Laila Aliz Chaim be Tel-Aviv

Gay Night Life in Tel-Aviv...I have tried my best to live a frum life for many years but there is always something that pulls me back to the throes of goyim styles - boys, Saturday SEC football, the soap I rub on my body, Tequilla, Guinness beer, groceries, etc. But the essence lies in the journey.

I recently got introduced to the Jewish Havura movement (meaning in elementary terms, welcomes all souls from both a Reconstructionist to Orthodox view - very liberal to uber-conservative) which eventually brought me full circle back to Israel National Radio's Thanksgiving evening broadcast, "Yishai & Friends". He interviewed the Director General of Israeli Ministry of Tourism Shaul Zemach and the discussion was centered around Israel's recent attempts to bring more visitors to that country...they see themselves in direct competition with Egypt (but all good Yehudim know that of all places they are not to look back on Egypt), Turkey, Cyprus, and Lebanon and the idea of making Jerusalem the focus of that campaign and not the forged capital Tel-Aviv.

The discussions main focus was a lively diatribe on the differences between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem which led to a recurring joke about Jerusalem competing with Tel-Aviv's gay night life and one of the callers was a frum - observant - Jew who moved there a couple years ago...

So I spent Friday day cooking chicken soup, making pizza dough (whole wheat), and goat cheese...all Kashrut mind you, and straightened up my "cookware" further according to the standards of maintaining them in a Kosher manner - all meat and dairy items separated. I spent Friday evening and Saturday reading and thinking. I read Zalman Shachter, Albert Camus, New York Times, the Oxford American and thought, thought, thought...

...the gay Jew who made Aliyah to Israel a few years ago that called in to the show wished to offer his support in making Jerusalem the focal point of the tourist focus but took it another step by stating that the gay night life of Tel-Aviv was not what motivated his souls yearning but it was the "old walls" of Jerusalem, to him it was the "place" where his heart's synergy was plugged into and too many of his gay friends saw it the other way...their energy came from and was centered around being feygele in Tel-Aviv.

I recently had a friend that I had nothing in common with yet a lot. We both came from disheveled and dysfunctional spiritual backgrounds, were "mama's boys", well educated, wondering minds and souls...but I was the socialist proletariat and he the capitalist bourgeois. Discussions ran from Krishna to the Lubavitch Rebbe and met their climax in early summer when it was discussed that no physical relationship would evolve. Months later the friendship was "divorced" by my friend because of his infatuation with me...I assume sexually, physically, carnally, "Tel-Avivy". To me there was a lost sense of reality...what was he in love with? The idea of that had been discussed and I thought put to rest much earlier.

My last "ex" and I agreed to go our separate ways in March, a little over two years into the relationship, and I moved out from his place in May. I have had sex with three people in the last three years and since my separation that communion has happened twice...maybe it is crossing into the forties decade or maybe it is realizing that my Yerushalayim Shel Zahov (Jerusalem of Gold) is my own heart and not tied to purse strings at the end of some race track.

Being gay and observant actually go together very well, as the caller said. We bring both worlds in the flesh together as the Torah does, in not discerning between male or female souls, there are no separating words, they are one...so when a man lies with a man it is not an abomination but a procreation. We lose sight and connection when it is done with "being in love with the idea of being in love"....

...the caller to the Abramowitz show adjured all gays to "L'shanah haba'ah biyerushalayim -- Next Year In Jerusalem"...at least in our hearts!

Happy Birthday Marine

Twenty years ago I stood hungover in a blistering bright but cold November day in North Carolina listening to some Marine Lieutenant fresh off the bus from Annapolis give a class on the new threat to world peace - the urban fanatical terrorist - growing out of Southwest Asia and I thought to myself: First - damn, the Berlin Wall is still falling and these brass-asses already moved on to a new game...next thing I know we'll be drinking Pertsovka with the Russkies. Second - South West Asia? Where's that? The west side of Laos? Mekong? Chosin? Urban? I thought they all lived in rice-huts in the middle of mud paddies.

