lives matter!” agrees Patrice Gerard, impressed at Barry’s acumen.

“I meant— ”

“You can’t mean Jews?!” wonders Benny the guide.

“No, no,” Barry stammers. Maybe a little call and response can’t hurt. Wake everyone up.

“He means gays!” answers Barbie Quint matter-of-factly. She works in fashion.

“Actually— ”

“It’s obvious he means Muslims!” shouts Oso Buko, smiling in agreement.

“Er… ” gulps Barry. As a rhetorical flourish, this device is turning into a disaster, he thinks in dead panic as the group’s cohesion splinters before his eyes.

“Poor people!” suggests Roger.

“The idle rich…” counters Barbie.

“The idle poor…”

“MSM, the mainstream media?”

“Trump supporters!”

“Mel Gibson?” asks Benny.

“Drug dealers!”… “Drug users…” “Narcs!” they conjecture, focusing briefly on narcotics.

“Who the hell is he talking about?” blurts Erik, the Swede, angrily.

“Children!” declares Erit. As Barry’s wife, she should know. Additionally, children are an issue in their marriage: They don’t want any. Little tykes would slow down their lifestyle.

“Really, I was thinking women as the world’s most oppressed minority,” Barry wails, flapping his arms.

There’s a long pause, while the group digests this information. Surveying their frumpy expressions, the outcome doesn’t look promising.

“This shows that mankind oppresses just about everybody at one time or another!” explains Patrice, standing and addressing the group. Mercifully, he’s solved the problem.

“To Holy Land Tours,” declares Barry, “we say: ‘Behold! One man’s vacation is another man’s sojourn into the crucible of Hell. Bring on the bus, you motherfuckers!’ ”

Not understanding half of what they said, their host, Jamal Kumquat— squat, sporting a purple fez, a black Hitler moustache hiding his upper lip— welcomes them effusively. “We Druze produce goat cheese,” he declares boomingly, “but let nothing curdle our relations!” Opening a cardboard box, Jamal releases a white dove, symbolizing peace. Its pink albino eyes staring nervously, it flutters a few feet and crashes to the ground, exhausted. “Didn’t anybody test fly the dove?” Jamal can be heard asking his staff bitterly. An embarrassing moment. “Who are we?” he cries incredulously. “John Kerry?”

 

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Even if Jerusalem is only three hours away by bus, Barry is damned if he’s going to listen to Arabic zither music blaring from the loudspeaker above each seat. Sitting next to Erit in a row halfway back, facing the emergency window, it takes a while to get Benny the guide’s attention.

No problem, of course, since Barry and Erit have their adages down pat: Don’t sweat the small stuff (and it’s all small stuff). U R what U eat. A penny saved is a meaningful opportunity indefinitely postponed. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is a crime against humanity.

“Yo, compadre,” he eventually explains to Benny, all but shouting in his ear. “Peep this. Enough with the audio Chinese water torture. Gotchu?”

“Torture is forbidden under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention,” Benny replies uncertainly, looking about 10 years old.

“That’s why I want it to stop! ” seethes Barry Lipowitz. “You’re turning me into a frothing militarist.”

“Whoa, what?”

“Stop the music! I want to get off!”

“The recorded music?”

“The same,” he sighs.

“Okay,” Benny replies doubtfully. Five minutes later, after consultation with Shmuel, the driver, Benny returns down the aisle to inform Barry, “It’s not our bus. It’s a rental. We have no idea where the button is for the sound system. Listen, as soon as we reach a car park, I’ll ask someone and get it turned off.” Ever helpful, Benny hands him an unopened packet containing two E.A.R. yellow earplugs. “Just until we reach Jerusalem,” Benny assures him. “That’s Maya Nasri doing the singing, by the way. Very poppy Lebanese songstress. A total fox. Sexy bod and lots of soul.”

Frustrated, Barry jams the earplugs into his ears.

An appointment has been made to visit the Knesset and confer with various pols. Batman vs Superman vs Mayor de Blasio. Finally, a building that doesn’t look like it was erected in the last two weeks!

“Knesset, huh?” sneers Barbie Quint. A petite strawberry blonde, garrulous, breathtakingly anti-Semitic, she’s convinced the Jews control everything. Everything. Maybe not on purpose, but still… Caustic, it makes sense that she has penned the Sniper’s Cave series, novels that explore the lives of Rock, Tom, Bob, Rip, Tim and Bill. Members of a top secret U.S. government sniper unit, they spend most of their time shooting white supremacists and sniping at one another. Their glamorous young wives shop, gossip and cook, taking up at least half of every book. Women love this series: Ostensibly about military hunks, there are a lot of really good fashion tips and some dynamite recipes. You get the best of both worlds, fantastic sex and beef Stroganoff. Nobody ever goes hungry in a Barbie Quint novel.

When they arrive, half the Knesset is feasting on cupcakes provided by the von Dreck family. Until recently, they ran a bakery on Ben Yehuda Street in Tel Aviv called The Habsburger Palais. “It’s a shame they had to close,” says Knesset member Yuri Schwartz. “They were very supportive of Israeli politics. This stabbing intifada is too much for them. They’re moving back to Vienna. During World War Two, they did support the Nazi regime, so it’s not really surprising—”

“WAIT!” demands Erit. “Vienna?! Supported the Nazis??? Don’t you see a contradiction?”

“No-o,” Schwartz answers slowly, considering. As wide as he is tall, his physique doesn’t help his argument. A true activist, in younger years he planted trees in Israel in order to have something to which he could chain himself in protest. Thirty years in politics, however, has left him a cynic. “I think the von Drecks are your classic conformists. Like many people, they simply feel most comfortable supporting whoever is in power. WTF, half of us Israelis feel that way! You go along to get along.”

Gritting his teeth, fists bunched in his pockets, Barry doesn’t know where to begin to refute this windbag. Calling him a Quisling is meaningless and the term “collaborator” lost all credibility with the dissolution of the French Resistance after World War Two. This discussion is totally loopy.

That evening, swatting at sand flies, he and Erit watch the sun sink ironically into the sea. “This reminds me of the movie Beach Blanket Bingo with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello,” he suggests. When you got it, flaunt it.

“It’s the same setting sun as in Gaza, just a few miles down the coast,” Erit reminds him. “We’re free, they’re not.”

Mad hungry, they march into town to find a halfway affordable restaurant.

 

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Things look brighter the next day. “Shalom and welcome to Eretz-Israel,” intones Erit’s cousin Ozzy, toasting them with long-stemmed glasses of Carmel wine. The four of them— Barry, Erit, Cousin Ozzy and Cousin Shlomo— sit around a glass coffee table in the cousins’ apartment in Ramat Gan. Sumptuously furnished, it’s hard not to like. The brothers, brown-skinned and bushy-haired, could be twins. Erit has given Barry their backstory: Both men had been married. Ozzy was divorced, Shlomo a widower. Shlomo’s wife died in a suicide bombing. A Palestinian insurgent climbed onto a bus, detonated his suicide vest and took everyone else on board with him. By the time the fire department put out the blaze, only the skeletal frame of the bus remained.

Barry finds himself lusting after their intricately carved and gilded wall art. These Israelis! You can’t love ’em and you can’t hate ’em. “Israel has the dirtiest politics in the world,” he declares brightly. “Ehud Olmert, former mayor of Jerusalem and an ex-prime minister, just went to prison for bribery and corruption. He was preceded by a long and sorry list of similar officials, including former Israeli President Moshe Katzev, who sits incarcerated for rape and sexual harassment. He got seven years. It does make you wonder.”

“Those are unusual cases,” insists Ozzy, while Shlomo  eyes Barry with a bemused expression of indignation on his face. “I know our Erit. You little twits are pre-disposed to hate everything about Israel. The two of you are yenems zi yidden to use the Yiddish, ‘somebody else’s Jews,’ practicing a brand of Judaism with unusual rituals we’ve never even heard of. We call you self-loathing Jews.”

“Fuhgeddaboudit! ” complains Barry plaintively. “That’s not even fair!”

“Typical Israeli aggression,” fumes Erit.

“I’m an American Jew,” Barry explains. “Every time Israel causes trouble, I get it full in the face. Tell Netanyahu to stop rattling people’s cages. Remember the old adage, ‘He who rattles the cage of the tiger soon ends up inside.’ Automatic, knee-jerk support of Israel is no longer guaranteed among America’s younger generation. Netanyahu has sharp elbows, but our head-bangers are more inclined to fist bump with the Palestinian underdog than the Israeli alpha dog.”

“How do you fist bump with a dog?” asks Shlomo, a furrow of consternation creasing his brow.

“On a dark desert highway,” counters Ozzy, “the dude with a flashlight is king.”

They drink.

“Israel is Likud,” insists Barry, sure of his politics. “Israel is rightwing.”

“Israel is rightwing,” agrees Shlomo. “We tried to make peace with the Palestinians by electing Ehud Barak in 1999 and look what that got us! The Second Intifada. Another Palestinian uprising. After that, people felt peace with the Palestinians wasn’t going to happen, so the pendulum swung the other way.”

“What about your country?” asks Ozzy. “Half the people hate Donald Trump, the other half hate Hillary Clinton. How can you criticize us?”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” hisses Erit. “Melania Trump is on our side! She isn’t anti-Semitic, she’s just pro-Palestinian. You don’t live in Manhattan, you wouldn’t understand.”

A year ago, Barry wore a Trump tee to be ironic. Since then, the joke got old. “Electoral politics in America are based on a 240-year tradition of democratic representation and States’ rights,” he explains, feeling like a pompous ass. “Donald J. Trump ignores all that. A failed businessman, he’s an economic predator. A Manhattanite, half of what he says is bringing the cray-cray, the other half is high-lining. Like Erit says, if you’re not from around the way, you wouldn’t understand. Trump attacks minorities, opposes immigration, insults women, supports white supremacists, ignores the Constitution and threatens democracy. But he might be good for the Jews.”

“According to The Economist,” Ozzy points out, “a Trump presidency would be riskier to international trade than an armed conflict in the South China Sea, the European Union falling apart or even jihadist terrorism. The man has no standing.”

“As every schoolchild learns, America leads the world. We contribute three billion dollars a year in military aid to Israel,” counters Barry.

“Of course,” Ozzy replies. “Our two countries have a special relationship. We Israelis appreciate your help. If there’s anybody you wish to see while you are here, we can probably arrange the introduction. Israel is a small country in that respect. Everybody knows someone who knows someone.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” replies Erit icily, setting down her wineglass on the coffee table vehemently enough to make it ping.

The cousins are just like Erit’s parents! The same damn thing, endlessly solicitous, constantly asking what they need, consistently offering to help. When Ozzy announces, a concerned look on his face, “We have a rooftop apartment you can use for a longer stay,” Barry knows it’s time to leave. The last thing they want to do is become beholden to these people!

“We’re here to see how our money is being spent in the West Bank,” he exclaims.

The cousins suggest lunch at a Sbarro pizzeria. Erit spots the obvious reference: Everyone knows a Sbarro was the site of a 2001 Palestinian suicide bombing that claimed the lives of 15 Israelis and left 130 wounded. Everyone knows that! Typical political propaganda! As if there were no other pizzerias they could choose! Sbarro is synonymous with terrorist attacks and fresh stromboli, she silently frets. When Ozzy hands Barry a pack of Noblesse, the high-end Israeli cigarette, clearly he hopes that Barry will succumb to lung cancer. That cigarette has the highest tar and nicotine content of any cigarette on the Israeli market! Insidious, conniving Israelis, they are positively Machiavellian. No wonder the Palestinians can never “get their land back,” as they so aptly put it. All of Israel, to boot.

Sighing, Barry tries again. “I am J Street. I am pro-Israel,” he insists. “The 1946 borders.”

“You mean the Palestinian Mandate?” guffaws Ozzy. “Aren’t you the root and bow man! Tear the country out by its roots, will you? Zeh lo tov!”

Shlomo isn’t laughing. “We’re not stupid. We know who our friends are. In every conflict, J Street sides with the Palestinians. Saying they are pro-Israel doesn’t make J Street a Zionist organization. Pro-Palestinian, yes. Pro-Israel, no.”

“Whassup?” asks Barry, impervious to criticism.

“Let’s clear up the mystery of why there’s no two-state solution,” Shlomo proposes with the finality of an ax chopping wood. “The Palestinians want for their future state the entire dagger-shaped land labeled on western maps as ‘Israel.’ Every centimeter, every dunam of land. It’s what they teach their children in their schools. That is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone tries to ignore at peace conferences.”

“Everybody knows that already!” insists Erit, exasperated.

“I think,” opines Ozzy, “the Palestinians are like Ali Baba, looking for the magic incantation, the ‘Open Sesame,’ that magically will make all us troublesome Jews disappear.”

“You have to work with the hand you’re dealt,” claims Barry.

“I don’t get it,” Shlomo complains. “If the Palestinians take all the land, what happens to us?”

“Oh! Jews will be allowed to live in a modern, secular State of Palestine,” Erit chirps helpfully.

This statement is followed by a very pregnant pause.

“And who,” asks Ozzy, carefully choosing his words, “advocates that position?”

“I do!” cries Erit. “It’s my position, it’s Erit Sameach’s position. Nothing the Palestinians have done compares to the genocidal apartheid regime of Bibi Netanyahu, amply funded and supported by the U.S. Congress.”

“Twenty thousand rockets fired from Gaza?” asks Shlomo.

“That’s Gaza!”

“Knife attacks. Screwdriver attacks. Motor vehicles which Palestinians use to plow into groups of Israeli pedestrians?” asks Ozzy.

“Those are desperate acts by the disenfranchised!” explains Barry.

“BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement?”

“Economic warfare,” replies Barry breezily.

“And you call yourself pro-Israel?” scoff the cousins.

“Yerp! Certainly!”

“Call yourself whatever you like. You sound like an enemy,” Shlomo observes.

“Look at Jack, back to the attack! Why are you always attacking people?” Erit insists self-righteously.

“Yes, I know,” observes Ozzy. “When you get four Jews in a room, you hear five opinions. Everything in life is political.”

 

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Soldiers in khaki, rifles slung over their shoulders, patrol in front of the beachfront hotel in Tel Aviv. With the sun setting in the west, by the evening of the third day, it begins to irritate him. Approaching the young men, Barry asks them jocularly, “Is an attack imminent?”

“Hello!” answers one of the youngsters, not more than 20. “You are staying at this hotel?”

Barry shows them his passport and electronic key card. “Peace out!” he jokes. “All we are saying is give Frump a chance!”

“Cool beans! Go inside. Enjoy your stay,” replies the young man laconically, having exhausted his English.

Speaking Hebrew, Erit wades in, giving the soldiers what-for. They respond in kind. Roughly translated, they tell her, “Arab slut! Who are you talking to? Do what you are being paid for. Take your American john to his room and fuck his brains out.” Pointing to the revolving front door of the hotel, the soldiers stare angrily at the tourists. Sensing disaster in the making, the head bellhop in his fine uniform pushes open a pneumatic door from inside and beckons them welcomingly.

 

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That night, in their room, stretched out on the bed, Erit suffers a total meltdown. Barry has unpacked, but she hasn’t.  Your basic gypsy, Erit spends her whole life moving from place to place. She is always in the process of moving in, only to have circumstances change, ending in the proverbial eviction notice. No wonder she doesn’t finish unpacking! Superstitious, she thinks that if they never move in, they can’t be kicked out! Chirping “Oh, oh, oh!” breathlessly, she cries, drools and pounds the pillows. “The poor Palestinians!” she shouts. “It’s so frustrating! Fucking Israel!” Gyrating her hips, her face wet with tears, she pulls Barry to her. “Yes! Yes! Fuck me, Raoul!” she groans, blindly clawing at his neck, before descending into a smoldering, smoky finish with just a touch of erotic hysteria.

Barry does as his wife requests.

 

 

 

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Relocating to Jerusalem the following morning, they dump their bags at the Waldorf Astoria, pile back on the bus and drive to Damascus Gate to visit the souk open air market inside the walls of the Old City. Benny the guide leads the way, making sure they know which shopkeepers are Jews and which are Arabs. “Ho hum,” says Barbie Quint. “This don’t impress me much.” Taking selfies, they talk to everyone they meet, arguing with soldiers who examine their passports at impromptu checkpoints.

“Now where exactly,” asks Patrice Gerard haughtily, “are you hiding the Jerusalem crickets? Stenopelmatus fuscus.”

Since no one knows what he’s talking about, Barry pulls out his tablet, goes online and googles it. A night burrower common to the southwestern United States. “Please stop,” Barry beseeches him.

“But these Israelis— ”

“I know, I know, but please stop asking about crickets.”

Oso Buko wants to know if booksellers stock Hebrew – Reformed Egyptian dictionaries. Firstly, this isn’t London or a bridge over the Seine. It’s hard enough to even find a bookseller. Secondly,  the ones they do find don’t have anything in Reformed Egyptian. No novels, no Bibles, not even The Book of Mormon. The proprietors suggest he try a university bookstore.  

They pause in the doorway of a shop belonging to an ornamental lamp-maker from Vilnius. Wearing a skullcap, sandals, a jerkin and a tattered tan apron over gunny sack pants, he looks about 100 years old. “When my grandson said he wanted to do something for the country…” he complains forlornly, “…I didn’t think he meant joining a hip hop band! Israel is supposed to be a light unto the nations,” he adds, indicating his wares.

“Some people prefer an urban-inflected awakening,” Barry consoles him.

“Says the New Yorker,” quips Erit.

Shiraz, from Wales, bursts out laughing. “Make ’em all into lampshades,” he suggests to the gnarled craftsman in a thick Cardiff accent. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, eh, old sport? (War thar’s smock, thar’s fahr, eh, auld spahrt?) Send ’em all up through the smokestack, that’s my solution.”

