The Last Part
Leaving Jerusalem is a sad affair — it feels practically biblical, like the palpable lack after havdalah happens at the end of Shabbat. Usually to lift our spirits at as our second soul departs, we smell spices to comfort and soothe. Unfortunately, Tel Aviv’s scent is a melange of sweat, urine, and hot garbage. This is my first impression as I step from the train at Hahaganah Station. Most take the bus from Jerusalem to the fabled Central Station of Tel Aviv — a building that looks like Escher took a hit of acid. I opted instead for the train — longer, but the scenery is cinematic and I have four seats to myself. The moment the doors open to the air, I wilt. Though the temperature is the same as Jerusalem, the humidity magnifies each degree; it’s maybe 87, but feels like 100. I decide to walk out of sheer stupidity and am repaid in kind. The walk from the station to the apartment is maybe 25 minutes, but might as well be a full day. The one saving grace is that here, unlike Jerusalem, people sweat unabashedly as though hit in the stomach, back, and chest with brutal liquid fists. Though I don’t spend much time lingering as I search for the apartment, I pass through Levinksy Market: stalls full of spices, dried fruit, candy, and people standing and shopping on perhaps 10 inches of pavement. After hitting at least three people with my luggage, I arrive at the apartment in the south end of the city, Florentine. Variously described as trendy, hipster-y, and dirty, I would say no description is mutually exclusive. The apartment sits off of Yafo St. in an alley that leads to an industrial area. It isn’t a looker, but the ceilings are high and the room has a balcony that looks into the street below and the apartments across. A woman a few balconies down smokes a cigarette and drinks some sort of energy drink. As she finishes it, she looks across to me and lets the can fall to the ground without a flicker in her expression.
“You love Jerusalem, but you’re in love with Tel Aviv.” The waitress saying this to me has a blond bob with a chunky streak of brown in the front. As I eat my burrito, I think: Is that true?. To be fair, I have only been in the White City for about two full days — three if you count a rather strange evening of walking aimlessly, trying to psych myself out to eat alone in one of the restaurants along Rothschild Boulevard.
Usually, I have no problems eating alone — might even prefer it, if only to save others from the horror that is watching me gorge myself at any given meal. But, in a country where you don’t know the language fluently and airplane mode is the only thing between you and $100 Facebook chat come next phone bill, eating alone is a rather different prospect. I end up at what amounts to an Israeli diner called Benedict, which has lovely food and a very nice wait staff, a little strung out from lack of sleep. Vladi, the person behind the counter, says that usually there are three shifts but the other waiter cut his hand badly — “lots of bloods from the hand” — so he has been working for the last twelve hours. I can’t quite figure out what this city is. Some call it the Big Orange, so I guess it’s like New York. There’s certainly a lot going on, and the people are metropolitan in an East Coast sort of way. But the city is also filled with beach bums and tourists, the prices are high, and the people look almost invariably good. To be fair, this seems to be an Israeli thing: maybe it’s the sun or the thoughtful diet or military service, but Israel is a sexy place where everyone has a tan and no one is going to let a thermometer get in the way of things like well-cut suits. The women strut on high wedges, their dresses fluttering for all the world like a Beyonce video. A walk down any street becomes a chance to recognize just how unfit, relatively pale, and undeniably sweaty I really am. This makes me feel as though it is more of a Miami than a New York, though I have yet to see one person rollerblading.
A momentary digression. Countries have their own terminology for things that exist in other places. For example, in Israel a shot is called a chaser, while American chasers, if they existed in Israel, would be called personal weakness. Dental floss is called dental wire, but, by golly, a Coke is a Coke. Coffee is somewhere between chasers and dental wire in the work of mutual intelligibility. As in so many languages, coffee is café in Hebrew. No issues there. Israelis, however, are quite fond of talking about how terrible American coffee is — an amusing opinion given that most Israelis drink instant coffee. Regardless, if you are looking for an iced coffee, things become a little more complicated. If you ask for an “ice cafe” (yes, yes, without the “d”) you will receive a coffee slushie. If you want that that Starbucks-style iced coffee, the phrase is instead “cafe kar” — “cold coffee.” Yet, unlike Starbucks, the milk is non-negotiable, nor are their options as to milk percentage, 1% and almond be damned. For a people who often drink their hot coffee black, the idea of drinking an iced coffee without milk is, well, strange. And despite explaining both in Hebrew and English that I don’t want milk, I get milk every time. Under normal circumstances, this would not be a problem. I am neither vegan nor lactose-intolerant so, though it isn’t my first choice, I will rarely send a drink back. But, have I mentioned that Tel Aviv feels like a test subject in the effects of green house gases? For whatever reason, the city was built facing the (exquisite) beachfront; thus, few streets run perpendicular to the sea. Whatever breeze might come from the east stutters through the buildings and dies toward the center of the city. Milk in this weather sounds about as appealing as Bikram yoga.