The Veteran in the picture was a WWI Vet holding the flag that draped the casket of his son killed in the Korean War.

I soon realized that Southwest Asia was the new moniker for "urban fanatical terrorist" land. How new was it? When did we begin using the term South West Asia? I honestly could not find any direct reference to it's inception so I assume it was the manifestation from some smokey Pentagon room as an attempt to "make things right" with the Vietnam/South East Asia Veterans which really didn't make much sense.

Little did I know that less than a year after listening to that cute Lieutenant explain the new threat to world peace coming from the "middle east" I would be eating camel in the middle of the Arabian Desert marching north toward Kuwait City and Basra like some modern day Lawrence of Arabia on his way to Damascus! Just what went on in those dark smoke filled Pentagon backrooms? They knew.

Over the years I formed this growing disdain for military action abroad and I must admit that much of it was fueled by my dislike for the neo-con's but the thing I never could really reconcile was that I was a complete Israeli Hawk; which should find me on the same side as the Amerikan evangelicals and war-mongers following Pat Robertson and getting google-eyed over Ron Paul. Ron Paul? Huh? I'll take the Republican Whip Eric Cantor...I must say he is really pretty but he is the perfect embodiment of one of USMC - uncle shadai's misguided children. Just a joke, Marine's sometimes refer to themselves as one of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children.

As I was writing this my phone rang, call from my dad. A little over a month ago I decidied I was "done with him" as I said in my un-neutered male-hair-standing-up machismo-adrenaline-driven stupidity. As the phone rang I could feel beads of sweat building up on the head of my dick as I rapped my fingers on the table in some weird Chopin piano riff style and could hear Jerry Garcia whispering in my ear "take up your china doll, it's only fractured and just a little nervous from the fall...all I leave behind me is what I found...stranger ones have come by here..." I figured if Chopin and Garcia were sending me a message at this point the only rightful thing for me to do was to...................hit END CALL! Please, I am a Leo, a purring little cat so I answered the phone and my father and I spoke about Theodore Roosevelts setting the stage for our National Forest system (something we both enjoy), Franklin Roosevelts wonderful programs before, during, and after the depression and his own indellible marks left on the preservation of some of our nations wilderness through the CCC, our uncommon bond of both being die-hard Democrats no matter what!, my Uncle Joe's military service in WWII, the people who were able to continue their lives beyond a very bleak and tortured eastern Europe because cynicism did not determine what was right or wrong, the soul did.

Yesterday I had stepped out of my office into the showroom we have at work - my office has two doors, one into the showroom and one into the warehouse - and a few feet away I heard a really loud and hard knock on the door, more like a banging, and as I turned to go back I was met face to face by this mid-fifties stragly haired guy who grabbed my hand and pulled it to his chest and said "Happy Birthday Marine! Semper Fi! names Terry Downs, they call me Tango and wanted to tell a fellow Marine Happy Birthday". November 10th is the Marine Corps birthday and it had not even crossed my mind. Terry was a medium sized guy with fairly stocky arms, bushy mustache, Marine Corps hat on, hair flinging out the sides...as he pulled my forearm to his chest in a hand shake gesture it all dawned on me: the Marine Corps was formed Nov 10, 1775 - one year before this country pissed it's colors, the president's own protect his quarters today just as those early blue coats did General Washington, they even guide his horse in the sky like they did his canoe... OK enough.

It dawned on me that my disdain for not removing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq was due to my own dark crevices selfishly absorbing the light from others. When I came in from work Wednesday, Veterans Day, I sat down and watched one of the evening news programs segment on a young veteran in his late twenties enduring the tumultuous recovery from injuries suffered by an IED in Afghanistan. He was on a morning run outside of DC hoping to become a drill Sargeant to train young recruits...he was running on two prosthetics, lost both legs but still saw the light!