The Old City is crawling with armed Israeli troops, a veritable sea of green. Niceties aside, simply for the sake of survival, Barry asks Shiraz to please, please, please mind his tongue.

 

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They tour the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, at least the accessible part. Amidst major scaffolding, a Greek crew is renovating the entire chapel, which is collapsing under its own weight. Using stabilizing mortar and titanium bolts, they hope to permanently restore the 200-year-old structure. This is the fourth chapel. The holiest place in all Christendom, followers of Christ have been praying here since A.D. 66. What is said to be the tomb of Christ lies underneath a towering rotunda. During his rule, Hadrian built a pagan temple to the goddess Aphrodite atop the tomb to discourage Christian pilgrims. The Emperor Constantine dismantled Hadrian’s edifice and built the first chapel in the 4th Century. That building was destroyed by the Egyptian Caliph al-Hakim in 1009. The Crusaders built the second chapel, later destroyed by the Khwarezmian Turks, who rode into the church on horseback, lopping off the heads of praying monks. A third chapel burned down in 1808. That’s when the Greeks built this current domicile to the spirit of Christ.

While bored again Christians and sticky-faced schoolchildren ogle the sanctuary, under the hawk-like gaze of Eastern Orthodox monks in somber black robes and amazing hats, Erit and Barry probe deep into the basilica. “Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so,” he murmurs over and over under his breath. In this deeply spiritual place, he finds it nurturing. It’s chilly in here. They discover an out-of-the-way, hidden chapel containing the raised tomb of some obscure crusader. Opening an intricately fashioned metal gate, they approach the tomb. “Nobody we know,” confirms Barry. Silently stripping off their jeans, they do the down and dirty atop the chilly stone lid. Having screwed their way to victory in a Men’s Room stall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, they are old hands. Maybe they can fornicate their way to salvation. Who knows? It sure beats getting crucified! Even if, G-d forbid, they should get caught, they know the authorities won’t do anything. Nobody wants an international incident. Do the hippy shake!

 

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Somebody tipped off the Arabs. Flashing diplomatic credentials, looking strangely out of place, an Egyptian delegation visits them at their hotel. “We know who you are. We are great admirers. We would like to assign to you this man, Colonel Daoud  el- Wasabi, as a bodyguard for the remainder of your stay,” explains Saïd Ramadan, Second Secretary of the Egyptian Embassy.

Everyone looks at the Colonel. Granite-faced, dressed in an olive-drab suit, he seems like a rough customer.

“An Egyptian bodyguard?” croaks Oso.

“We come in peace,” insists Barry, at a loss.

“I’m sure that will not be necessary,” hisses Erit. “Here in Israel, the IDF is perfectly capable of providing protection.”

“Okay,” says Saïd, looking worried. “Just don’t venture into the Sinai. We cannot guarantee your safety.”

Once they leave, Barbie Quint comes out of the bathroom, where she’s been hiding. “What did they want???” she asks shrilly.

“They offered us additional security,” explains Patrice.

“Against whom?!”

“Against everybody.”

 

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In preparation for the West Bank, they receive an Intel briefing. “Military Intelligence reports— ” begins the officer in his immaculately pressed uniform, indicating the first slide in a Power Point display.

“Whoa!” shouts journalist Roger Kaminski. “Just, whoa! Now there’s an oxymoron, if I ever heard one! Military… Intelligence? I. Don’t. Think. So.”

“Bravo!” cheer Barry and Erit. “Sock it to ’em!” Jumping to their feet, they applaud enthusiastically. Huzzahs! A standing ovation. Get down! Hooray for anarchy!

Embarrassed, the Crazy for Peace people roll their eyes and sigh audibly. “Could we at least hear what the IDF has to say?” they beseech their guests.

“You Israelis may have created drones, but we Americans invented the light bulb, the phonograph and basketball!” counters Barry. The Americans are annoyed. Sitting down, they listen stolidly. This certainly isn’t the way things are done back home!

“As you may have heard,” the same officer begins again, smiling ever so slightly, “Donald Trump has announced in Terre Haute, Indiana that he will broker a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians. We’ll all look forward to that!”

The room fills with discreet laughter.

“On the home front, Amnon Reshef has founded Commanders for Israel’s Security. They call their peace plan Security First. Reshef’s idea is to stop waiting on negotiations. Instead, he suggests we finish the security barrier, stop building settlements, and then put pressure on both sides to negotiate. Stabilize. Secure. Then negotiate. It’s an interesting concept. Something might actually come of this.

“Further afield, our own Yisrael Katz, Minister of Transportation and Intelligence, is exploring the option of building an artificial island three miles off the coast of Gaza. Once again, the purpose is to stabilize a bad situation. It would give the Gazans a commercial port, solving a major logistical bottleneck, and open up Gaza to international trade. Putting the port off-shore allows Israel to man checkpoints on the causeway between the island and the mainland. Hopefully, this will prevent the importation of weaponry and contraband. The island could also feature an airport. Budgeted at $5 billion, the Israeli Security Cabinet is batting the ball back and forth on that one. If anybody finds $5 billion floating around, please let me know.”

More discreet laughter.

“Finally, the Palestinian terrorist attack on the Tel Aviv food court at the Sarona Market in which two West Bank cousins in suits shot and killed four Israelis and wounded 15 others. Their attack with homemade “Carlo” type submachine guns, based on the Swedish K firearm, may be interpreted by some as a violent critique of the chocolate brownies and coffee served at the café. Our investigation has led us to the unequivocal conclusion, however, that the young men showed up already planning to attack the patrons, regardless of the food quality at the Max Brenner desert emporium. Theoretically, a high Zagat rating may actually attract terrorist attacks. Terrorists like big venues with lots of soft targets. Think about it. Attractive locations draw big crowds.”

 

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You would think that in a city as large as Jerusalem or a country as diverse as Israel, Barry and his group could go about their business reasonably incognito. Not so. On their second visit to the Old City, ostensibly to talk with Arab vendors about discrimination, three healthy-looking young Israelis in H & M sports clothes and matching black and white tees— two girls and a boy— track them down. “Hey, man!” they whine. “Who do you think you are, coming here out of the blue, no invitation from us, Jewish Voice for Peace, no experience in the IDF or anti-war movement, tourists with no real roots in the country, most of you not even Jewish, and you are going to write about Israel?! Get real!”

“Well, the purpose of our visit is to examine the very issues— ” Barry placates them, but all they do is give him the finger and walk off.

Young people! So impatient. Do they have any idea how long it takes to proofread the galleys to a book of 320 pages, including Acknowledgments, Footnotes and Bibliography? Have they ever struggled to find inspiration in The Hamptons?

Tramping the same streets and alleyways a second and even a third time, it’s Patrice Gerard who announces, “These A-habs ain’t the bros we lookin’ fo’. They’s all in on the system.”

“Please talk like a human being,” Oso requests.

“These Arab merchants have obviously sold out. We gotta look further afield if we want to hit pay dirt.”

Their search for authenticity takes them to East Jerusalem. As they meander through the narrow streets, the number of Israeli patrols increases alarmingly. “It’s not a war zone,” they keep reminding themselves. “People live here.”

It’s a sandstone city, built on two levels. “Hi!” shout the locals, waving from their terraces. When approached, they turn out to be Americans from Skokie, Illinois or West Palm Beach, Florida. The walk starts to feel strangely surreal, the landscape alien, the people entirely too familiar. Far from being on edge, the local inhabitants appear happy, these exuberant transplants, happy in a way the rest of the country hasn’t displayed.

“Aren’t you afraid of Arab riots?” Barbie Quint asks a young housewife named Miriam, dressed in the long skirt of the Orthodox. “You live so close by them.”

“The Arab Quarter? We don’t associate much with them,” Miriam explains blithely. “They do their thing, we do ours.”

“Something’s not right,” Patrice decides, after another ten minutes of walking doesn’t seem to bring them any closer to the Arabs. “Every time we approach the east end of town, the street is blocked off, bricked up or sealed shut.”

“Word,” replies Barry. “What’s going on, Benny?”

Interrupting his cellphone conversation, Benny sheepishly acknowledges that the Jewish and Arab communities of East Jerusalem are fenced off from one another.

“WHAT???” demands Barry.

“Come.” Benny mounts stone steps to the upper level and, sure enough, through a chain link fence, they find themselves looking into the courtyard of an elementary school.

“Arab,” explains Benny. “Look but don’t touch.”

“Fuck.”

“It keeps the peace,” he suggests apologetically.

“Hey, little school kids!” hails Patrice genially, waving, when some Arab boys in green and white school uniforms and brown shoes pour from a doorway. “How ya doin’?!”

Startled, the children glance up at the gaggle of strangers lining the fence above them. Quietly consulting one another, they disappear back inside the schoolhouse, as shy as birds.

“Damn,” swears Patrice. “Fucking apartheid.”

“Everybody wants it like this,” insists Benny. “Jerusalemites have learned to live together but apart for generations.”

“Now you sound like bloody Likud,” growls Shiraz. “Separate but unequal.”

“Oh my G-d,” replies Benny, taken aback. “Maybe you’re right. I never thought about it like that.”

Shaking his head, Barry sighs wearily. ¡Mierda! Maybe Benny is prepped regarding the West Bank, but he seems woefully uninformed when it comes to East Jerusalem. “Go back and find out the party line,” he requests. “I refuse to believe the Arabs of East Jerusalem are content being penned up like cattle.”

 

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Avi.

Cousin Avi is one scary dude. Not actually estranged, he and Erit have at best a distanced relationship. While Barry and Erit can look down their noses at everyone living in Israel simply because they don’t live in America, Avi divides his time equally between Jerusalem and California. Whereas they are writers and can secretly chortle at working stiffs, Avi runs a political consultancy that wields real power. While Barry preaches that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” Avi isn’t averse to chopping off heads. A chameleon, neither Republican nor Democrat, Avi works both sides of the political spectrum. He is consul for several small Eastern European countries who find his lobbying efforts in Hollywood and Silicon Valley both timely and effective. Where Barry and Erit have three million dollars in the bank, Cousin Avi has seven million. The fact that he doesn’t give a shit scares them. Having fought in several of Israel’s wars, when in America, Avi likes to take helicopters onto some of Colorado’s more inaccessible peaks in the San Juan Mountains and downhill ski on virgin snow.

“It’s too hot to stay cooped up in the apartment. Let’s visit Masada,” he purrs into the phone.

So while the rest of the gang does the museums, B & E accept the invite of Erit’s least attentive cousin. As chisel-jawed and crinkly-eyed as Paul Newman, his scalp is shaved to a quarter inch of peach fuzz. He exudes charisma from every pore. Dressed in hiking boots, khaki shorts and a green jungle shirt with a dozen pouches, he drives them down to Masada in a vintage Renault that sputters like a tea kettle. An enthusiast of archaic technology, he has one of those cassette adapters that plugs into the tape deck on the dashboard, allowing him to play compact discs on a portable CD player. Blaring from tinny speakers, his musical taste centers on Rami Fortis’s punk bands from the 1980’s and rapper Lay-Z.

“Why bother with all that mechanical junk to play music if all you listen to is techno?” complains Erit.

“I’m into Conceptual Art,” Avi exclaims. “It’s the idea of the thing that counts. I’d play 8-track if I could get the equipment.”

“What’s 8-track?” asks Erit.

Barry and Avi look at one another and roll their eyes. “Still psychic after all these years?” taunts Avi. “Or is it psycho?” An obvious throwback to their childhood. “You never knew Erit when she was a girl. A total tomboy. She took piano lessons but preferred rope climbing.”

“That’s true,” she admits. Barry hopes Avi can make some sense out of modern Israel. Erit harbors no such conviction. The fact that Avi writes for rightwing political magazines in the States is just another mark against him. “How are your parents?” she remembers to ask.

“They’re in Tel Aviv working at a desalination plant,” Avi replies, laughing. “Can you imagine? At their age? Engineers never grow old. They convert sea water into drinking water. My sister says hello.”

“Ronit?”

“That would be her, unless she’s changed her name.”

“Still with the military?”

“She continues to devise weapons of limited destruction,” Avi cracks, with obvious pride. “It’s all so hush-hush, even I don’t know what she does. We’re Israelis. We achieve.”

His teeth are clenched so tightly, Barry’s getting lockjaw.

Masada is a mountain fortress 1300 feet above the Dead Sea. According to Josephus’ account, it became the last redoubt in Israel’s revolt against Rome in 69 – 73 A.D. Besieged for three months, its 953 Jewish rebels preferred to take their own lives rather than be captured and enslaved by the Romans. Selecting ten executioners by lot, the Jews allowed their throats to be slit, one by one, after which the executioners dispatched each other. When the Romans arrived, they were greeted by the only survivors: two women and five children. Modern Israelis see Masada as a symbol of resistance, resilience and courage.

Starting at the Masada Museum, they take the Snake Trail on the eastern side of the mountain. They hike for 10 minutes in silence. Avi gazes at the Dead Sea through binoculars. “So, how do you like Israel?” he asks.

Oh, no! Not again, Barry groans. If I say I don’t like it, I get an argument. If I say I do, I get an argument. “Too early to tell. Hard to say. No comment,” he mumbles, dissembling.

“C’mon, man!” guffaws Avi. “I’m not asking you to sign away your inheritance. You’ve been here awhile, what d’ya think?!”

“NO COMMENT.”

“That figures. This is the year of Disaffected Jews,” Avi remarks.

” ‘Scusa?” replies Barry tartly. “Say again?”

“You’ve got Lubavitch, ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism in America. Where do people like Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein come from?”

“Who is Jill Stein?” pants Barry. The climb is leaving him badly winded. It must be 100 degrees on the mountain.

“Now you sound like Ayn Rand,” comments Avi with a dry chuckle. ” ‘Who is John Galt?’ Jill Stein is the presumptive nominee of the Green Party. She’ll probably get four percent of the vote. Another Disaffected Jew. She wants to cut off military appropriations to Israel. She favors Palestinian statehood. She wants to try Israelis for war crimes.” Pulling out an Army compass, he checks magnetic north.

“I thought the Greens were like the Amish, non-violent, horse and buggy, homegrown chickens and a cow in every yard. Anti-nuclear.”

“That was the 1980’s edition,” Avi comments bitterly. “Since the Communists hijacked it, the Green Party has become rabidly anti-Semitic.”

“I prefer to think of them as pro-Palestinian,” hisses Erit.

“Not since the 1970’s, have I met so many anti-Zionist Jews,” Avi insists. “Not pro-Palestinian. Anti-Zionist. Tough times breed contempt. As the last of your ‘pro-Palestinians’ leaves the smoldering wreckage that was Israel, who’ll turn out the lights?” he asks. Returning to the binoculars, he scouts their surroundings for terrorists, grinning. “We’ll have peace about the same time that Antarctica qualifies for the Winter Olympics! Sea lions take gold in tobogganing! Penguins take gold in slalom!”

“You bugging,” observes Barry, gulping water and chewing on an energy bar. Between the heat and the exertion, Masada is killing him. “You’re upset. How very post-modern!” He’s curious about Avi’s living arrangements Stateside, but bites his tongue, lest he find himself extending an invitation. You live in Manhattan, everyone wants to stay with you when they come visit the Big Apple.

“The stylish left inside Israel is always rending its garments and crying ‘Mea culpa! My bad. Forgive me that I am not kinder to the Palestinians.’ It’s damn hard to cuddle a porcupine,” Avi complains. “You get shot full of quills.”

“This… That’s…” pants Barry. “That’s what I hate about you proponents of realpolitik,” he blurts, perhaps the most honest thing he’s said in the last 30 years. The altitude is having that effect. “You see the glass as half empty, while I see it as a golden opportunity to create an entirely new reality! All of us together as brothers and sisters, united. Man, woman and child. A spiritual rebirth!” To hell with it! He plops down on a cairn of stones by the side of the trail. He needs to rest.

“We’re into the other thing,” Erit proclaims adamantly.

“What other thing?”

“The alternative universe. Astral projection. Time warps and black holes. Dark matter lives!”

“Not on my watch,” growls Avi, looking, for the first time, truly angry.

Erit lets it slide.

“What are you going to do about the Shiites and the Sunnis?” asks Avi. “The Alawites versus everybody else? It’s not like every Arab loves his brother.”

“That’s cold,” complains Barry. He looks out over the valley floor and feels himself blacking out, his vision a sweaty blur.

“You’re trembling,” remarks Avi, opening his knapsack and handing him salt tablets and a fresh water bottle. “The Jews of Masada held out for three months and when faced with defeat, they chose death over enslavement. I wonder what the American Jews will choose under a fascist Trump presidency.”

“That’s not fair!” explodes Erit furiously.

“History repeats itself. We’re back in the 1930’s and it sure doesn’t resemble farce to me,” suggests Avi, calculating their elevation on his smartphone.

How barbaric! decides Barry. “You are so far to the right of Genghis Khan, you risk falling off the edge of the planet,” he protests angrily. “I thought it was just your iconoclastic, libertarian style. I didn’t think you actually believed all that stuff…” Groaning, he adds, “Next time, let’s take the cable car.”

Avi laughs, not even winded. A typical sabra, born in Israel, bred for the desert.

How unreal, thinks Barry. We come all this way and the bad guys get all the breaks!

 

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It turns out, Masada is only a foretaste. Every day after 10 a.m., the cool, clear air of morning gets incinerated by a yellow sun that fries everything to a golden crisp. Panting in the blast furnace heat, chugging liters of water, Barry and his crew fear for their very survival. “Get me through this one day, Lord,” they pray. Reason says it’s just hot weather, but instinct rings alarm bells in their heads. “Sweat freely,” reply the Israelis. They do.

