What if she held it
up to my crotch and the meter went wild. Jail time, court trials, news paper
articles, my bewildered face on the front of Haaretz with the headline ASSHOLE
with atomic crotch found on EL AL. At the very least it would have meant that
my dick was radioactive and that can't be good (could it be?).
Still it was a
disappointment for me. It is natural to expect a little more from my penis.
Jack, my friend,
you want your cock to have all this hidden power, to rise up behind
revolutions, swelling to destroy
civilizations, to raise cities to the ground, to violate (repeatedly in a
rhythmic fashion) the laws of time and space. You want your balls to be packed
with plutonium (weighty balls no?) ready to fire forth and split the atom. You
want your penis to be viewed by future, post-apocalyptic civilizations, through
some transspacialtemporalsmegomaniameter and you want those people to say WHAT
A DICK!
Jack you want it to
blow out like a raygun.
Instead, much like
my penis, the giger counters hung limply down. It was a big floppy for
everyone; me, my dick, and the security specialist.
What
set me off was the smug look behind the sherbet cream lipstick, behind the
tectonic layers of rouge hello kitty makeup, behind her Ronald McDonald
eyeliner, behind the curled lips and shuttered eyes of contempt. It just pissed
me off, watching this fat bitch hold the Geiger counter in her baroquely, multi
colored manicured hoof. This gargantuan sow, dressed like she should be handing
me my french fries, was looking down at me shoving a Geiger counter into my
crotch. She was in charge, she had power, she loved it and she didn’t even let
me lick her boots. So my suggestion that she check my ass for a dirty bomb
didn't fly so well.
-It is all for your
security sir, is what she said.
My security?
When they pulled me
and my wife out of line and started to ask us questions about who and where we
were going to be visiting in Israel.
When they had us wait in a small room for an hour without telling us
why. When they turned on our cell phones and looked through the contact list
(Osama Bin Ladin +79 03 983 379, Yasser Arafat + 97 98 987 789, Carlos
the Jackel +33 986 675 6574, Donald Trump +01 293 343 3204), they said this was
for my security. My security, when they opened up our bags and searched through
my wife's underwear and lost one of my favorite shoes. When they confiscated
all of our luggage to inspect them in greater detail and kept them for a week. My
security? When they brought us up to the flight gate with a security escort.
The moment in time
you measure the radioactive levels of my penis to see if it is a nuclear
threat, it is clearly not for my security. Clearly it is someone else’s
security they have in mind.
Could it be, in
some partial , limited sense; my fault?
The first person to
speak with when flying El Al is Miss Security. She stands behind a podium, white pages lie before her
on the brown wood. Her navy blue jacket separates her from the gray walls of
Fiumancino Airport in Rome.
Miss
Security smiled at us behind her Olivia Newton John haircut, looked at the
names on our passports and began picking apart every aspect of our lives.
-Hello is this your first time going to Israel, she asks.
Yes,
it is and we are looking forward to it!
-Where
do you want to visit in Israel?
My
wife pushes me aside. Dressed in her baroque olive and black with gold
embroidery military jacket, she
leaps forward and answers:
-Jerusalem,
Nazareth, the Red Sea and the Dead Sea.
Shifting
in my Rhone leather trench coat, thinking, fuck she took everyplace, where the fuck
else could we go in Israel? Then this dropped out of my mouth like a turd:
And
Bethlehem, definitely don't want to miss that.
Miss
Security’s jaw unhinged and dropped as if cobra was trying to take a ten foot
black dick:
-Oh
my God! Why would you want to go there it’s so dangerous!
My
wife, green eye glared at me:
-Yes
dear, why would you want to go there.
My
head spun in panic:
Oh
shit that's wasn’t Isre...duh …um...yes, of course.
Don’t say
Bethlehem, especially in the middle of the second intifada. Bethlehem just came
to mind. Who fucking wants to see Tel Aviv besides lonely guys in Brooklyn who
have heard that the only thing better than the loose women is the Haredim gay
scene. Who thinks of Bethlehem as being a Palestinian city? Even though
it is...duh
…um...yes, of course.
From
there it is just the downward slide:
Miss
Security narrows her eyes:
-So
what do you do for a living?
Me,
video editor.
-NEWS?
No,
oh god no, yucky news, pituoooe news, it’s all nature documentaries, promos,
color correction. Pretty pictures that’s me.
-So
how much do you make? Miss Security asks
How
much do we make?
-Yes how much?
About
60 thousand a year.
-60
thousand?
Yes.
Miss
Security wrinkles her nose and smirks;
-Doesn’t
sound like much.
What
do you mean?
-Well
for the kind of work both of you do 60 thousand doesn’t seem right.
Tell
me about it...Wait a second, how much do you make?
-Where
do you live.
Via
Aristide Busi #9. Here in Roma.
-Here?
Yes.
-Do
you have a Visa to be here?
Visa?
-Yes.
This
is Italy. We are Americans. Nobody cares.
-So
you are here illegally. Why are you laughing?
Sorry,
that is just really funny.
-Ah
hum.
Yup…ah
hum…jesus…
-Ok,
where are you staying in Israel?
With
our friend, here’s her card.
-Where
does she live?
In
Jerusalem.
-Where?
We
don’t know we’ve never been there.
-But
you don’t know the address?
She’s
coming to pick us up.
-But
how can you not know where she lives?
We
have never been there before. Look you have her card, you can call her and ask
what her address is. Please do.
-And
she works for an International agency?
Yes,
like it says on her card.
-What
does she do?
Well
it should say on the card.
-Yes
but what is it that she does?
Work,
hobbies, toilet practices, what do you mean?