This being said, perhaps the best interaction I have had in Tel Aviv was with a girl, no more than 10, working behind the counter at the Israeli version of Starbucks. This is another aspect of Israel that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s summer vacation, but at a major chain company I don’t think any bring-your-child-to-work-day would mean allowing your child to ring out customers unaccompanied. Clearly, Israel’s rules are a little more relaxed. Without missing a beat the young girl takes my order, realizes I have the Hebrew of a three-year-old (at best), and switches effortlessly to unaccented English. As she hands me my change, she says have a nice day and waves me from the shop like a veteran, fixing her name tag. I find myself equal parts charmed and saddened: charmed by her confidence, her fluency, her kindness and saddened by my continuing lack of fluency and my younger self, who probably didn’t have an appreciable fraction of her industriousness. As Beyonce might say: who run the world? Clearly, this ten-year-old.
***
The influence of the Anglo-world isn’t exactly hidden in Israel, and certainly not in Tel Aviv. This seems especially true in the country’s queer culture. In Jerusalem, I met two party organizers who invited me to an event not more than a four minute walk from my apartment in Florentine. Navigating another alley, I arrive around 10 at an unassuming venue with thirty or so people milling between the street and a large room hidden behind a fluttering metallic curtain. Some are dressed in deconstructed tuxes, one has bedazzled Mickey Mouse ears on, another wears a skin-tight cat suit and Tiffany blue knee-high boots. It is queer in so many senses, and it is lovely. The DJ plays some house music, and in the center of the dance floor are another thirty people dancing in the heat that air conditioners can assuage but not remove. I see the promoter, Ysca, who greets me warmly and asks me if I am ready for a night of voguing. I learn that, unintentionally, I have stumbled into the first voguing competition in Israel. For those who don’ t know what voguing is, I suggest you watch Paris is Burning and/or videos of a dancer-choreographer named Willi Ninja who was the inspiration for Madonna’s 1990 “Vouge” and brought vogue dancing from the underground ball scene to international attention. The style itself blends elements of stylized posing, fluttering hands, break dancing, humor, abandon, and attitude to create something both dangerous and captivating. Over the course of three hours, soloists, pairs, and trios compete, each battle punctuated by the crowd coming back to the dance floor, wading through the energy left behind. This is my Tel Aviv.
I am down to the wire in Tel Aviv. Tomorrow is my last full day before I have to skip, once again, across the sea to the Great Flughafen and onward to New York. Though I still can’t say I like Tel Aviv — I certainly don’t love it — I have come to appreciate the meaning it has accrued for the Jewish people, a different kind of Jerusalem perhaps. Tel Aviv isn’t holy, but it does have a kind of divinity, of prophetic fulfillment for better or worse: it is a city where people are Jewish on their own terms, and unabashedly so. In a religion whose stories and histories often deal with the threat of destruction, Tel Aviv feels like a well-tanned middle finger. The Jews are the people who lived, but to live and to flourish are hardly the same. Tel Aviv flourishes, buildings pushing like bamboo toward a sky that is unbearably blue. I don’t think anyone can say what will happen; certainly in my month here, I have stumbled into moments that sometimes feel impossible to synthesize into a total picture. Like a queer Judaism, Israel feels more like a negotiation, a vigilance perhaps for the weaving of tradition and modernity, Western influences and a very non-Western mentality, secular and sacred, beauty, chaos, possibility. In the end, I suppose all we can have is savlanoot — patience.