Eating a light lunch in a Greek bistro in Petah Tikva, Erit orders dolmades. “I think these stuffed grape leaves were rolled in the last century,” she complains.

“They are marinated in olive oil,” explains the server, a dark, petulant Sephardic Jew whose family was among the few to escape Salonika before the Nazi massacre. “Dolmades have a very long shelf life.”

“They are rancid,” Erit insists, demanding to see the manager.

The closest thing to a manager is the cook, who comes out in a white smock covered in blood stains. Bald as a bowling ball, he carries a meat cleaver. Waving it threateningly, he asks, “Why did you order dolmades if you cannot eat them?”

“It’s fine,” sighs Barry, shoving the guilty appetizer to one side. “Fuhgeddaboudit. Here, Erit, eat some hummus. Try the pickles. Tomatoes! Pickled tomatoes.”

“If grape leaves are on the menu and we ordered them and they served them,” she reasons, “they at least should be edible.”

“Try the moussaka!” Barry pleads. “It’s pleasantly spicy.”

“What about my grape leaves?!”

BAM!!! With a mighty crash, the cook smashes his meat cleaver upon the offending item, shattering the white porcelain plate and sending shards of pottery in every direction. Thus rendering the meal inedible. “PAY… and… LEAVE!” he bellows, his face red, eyes bloodshot with anger.

Temperamental Greeks, thinks Barry. Fortunately, most of their group has already devoured enough to hold them until dinner. Barry pulls out his black American Express Centurion charge card.

“Mah-zeh?” asks the cook suspiciously, while the server rolls his eyes.

“Benny!” yelps Barry. “Explain to these cretins what a credit card does.            Pul-lease!”

“That’s a hard one,” Benny points out. “This is Petah Tikva. Can’t you pay cash?”

By scrounging everyone’s shekels, they are able to cover the bill. “We’ll go to the bank as soon as we’re out of here. Or an ATM machine,” Barry promises.

“I don’t mind paying my way,” claims Barbie Quint bitchily, “but I never forgive a moocher.”

“I’M NOT A MOOCHER!” howls Barry.

“Yu-u-u-uge!” Barbie primly replies.

Another meal down the hatch! Another Israeli experience.

Avi has given them a phone number to a member of the Israel Bridge Federation. When they call, a Russian answers. “Da?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m calling to discuss a bridge date with, uh, Yosef.”

“Da. I’m Yosef.”

Barry explains who they are.

“Seven o’clock,” says Yosef, giving them directions. “You’ll pay the fee in shekels?”

“Of course. We’re looking forward to the game.”

“Da, da. We cannot take dollars,” Yosef laments. “Some shlemiel might accuse us of currency smuggling.”

“We’ll play a lot of bridge,” Barry suggests excitedly.

“Oh? You are in Israel a long time?”

“No. I meant we’ll play every evening while we are here. We’re leaving at the end of the week.”

“This is not a lot of bridge,” the Russian admonishes him, making him wish he’d never made the call.

“Lama lo? WHY NOT?” interjects Erit, taking the phone. “Are you afraid to play with us?”

Ta-ta! It’s all right. The Russian can’t wait to see them that evening for bridge.

Erit has a penchant for bidding “No Trump.”

 

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As the days wear on, everyone admires Benny, their guide, saddled with a dozen thankless tasks. “Benny didn’t like his time in the IDF,” confides Shmuel, the driver, to Barry. “So a lot of it is personal. Getting back at people in the military. His position on the Settlement Watch team of Crazy for Peace pays next to nothing, but Benny’s a clever boy. He always finds other sources of income.” True to form, Benny tries to sell them customized Swatch plastic wristwatches smuggled from Switzerland.

They bus to Tiberius to inspect the ruins of a Roman villa purportedly once the home of centurion Marcus Fartus. Standing on the crumbly site strewn with potshards, Benny lectures them on the righteousness of their mission: “The French statesman Georges Clemenceau told us, ‘Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.’ I think he meant it’s not melodious, it’s no Brahm’s lullaby and it may not even be justice. Behold, my friends, the shattered remnants of the spoils of war. Tempus fugit, time is short, war’s ill-gotten gains are at best temporal. Booty is as booty does. Thus passes away the glory that was Rome, assigned to the dustbin of history. Only the proverbial pushpins and paperclips of antiquity remain.”

“I don’t see any pushpins,” Oso complains, plucking a dirty paperclip from the ground.

“They must be on the other side of the villa,” Barry suggests sardonically.

Kicking at the rubble, Barbie Quint announces, “Lookee here, this whole show don’t impress me much.”

As if on cue, Land Rovers come roaring up in a cloud of dust. Students from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev embark carrying buckets, shovels, trowels and sieves. Sporting Timberland hiking boots, blue shorts, a baggy university sweatshirt, a floppy blue hat and a bright red beard, their nominal leader marches up to Benny and declares, “Scram! This is an archeological dig! Who gave you permission to be here? Fuck off, fellah!”

“I was just showing— ”

“Yeah, yeah! Take it up with the university provost!”

So Barry and the gang get back on the air-conditioned bus and proceed to the West Bank. At the security barrier, a wall reminiscent of West Berlin and Donald Trump, an armed Israeli soldier climbs aboard. Walking down the aisle, he points to each parcel in the overhead rack. “Shay-lee?” he asks. “Shay-lee?” He waits patiently for someone to claim the item as his own. When the baggage has been accounted for, he walks down the aisle again, slowly, staring into each person’s face in turn. “Kadima! ” he commands, signaling with the business end of his rifle that certain parties should vacate the vehicle: Shmuel the driver, Benny the guide, Patrice Gerard, Oso Buko and Oki Nawa. Introducing them to the joys of a truly thorough examination of their documents and the reason they are in Israel. “If we’re lucky, they’ll skip the full body cavity search,” Benny suggests consolingly, dreaming of fat tips.

“I’m poet laureate of my prefecture in Japan,” sobs Oki Nawa, plainly terrified. “I’m here in Israel to compare and contrast as many kinds of falafel as we can find. I saw graffiti on the walls. Is this a hippy hangout?”

Writers!

“We members of the black community take offense at your racial profiling,” Patrice Gerard tells the Israeli soldiers, handing them his business card. “I can get you very reasonable rates regarding Holocaust survivor demands for restitution from the German government for artwork looted by the Nazis. I’m familiar with the process and have colleagues who sprechen Deutsch. In the meantime, I protest this curbside outrage in the name of the Malagasy Jews, the Lost Tribe of Israel in Madagascar. Indian Ocean, calamine lotion, mad Maddy Madagascar be the biblical land of Ophir, a major source of lemurs and vanilla extract. Descendants of the Levites be ’round the ‘hood in Vatanasina-Vohipeno. You knows any of them Joes? Ark of the Covenant be buried on the island. No lie! It’s a good thang. Why you makin’ a beef?”

Wisely, Benny shuts him down before the situation escalates any further. Eventually, everyone is allowed to resume their journey.

 

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They make their first stop in the West Bank, a hilly desert full of scrub.

“This is our WALK FOR FREEDOM!” chants Oso belligerently. He sashays forth, looking regal in his round cloth hat and flowing, multi-colored African robe.

“But you’re only walking from the bus stop to the Visitors’ Center,” counters Roger Kaminski. A journalist, he demands a modicum of fact mixed in with the rhetoric. He writes well, but everything comes out scathingly negative. Which is why Barry has chosen him, hoping for an exposé or three. Israeli white slavers. Russian prostitutes. Maybe the Israeli Connection in drug trafficking.

“Even the longest journey begins with a single step,” Oso declares magnanimously. “Walk the walk and talk the talk, whitey.”

A young Arab boy approaches, offering to sell them souvenirs. “Wood from the cross, parchment from the Dead Sea Scrolls, shell casings from Baruch Goldstein’s Uzi machine gun.”

Charitable, Barry buys three shell casings.  Irritated, Erit tells him he’s an idiot. “It’s murderabilia,” Barry protests. “There’s always a resale market for this stuff.”

“Whatever,” fumes his wife.

Looking over the sandstone building, Barbie Quint announces, “That there don’t impress me much.” They’re beginning to understand that she says this upon arrival at every new location.

Inside the Visitors’ Center, they meet Yehuda, a weathered local politician of some renown. Dressed in Arab sandals, sun-bleached denim shorts and a torn white tee, two days’ stubble on his chiseled jaw, he’s a walking example of the psychic toll the Occupied Territories take on Jew and Arab alike. Of all the positions open to him as a local dignitary, the one Yehuda wanted most was Chief of the Regional Power Grid. Thoroughly entrenched, he loves driving from settlement to settlement after 10 p.m. every night in his jeep, Snap’s The Power blaring on the stereo: “I’ve got the power! I’ve got the power!…” Unlocking the cage to the control panel just off the main road at each checkpoint, he pulls out his bullhorn and gaily shouts in Hebrew “Lights out, suckers!” Pulling the switch, he plunges his coreligionists into medieval darkness. Nobody crosses Yehuda. He has the power.

After the usual greetings, shalom this, shalom that, women in sun frocks  and kerchiefs serve them Turkish coffee in tiny cups. Each coffee comes with a glass of chilled well water to offset dehydration. “Le chayim,” exclaim their hosts. “To life!” The visitors walk around, studying the charts, graphs and displays lining the walls. These illustrate population growth, crops, livestock, economics. Facts and figures. There’s also a presentation about SodaStream, an example of the pernicious influence of the BDS movement: Hounded out of the Occupied Territories by the threat of an international boycott, now relocated inside Israel proper, the once-thriving local factory ist kaputt — it’s gone! — and 470 paid Palestinian jobs with it. Call it withdrawal symptoms. “If we withdraw from the West Bank, it will just become a repeat of Gaza,” Yehuda tells them. “Israelis out, terrorists in. Everyone loses except the terrorists.”

A considerate host, he takes Barry on a tour of the fields. Accustomed to getting a baker’s dozen on every purchase, one-on-one, no witnesses, Barry hopes to get the real dope regarding the occupation. “What do you grow in the greenhouses?” he asks for starters.

“Carnations,” replies Yehuda, taking him inside. “For the European market. We’re losing market shares to Spain, but flowers are still a moneymaker. We grow tomatoes and eggplants, too, you know, but they sell so cheaply around here, you can’t make a living on fresh produce.”

Aha! Exploitation of the local economy!

They walk back out into the sunshine. A Bedouin stands by the nozzle to an irrigation pipe. As the sparkling water gushes forth, he fills one of his two plastic buckets. He has a blue one and a white one, the colors of Israel! He smiles at the westerners sheepishly.

“Why does he look so guilty?” Barry asks, visions of Mandingos dancing in his head.

“Because, Jewboy, he’s stealing water,” harrumphs Yehuda.

“Hey, you punkin’ me? ” asks Barry. “Surely it’s his water, too!”

“He didn’t pay for prospecting, drilling the well, the steel pipes, the nozzle or the faucet. What he is doing is simply stealing water.”

“Certainly the water belongs to him, too!” insists Barry. “It seems so obvious. He lives on the land, you live on the land. The sunlight, the air, the water should be shared equally.”

“You think so?”

“Of course!”

“Listen, grauber yung, not even the Bedouin thinks that!” Yehuda concludes vehemently, pointing at the robed Arab, who dances around in the hot sun, embarrassed. Embarrassed, but getting the water.

Despite further probing, Yehuda’s well seems to run dry right before Barry’s eyes.

 

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DATELINE, Hebron – A group of renowned international writers, advocating greater autonomy for the Palestinian people, today visited the grave of notorious mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli-American physician who went berserk in 1994, took his machine gun to the local mosque in Hebron and killed 29 Palestinians, wounding over 100 others. Under the leadership of prize-winning American author Barry “The Dude” Lipowitz, the writers stood sweltering in the heat at the settlement of Kiryat Arba. Contemplating this shrine to the Settler Movement, Lipowitz warned, “We’re not having the bestest day, but we’ll do what we can to understand the enormity of criminal conduct behind the actions of this murderous creep. Hitler would be proud. Or Mussolini. Maybe Stalin. He would have made one of them proud, I’m sure! Ou sommes nous? There are certainly Arab-haters in the world, and no doubt they idolize someone like Geldman. We, on the other hand, think Goldwasser had a language deficiency. Unable to express his rage in words, he resorted to bullets.”

Goldstein, that was his name, Goldstein! George Orwell’s 1984. Goldstein, the Leon Trotsky fifth-columnist betraying the revolution through his simple declarations and insidious propaganda. A little like Donald Trump. Goldstein! Barry and his entourage know all about Emmanuel Goldstein, thank you very much. Obviously, in this case, the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree!

“Baruch Goldstein,” Benny the guide intones, a sour look on his kisser. “The inscription says he died a martyr with clean hands and a pure heart. His admirers place small stones on his grave in lieu of flowers.”

“How did he die?” asks Barry.

“Oh, the enraged Muslims overwhelmed him and beat him to death.”

“Sweet,” gulps Barry.

“The last time I was here,” hisses Erit, dressed in a halter top and shocking pink hot pants that accentuate her curvy legs, “I brushed the stones off his headstone. Such a beast deserves no commemorative stones!”

“Show some respect for the dead,” murmurs Shmuel the driver, looking shocked.

“What about the Palestinian dead?!” rants Erit, her face a furious red.

“Relax. Relax, honey,” implores Barry, nervously taking her arm to console her.

Erit pulls out an e-cig and stalks off for a quick time-out.

“Hey, you!” catcalls a group of local boys, abandoning their game of soccer. “What you doin’ with that creep?!” Pointing at Benny, they address him as “Hey, fatso!” Never actually touching anyone, they manage to stampede among the adults in a threatening horde. Soon, they are joined by angry settlers shouting “Get outta here!” and “Murderers! You’re no pacifists. You don’t mind violence, as long as the victims are Israelis. What about our dead? If you cut us, do we not bleed?!”

“That’s… you…” Barry sputters, but it’s like trying to argue with a swarm of angry badgers. He feels like he’s being ripped to shreds.

More children dog their group, some holding aloft black and white photographic enlargements of Jayne Mansfield. “You people come here, understanding nothing,” insists a youngster who can’t be more than 10. “Then you treat us like Arabs!”

“Somebody has to portray you as the blackguards, troublemakers and provocateurs you are!” Barry blurts out. What the f—, I’m having a political argument with a 10-year-old??? he marvels, appalled.

Having heard enough polemics, the kid asks instead, “Hey, you wanna buy a Jayne Mansfield poster? Fifty shekels! I can get you Ann-Margret Olsson in hot pants! Shiksa hotties sell.” The kid has a whole sales speech worked out. “For you, ’cause I like you, special price: Two for a hundred!”

“Are those by any chance cypress trees?” asks Sir Razor Babcock, pointing daintily to a clump of foliage in the distance.

“I don’t know,” Barry replies, hightailing it back to the safety of the bus. “I’m not an arborist.”

 

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Clutching the Palestinian waif to his breast, Mike Hudson braved a barrage of insults and innuendo from the angry protesters. Let he who lives in a glass house throw the first stone. His eyes smarting from the tear gas fired in canisters by the panicked troops, he rounded a corner and stumbled into the Aid Station. Karen, impeccable in her starched brown uniform of the Women’s Auxiliary, approached, brushing white splotches of encrusted pepper spray from his leather vest. Her hands trembled ever so slightly. “Oh, Mike,” she breathed, “I was so worried…”

 

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A Birthright Israel tour group is staying at their hotel, 40 young adults plus chaperones. Even if he’ll stoop to churning out YA lit, using the pen name Alicia Bennett, to rake in some guap, it bothers Barry that a crowd of noisy kids in identical Taglit T-shirts are utilizing a five-star hotel. Aren’t there kibbutz guesthouses for groups like them? This whole Birthright Israel thing strikes him as preposterous propaganda. You never see any Sudanese children in a Birthright group, only Americans. The Israelis are playing them for suckers, Barry feels, when all the Israelis really want is the three billion dollars a year in military appropriation from the U.S. Congress. It makes his stomach ache to see the kids in the lobby, gaily laughing and earnestly talking, wildly enthusiastic. Barry’s group of adults aren’t laughing.  Nor are they wildly enthusiastic. “While you’re laughing, the teenagers of Gaza are weeping,” he tells two boys and a girl who are practicing secret handshakes.

“You mean the Palestinians?” asks a redheaded boy whose nametag says “Ricky.”

“I. Mean. The. Palestinians,” answers Barry meaningfully, clutching his tablet and thrusting out his chin.

“We meet with groups of young Palestinians as part of the program,” replies the girl.

Empty-headed bitch! “Well?” asks Barry.

“They’re having a very hard time. They’re really unhappy. They want a homeland. Only we’re not going to give them ours. Still, we all think peace is the answer.”

See! It’s totally impossible to talk to these people!

 

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Shmuel the driver calls in sick. He’s had enough, disassociating himself from the project. It could be their behavior. Whenever they pass another tour bus on the road, they scream, wave their arms and stamp their feet. The smoked glass windows mask most of this pandemonium, but Shmuel had taken to wearing chipped green ear protectors left over from his Army career. At rest stops, Barry and his gang boorishly accost groups of Japanese tourists, schoolchildren on field trips and, especially, other Americans. Hooting, sticking their tongues out and pretending to pick their noses, they yammer in Hungaro-Croatian, a fake language they’ve developed to confound their enemies. This is Israel and they fight way below their weight class; they make damn sure to avoid brawls. They’d end up in the hospital.

Shmuel’s disappearance is a wake-up call. “Reality check, people!” announces Barry. “This shows we’re doing some good.” His fondest hope is to have the BDS movement rechristened to Badger, Disrupt and Stymie. The actual BDS proponents he encounters online in their chat rooms take a rather dim view of this suggestion. “What are the economic consequences?” they keep asking. Yasser, the lanky new driver, is a 20-something punk with coal-black eyes and a gun-barrel stare. An Israeli Arab, he is named after the peerless Yasser Arafat, freedom fighter, esteemed leader of the PLO and sticky-fingered father of his country. This Yasser, taking his instructions solely from Benny, is so angry at everything and everyone, he won’t even talk with the rest of them.