Miss
Security straightens her back and levels her shoulders and held pen to paper,
smirking triumphantly:
-What
do you think?
Gottcha.
She bakes. Loves to bake. Mad for it.
Breads, sourdoughs, torts, cupcakes, meatpies. Like apeshit wild for it.
A real fucking Betty Crocker, its kind of scary.
-Is
she American?
Yes,
wonderful woman. God bless her, her apple pies and God bless America, long may they waive.
-She
married?
Yes.
-What
is he?
An
international consultant.
-No
what nationality is he?
American.
-No,
ethnically.
Ah
yes. Palestinian.
And
then we were taken aside and searched.
If you want to be
treated nicely, don't mention anything connected in any way with Palestinians.
Don't mention Bethlehem, Jericho, Nabuls, Jenin, and especially not Hebron.
These places do not exist, they are just very old figments of someone else's
imagination. If you are deluded into believing in them, then you are a
threat to someone else's security. The guy carrying ten pounds of plutonium in
is ass probably also aware of this, and he is the one most likely to say that
he's on his way to Eilat.
The
fact we were lying didn’t help. We weren’t going to Jerusalem for a vacation.
My wife had a job doing development work in Ramallah, Palestine and she was
going there to work without a visa. And it seemed like a good place for my
nervous breakdown. Weighty balls, no?
Confiscating all of our belongings, to further search, they escorted us to the gate five minuets before boarding, blowing all of our duty free opportunities. And after being in rooms with no windows; Jack you want to see the sky. And you walk to the gate windows at Fiumancino Airport, and look at those pastel blue Italian sky. So different from the dark blue of New York’s heavens. Everywhere you go Ouranos is different... what will the sky be like; there in Israel?
Jack strain your
eyes and look to the horizon, there is a different sky, Uranus at war. Full of
smoke, artillery rounds, tracer bullets, and the scent of horrifying sulphur
from Katuscha rockets. Outside the window are planes taking flight, strain your
eyes and you can see Apache helicopters flying over while civilians dash from
the streets in fear. Outside the airport window there is old Italy living in
its lavish mediocrity, strain your eyes and see Israeli girls with push up bras
in military uniforms, Palestinian girls in tight tee shirts, Israeli and
Palestinian boys in crotch and ass grabbing pants, see the stone houses within
they live impoverished lives, united in ways they could never see. Jack strain
your eyes and see a red heifer and a rooster jumping from roof to roof. When
the light of the ray gun goes out, and your eyes relax, they see your face
reflected in the window.
They then marched
me and my wife out before our murmuring fellow passengers and onto the El Al
flight. Down sat two gigantic security officers, in perfect plain clothes narc
wear on either side of us, for the duration of the flight; just in case an
airline spork could be used as a deadly weapon. Doubtlessly for my
security.
Then the in flight meal tasted a bit flat; so low grades for EL AL on the customer comment cards they handed us. One of the guys with no neck lent me a pen.
No one really
cares, we all just phoning this in. One regulation says you seat me between two
shaved gorillas, and another says: give them a comment card, we want their
feedback. Checkpoints, body searches, undercover agents, it is all just done by
rote. It encapsulated everything that can be said about the modern security
state that has arisen in Israel, in Rome, in London, in New York, and in my
room with the sounds of night engulfing me. Is arising the right word? Is it
simply limply hanging.
Now, in the shades
of night, my finger tapping to the sounds of my family sleeping, these words
are finally consigned to the page.
My Proto Pipe is
broken, it still fucktions pretty well, sitting brasstained black, blockish
front chamber, Bauhaus style, with it pick laid along side it. The rubber
cover on the brass breathing tube, bitten, with two lone hemp seeds sitting on
the white table. Why isn't it a ray gun that shoots out the lights around me
and cuts through the darkness beyond?
A small spider emerges from the shadows around my desk, emerging from the darkness and darting back within. It is looking for some where to catch its web and to start weaving. Fingers pull back from the keyboard in fear. The fingers, my fingers, have come to here again and again, before receding once again in fear. a fear that you burn to glowing red ash every night, a fear that you open up a bottle of wine and drink it away in laughter every night, a fear that you shove your cock into while she claws the skin off your back...
A small spider emerges from the shadows around my desk, emerging from the darkness and darting back within. It is looking for some where to catch its web and to start weaving. Fingers pull back from the keyboard in fear. The fingers, my fingers, have come to here again and again, before receding once again in fear. a fear that you burn to glowing red ash every night, a fear that you open up a bottle of wine and drink it away in laughter every night, a fear that you shove your cock into while she claws the skin off your back...
The story is a
simple one, see Jack run to live in Ramallah for six months in 2004, at the
height of the second intifada because he ran out of cash. He returns in the
Lebanon War in 2006 because he ran out of what he found there the first time.
It is not a story about right and wrong, not about politics, it is to be a
pretty thing. Sights, sounds, a soft breeze on a warm day, a catching glance of
a pretty woman's eye, the salt water rush of biting into a halal pickle. And
tits, lots of tits bounding around everywhere. This story should be described
the most mamarian terms achievable, it should ooze milk. It should make babies
coo.
Except for that feeling of fear, as if someone has entered into the room and is watching you work. Their eyes boil the computer screen, singe the hair off your arms, and view you as one thing among many.
Except for that feeling of fear, as if someone has entered into the room and is watching you work. Their eyes boil the computer screen, singe the hair off your arms, and view you as one thing among many.
Behind my bulk on my left side there is the sound of people walking in the room. Perhaps they have come in, taken aloof their shoes, moved through the house, and now their eyes are resting on me. Right behind my left shoulder, they are breathing deeply, softly, behind me. What to write, what to say, there eyes lie on you and perhaps their arms reach out...
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