I thought about my dear friend Karen's father who was an Air Force pilot in WWII who flew numerous missions over Germany - the compass, glasses, and miscellaneous military items issued to him that Karen gave to me. I thought about the berets, scarves, ribbons, and miscellaneous items I brought home from Iraqi soldiers.

So, Veterans Day. I thought about the nightmares and dreams we all brought home and realized that it's my fucking Marine Corps and the boys over there are my brothers and the ones that went before us are all our fathers.

No matter what the President decides I will support. Not for some nation building geostratifying nation building fantasy but for the hearts that march on led by the ones that went before.

To ALL Veterans...thanks and Semper Fidelis!

Karzais Klein Democracy

As a former Marine and combat veteran I voted for President Obama hoping that he would remove our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and even though the Whitehouse has recently hinted there would be no reduction in forces protecting Kabul... I really thought that in Obama grandeur we would get a press conference later this week not only announcing the refusal to send more young men to that heroin infested shit hole but a proclamation of ENDING THE WAR! What war?

Close to 1,000 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan and almost 5,000 in Iraq. Do you realize it has been NINE years? We go on with our lives and do any of you recall the last time you watched an American-flag-draped coffin exit a plane at Dover? Do any of you recall the last soldier killed in Afghanistan? Has there been any reduction in troop sizes in Afghanistan or Iraq? This is a black GW!

To be honest with you, no other issue permeated my thoughts when voting for Obama more than Iraq and Afghanistan. I could give a crap about gay marriage, a new economic policy, or Iran...all I wanted was someone with balls to stand up to the narcissistic military establishment that runs through Washington, London, Moscow, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Riyadh and New Delhi and say E N O U G H !

I guess the decision to forego any troop removal was made behind closed doors last month in Pittsburgh...ermmmm, ever heard of the Group of Twenty? G-20. They had a little summit in Pittsburgh last month. This decision most likely bodes well for most of the G-20 whores. Think about it...the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have become to the world what the Palestianians are to Israel... a bunch of mis-fit kwanii kelbahs (faggot bitches) that no one else wants to help find a solution to or for so the international community has used our presence in Afghanistan as leverage to remind President Obama that our boys need to remain there in order to fight for Afghani womens suffrage, Zoroastrian freedom, education for the little kids, a fruitful life at least past 10 years old, an outlet to the abyss. Wait! That sounds like Memphis! We have one of if not the highest infant mortality rate in the country that is worse than some T H I R D W O R L D countries, our violent crime among young people is much more skewed toward black on black - try 99% - which is an abomination, more than a third of our highschool kids never finish school, and we wonder why Memphis was one of the first cities to receive the H1N1 innoculation - today, 10/05/09 - it is because we are in the middle of a mayoral race where everyone is talking about bringing the county and city together as one loving fucking entity and being equal.

Equal?? A 10 year old white girl with MS and other complications died last week in Memphis from H1N1 and a 13 year old very healthy black boy died yesterday two miles away. 6,000 cases have been reported in Memphis. Yet the G-20 have a new vision and the Pittsburgh summit's preamble stated:
"We meet in the midst of a critical transition from crisis to recovery to turn the page on an era of irresponsibility and to adopt a set of policies, regulations and reforms to meet the needs of the 21st century global economy..."

Afghanistan borders Irans eastern boundaries and that is the only reason I can imagine we have fooled ourselves into remaining there...it will force the Persians to talk more. This is so ludicrous. I despise Ahmadinejad but do not see why he has to be forced to "talk". I think it is time for Cyrus to just let it be.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we have troops on the other side of Persia/Iran also... I R A Q. Maybe there is some order in chaos in the new world idealogy of geo-stratified nation building... it's sheer madness to me. I just beg that we cut our losses and let the zibs (dicks) take care of themselves but no matter what, as Stephen Decatur said, "my country right or wrong , my country..." but this is the abbreviated version for quaint hill-billy southerners! What he actually said was: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” Let's do what we can to set it right!