 

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“Barry Lipowitz and Erit Sameach, we’re B’Tselem,” declares a talking midget, putting aside a copy of the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth to ambush them in the lobby of their hotel.

“Oh, wow!” replies Barry. “T-Slam, eh? I have your album ‘Loud Radio’ on vinyl. You have no idea how exciting it is to actually meet one of you musicians!”

“That’s not us! We document human rights violations in the Occupied Territories.”

“What d’ya want us to do about it?”

“What does he want?” whispers Erit, leaving a dull ache buzzing in Barry’s ear.

“How can you write about the situation without consulting us???” complains the dwarf.

“As Ronnie Reagan said, ‘There you go again, casting aspirations,’ ” replies Barry.

“He means aspersions,” corrects Erit. “Casting aspersions.”

“We’re happy to talk to everyone!” Barry insists. “We’ve never encountered an Israeli act of self-defense that we couldn’t smear. Listen, any response is a disproportionate response. How many dead Palestinians does it take to change a light bulb? War is war. Are we supposed to give Israel credit for avoiding civilian casualties?”

“We talk, you listen,” suggests the dwarf. “Do you ever do that? Listen?” Checking dates, they touch smartphones, automatically exchanging personal data.

It takes a while for Barry and his crew to realize that all over Israel, their cohorts in the anti-war movement are in a months’ long process of mourning over the passing of Swedish sculptor Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, designer of the iconic peace symbol of a revolver with its barrel tied in a knot. Entitled “Non Violence,” Reuterswärd created the knotted gun in protest over the assassination of his friend John Lennon. The image became so ubiquitous, it even appeared on postage stamps. United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric calls it “a true symbol of disarmament… a true symbol of peaceful resolution of conflicts.” There’s a version of it outside the U. N. building in New York. Tourists love to pose with it in the background. All politics is local.

Barry is sure his time has passed. He remains “America’s greatest living Jewish author,” certainly, but no more than that. So he feels pleasantly surprised to find himself in demand. As a person, as a traveling companion, maybe even a friend. It’s one thing to never return calls, something quite different when your phone never rings.  A practitioner of the former, as of late Barry has become familiar with the latter. The New Yorker no longer publishes his short fiction.

Tramping around the West Bank from settlement to settlement in their bus, they don’t feel so much unwanted as a fifth wheel. Whatever opinions they have don’t seem to make a dent among people whose entire lives are taken up, hardscrabble, with farming, harvesting, growing grapes, making wine, educating their children and carving out an existence.

Stopped by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere to take pictures of the local flora, Barry spreads his arms wide and cries, “I christen thee Wadi Del Margo. Ladies and gentlemen, timeshares are available! Please speak to my secretary on my left.”  Such is frustration. He’s reduced to making bad jokes.

Armed to the teeth with high-tech surveillance equipment, they wound their way amidst the squat gray Arab villages of Tatooine, the incessant warbling of Arab women’s voices piped in from above. Unbidden, their unbridled doubt joined the roar of the diesel bus engine, echoing forlornly across both olive grove and citrus orchard. Justice cried out from a cloudless blue sky, he writes, intent on crystalizing the group experience down to its very essence. A tingle up his leg turns out to be a centipede.

Standing at the entrance to still another barbed wire enclosure topped with concertina wire, they drink from their plastic water bottles, rub the dust from their eyes and wonder if they’ll ever get to the root of the story.

Barry grows angry with the settlers. He and his group are world-famous writers, yet these dumb villagers seem more concerned over their livestock and pets than making a good impression. Such nonchalance will not go unpunished, Barry promises himself. These settler fanatics are bad news Jews. They give Judaism a bad name. He, Barry Lipowitz, will skewer their self-righteousness in blistering prose.

He can’t wait to get home and get started!

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Barry and Benny the guide are accosted by an Israeli woman in Hasidic garb. “Mah atah rote-seh?” she demands gruffly, looking Barry up and down. “Lar! Whatchoo want?” she adds in a Boston accent.

“We’re here to protest— ”

“Your Arab driver says you’re touring Judea and Samaria,” she exclaims, talking straight over him. “What about the Golan Heights? Youse ain’t seen Israel ’till youse seen the Golan.”

“— protest the mistreatment of the Palestinians and the illegal expropriation of their land— ”

“Yeah, right!” she insists abruptly. “Only, up on the Golan, we got lovely rooms, Swiss chalets, guest houses with all the mod coms, most within ten miles of the Golan Heights Winery. They got the cleanest air you’ll ever breathe in your life, superlative hiking trails and views over Syria like you won’t believe.”

” — ‘Cause the inequality reeks to high heaven and I mean, just look at you, the Settler Movement. The Israeli Army holds the Palestinians down while you run roughshod— and for what, a lot of pre-fab concrete blockhouses and barbed wire enclosures! You’re back living behind barbed wire, just like the Jews in the concentration camps!”

“Listen, bub, I know Debbie Wasserman Schultz and you ain’t no Debbie Wasserman Schultz,” she declares. “Now get serious! I’m talkin’ Bed and Breakfast. B and B. It’s simple to book online. You can get an Egged bus or take a taxi. They arrange your arrival at the checkpoints, they see you have plenty of grub, they provide maps of the area. My brother runs a guest house. I can guarantee you the time of your life! And if you’re religious— ”

“No! No way, José. You don’t understand why we’re here!”

“Oh, I know exactly who you are, Mr. America,” she declares, without a trace of condescension. Pity, if anything. Spitting, she says, “You struggle to meet the car payments on your SUV, you spend your days searching for a café with decent wi-fi, then you think you own King Solomon’s copper mines if you can pay the rent and still have some geld left in your pocket.”

“What are you talking about???”

“You are a shanda fur die goy, an embarrassment to the Jews! Listen, 57% of religious hate crimes in America are directed at us Jews. We, who constitute less than 2% of the population. We don’t need you adding kindling to the fire! Look at the life you lead. Get it together, mensch!  You’re so farblondjet, you’re coming back around the other way! Check your Bible. Join the Settler Movement. Learn to live Orthodox. You won’t regret leaving the empty life behind, I can assure you!”

“We are patriotic Americans!” insists Barry, ready to tear his hair out. “Look! Boat shoes. Purchased at Macy’s. I’ve made two tax-deductible contributions to the Clinton Foundation! Two! On the 4th of July, Cuatro de Julio, we light fuse and retire quickly. I don’t see any Israelis lighting fuse and retiring quickly on the Cuatro de Julio. Unless, of course, they are blowing up half of Gaza!” Helplessly, he turns to Benny, who apologetically explains to the woman in Hebrew that he’s a spokesperson for the Israeli left and opposes virtually everything she represents. When he finishes speaking, she spits once again at their feet, turns to Barry and says, “Google it. Golan Heights + B and B.” Turning, she marches through the gate without a backward glance.

Word! Barry concludes. This Settler business is a lot harder than I thought.

 

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They are tired, it’s been a series of long days. Barry decides to reward himself by having sex with Galit, the attractive brunette from the Ministry of Culture. They are in the bar of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, drinking cognac. “Cross-cultural pollination requires spadework,” he jokes. Galit doesn’t seem to get it. Taking his remark seriously, she delivers a long, involved explanation of the effect of Americans on the Settler Movement vis à vis Israelis.

Downing his third cognac, Barry says “Let’s fuck!”

“Excuse me?” answers Galit, blushing crimson, a fleeting smile crossing her luscious lips.

“You heard me, let’s do this thing,” suggests Barry in his best Scout leader basso profundo tone of voice. Then he beams like a 10-year-old, just in case she takes offense, busy undressing her with his eyes.

“Well,” she replies, playing with her pack of cigarettes on the counter top. “I am flattered, but the services provided to writers and journalists by our ministry don’t include that. If you are truly in need, I can suggest an escort service. They are Russian, but discreet.”

“C’mon,” chuckles Barry, “you know you want to. Booty call! Who’s your daddy? I’m your daddy!”

“Well, it’s late,” remarks Galit, checking her Rolex and hopping from the bar stool. “You’ve had a lot to drink.”

Barry takes that as a provisional “yes.” He offers to escort her to her car.

“That is not necessary.”

“I insist!”

At the car, he waits until she opens the driver side door before grabbing her roughly and pulling her to him. His need is very great.

Kneeing him in the groin, Galit swings her heavy purse into his face, pulls out a canister of pepper spray and gives him a royal dousing.

Blinded, on his knees on the rough macadam, Barry says in a loud voice, “I take it this means a tentative ‘no.’ ”

Ripping open two foil packages, she provides him with portable hand wipes. She stands by her car while Barry cleans the chemical from his eyes, nose and mouth. Israelis! World leaders in self-defense!

The life of a writer is never easy, he consoles himself, stumbling to his feet.

“Good night,” says Galit curtly and drives off into a night humming with big-city traffic.

 

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Barry has an epiphany. Lying in bed, asleep, The Land of Israel calls out to him. Awakening amidst lightning and thunder, a deep voice rumbles from the heavens, “Barry Lipowitz! I am Yahweh, the Lord Your G-d. I command you to become devout and follow the laws of the Torah.”

He looks desperately to Erit, but zonked out on barbiturates, she sleeps as if dead.

“You mean become an Orthodox Jew?” asks Barry, unsure where this conversation is going. “The settlers are Orthodox Jews. No good can come of it.”

“I have made a covenant with the People of Israel,” proclaims the voice of G-d. “You shall have no other god but me. Bow down before your maker. Show penance for your trespasses. Obey the laws.”

“I do,” insists Barry. “I’m a gastronomical Jew.” Feeling this fulfills his commitment, he turns over and goes back to sleep.

 

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The next morning, they depart for Ramallah. As they bump along in the tour bus, klezmer music adds an Eastern European vibe. Route 60, an asphalt road, unwinds before them, meandering over the hills like a strand of weak spaghetti. Once past the Arab village of Jenin, a perennial flashpoint, the road intersects with Ramallah Street. Passing through three heavily armed checkpoints, they arrive at the lobby of the exquisite five-star Mövenpick Hotel on Emile Habibi Street in south central Ramallah. Head tilted skyward under a ridiculous canvas sunhat, Barbie Quint examines the façade of the $42.5 million luxury hotel and announces, “If it don’t say ‘Trump’ right up front, it sure as hell don’t impress anybody. Leastways, me!”

They are ushered into a conference room and served tea. Through the sun doors, they can see a patio and a swimming pool, its blue azure water beckoning. Instead, they are given a lecture by one Abdullah from the Palestinian Authority’s Office of Information. Gruff, with a “take it or leave it” attitude, dressed western, sporting French cuffs and a Guard’s tie, smelling of cologne, his English is clipped and precise. Roger Kaminski records him on his cell phone. “The Israeli aggressor is a thief in the night, stealing our land and oppressing the people!” Abdullah suggests, deeply offended on behalf of Palestinians everywhere. “The land of Palestine is our holy inheritance,” he hectors them. “Ever since the Ottoman Turks, we have been betrayed. They sold so much of our land to the Jews, land where our fathers and grandfathers are buried. Heretics and foreigners, the Jews show no respect for our culture. They exploit Arab labor… for a pittance! No wonder our young people are desperate for a solution, their wrath exploding uncontrollably. Palestinian anger knows no bounds!  Entire villages rise up, crying for intifada, crying for vengeance on the oppressor!

“Make no mistake, the West Bank is Palestinian. Give us our political sovereignty— free of Israeli interference— give us a land bridge to Gaza, a unified Palestine, and we shall work out the details.

“The so-called Two-State Solution is devolving into a two-state delusion. Every day, more Israeli settlements spring up, further separating Arab villages. How can we Palestinians ever attain a cohesive nation if the Israelis divide the West Bank into cantons?

“We, too, believe in a two-state solution, mind you! A unified Palestine on the one hand and the Jews living somewhere else, in a second state. Two states. Palestine and Madagascar. Palestine and Uganda. Anywhere else that will take the Jews. Cuba. Venezuela. Tasmania.

“We see Hamas and Hezbollah as moderate rebels. No more genocide! They kill off the Jews one at a time.

“The Israeli aggressor must be thrown into the sea,” concludes Abdullah. “After that, we can begin long-term negotiations.”

Barry records the speech on his tablet. He finds this data extremely useful. Israel-bashing never goes out of style.

 

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They spend the afternoon at Crazy for Peace’s own hillside bungalow outside Jerusalem, doing laundry and catching up with themselves. They sit in the shade on wicker chairs and concrete benches, sipping almond smoothies handmade from blanched, crushed almonds and individually mixed. Everyone has a hundred emails to delete from their online accounts. There are angry emojis from groups who feel ignored: The activist organization Gush Shalom. Parents Circle Families Forum. Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement. Neled: Women for Coexistence. Tandi, the Movement of Democratic Women for Israel. Bat Shalom, the Coalition of Women for Peace. The New Israel Fund. Machsom Watch who monitor checkpoints and the bureaucracy of the Occupied Territories. Zochrot who document the Palestinian naqba or “catastrophe” that was the founding of Israel. Combatants for Peace. Breaking the Silence. The pacifist New Profile. Tent of Nations. Just Vision, a media outlet. Sikha Mekomit, a webzine.

“Let’s not get all tight over this. I will address the issue at a later time,” announces Barry, bathed in sweat. Yikes!

Worse still is the response to an online article on The Times of Israel website detailing the nature of their visit. The talkbackim in the comments section tends toward the vitriolic, accusing them of being pawns in the pocket of the Palestinians, indulging in neurotic self-hatred, a gaggle of fifth columnists, Obamaniacs or clandestine supporters of a Bernie Sanders leftist revolution. “Go home and overthrow your own government,” writes SonofGideon123 , “instead of measuring the Knesset for drapes.”

Meanwhile, Angry Yasser, their driver, leaves in a taxi. One less headache.

Erit reads aloud from her latest work: “As I say goodbye to this mortal coil of pain and woe, I leave behind those I met and all that I know.  A draft dodger and daft jogger on the treadmill of life, I’m full of sound and fury, decibels of strife. Next year in Jerusalem, Katmandu or Myanmar, he who travels longest is he who travels far. The sidewalk out front needs a hosing, even as the coffin lid is softly closing. Jumpin’ Jehoshaphats spit wooden nickels as they pass through the doorway to my demise. Headaches, heartaches, political tricks meet the boatman on the River Styx. Sherlock, Skylar, hemlock and Shylock cannot stop the ticking of G-d’s celestial clock.”

Applaudissement poli, polite applause, from her literary competitors. There are only so many openings and jackals don’t share.

They spend almost two hours participating in International Solidarity Work. In their case, this consists of folding hundreds and hundreds of Palestinian flags and placing each one in its own plastic bag. “This is crazy,” complains Barbie Quint, feeling she’s been shanghai’d into doing manual labor. “Why don’t you just let us make a monetary contribution and pay someone to do this?”

“Who are we going to hire?” bleats Benny the guide plaintively, dressed in a forest green military style shirt from Adam Levine’s designer label. “Palestinians?”

“Either you show solidarity with the Palestinian freedom movement or you don’t,” Barry calms them, feeling the comfort zone of childhood slave labor reawakening.

Not fooled by pretty words, Oso Buko laughs derisively. “White man imperialism replaced by Arab imperialism,” he declares.

Bang-o! Everyone stops working.

“KEEP FOLDING!” screams Barry, mouth agape. “PLEASE! For my sake. So we don’t lose face. Pul-lease???”

Reluctantly, they get back to work.

“You,” Roger Kaminski insists to Patrice and Barbie, fellow Americans, “can be unconventional and tear the party apart at the convention in Cleveland in July, choosing a centrist Republican like Mitt Romney as your candidate. Or you can elect to go with Mr. T and experience thundering defeat come November. Either way, the Republicans lose.”

“Say again? We ain’t Republicans,” Patrice assures him.

Downing duty free Scotch from a hip flask, Roger sinks into a frumpy fugue of introspection.

The visitors also get their first opportunity to hear from former IDF soldiers themselves. “Shalom!” says a bewhiskered young man, running to fat now that he’s no longer on the front line. “We are Sour Grapes, a pro-soldier sounding board for anonymous complaints from members of the Israeli Defense Forces. Keep in mind, military service is compulsory in Israel. And please, for maximum candor, no video or audio recording! Feel free, dudes, to complain at any time.”

“The meals at our Forward Observation Post were really terrible,” exclaims one soldier.

“I had to rifle-butt young Palestinians, both boys and girls. Who wants to do that?” asks another.

“My commander forever smiled and said ‘Now we’ll give the little pigs a taste of their own medicine.’ He should be cashiered from the Army,” insists a third.

“Three years! Three years in the IDF! We shot people and detonated explosives all over Gaza that summer. Life sucked big-time,” says a fourth.

“De flesta verkar småskärrade,” announces Erik the Swede = Most of them seem still in shock.

Barry returns from a bathroom break to find Patrice Gerard monopolizing the attention of the group. “I know you are concerned about my qualifications,” he pontificates. “First and foremost, I am very tall.” The others shake their heads in agreement. “Secondly, and this is important, I have a letter from my doctor attesting to my fitness to serve as president of the Guggenheim or the United States of America, whichever comes first. It’s amazing what $3,000 can buy. Baby, am I into baby aspirin! Although not necessarily the healthiest, I will be the shrewdest individual ever elected to such high office.”

“What’s he talking about?” Barry wonders.

“If the Republicans dump Trump, Patrice is prepared to do a Norman Mailer and throw his hat in the ring!” explains Barbie.

“Why am I not surprised?”

