He bragged so frequently about smuggling a lump of hash into
the country by tucking it behind his balls that at last I was forced to assume
that he wanted me to smoke it for him. Presumably, the hash had been wrapped
before it came in contact with his scrotum. In any event, sack hash was better
than no hash.
The weed in Israel was uniformly depressing, sold by seedy
British guys in back alleys of Eilat, thirty shekels a matchbox. Weed came in
matchboxes—about the equivalent of a nickel bag—gritty, dusty, low-quality.
We’d separate it on plastic plates: a pile of ganj, a pile of sticks, a pile of
seeds, and a pile of sand. Every matchbox contained a nice helping of sand.
Nut-hash didn’t belong.
We were, for the most part, in our late teens and early
twenties, hiding from the people we were in our home countries, volunteering on
the kibbutz for room and board and a pittance that earned us enough to purchase
a candy bar or a stick of real butter in the kibbutz store.
Nut-hash was forty-two, a professional chef who “followed
the season,” three months in a hotel kitchen in Hawaii, four weeks at a resort
in Thailand. Whatever, wherever. He came to Israel because the foreign girls
were easy. The British, I noticed, threw off their inhibitions along with their
clothing as soon as the sun hit their skin.
But he seemed stuck on me, and never lost an opportunity to
brag: underwear models he’d had, exotic ports he’d explored, the beauty of his
ex-wife, who he’d left because, “Can you imagine sleeping with the same person
for ten years?” And, of course, the lump of Dutch hash he’d taped between his
penis and his testicles.
His chunky but good-hearted redhead roommate had a crush on
my well-endowed raven-haired roommate. She and I would stay up late at night,
laughing about how they’d never have their way with us. I was in fact sleeping
with a Russian body builder who had his own house on the other side of the
kibbutz, far from the horrifying volunteer quarters, and also with a soulful
Moroccan engineering student, who was running away from his Borderline fiancée.
They knew about each other and were good friends, often boring me with
long-winded conversations about math.
The Moroccan revealed to me the redhead’s real reason for
being in Israel: he was wanted on a drug charge in New York. His mother had
made him come. My roommate was running from her dangerous obsession with
Mexican-American gangsters. I was running from adulthood.
Technically, that’s what nut-hash was running from too, but
I was twenty-one at the time, and he was twice my age.
The Russian body builder was not running. He had citizenship
and lived on the kibbutz because the IDF had deemed him too crazy for the
mandatory military service required of every other Israeli.
I didn’t like to smoke pot with my lovers; they were both
lightweights. The Russian would take a few hits, cough madly, and then spend an
hour debating with himself about whether or not drugs made him crazier. The
Moroccan would take a few hits and fall asleep.
Mostly, I smoked with the redhead, because he was a real
drug dealer and didn’t mind dealing with seedy British guys in Eilat alleys,
whereas I found it distasteful and nerve-wracking. On Rosh Hashana, we took an
apple from the dining hall and carved it into a pipe, lighting the weed with a
lighter my roommate had brought from her local Hillel.
We didn’t hatch a plan to get at the scrotum-hash, but after
the fiftieth time he bragged about his act of daring, my roommate and I
double-teamed him. We had shared our sandy weed with him. Didn’t he like us?
Didn’t he want to come over to our room and share his stash with us? The redhead
got in on it, too. Nut-hash either needed to pony up the hash or stop talking
about it.
“Come after dinner,” we advised them.
It wasn’t a terribly impressive lump: a fraction of a gram.
Perhaps he had already smoked some portion of it. The guys were overly
solicitous, lighting the pipe, complementing the way we’d decorated our room: a
combination of our own artwork and images torn from magazines.
When the hash was gone, we stretched our arms in mock
exhaustion. “Well, goodnight, then,” we said, shoving them out door.
Afterwards, we laughed. It didn’t occur to us that we might be cruel. They had
wanted to take advantage of us.
Late at night, the Moroccan and I took a walk out in the
desert, where I almost fell into a wadi. Although slender and without strength,
he caught me, twisting his own ankle in the process. We laughed together, and I
supported him with my shoulder all the way back to the kibbutz, where we had a
little sex, but only a very little, because the workday started early.
Nut-hash got some sandy weed from the redhead and invited me
to smoke down in the desert, and I went, for the drugs.
I fell into another wadi, but this time there was no one
there to catch me. Nut-hash stood up on the ridge watching dumbly as I tumbled
into the sand and climbed out again. He didn’t offer to help as I limped back
to the kibbutz.
We sat behind the dining hall while he bragged about the
places he’d been and girls he’d laid, and the Russian wandered out into the
pavilion, but he couldn’t see us in the shadows.
“What’s he doing?” Nut-hash interrupted his narrative to
wonder.
“Looking for me,” I said. “He’s my lover.”
“Oh.” He sounded hopeful. “Do you have a lot of lovers?”
I smiled in the darkness. “As many as I need.”