Semper Fidelis!

In The Ghetto...

...the first time I remember hearing the word ghetto was when I asked my mom what it meant after hearing Elvis Presley sing Mac Davis' In The Ghetto...uh, maybe sometime around 1975 for me. The song was originally titled The Vicious Circle and Elvis recorded it as In The Ghetto at American Sound Studio in Memphis in 1968 - the same year Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, Neal Cassady, Yuri Gagarin, Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck died. Wow! Talk about a mouth-full! And the year before some of us saw Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin and Jimi Hendrix pass. WTF? Vietnam was a festering boil - Israel had won the Six Day War with G-d and Bob Dylan on their side, patriotiam had become the last refuge of the scoundrel, and Ivy League schools were prepping for the sneaky neo-cons!

Prefix: to place in front of, especially to add as a prefix - 'prefix a syllable to a word'. I preferred Websters because it is still a bit original and not so modern. So when did GHETTO become a syllable?

Most Anthropologists and Sociologists will tell you that one of the most common avenues used to destroy or conquer a nation, people, country, ethnic group, cultural entity, etc. was/is to subdue it's native language. "Subduing" a native tongue did not always mean completely doing away with it but often times more than others it included DE-SENSITIZING (there goes the prefix) original peoples uses of certain words initially and then indirectly deriding the entire language.

Not far from the gates of Graceland Elvis sang:

"People, don't you understand, the child needs a helping hand or he'll grow to be an angry young man some day. Take a look at you and me, are we too blind to see, do we simply turn our heads and look the other way? Well the world turns and a hungry little boy with a runny nose plays in the street as the cold wind blows In the ghetto."

Put ghetto before all of the following words and please explain to me what the meanings are: -food, -car, -soul, -house, -bootie, -hair, -shirt, -watch, -dog, -honey, -man, -gay (gay-ghetto), -school, -church, -medicine, -education ????????????????

I'll tell you what it means: an attempt by racist suburban pigs to subtly diminish an ethnic groups identity and self worth by further claiming that they are nothing without "whitey!" It means a place where Jews were pushed into well before Hitler that ended in the camps under the Nazis. It means a place in northern Africa where Jews were "quartered" in front of the ruling elites compounds to protect them from riotous crowds. It means a place where people end up living due to less than financial prosperity becasue there is minimal revenue remaining in the area - schools suck, medical care sucks, transportation sucks, grocery stores suck (have you ever seriously shopped a grocery store in an economically depressed neighborhood? The meat department is akin to what I imagine a meat "counter" looked like in 1870 famished Ireland! - seriously - neckbones, tripe, feet, etc) These are not so much cultural delicassies as much as they are FORCED dietary items. A Vicious Circle? What did Elvis say? Take a look at you and me, are we too blind to see?

Graceland grew from south Memphis - south Memphis did not grow from Graceland. Lisa Marie recorded a duet "with her dad" in August 07' of In The Ghetto to raise money for the Presley Charitable Foundation which caught a lot of shit from the "holier-than-thow" crowd because of it's depiction of toddler's with guns in the city. Toddlers with guns? Huh? Black teenage kids are killing each other in this city and they are toddlers in the eyes of g-d! Our eyes are not too blind to see, our souls are too dark to know. Do you have to know something to care about it? Or do we simply refuse to care?

As "white flight" began in our country (whites leaving the inner city for the suburbs) the FHA Mortgage Manual stated: "Recommended restrictions should include provision for: prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended …Schools should be appropriate to the needs of the new community and they should not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups." Nothing else needs to be said.

Use of the word ghetto is unacceptable! Unless we (white people) are describing our own souls...it is a white-ghetto-diaspora-of-the-soul.

blind-man-ricky on the Orange Mound

I had a scheduled doctors appointment due to a request to change my Ambien and general check up issues. My doctors office is in a "less than fortunate" part of town, on Park, close to Getwell where the Memphis Gay Chamber of Commerce recently discussed "removing the riff-raff from the area"... HUH? I wanted to extend my hand in the air and say "huh, please repeat"!!!!!! Riff Raff?? That is such a CODE WORD for/from whitey refering to black and other-than white non-owning tenants anywhere around. Riff Raff? Is it 2009 or 1969?