News of the latest stabbing reaches them over the Internet. Same old, same old. A young Palestinian, acting alone, a so-called lone wolf, has attacked Israeli civilians at a Jerusalem bus stop. His weapon of choice, a fish knife. The assailant was shot dead at the scene. Three injured, one critically. Israel’s reprisals include demolishing the house of the perpetrator’s family and revoking the work permits for every member of the perpetrator’s clan. Let them sit among their ruins in the West Bank and rot!

A pall falls upon Barry’s group. “My heart is breaking for the poor Palestinians!” insists Oki Nawa, their resident Japanese. Hey, it’s the first time Barry has heard a peep out of her! Such a drama queen, he thinks. His heart isn’t breaking, although his investment in the Ramallah futures market obviously took a hit. Very volatile is the economy of Ramallah. Good money to be made, although even their municipal bonds are a shaky proposition. With so much smuggling from Jordan, there’s no such thing as stability in the West Bank antiquities market. Maybe he shouldn’t have bought that sarcophagus purported to have held the mortal remains of Jesus Christ.

Win some, lose some, thinks Barry philosophically. He  decides to use the tale in one of his novels and deduct the loss as a work-related expenditure.

“I don’t want to sound like a complainer,” says Barbie, “but this trip is all screwed up. How can I write about murderous Palestinians when I haven’t met a single one?”

“That’s where fiction comes in,” counsels Barry. “Choose Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh or someone else heroic, slap on an Arabic name, throw in a love interest and write your heart out. Like your Sniper’s Cave series, but different. Don’t use Napoleon. Tales based on Napoleon never seem credible.” Teaching creative writing has made him a master of technique.

“How bad is the apartheid in Israel?” asks Oso. “Can I mix in whites with my colored wash?”

“Oh yes!” Erit assures him.

“Actually,” he chuckles, a guilty look on his face, “that was more in the style of a joke.”

“I need an Israeli joke,” Barry points out, reviewing his notes.

“So do we all,” sighs Patrice grimly.

“Hey, I got this,” smiles Benny. He’s busy baking fresh pita bread in a brick oven set into the hillside. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“Okay… Why?”

“To detonate his suicide vest, blowing himself up and taking a dozen Israelis with him in the name of global jihad and the Islamic State.”

“Any others?” Barry gulps, video recording.

“Sure. Why did Moses walk 40 years in the desert?” quips Benny. “Your typical male, he was too proud to ask directions.”

Once started, Benny is hard to stop: “Liebowitz and Trump are out on the golf course. Their long game and irons being about equal, Liebowitz is phenomenal at dropping the ball into the cup in one. On every hole. He just taps ’em in. Finally, exasperated, Trump asks him, ‘Tell me your secret!’ Liebowitz looks at him and says, ‘My wife kisses my balls. It makes my putz go straight.”

“Stop! Ma-speak! Enough,” groans Barry.

Losing patience with the local fauna, Benny breaks off his baking to scoop up a hardboiled egg from a serving bowl. “Die, mother!” he screams, hurling the egg, pegging a little gray mouse squarely on its head. Chunks of egg white and rich yellow yolk explode in a dozen directions. Stunned, the encrusted rodent falls on its side, tale inert, its four pink legs jerking spasmodically. “Incoming,” Benny proudly smiles.

Yasser returns… with his mother! Her name is Fatimah. Is this an Arab courtesy thing, “Meet me, meet my mother”? Is it a sympathy ploy to garner larger tips? They’re confused. “Maybe the old lady’s here to collect the tip money,” Barbie wonders. That’s something a character in the Sniper’s Cave series would do, bring his mother to collect his money.

“I want you,” announces Yasser to all and sundry, “to hear the Palestinian narrative from someone who has actually lived it firsthand. My mother!”

So they gather ’round in the shade, give the woman an almond smoothie, clean the wax out of their ears, hold aloft their smartphones and listen. Dressed in a shabby black dress and a patterned shawl, a green kerchief covering her hair, she only speaks Arabic and a smattering of Hebrew. Yasser translates with an assist from Benny.

“Palestine under the Pasha was a tranquil land of farmers and tradesmen,” she begins.

“That’s the Ottoman Turks,” explains Benny.

“A land where happy families lived for generations, venerating their ancestors, farming and raising their children. We had no quarrel with the Jews, even as they bought up our land and pushed my family to the fringes. Then the Jews made war on our neighbors! I was not yet born, but my mother told me of the naqba, the catastrophe, that befell our people. In the midst of battle, we were further driven from our lands, the Jews grabbing everything, everything, for themselves! Overnight, we became second-class citizens in our own land! Suddenly the Jew was the lord effendi and we the fellaheen peasants. Entire families ran to take shelter in neighboring countries. Where their Arab brothers and sisters treated them like vermin! As penniless refugees, they were shoved into refugee camps. At the mercy of the international community, generation after generation of Palestinians await the glorious day of our return to Palestine! It shall happen! It shall happen! Insha’Allah! God willing.”

“This is our suffering!” screams Yasser. “This is the rage that festers in every Palestinian heart!”

“Peace now?” marvels Barry. “Fuhgeddaboudit!”

It is all they can do to calm Yasser down. Murmuring sympathetic comments and wiping away tears of compassion, they thank his mother profusely, raining cash down upon her head. They follow Yasser and her to the highway and wait while he sends her home in a taxi. When they return to the courtyard, Benny points out, “Palestinian women wear the pants. No one hates like a Palestinian mother. They never, ever forgive a slight or a misdeed.” Shrugging, he tells them, “Palestinian society is rife with blood feuds.”

Yasser stomps away to the bus, but he doesn’t deny it.

Waking from his torpor and not entirely satisfied with the progress of their Kix odyssey, Kikes investigating existence, journalist Roger Kaminski corners Erit and Oso. “You seem the most vocal,” he points out. “What exactly is your beef here? So life is unfair. The Settlers are redeeming the land. I don’t see anybody else doing that. Ramallah seems dead set on playing the obstructionist card. In their eyes, nothing the Israelis do is ever any good. You show up with the publically declared intention of maligning Israel. Have you no conscience?”

“You don’t understand!” seethes Erit. It’s a long afternoon and tempers are frayed. “Sie verstehen nicht!” she cries, lapsing into German in a desperate effort to explain herself. Ten days of inner turmoil has left her totally fritzed. “My great grandfather worked in the secret bullet factory underneath Kibbutzim Hill in Rehovot. An underground factory the size of a tennis court, they produced five million bullets from 1945 to 1948. Even if Israeli soldiers only hit their targets once out of every ten shots, I share the guilt of half a million Arab deaths. Half a million! How can I ever wash away the stain? Why couldn’t he have been a baker and worked in the adjacent bakery? But no, he had to be a machinist, the most pernicious of warmongers. Woe is me! Wehe mir!” she cries, tears streaming down her face.

Torn, Roger feels for her. He’s also delighted to finally have a story to tell.

 

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The bus slows on a curve and pulls off the road.

“What’s wrong?” Barry asks worriedly.

“It’s a Bedouin encampment,” explains Benny. “You should experience this for your writing.”

There are tattered black tents and stubby black goats everywhere. Gnarled, brown-skinned Arabs with furrows in their faces, long bony hands and broken fingernails are dressed in traditional layers of Arab garb. Stinking of incense and goat milk, they come forward to greet Benny’s group, smiling at the Americans with brown teeth. “Come Sāhib, you are our guest,” exclaims the oldest male present, latching onto Barry and graciously dragging him to the largest of the tents. Ducking under the flap, Barry catches a last glimpse of Bedouin women surrounding Erit with offerings of cloth and brassware. For sale, obviously. It all makes sense. Give the tourists an adventure to write home about while injecting life into the local Arab economy. Why should the Settlers make all the money? The odor of incense inside the tent is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Barry feels his head spinning.

“Come! Sit!” cries the tribal elder grandly. His name turns out to be Fayyad. “This is my joy, my youngest son, Ramzi,” he prattles, busy pouring tea for Barry and himself. He dusts it with brown powder which Barry assumes is sweetener. The tea is cloyingly sweet and pungent enough to make his tongue twitch. Wow! A real Bedouin experience. Meanwhile, Fayyad lights a quiff of what smells like very raw hashish, takes a major hit and passes it ceremoniously to Barry. Pulling the white smoke deep into his lungs, Barry feels it burning its way down his throat. It’s like inhaling sandpaper. Nothing. He takes another drag. That’s when it hits him. Sitting on his haunches on the dirt floor, Barry feels himself floating into space. Now he knows the secret of Aladdin’s flying carpet! Floating, flying, he grandly surveys the colorful cushions spread out at his feet. Surreal.

A small black goat noses its way into the tent, bleating. “Ah, Suha!” cries Fayyad happily. “My prize goat. She makes wonderful milk.” Barry sits staring at her in a daze. She’s such a pretty goat, so well-proportioned, with short, prickly hair and a wandering eye. The day seems endless. The tea tastes so sweet. Laughing hysterically, in a mellow fog of hash-induced euphoria, Barry only has the vaguest notion of what may or may not be inter-species coitus. One moment the goat is nuzzling his ear, the next, Fayyad’s steady brown Bedouin hand seems to guide Barry’s swollen staff deep into the goat’s murky hindquarters. Not that it matters. And the sensation of release— percussive! explosive!— is like nothing Barry has ever experienced before in his life.

“The East shall shake the West awake” dreamily passes through his thoughts until he discovers Ramzi, the 11-year-old, holding a smartphone and shaking him. “Wake! Wake up, mister! You wake!” cries the boy in his squeaky young voice. Leading Barry groggily from the tent, they join the others by the tour bus where Fayyad is deep in conference with Benny the guide.

“Ah, good, you are awake!” Fayyad greets him, as solicitous as ever. These Arabs! Nothing can beat their hospitality!

“When we return to Jerusalem, I’ll take you to the local clinic for a shot of antibiotic,” suggests Benny.

“Why? Is somebody sick?” asks Barry.

“Precautions. Precautions,” replies the Israeli curtly in a show of typical Israeli brusqueness. Barry is sure it is something in the water that makes them so testy. He hands Fayyad a crisp American ten dollar bill before leaving.

 

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“Hey, baby,” leered the Israeli soldiers, ogling the Palestinian schoolgirls. “How ’bout a quick ficky-ficky for a packet of Elite spearmint gum?” This was the backside of the occupation, Barry conjectures, the dehumanization of conquered and conqueror alike.

 

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On Twitter, he reads

#Trump The Islamic State is CRAZY for The Donald. They know he will put America in the doghouse.

#Trump 2016 Sales of anti-depressants rise as Trump nears the presidency.

#Election 2016 Party politics: Hillary’s a donkey. Donald J. Trombone leaves a trail of elephant dung everywhere he goes. Messy year for the USA.

 

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Even as America mourns the 49 dead in the terrorist attack on a gay club in Orlando, Florida, Barry and his group march in front of the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem in protest over the latest Turkish-Israeli peace agreement. The rapprochement forgives Israel for the 2010 attack on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara. The background: Loudly proclaiming their intention to break Israel’s naval blockade, a group of Turkish activists sailed a small flotilla carrying construction materials and humanitarian aid toward Gaza. Israeli Shayetet 13 naval commandos boarded the ship from speedboats and helicopters, intending to force it into the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection. Hand to hand fighting broke out. The Israelis ended up killing nine of the Turkish activists. Ten of the Israeli commandos were wounded, as well. “Down with Israeli aggression! Freedom on the high seas!” chant the protesters, although whether the Mediterranean can be considered a high sea remains open to interpretation. Pariahs in the land of Daniel, it feels good to have something concrete to protest about.

 

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On his blog, Barry writes: Nationalism has never been more popular. That said, we can relegate to the scrap heap of history such concepts as democracy, socialism, communism, syndicalism, unionism and the unadulterated corruption called religion. G-d spelled backwards is dog. Agnostic spelled backwards is citsonga. Dance to the music! Perhaps all we need is a single strongman— iron-willed, resolute, convinced of his divine right to reshape the world. He shall lead us all to a New Jerusalem! Although Old Jerusalem isn’t bad for the money. I give it three stars.

  

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To: Barry Lipowitz

From: Sid Harmon Agency

Subject: New Project

Need U 2 brush up on Ralph Lauren & Calvin Klein as prep to pen script for medium budget block comedy “Dances With Wool.” Think “Breakdance” meets Groucho Marx in the Garment District. International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union on board big-time. Sid

 

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America beckons. He’s booked to give a speech next Wednesday before HAHA, the Hasidic American Hebrew Association, a major, non-profit advocacy group providing gainful employment for the Goldfarb, Becker, Mankiewicz and Lippmann families. It’s not like Barry isn’t a professional speaker. Move over, Hillary! Our boy’s résumé includes speaking at the United Nations! Not in the General Assembly, per se, but on a soapbox outdoors under the open sky at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza overlooking the East River. He attracted quite a crowd— almost a dozen listeners— before the NYPD men in blue told him to “Pack it up and move it along there, ace!” (It all happened so fast, he didn’t even have time to get the blue-eyed blonde’s telephone number.)  When you got it, flaunt it!

As self-effacing as he is, Barry nonetheless likes to consider himself a student of the Talmud. The campaign of a certain presidential candidate, also from New York, is using one of Barry’s more intellectual treatises, The Handbook of Over-ripe, Half-baked, Fully-cooked, Warmed-over and Burned-out Ideas. So ineffectual is this guide, anybody watching the campaign would think the candidate and his staff are simply winging it. It’s in the Lipowitz genes: Not for nothing was Barry’s dad a leader in used auto parts.

As any successful author can tell you, the publishing industry is voracious: Once you become an established winner, you can put sheets of used toilet paper between book covers and sell it.

A final confab among the scribes is a revelation. Patrice Gerard’s chapter will be free-form Gonzo journalism called “Boom or Bust on the Israeli Stock Exchange.” Tipped off about several investment possibilities, he’s made some dead ass choices. The bro is seriously in the cheese. Sir Razor Babcock has fallen in love with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Finally, an archive that covers every aspect of anti-Semitism from soup to nuts! Murder squads. Gas chambers. Josef Mengele! Adolf Eichmann. He doesn’t know where to begin his writing. Oso Buko has discovered common ancestry among Israel’s “Falashas,” Ethiopian Jews from Gondar Province. He intends to return to Israel very soon. Erik Andersson the Swede has decided to stay, requesting membership at the Sha’ar Ha’Amakim kibbutz outside Haifa. It’s the same place Bernie Sanders once stayed as a volunteer in 1963. Erik intends to write freelance and make his living by producing solar water heaters at their on-site factory. “It may not be pure socialism,” says Erik, “but I like it.” He’s ain’t leaving.

Have these people no sense of allegiance? wonders Barry. He isn’t holding them to a written contract, but he assumed it was in their own best interest to stick with the critical focus of the project. “We come not to praise Israel, but to bury it” has been Barry’s motto this entire trip. Now he feels like a fool.

Roger Kaminski at least is writing an exposé. Entitled “Cutting Edge Israeli Anti-Missile Technology Will Blow You Away,” it’s Life Magazine in tone, nerdy in detail and a fuh-yucking puff piece for the Israeli defense establishment. Oki Nawa is composing a sonnet to hydroponic husbandry and crop rotation. Barbie Quint is busy writing “The Miracle of Ahava – New Life From the Dead Sea,” her stream-of-consciousness experience of Israeli spa life and the cosmetics industry. Barry feels a little sick reading about the many beneficial uses for mud. Erit finds it interesting. For her part, she is composing an ode, “Life Among the Ultraviolent.” Loosely based on The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian tale from 2500 B.C., she portrays the Jews as the villains. Barry is left with “Bad Vibes In the West Bank,” wherein he maligns as many fictional straw men as possible within the specified 10,000 word limit. Keepin’ it real! This is not what he expected.

 

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In their hotel room, packing their imitation Louis Vuitton luggage to leave for the States, Barry reminds her, “We’re heading home to a strawberry moon over Manhattan.” Erit gives him a sad look, a last vestige of the romantic passion they once shared. He also gets a text message and enclosed video from little Ramzi. “Sank U 4 wisit, we enjoy yu company,” texts the child. “Daddy say U maybe send us 5,000 shekel thru tour guide Benny, maybe we no show nobody these video.”

The clip is short, less than 30 seconds, in full color. In surprisingly sharp detail, Barry can clearly be seen buggering Suha the goat, stupid looks on both their faces.

“What is it?” hoots Erit, sensing disaster. Dropping a handful of clothes on the bed, a swirl of motion, she grabs the tablet from Barry’s trembling hand. “Fuck!” she swears vehemently. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

“STOP THAT!” screams Barry hysterically. “I can see very plainly what I did!” Weeping, he adds in a small voice, “I am so sorry. It was the hashish. Or the tea. Or the incense… Or all three.”

“Goddam Arabs!” seethes Erit. “It’s called sextortion. Very popular in some circles.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“Send them the goddam money, honey! Five thousand shekels isn’t the end of the world.”

“But it will never end! They’ll be milking us for small change forever and ever,” wails Barry Lipowitz.

“Welcome to the Middle East,” replies his Israeli wife.

 

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********** Now. New. No? No way! Way! Dig it! **********

^^^ The Box. $99.95  The Box. $99.95  The Box. $99.95 ^^^

Join your fave authors Barry Lipowitz and Erit Sameach in a celebration of Palestinian independence. This multi-media, 3-dimensional Concrete Art collection includes: Miniature flags of Hamas and Hezbollah. A Hamas decal. A mint green one-size-fits-all elastic Hamas headband! Thumb drive containing a complete travelogue of Occupied Palestine with photos and commentary by Erit Sameach and New York fashionista Barbie Quint. Street map of Ramallah. Map of the Proposed Free State of Palestine (formerly the entity known as “Israel”). The Hamas Charter in English and Arabic. The Fatah Charter in English and Arabic. The Palestinian Liberation Organization Charter in English and Arabic. The Proposed Charter of Free Palestine in English, Arabic and the original Swedish. Facsimile menu from the Greek Pavilion Restaurant, Petah Tikva. Egged bus schedule. Full-color photo of Yasser Arafat. Photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Photo of Gamal Abdel Nasser, early proponent of Palestinian statehood. E.A.R. ear plugs. EL AL sleep mask. Israeli playing cards. No. 2 pencil Made In Occupied Palestine. Plastic knife, fork and spoon manufactured specifically for the Free Palestine Collective, Ramallah. Palestinian Authority™ porcelain coffee cup manufactured in Occupied Palestine or on its behalf. Bottled water (1.22 fl. oz.) from the River Jordan! Palestinian Commemorative Coin, Hebron. Three Star Safety Matches, Ramallah. All this and so much more! Fun for the whole family! IRS approved. Makes a great gift in time for Purim! A product of Sweeney Farlow Graham & Co.

 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 

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************************** DISCLAIMER *************************

 

Any reference to Israel (aka Israel, Israel, ISRAEL, ISRAEL or ISRAEL) shall not be construed as binding the reader to a specific interpretation of Zionism per se nor the Jewish State nor milk (for the lactose-intolerant) nor honey (for the just plain intolerant, period).

While recognizing all halachic and cultural variations thereof, the preceding narrative abstains from promulgating any single worldview. You are not required to support Jabotinskyism, Palmachniks, Messianism, Hasidim, etc. Like John Adams or the U.S. Constitution, I try to be all things to all people, impartial. When giving offense, I try to offend all sides equally. As the tough, young Vietnamese businessman standing outside the Golden Dragon restaurant proposed, throwing his cigarette angrily to the pavement, “Hey, man! That my girlfriend! You want I cut off your balls?!” The lesson: Either never visit the neighborhood of Little Saigon or keep your gaze averted when you do. Covert beats overt every time. I feel the same about my writing. All characters, characterizations and descriptions spring directly from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real, living or imagined human beings is entirely coincidental. Where dealing with factual material, I have tried to be accurate.

Like you, I am an antidisestablishmentarian. Unless, of course, you prefer democratic socialism or intend to overthrow the government! That makes you a disestablishmentarian. As a budding capitalist plutocrat hoping to score big money on this tome, I strenuously object.

The opinions expressed herein are primarily those of the author, his immediate family, his cousins, friends, editor, literary agent, historical figures and the occasional Arab. What you see as plagiarism, I consider homage. No animals were injured during the writing of this book.

 

*********************  k.feingold@hotmail.com  *******************

 

NOTE: In a world with The Donald winning big in the presidential sweepstakes, it’s darn hard for a fiction writer to trump reality! That said, enjoy!

**********************

For our inaugural matchup, Swedish Match proudly paired Fred Barber, 28, with Natasha Gurkin, 27. On this first date, we sent them to El Fanfarrón in Washington, DC.

Fred: “Considering the size of the wall The Donald intends to erect with Mexico, I found myself apprehensive over the choice of restaurant. Would we get kidnapped? Would we be harangued by Mexican drug dealers? On the other hand, I do love tacos.”

Natasha: “OMG! My Uber driver was a total hunk, driving me endlessly around the block, eating me alive in the rearview mirror with those gorgeous blue eyes of his. Tee-hee! It’s a miracle we didn’t have an accident!”

Fred: “I was the first to arrive and chose the table farthest in the back by the restrooms in case the guacamole didn’t agree with us or the place got raided.”

Natasha: “Paying the driver, I got in a little quick hand action. We exchanged phone numbers.”

Fred: “At first I thought she wasn’t coming, so I ordered a Dos Equis and sat moodily deciphering the faux Mayan hieroglyphics on the back wall.”

Natasha: “The wait staff greeted me like an old friend. They told me my date had arrived and seemed like a total douchebag. I love Mexican food, so I figured at least I’d get a good meal out of it. Fred wasn’t bad-looking, but I didn’t feel a spark.”

Fred: “Natasha is absolutely, like totally, breathtakingly wow! She’s stunning. Raven hair, the face of a Gypsy, voluptuous body, black leather boots. I found myself stammering. I ordered two tequilas to hide my embarrassment.”

Natasha: “I don’t normally drink on a first date, but Fred was so nervous, I figured LOL.”

Fred: “On the questionnaire, I had checked the box specifying that physical appearance is really, really important to me. Call it eye candy, but if the lady isn’t drop dead incredible, my little pecker stays in my boxers.”

Natasha: “The waiter’s name was Barry. He and I had a whole eye-contact thing going and I pretended to use the Ladies Room to give him a quick blow job.”

Fred: “I think my date must have a bladder infection because immediately after ordering, she needed to use the Ladies. For an appetizer, we ordered quesadillas made with goat cheese brie accompanied by shots of Chianti. Followed by turtle soup and, for the main course, red snapper with green tahini. We drank St. Klippenstein stout with the fish. ”

Natasha: “I don’t normally go in for crêpes, but I figured ‘Suck it up, girl, the dude is paying good money, let him order what he wants.’ The food was good. Fish is a trad aphrodisiac. I’m a great proponent of fish.”

Fred: “I expected guitar-strumming entertainers in gaucho garb, like in the movies, serenading us with narcocorridos, drug ballads. But this particular restaurant didn’t have any of that. I asked the waiter to fetch their copy of Grande Enciclopedia Illustrata Della Gastronomia and compared the food on my plate with the printed recipe. Just as I suspected, they skimped on the cilantro leaves! You would think their kitchen would be thankful for this culinary guidance, but no… Cayenne peppers from Hell came with the drinks.”

Natasha: “I got a phone call from my contact at the State Department, so I knew the evening wouldn’t be a total waste. I moved things right along, since money beckoned.”

Fred: “When she got up to stretch her legs, she shoved her butt in my face. I’m sure purely by accident. I think the wait staff pumped Spanish Fly into my tortilla, because I had a boner like you wouldn’t believe!  Still, $35 for lobster, on the menu, seems excessive.”

Natasha: “Amazingly, we both worked on the Obama re-election campaign of 2012. We compared notes. Fred manned a phone bank and I canvassed door to door. Where applicable, I recorded names, addresses and phone numbers for possible inclusion on my list of johns. I didn’t tell Fred that, of course. The Washington metro area is very political. In other words, horny.”

Fred: “She was telling me about a ‘friend’ who has a private email server in her home and runs a Sex For Hire service. She wanted to know if I would consider investing in that.”

Natasha: “That’s true! Hopefully, I can incorporate this whole Swedish matchmaker scam into my business model.”

[Editor’s Note: Swedish Match is NOT a scam.]

Natasha cont: “I’m trying to get Mitt Romney to endorse my business plan…  Fred kept staring at my legs. I offered to sell him my fishnet stockings for a cool thousand bucks. I like men who are into retro. We laughed a lot.”

Fred: “I asked if she was Albanian, since I make my living designing white supremacist software and she might take offense.”

Natasha: “I once had a year-long relationship with the Danish ambassador’s au pair. Her name was Margot. She came from Sri Lanka. She snored.”

Fred: “I asked if she’d ever dated Marco Rubio and I didn’t really get an answer. ‘Better to live a hundred years as a lion than one year as a sheep.’ Mussolini said that. I rubbed Natasha’s thigh under the table. If I held my breath longer than 90 seconds, visions of sugar plums danced in my head.”

Natasha: “My strongest feature is being multi-lingual. I can say ‘Fuck me!’ in seven different languages.”

Fred: “Here in DC, Oblama is frantic over his legacy. His legacy is Donald Trump!”

Natasha: “It would be brilliant if Obama nominates The Donald to the Supreme Court! It would get him out of the presidential race and replace the late Justice Scalia with an equally selfish, vain, opinionated egotist. Bravo!”

Fred: “If Christie doesn’t work out as Veep, Trump can fire him on TV. ‘You’re fired!’ Hilarious! El Trumpo can always choose Sarah Palin or The Bachelor as his running mate, people with real Reality TV acting chops.”

Natasha: “IMHO, as political allegory, Mad Max: Fury Road says it all.”

Fred: “Through the barred back window of the Men’s Room, I could see a pop-up crack house being constructed by two Indian developers from Calcutta. I ask you, how will Trump’s wall with Mexico balance the trade deficit with China?”

Natasha: “What about those of us who have haciendas in Chihuahua, south of Juarez? Down Mexico way, I am known as La Niña. My girls are among the most popular in Sinaloa. I make sure they aren’t THOTish. That Ho Over There… George Clooney calls Donald Trump a xenophobic fascist!”

Fred: “Who is George Clooney? Isn’t he governor of Michigan or something?”

Natasha: “I was governor of Michigan in a past life.”

Fred: “When you study Hitler, Mussolini or even Joseph McCarthy, a demagogue like Donald Trump is easily recognizable. He has hijacked the Republican Party for his own deification. The Trump candidacy is a bad novel. A combo of economic hardship and fear of Muslim attack has given some Americans the bunker mentality of 1930’s Germany. In a crouch, terrified, they are looking for a strongman, a savior with simple slogans, to lead them to a New Jerusalem. The Donald obliges this fantasy.”

Natasha: “With Trump as the nominee, the general election will be Day of Judgment: Nietzsche’s Superman VS Hillary’s Catwoman.”  

Fred: “When Trump raises money for veterans, his foundation sometimes forgets to hand out all the money. Once, instead of a cash donation, a veterans group in Queens, New York received a supply of Trump bumper stickers. The road to Hell is paved with bumper stickers… Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio. All the little Napoleons. Each with worlds to conquer. Each dreaming of conquest.”

Natasha: “Let’s not get into a slugfest, now!”

Fred: “Trump is the candidate as rock star. He flies in on his giant phallic symbol, puts on a show and departs. Trump’s supporters are the same 15% fringe of dissatisfied reactionaries who supported candidates like George Wallace and Ross Perot. Back then, they were the John Birch Society. Nowadays, they call themselves the Tea Party. Same difference. It’s the same sad jerkoffs with their World Wrestling Federation mentality. Hurrah! They have found themselves a champion. A big, ugly brute. The Donald! He and Christie make a great tag team. When are they going to put on their lucha libre masks, colored pants and fancy boots? Behold, politics as ring wrestling!”

Natasha: “I’d give our date a 4.8 out of 5. Even if there wasn’t a romantic spark, I was able to borrow $150 in cash and get my name added to Fred’s checking account. We’re vacationing in Hawaii for Spring Break and Fred’s going to invest in my handmade body wash business, so I’m grateful for that. We exchanged phone numbers.”

Fred: “I’d give the date a 1.5 out of 5. When I got home, I whacked off twice and then texted her in Sanskrit, using the Punjabi lexicon as backup. Fortunately, I’m already married to my job, otherwise I’d probably kill myself!”

 

 

“Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday, who could hang a name on you…” – The Rolling Stones

As Yard Sign Inspector for the Township of Oxburg, Maryland, I hereby post the Rules & Regulations regarding visual aids disseminating political content leading up to the Tuesday, April 26 Primary in Maryland.

Point 1. My qualifications: As people are complaining that I make up the Rules and Regulations arbitrarily, let me state that (a) in order to silence my usual grousing, the Town Council has appointed me to this menial task, taking up virtually all my time, (b) I have checked the regulations in adjoining municipalities for guidance and (c) I was the Visibility Coordinator (a k a “Yard Sign Guy”) in 2011 for the Anna Bola campaign for Attorney General of Maryland, hammering yard signs into Oxburg’s rock-hard, gravely soil. Listen, I must be qualified, Anna won!  [See my blog posts from that period for details.]

Point 2. The following formats of commercially printed yard signs may be posted: The standard 18″ X 24″ cardboard, plastic foil or fiberboard yard sign. Even 22″ X 28″ and supersize 24″ X 48″ are allowed. (C’mon, people, that last one is a two foot by four foot monster!)

Point 3. Ya would think that wildly liberal Oxburg would allow handmade signs. Unfortunately, when we did this in 2012, Town Council Chairman Johnny J. Johnson fumed that “this entire burg looks like a goddam art installation!”  Therefore, this year, only commercially printed signage will be acceptable. Sorry.

Point 4. This primary is going to be hu-u-u-uge.

Point 5. For some inexplicable reason, all Donald Trump yard signs will end up in the town incinerator.

Point 6. All signs must be on wire frames and pushed securely into the earth.

Point 7. “Mad Max: Fury Road” shoulda won Best Picture.

Point 8. Chris Christie is running for vice president on the Trump-Christie ticket.

Point 9. On private lawns, signs may be posted anywhere the homeowner deems appropriate.

Point 10. “The people who talk about stopping Trump are smoking something,” insists Fred Malek, finance chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

Point 11. Why don’t the candidates discuss the truly thorny issues, stuff like Norwegian Air Shuttle wanting to fly domestic routes inside the USA?!

Point 12. Prior to the primary, signs may be posted on public thoroughfares on median strips and open areas, but only as long as they do not impede or hide approaching traffic.

Point 13. Bernie Sanders did great presenting his platform on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but every time he goes on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd, Bernie goes into a defensive crouch, sounding like any other shifty politico. Now that he’s clean-shaven, why doesn’t he ever talk about his military career or his recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken? Just asking.

Point 14. The Ku Klux Klan will be allowed to demonstrate in Oxburg, but only if it is done tastefully.

Point 15. No political signage may be closer to a polling station— school, library, church or public building—  than 20 feet.

Point 16. All signage on public and private land must be removed within three (3) days following the April 26 primary.

Point 17. Any signage that violates the stated Rules & Regulations will be taken down and disposed of. Believe me, there’s plenty of room in the town incinerator, folks!

Point 18. Am I a little dictator whose position has gone to his head? Is The Donald the greatest thing since sliced bread? Did Iceland’s economy tank? Is Hillary one peculiar candidate? U tell me!

– Kevin Feingold, Yard Sign Inspector for Oxburg, Maryland

 

 

“Write what you know” is the advice proffered to every would-be writer. I know that the process of packaging, formatting and presenting my novels to literary agents in New York and pitching my screenplay to studios and production companies in L.A. is killing my writing! Ah, those Halcyon days when all I had on my plate was creative writing. I feel like I’m running a publishing house, each individual letter etched in stone. Ambition, thy name is pain! Take that as a warning. According to Marco Rubio, of course, it’s all Obama’s fault.

Because, believe it or not, those vast spaces between blog posts are taken up by life experience. Living! There are other things in my life than designing book covers. For example, Oxburg’s own Anti-Leash Law Movement. This is an important First Amendment gathering of like-minded individuals who are concerned over curtailment of our basic freedoms. Which is why on the Friday before “Blizzard 2016,” we occupied the Mary T. Boynton Picnic and Rest Area off the bike path in Oxburg, Maryland.

Like Hollywood, Maryland, Oxburg is a concise geographical area. Tucked behind what used to be the White Flint Mall (sic transit gloria mundi, thus passes away the glory of the world), we’ve got Rockville Pike on that side. A sunken road, The 1812 Highway, borders us to the north. Natalie Woods flanks us to the east. To the south, endless, breathtaking… nothing. Suburbia.

We are particularly proud of the five miles of bike path ringing Oxburg. With the exception of a hair-raisingly wild trail through scenic Natalie Woods, we are talking black macadam, smooth as a baby’s behind, with a dainty white line painted down the middle to separate traffic. At Mile 2, in a stand of maples and oaks, there’s even a concrete blockhouse, two picnic tables and an outdoor hibachi. The Mary T. Boynton Picnic and Rest Area. One side of the blockhouse says “MEN,” the other side says “WOMEN.” Inside each, there are two toilet stalls, two sinks and— in the case of the Men’s— a stand-up urinal. Very functional, the indoor surfaces are covered in glazed sky-blue tile. There’s even a janitor—a lanky, black, town employee named Rufus— who shows up at odd hours, places fresh paper towels and toilet rolls in the receptacles and swabs everything down with Lysol. Such a convenience!  And don’t we all use it. For safety reasons, and to stay one step ahead of homeless people, the local constabulary padlocks the steel doors at night.

Living in Oxburg has resulted in a certain degree of community spirit. True, I don’t personally own a dog, but when asked, I earn my reputation— to quote Town Council Chairman Johnny J. Johnson— as “a goddam fussbudget troublemaking libertarian son of a bitch!”

Always nice to be recognized.

For years, dog owners fought for designated dog parks where Fido could run free with like-minded canines. Having achieved their goal— we got three— and human nature being what it is, they want… more! The Dog Owners, Watchers and Sitters Association wants a review of the draconian (they say) 1952 Leash Law. “No one else is made to wear a leash!” they reason. “End the yoke of slavery! Free the spirits! Dog Lives Matter!”

Yada, yada, yada. Hey, I gotta get outta the house, right?

Wearing backpacks and carrying foldable beach chairs, five of us stalwarts show up at 1 o’clock on Friday, January 22, 2016. Unfolding our chairs and the Sports section of The Washington Post, we break out a thermos of hot coffee, call our accompanying dogs to heel and proceed with our protest.

“I know what it is to feel pain,” insists the lisping, listing Ronald Hilton, a craggy-faced accountant with a briar pipe clenched between yellow teeth. He sports a blue beret and a voluminous black winter coat. Once we discover that a discussion of China’s Five-Year Plan is a non-starter, the talk centers on dogs instead. “My weimaraner Sparky met the most horrendous brute online in one of those canine chat rooms. When he snuck down to the park for a midnight tryst, poor little Sparky was thoroughly victimized. The poor darling was raped. Pillaged. Sodomized. From that day to this, my computer is off-limits. This dog is grounded!”

I look at Sparky. The color of a silver ghost, he doesn’t exactly have a guilty expression on his mug.

“This is going to be huge,” Walter Crumb insists.  A youngish computer salesman, wearing plaid and going bald, everything is always superlatives with Walter. A free spirit, he’s already rolling a joint.

“Walter, please!” I plead. “Civil disobedience, yes, violating drug laws, no.”

“Wha-at?!” he squawks innocently.

In search of legitimacy, I have chosen the most intellectual person I know— Manfred “Manny” Presto— to write our screed. In the Old Days, this would have been imposible, since Manny teaches at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Skype saves the day! Manny was the guitarist in Oxburg High’s very own hair metal band, The Brass Tacks. Faking upper-class British accents, the boys even had a theme song à la The Monkees:  “Ain’t we cool an’/ We got the schoolin’/ Rada rada rada/ We’re The Brass Tacks!” Better you shouldn’t have been there!

So Manny Presto writes our manifesto:

“Incoherence is resistance! Themes of empire, desire, anarchy, ancestry, microfauna and macroflora, the apocalypse and the future of all mankind weigh heavily on our attempt today to unleash the forces of good versus evil. The demons are right to be offended. We don’t like them! Set free the dogs of war! Freedom’s just another word for the irresistible flow of history. As Kierkegaard reminds us, dog spelled backwards is god and ton spelled backwards is not.”

I admit, this deviates somewhat from what I expected, but when no one else complains, I figure, let sleeping dogs lie.

It’s about now, as Manny’s manifesto plays out on our laptops and tablets, that I look up in confusion and see, from behind, a brunette in black leather boots, black leggings and a pink winter coat. She is busy picking up DVD cases from the ground. How did DVD cases get to the Mary T. Boynton Picnic and Rest Area? As she turns around, holding a stack of at least 20 DVD’s, I am amazed to realize that she is, like, 14 years old! Wearing rainbow-tinged ski goggles, her face is as soft and unmarked as a Madonna’s.

“Hello!” I call, rising and approaching her. “What’s up?”

“They forecast snow, so I thought we ought to squirrel away a good collection of movies in case we get snowed in,” she explains, staring at me through her plastic ski goggles with enormous blue eyes.

We’re a collection of old codgers, no way is there room for a 14-year-old. She doesn’t even have a dog!

“You’re just passing by?” I surmise hopefully. “You’re on your way home? Yes?”

“No,” she says, her mouth turned down in a gorgeous pout. “I read about you guys on Kik and decided I should come join the protest.”

“Wait a minute— !”

“You guys are all over Kik. Everybody’s talking about you. Doggie Lives Matter.”

“What is Kick? You mean Kickstarter?”

“No, silly! Kik. It’s a social networking site for young people. We love dogs, too, you know!”

“I’m sure you do,” I reply. As the responsible party, I tell her, “Go home!”

“It’s a free country!” she insists defiantly.

“You probably don’t even live in Oxburg,” I claim desperately. There are so many laws regarding minors and I don’t want any of those kinds of headaches.

“I live with my folks on West Camden,” she tells me, sticking out her round little chin. She’s so pretty, I could eat her alive!

“Please, please, please— ” I beg. Too late, she’s busy petting the dogs, spilling DVD cases everywhere. “We don’t even have a DVD player!” I bleat.

“My laptop plays DVD’s,” Jacqueline David chimes in helpfully, looking up from the Style section of the newspaper. This… is… not… helping!

(The only truly consistent item on my laptop is a pop-up ad for Zynga’s FarmVille 2.)

So now, in addition to our furry friends, we have a 14-year-old mascot.

My high school class was a very mixed bag, so I’m not particularly wowed to see Pando M’Onium from Mumbai ride up on his racing bike, white plastic shopping bags swinging from the handlebars. “What’s this ’bout a protest?” he asks, an excited look on his handsome, brown-skinned face. Good old Pando! We used to double date in eleventh grade. As I explain our purpose, he stirs old leaves and ashes from the hibachi. Unloading his parcels, he pulls out charcoal, lighter fluid, an enormous package of hot dogs, mustard and two bags of buns. Despite my groans, he soon has a fire going and wieners grilling.

Nobody listens!

[Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, now utilizes a Call Center in India to handle Customer Service. When those sweet, young Indian IT hotshots run up against the demanding, anal retentive culture of the U.S. Government, both sides end up butting heads.]

Having requisitioned my beach chair, our young lady is busy pecking away on her smartphone. “What’s your name?” I ask.

“Ginny!”

Christ, even her name is hot. This was not my intention.

“C’mere!” she says. “Sit!”

“What’s up?”

“I know who you are! You’re Kevin Feingold, the blogger.”

“Ah! Notoriety,” I joke, “thy name is mud. I’m such a celebrity, nobody’s ever heard of me! I’m not exactly Donald Trump.”

“I wanna be a writer,” Ginny explains. As Teddy Peligrosa’s dachshund waddles to her side, she scrolls on her smartphone, reading aloud. “Ernst Stavro Kleinfeldt faced the firing squad of life. Fortunately, he had his iPhone and Bluetooth to guide him. ‘Do you love me, Henrietta?’ he asked Henrietta von Fritz Alpokvist, his dalmatian. Speaking in tongues, the dog licked Ernst’s kneecap affectionately. He— ”

“Stop!” I scream. “Just… stop! What are you doing?”

“It’s a novel.”

“Yeah, I got that, but what’s the point of view? The voice? The syntax? What frame of reference are we dealing with here?” I ask, feeling like a curmudgeon.

“He’s a Soldier of Christ.”

“Yeah, okay,” I answer, flummoxed. “Whatever! Write and enjoy it your own way.”

Looking up, I see Town Councilwoman Claire Daphne storming down the embankment from the houses on 4th Street. She zeroes in on me. “Kevin Feingold!” she shouts. “How dare you! Don’t we always give you everything you want? Why do you always do this? Are you some sort of hippie???” Seething, she is, as usual, a complete and total, hopeless buffalo.

“Now see here— ” Ronald Hilton protests. I let him have a go. “This is a group effort of concerned citizens. No one person is responsible! The leash laws in this township are positively archaic! Any well-trained canine is thoroughly capable of walking at heel. We— ”

“It’s not us!” screeches Claire. “It’s the Animal At Large Law of Montgomery County and the state law in Annapolis. Cecil Calvert, the Second Baron Baltimore, kept foxhounds. Although he never left England, he gave his brother Leonard instructions in 1633 for governing the colony, including defense, the building of homes, surveying of land, making of salt, mining of iron ore and the husbanding of animals. As Maryland’s first governor, Leonard enforced those rules. Our hands are tied! We are bound hand and foot. Protest to Rockville, protest to Annapolis, not here!” she demands. Bound at neither hand nor foot, she angrily turns on her heels and marches back up the hill.

“Not to worry,” snickers Walter Crumb, peering at his cell phone. “I got it all on video. Uploading… now!”

A pleasant diversion, I take a few moments to join Jacqueline David and Ginny who are watching a movie on DVD. It starts with a panoramic view of a ruined cityscape à la WALL-E. A deep man’s voice, guttural German accent, intones: “My vorld ees filled wid wiolence. From Greenvich Willage to the sea, peoples is fighting. This ees also an homage to The Beeg Epple. Seven million peoples live in the city. Actually, a little less than seven million as the SARS virus—”

            SPLAT! A tousled man’s head comes flying at us like a cannonball, leaving a crimson swath across the screen. Screams. Around the edges of the bloody swath, headless zombies— arms stretched out in front— wobble along 5th Avenue. World War Z meets Urban Legend, what is wrong with this picture?  More to the point, is there anything remotely watchable about it?

Of course, Marco Rubio believes this film would be a lot better if President Obama wasn’t fundamentally trying to change America.

A shark-faced man in a trenchcoat like something out of World War Two and a homburg hat comes along the bike path walking a rottweiler. “Oh, hi!” he grins, desperately trying to curb his dog, who is wildly lunging at our pets, its behind wagging. “What’s with the beach chairs, dudes? And ladies.”

The “And ladies” sets off security alarms in our heads. Nobody talks that way outside of a federal building.

“Next stop Raqqa, Syria!” he proposes.

“Pardon?” asks Ronald Hilton icily.

“I’m just saying,” the stranger natters on, growing weirder by the second. “First you advocate the overthrow of the U.S. Government and now you espouse traveling to Syria and joining the Islamic State, right?”

“Says who?” demands Walter Crumb, fists clenched, angrily approaching Mr. Trenchcoat.

“I’m just sayin’ and all. I mean, that is your program, isn’t it?”

“Hey, maybe you better shut up!”

“Or what? I’ll sic my dog on you, shit head!” counters the stranger. But with its tongue lolling out and hindquarters wagging, a less threatening rottweiler I have yet to meet.

“Have a nice day,” I chime in brightly.

“Aren’t you, in fact, responsible for several deaths on the island of Grenada?” he asks me acidly.

“Well, well,” I scoff. “Fonzie jumps the shark! Somebody’s been accessing a lot more than Google Earth.”

“Anarchists!”

“We wouldn’t be having this difficulty,” insists Walter, almost tearing his hair out, “except that Barack Obama is president and knowingly, fundamentally trying to change this country. And not in a good way!”

“You’re just another bunch of goddam New York Jews brown-nosing your way into Cuba!” insists the stranger.

“Ecce homo, behold the man!” jeers Ronald Hilton. “Salus populi suprema lex esto, let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.”

Pando tosses a plastic fork.

“Move along!” I exclaim helpfully. “Nothing to see here, folks! This means you. Otherwise, we’ll sic our dachshund on you. A nervous fucker, he’ll pee on your shoes.”

Whatever his motive, with us laughing at him, our provocateur blushes furiously and— dragging the rottweiler— stomps off.

“F.B.I. informant,” Ronald Hilton proposes sagely, filling his pipe. “Federal agent. Did you see his wingtips? Civil servant footwear. Sheesh! I work with these people all the time.”

Feeding and watering the pooches while gorging on hot dogs and peanut brittle, we get interrupted by a mighty roar, shattering the tranquility of the bike path. Spooking man and beast alike. Nine massive motorcycles glide ominously into view, driven by Vikings and pirates bewhiskered in assorted hair colors and lengths.  “Balto Bandits” declare their leather vests.

“No motorized vehicles on the bike path, dudes,” squeaks Ronald, apparently terrified.

“We’re here for you!” shouts their leader. Toting a Thompson submachine gun on a sling across his chest— more for show than blow— he ceremoniously dismounts, comes forward and clasps me in a bear hug. Totally freaking me out. What if the gun goes off?! “Goddam gov’ment!” he announces.

“You saw us online?” I sigh, already tired of our Internet popularity.

“Wha—? No! We got a call from a local member of the Maryland Citizens Volunteer Militia. He thought y’all might need our help fighting socialist tyranny,” offers this son of Oden cheerfully.

“I counted the hot dogs,” volunteers Pando. “We’ve got enough.” Not wanting any trouble, excruciatingly aware of his place in the pecking order, he busies himself on the hibachi.

“How many gallons in the tank?” I ask, always a conversation starter among motorcycle enthusiasts.  We stand around discussing cubic centimeters.

“I got a 500cc Suzuki in my garage,” their leader assures me, “that might just fit a lowbrow novice like yourself.”

“Cool.”

We chew the fat until the snow starts at 3 p.m. The dogs jump in the air, yelping, nipping at snowflakes. “Shit! We gotta get back to Balto. Riding motorcycles in the snow is not fun!” our uninvited guests announce in a hail and hearty farewell. “And thanks for the dogs!” They do wheelies up and down the macadam. Before we know it, they are gone in a cloud of grimy black exhaust fumes. Our ears ring.

Probably because President Obama is trying to fundamentally change America.

            Thrup… thrup… thrup… thrup… A U.S. Army RQ-11 Raven drone, hardly bigger than a model airplane, not only invades our air space—

            Crash!

— it gets tangled in the kite-eating branches of a maple tree and flops to the ground, thrashing and buzzing like a wounded bat.

Hey, dudes, close only counts in horseshoes!

I guess if we wanted attention, we should be pleased. Feeling more and more like dartboards, we’re left considering that maybe Reality TV is the way to go.

I begin cleaning the area, dumping folded paper plates and white plastic forks into one of Pando’s grocery bags. Everything is dusted by a sheen of snow making skeleton patterns on the sidewalk.

“All right, so what is this?!” demand two Oxburg police officers, driving up and getting out of their squad car. So much for no motorized vehicles on the bike path! Nobody I know, they both look plenty pissed. Not exactly a “Snow Falling on Cedars” vibe.

“There are stink bugs in the Gents!” complains Walter Crumb, coming from the Men’s room, red-faced, reeking of weed and high as a kite. “Also, we’re practicing our citizens’ right to peaceably assemble.”

“Want some peanut brittle?” I ask the policemen.

“You fucking ass-holes!” one of them replies. Wet, ponderous snowflakes stick to the visor of his cap. “Haven’t you heard the weather forecast? We’re expecting snowmageddon. Get the fuck outta here! We are not sending Ambulance & Rescue when you a-holes get marooned out here in four feet of snow!” Carding Ginny, they become truly furious upon discovering that she’s a minor. Marching her to their cruiser, they stash her in the back with her pile of DVD’s. “I’ll catch ya later, Kevin!” she shouts. The troopers stare at me, molten brown murder in their eyes.

When I get home, mom sends me to fight my way through the grocery aisles. Confronting empty shelves, I stock up on remnants. Looks like we’ll spend the next three days subsisting on tea and vanilla pudding. I’ve known worse. It would be a lot better if President Obama wasn’t trying to change America fundamentally.

It snows for 36 hours, a cool, light and fluffy 30 inches of the white stuff. During the following week, I go out and shovel five times, a total of 7,200 pounds of snow by my calculation. I don’t hurt myself, but my charley horses got charley horses. Taylor Swift sings, composes and plays the guitar. The girl has the world at her feet. I shovel 7,000 pounds of snow. Qualifying me as a day laborer. Is life unfair or what?

This is only a problem because Barack Hussein Obama has spent the last seven years changing the spin of the planet. Ask Marco Rubio. It’s all Obama’s fault. Take that, Oprah! We can be victims, too, y’know!

Finis coronat opus, the end crowns the work. Newly muscle-bound, finally in shape, why am I not surprised when my phone rings and Ginny wants to know if I can come sledding? “Bring your dog!” she adds.

How can I explain to her that I don’t own a dog?

 

 

Correct you are that I should not always pipe up after the fact. Keep you informed I should of my whereabouts via Twitter, making pithy comments straight from the battleground. Only I get so wrapped up in the experience, it isn’t until hours later that I can gather my thoughts and express myself in words. Unlike Katie Couric, I seem to be experientially dyslexic: I know what is happening right in front of me, I just cannot find a way to simultaneously describe it.

Put simply, Suzanne— a bud from my college radio daze at dear old Moosegrave— invited me to visit her in Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re both retired: I retired from the Army, she retired from her marriage to a dot com titan whose development company makes video games and gets listed on the Fortune 500. I shipped my golf clubs. Last Monday, I flew out west budgiprop. It seems I never learn. The weather is in the mid-50’s, Denver has snow, and I’m chasing my golf game.

Here’s the drill. Tuesday is sunny. Appropriately attired in windcheaters, we play 18 holes. During lunch, I get a text from Jimmy, also an alumnus of our 0 watt college megastation, piped into the dorms via the electrical outlets. “Glad 2 hear U 2 R back together,” he twirps from Torrance, California. “Since U R in Arizona, go 2 preview of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Wed. Dec. 16, Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, 12 noon, International Air Response hangar. Be there! Love ya, Jimmy.”

On the upside, plagued by ADHD, Jimmy utilizes his X-ray focus to suss out stock quotations. He has actually scored over a million dollars in profits day trading. That takes talent. On the downside, Jimmy does suffer from ADHD. Suzanne calls him “Wildman,” which was his disc jockey persona, DJ Wildman Willard.

“What does Wildman want now?” she grouses, busily munching a country club bacon cheeseburger and an extra portion of southern style fries in guacamole. How does she do it? This girl never puts on an ounce.

“He wants us to go to the new Star Wars movie in Phoenix.”

“I don’t like downtown. Besides, weren’t you a Trekkie?”

“This is at the airport.”

“Which airport?”

“Phoenix-Mesa.”

“Oh. That’s in Mesa,” she says, latching onto my phone to read the message herself. “I thought the movie opens on Friday.”

“This is a preview.”

What to wear? Too cheap to spring for a lightsaber, I take a 46-inch fluorescent tube and duct tape a wooden handle from a broken golf umbrella on one end and the black plastic cap from a cold cream jar on the other. Ta-ta! A lightsaber… facsimile. Dyeing an old bedsheet brown, I fashion it into hood + cloak. I wear gray sweatpants and a red sweatshirt under it, securing my “robe” with a 1  3/4-inch black leather military belt from the former Soviet Union, replete with a brass buckle exhibiting the hammer and sickle inside the star of the Red Army. Black leather boots leave me stranded in appearance somewhere between a Tatooine dirt farmer and a Knight of the Rebel Alliance.

Suzanne dresses in a black leather jacket, a ballerina skirt and pink platform heels, her hair dyed purple. Blackening her teeth, she proclaims herself “Princess Hee-Haw of the Clown Colony.”

When we drive to the airport, the gravel parking lot is a madhouse, which well it should be. We are, like, two hours early and the line still snakes around the hangar. Not that many people in costume. Also, not the demographic I expected, too many blue-haired matrons and stuffy older gentlemen, a lot of rednecks and dudes in camo. I have read that ticket sales have broken all records and that white males have been the chief purchasers. I don’t know enough about Arizona to judge. “Any Hillary haters?” shouts a vendor, hawking buttons that say “Hillary for Prison.” Maybe this is what going to the movies is like in Arizona.

As we shuffle through the metal detector at the security checkpoint, the Rent-A-Cop in his stylized western police uniform grabs my lightsaber and asks, “What is this?!”

“It’s a lightsaber. You know, Star Wars. We’re here for the movie. I’m Captain Ad Hoc and this is Princess Hee-Haw,” I say, giving the Vulcan salute.

“Uh… What movie? This is a Donald Trump campaign event, y’ know.”

“Oh, well. Oh! That’s brilliant! Gad, why didn’t I think of that? Total synergy. You put together the Donald Trump crowd and the movie crowd and you double the audience. Smart!” Turning to Suzanne, I can see that she also is impressed by this marketing ploy.

“Wait over there to the side,” the cop tells me worriedly, calling for a supervisor. A dude in a nice suit with a walkie-talkie approaches, looks us up and down and asks, “Code Pink? No? Let me guess… Black Lives Matter! Not, God forbid, the Muslim Brotherhood???”

“The Rebel Alliance!” I inform him. I mean, don’t these dudes know anything about the Star Wars universe?

“White supremacists?”

“No, just movie enthusiasts.”

“What movie?”

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

“There isn’t any movie scheduled.”

“Of course there’s a movie! It’s a sneak preview. In conjunction with the Donald Trump rally,” I explain. Suzanne and I did both eat Alaskan King Crab legs on Tuesday night, followed by wild lovemaking, so I’m sure we smell both fishy and funky.

“O-o-o-okay,” sighs the supervisor. “First I heard about it. Say something from the movie.”

“Luke, I am your father. Now will you let go of the drainage pipe or do I need to cut off your pecker?”

“Okay, you can go in. Don’t cause any trouble!”

Not only do they let us pass, I even get to keep my “lightsaber.”

The crowd is enormous, the tension both thrilling and palpable. This is the famous Trump Crowd the commentators natter about. People who are fed up, in search of a fight. Shades of Nazi Germany, the crowd has roughed up protesters at previous rallies. A mean-looking dude in camo gives me the hairy eyeball. “What’s with the robe?” he asks, grimacing, telegraphing distaste. “You think you’re Lawrence of Arabia or somethin’?”

“No, no. Star Wars.”

“Star Wars?!” he yelps. “Best damn anti-ballistic missile program ever devised by man. Missiles from space. Pure genius! All Ronnie Reagan needed to do was threaten the Soviets with it and they went broke trying to keep up.” Happy with the association, he stands there beaming. Regally, I touch him solemnly on each shoulder with my lightsaber and declare, “May the fudge be with you!”

I love the back wall of this hangar, it must be 150 feet long and 60 feet high. Colossal! Crank up an IMAX digital projector and we are in for one heck of a show. Gangbusters!

Meanwhile, Suzanne— of French derivation— has accrued a posse of hungry males, drooling and teasingly yanking on her skirt. Exasperated, a liberated woman, she turns around, pulls down her skirt and moons us through per delectable pink panties. Applause all around, from both men and women. A lady for any occasion, we’re buds because she’s such a great bitch to hang out with.

Amidst deafening rock music, Donald Trump’s plane taxis up to the hangar. As Trump makes his way to the podium, people’s right arms shoot into the air… hoisting their cellphones to photograph the event. Then there’s a pause while The Donald gives an interview to Fox News, using us as his backdrop. Smart move.

Here’s a dude in buckskin and a coonskin cap. At least we’re both in costume. I start to say “Brilliant minds think alike,” but he’s one jump ahead of me. “You takin’ a gander at mah squaw?” he demands, thumping me on the chest with his balled fist. That’s when I first notice his lady— maybe five feet tall—  decked out in pigtails, leather fringe and moccasins. His own personal Pocahontas.

“Not that I know of,” I tell him. “May the frost go with you!”

Suzanne intercedes and, smiling ferociously, drawls in Californ-eye-ese, “Y-Y-You-u  le-e-eave  mah  b-b-boyfriend  alo-o-o-one!”

At the podium, Donald Trump tells us how his crowds are so much bigger than anyone else’s.

“Dump Trump! Dump Trump!” shout a contingent of protesters, fists in the air, pressing their way through the crowd. Jeering, whistling, booing Trump supporters give them a quick boot outta the arena.

Suddenly, for no particular reason, there’s a boneheaded redneck hissing in my ear. “What kinda get-up you wearin’?” he wants to know. Glancing at his pimply face, red hair and the dozens of holes in his greasy jeans, I could ask the same of him. His teeth are stumps. He has an Arizona twang that all but screams “Poor white trash!”

“Let me listen to Trump— ” I suggest.

Latching onto my shoulder with an enormous paw, he burps, “Is that an Arab robe or somethin’?”

Distracted, I stupidly tell him, “A thawb? No, it’s not a thawb.”

“You is a slimy A-rab,” he seethes, looking bloody murder at me. “We worship Jesus, you worship Osama bin Laden!”

“Obama— ”

“I hate Obama! We should run all o’ you Mos-slimes outta the country! And that includes Kenyaboy!”

People to our left and right edge in closer and shake their heads in agreement. Shoving me discreetly, they kick me in the shins. Shades of fraternity hazing, everybody gets to take a poke at Captain Ad Hoc! As we say in the Army: Wear the uniform, bite the bullet. “Ours is a nastic movement,” I exclaim plaintively. “Some would even say thermonasty!” To no avail.

Suzanne is also getting the treatment. While she and I are being pushed around, Donald Trump says, “You know, I’m at 43 and the other guys are at two and three and seven.”

Boy, so much for being the “other.” People be angry. I’m confronted by a lady dressed in black lace like Madame Lafarge. My badge says “May the Fluff Be with You.” Hers, fully four inches across, says “Fuck Iran!” Eyeing me like she is a frog and I am a tasty fly, she croaks, “The silent majority sides with Trump!”

“Wisdom great should you find,” I explain Yoda-style. She wallops me with her handbag. Wow, am I relieved when security comes rushing over! They escort a furious Suzanne and me from the hangar.

“We’re the victims here,” Suzanne insists. Trump is still talking, but people have begun to vacate the premises.

“We knew youse was troublemakers from the get-go,” a helpful officer informs us. “We shoulda impounded Gonzo’s lightbulb, but we was tryin’ t’ be nice!”

“You’re a New Jersey transplant?” I guess. “Here for the weather and the golf?”

“Yeah, so? What about it?” he responds, very fast and hot under the collar.

“Whoa, wait! I think it’s a great move. I’d do the same. No, I just meant us Jersey boys should stick together.”

“No way! Where you from?” he scoffs.

“South Orange.”

“If’n youse from South Orange,” he asks, “why you causin’ trouble?”

You got me.

“I should have gotten an Emmy for ‘The Apprentice,’ ” says Donald Trump.

“Can we go in when the rally is over and they start the movie?”

“There ain’t gonna be no goddam movie!” the New Jersey cop insists earnestly. “I asked! No one in the Trump campaign has heard anything about a movie. Not even a campaign movie. They don’t intend to show a movie.”

Uh-h-h, boy! Wildman strikes again!

“I don’t want to be a nasty guy, but I don’t care anymore! I don’t care!” shouts The Donald as the masses depart.

Using Bing on Suzanne’s smartphone, we find a coffee shop at a Comfort Inn where like-minded Star War fanatics are getting juiced on triple lattes and constructing our own Most Desired Screenplay.

*******     Stud Wars: Balls Out on the Long Island Expressway     *******

Our tale chronicles the adventures of Tab Soho, a New York taxi driver who refuses to drive South of Houston. Together with his hairy dispatcher Chewin’ Tobacca and the Princess Nee-how (Chinese for “hello”), they battle the marching stormtroopers of the Uber Empire. These stalwart champions of free enterprise are aided by The Thug Boy Three who sing in a band when not beating people up and, vice versa, beat up people in bands when not singing. And they are the heroes! Horns honking, subwoofers blasting, pedal to the metal, much mayhem ensues. This is gonna be a great movie! There’s even an homage to Abdel Gamal Nasser, although we do get in a fight over who receives the primary writer credit.

 

 

The cold weather is nipping at our heels. I wanted to write about ISIS, but I’ve got this legal conundrum. I’ve spent the day trying to figure out how to put the situation in the best possible light. You guys who know me are gonna be pissed! I blame it on the goddam picnic tables.

Oxburg, Maryland has three schools, Pierce Elementary— where both my younger bro’ Tim and I went to school— H. L. Mencken Middle School and, of course, Oxburg High. Long may the purple and yellow (yech!) wave victorious! “Oxburg, Oxburg, who’s gonna buy the slurpees?” as our cheerleading squad used to chant at football games.

My current legal battle has gone on for a month. As Tim says: “If Maryland is my lover, why am I ducking for cover?” It was only this week that my case came up on the docket.

The library sits next to H. L. Mencken Middle School. And there are these wooden picnic tables where, cloudy or bright, sweet young girls hang out after school. I mean, this is a given. Mindless maidens, noses buried in their smartphones, nobody using the library pays them any mind. Separate worlds. Fridays, however, are a problem. Predatory Friday, suddenly our young damsels are looking for a sugar daddy to finance their weekend activities. I came out of the wrong door at the library, and there were two young ladies waiting to pounce.

Sandee has hair three colors of blond, any one of which may or may not be natural. All this wavy blond hair cascading off the shoulders of her fire engine red outfit. Okay, I’m a pushover for girls with painted eyes. She had me right there. “Hey, mister,” she called in the cracked, nasal voice of adolescence. “Whaddya gonna do this weekend? Julie and I want to have fun but we don’t have any money, tee hee hee! ” Waving a hand, kicking her foot, smirking, she kept me enthralled with those dynamite blue-green eyes. This was a sad situation. I hoped her braces would demure me, but instead, they just made her seem all of 13 years old— which she is— and I found that strangely attractive. Kind of like revisiting my misspent youth.

Her girlfriend Julie was no help. Your foxy brunette with tight, tight blue slacks that showed off her exceptional hips and a round little rump, she wore a patterned blouse that somehow drew my glance upward to that laughing face of hers. “How much money ya got in yer wallet?” she guffawed.

(I need to stop grinding my teeth while writing about this, but read on!)

“No, really, guys, I — ”

“How old are you?” lisped Sandee, pointing at me with her whole hand. Her red lacquered nails resembled ice picks.

“I’m 42,” I lied, shaving 15 off my age.

“What year were you born?” Julie immediately countered, a smart cookie.

I, too, am nimble at math. “October 12, 1973.”

“L-L-Listen,” Sandee insisted, “It’s so warm out! Take off your jacket!”

Just kidding around, I took off my jacket and dumped it unceremoniously on the table.

“Lemme see yer wallet,” cracked Julie, both hands held out in front of her like an Egyptian maiden.

“No way!”

“Way!”

“Give her your wallet!” laughed Sandee.

God help me, I handed Julie my wallet.

My life is so barren of romance, the girls’ teasing had me swollen like a blimp, pressing achingly inside my pants. It’s been too long. Sandee and Julie gave each other a look of “Oh, wow!” while examining my crotch with wolfish grins.

“Now take off your shirt!” Sandee commanded.

“Oh, come on…”

With Sandee laughing, waving her nails in my face and kicking her legs, I found myself compelled to comply. Once I had my shirt off, of course, every Tom, Dick and Harry in the neighborhood was gazing, appalled, at my pale torso. Customers from the bank across the street, school personnel, neighbors on West 31st Road. Very quickly, I did a few Arnold Schwartzenegger poses and pulled my shirt and jacket back on.

Julie, meanwhile, took advantage of my little exhibition to relieve me of the $38 in my wallet: A twenty, a ten, a five and three ones. Foosh! Quick as The Flash, all gone!  “Here! Take yer wallet,” she drawled, tossing it on the table. Love that Maryland accent!

Sandee laughingly suggested, “Get down on all fours and bark like a dog!” That’s when the police arrived. I was busy tucking in my shirt tails, under my jacket.

“Okay, don’t move,” two male policemen instructed us, approaching edgily, looking larger than life in their brown uniforms.

Droooop, I lost that erection muy rápido! “Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Show your I.D. and shut up!” suggested one police officer. I really liked the way his partner unclipped the flap on his holster. Did they actually feel threatened?

“WE’RE JUST TALKING!” Julie insisted.

Sandee’s porcelain white skin had already turned a whiter shade of pale.

While one cop kept me under surveillance, his partner went to their cruiser and put my particulars into the computer.

The blacks in Baltimore are rioting in protest over police violence. Here in lily white Oxburg, the local gendarmes divide their time equally between investigating burglaries, directing Saturday traffic at the synagogue and Sunday traffic at the mosque, and running a series of speed traps along The 1812 Highway.

“So what’s it all about?” asked the first officer when his partner came up empty. “Do you know these girls?”

“It’s literally nothing. We’re playing. I work really hard, so when they saw me and I saw them, we decided to joke around.”

“Somebody called and said there was a streaker. Was that you?”

“THERE WAS NO STREAKER!” Julie volunteered, but I shushed her with a wave of my hand. I think she was ready to get in a fistfight with the cops.

“I told them about training on a Nautilus at the gym and they wanted to see my muscles, so I took off my shirt for a second. Bodybuilding poses. Half a minute at the most.”

“Okay, we’re charging you with pedophilia. You can explain it to the judge.”

“There’s no law against talking to people, officers.”

“Tell it to the judge! You did a lot more than just talk! Now shut up!”

BAM! Just like that, I and my book bag are loaded into the cage in the back of the police car and I am driven to the precinct house, fingerprinted, and put in a holding cell. My one phone call is, naturally, to my mom. She, in turn, calls her estate lawyer, who practically has a meltdown over the phone. Eventually, a chubby criminal lawyer named Richard Pope comes to my aid. Standing outside my cell, briefcase in hand, he’s sprung me! When the guard opens up, Richard shakes my hand. “I know who you are! I’ve seen the golf trophies. I graduated twenty years after you at Dorkburg,” he tells me, a big smile on his face.

“Long live the purple and gold,” I breathe.

******

I get several unpleasant telephone calls from the parents. They do not appreciate our little charade by the picnic tables. Sandee’s mom calls me a child molester. Julie’s dad accuses me of being a Muslim terrorist. “If you ever show your ugly snout around my daughter again,” he informs me, “I’ve got a gun and I’m prepared to use it!” They are out for blood. I find anything and everything I say only sets them off. So I stop trying to explain my concern that the girls not be traumatized by a court appearance. They’re good kids. We adults may be full of bilge, but there is no earthly reason to put them through such an ordeal. Thankfully, Richard agrees with me. He convinces the prosecutor to take oral depositions from each of the teenagers. These will be used in court.

******

My argument is that in a world where angry, radicalized shooters massacre innocent people once a week, what possible harm does it do if two young girls and I clown around?

“Firstly, you are not a legal expert, so your lay interpretation of the law interests the judge not at all,” Richard tells me, totally deflating my trial balloon.

Ouch!

“Secondly, you cannot put an equal sign between other people’s behavior and your own. The judge is concerned primarily with the letter of the law. Have you violated existing statutes? Only in extremis does the spirit of the law enter the picture at this level. We’re not talking Clarence Darrow pleading before the Supreme Court here. You are remanded to district court, the lowest rung on the legal ladder.”

Ga-a-a-a! At $250 an hour, I give it another shot: “There was no public nudity to speak of. No one touched anyone else. There was no intention of anyone doing any touching. Who took the ‘innocent’ out of innocent fun?”

“You’re not listening, Kevin! Think of the law as a game with a very intricate set of rules. All we servants of the court practice it daily. You cannot show up with neophyte opinions and ‘win’ against paid professionals. All you can do is lose. That’s why you pay me. To minimize the damage.”

Yikes! I feel like I’m on my way to San Quentin.

******

Richard is very good in the courtroom. I can’t quote the judge without risking a boatload of legal grief, so I’ll merely describe the issues. The county prosecutor charges me with pedophilia and contributing to the delinquency of two minors.

“Pedophilia presupposes a sexual motive behind the actions of the accused, which has in no way been substantiated,” Richard points out.

The judge lectures us: In nine out of ten cases of adults misbehaving in the presence of a minor, predation is the motive. A legal precedent is already in effect.

Richard objects that this hasn’t been proven in the current case.

The prosecutor insists that the charges stand.

Richard offers to take the case to trial.

The judge does that “please approach the bench” thing. I sit and sulk while the three of them confer. When Richard returns, he’s smiling ever so slightly. “They want to hit you with a $500 fine and give you a year’s probation.”

“Shit! Sure,” I tell him. “It’s a storm in a teacup. There wasn’t any ‘there’ there.”

“Hell, even I know that,” Richard insists.

“What about my first amendment rights? Certainly there’s no law against talking with a member of the younger generation.”

“You should have thought of that before you took your shirt off, Kevin!” he admonishes me, a less than amused look on his face.

“I acted like an idiot,” I agree.

“We won’t tell the judge that, he’d up your fine.”

******

“Hey, mister!” Sandee and Julie shout, waving from a distance outside the library this last Friday. It’s sunny, but the weather’s turned cold. We’re bundled up. “No hard feelings, huh?”

“You never did a bad thing in your life!” I shout back, waving.

They laugh.

I laugh.

******

The End. I hope.

 

***************** Ambiguous Law Enforcement *******************

The good news is, I was not arrested and I am not pro-pedophilia. The purpose of the story is to show how difficult we find handling ambiguous issues. While the local police in San Bernardino, California were issuing traffic tickets and investigating local disturbances, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik purchased 4,500 rounds of ammunition and assorted bomb components without awakening the interest of either the FBI or the San Bernardino police. Farook and Malik were not members of the military, law enforcement or a gun club. Why did they need 4,500 rounds of ammunition? While the police were going about their daily business, Farook and Malik killed 14 people and wounded 21 others. We need to get our priorities straight.