As I ws driving down Park I noticed out of the corner of my eye this middle aged black man walking with a cane and using it in a manner as if he had some eyesight handicaps and didn't think much else about it until...

..."wooosshh, kabam" the front door to the doctors office slung open and there he was slumbering straight ahead into the corner walls in a part of the front office where nothing was, other than paneling and saying "hello everyone, it's a beautiful day ain't it!" I honestly had to put myself in check becasue I almost laughed. This guy had walked straight into the corner where two walls meet but it quickly dawned on me "he's really blind." I arose and said this way sir, took his arm and led him to the receptionist window and I returned to my seat and magazine.

A few minutes later the blind man finished with checking in and turned around and said "where's my new friend?" I replied "here sir" and before I could say anything else he had sat down beside me and asked if I minded if he joined me.

"Ricky's my name, blind man Ricky some call me" and stuck out his hand. We began talking about me seeing him walking on my way to the doctor's office, if the city provided special transportation services, if he was from Memphis, family close by, young "skiddles" as he called young people - "skiddle" meaning stupid kid - how blind he was, his government assistance, etc.

Ricky grew up close by and said he had not been out of the house in the last month because it had been so hot. He told me about trips to the Pink Palace, botanical gardens, the zoo, and described the splendor of the beautiful geese in flight around the ponds, the huge pine trees, and all the flowers. I at this point assumed he was partially blind and asked him about his sight. Blind man Ricky leaned his head back and gently put two fingers in his right eye and removed this thin piece of "something" that looked like an abbreviated eye, that had been "looking" at me a few minutes earlier in his eye socket, and said: "I lost this one in 82'" and then did the same thing to the one on the left and said "and I lost this one in 02'...glaucoma...I have diabetes...that's why I am here today becasue my legs is hurting me bad." He pulled up his pants and had these huge baseball to softball size lumps (two or three) at the bottom of both lages shortly above his ankles. I honestly thought to myself "HEALTHCARE REFORM - 20 YEARS OF LIES and this man will probably lose his legs due to poor healthcare in the next few years". First his eyes then his legs. A whole new approach to ethnic cleansing! I have no right to feel any self-pity!

His walking cane was a golf club with the "head" broken off and I asked him why he didn't use a regular walking cane for sight. He said he'd been through so many in the last year it ws just easier to buy the golf clubs at the goodwill. He was blind, very blind. Said he got $65 on the 13th and another $450 on the 31st of every month, lived in a subsidized apartment, lost too many canes to the "skiddles" who would grab them from his hands while walking, explained how he bought groceries. The truth was that his insurance would not pay for any more canes because of all the ones he'd lost to the cruel little delinquents.

I asked him if he got depressed when he lost his second eye and he said yes. Said he stayed on the couch for almost a year. Said he couldn't stand not seeing the sun, frogs in the road, birds on the wire, "skiddles" chasing the ball, grass, his food, his mama's face...on and on. I almost had to get up. Then my overly maternal doctor Sudha came for me. I told Ricky if he was still there when I got out I would "holler" at him.

Soon after entering the patient-examintaion-room, Ricky was taken to one of the rooms also. The entire time I sat there I could hear his voice across the office carrying on with the nurse, laughing, telling her she was beautiful, talking about how nice the day was, and how sweet the staff were in the office. He never complained...

When the doctor finished with me I asked a nurse (she was Indian as my doctor is and had fraternal twins whose birthday was the same as mine, July 25th but considerably younger - she said "the girl has the devil in her sometimes and the boy is as sweet as Buddha") in the front office if Ricky was still there becasue I had not heard his voice in a while...the office was full, maybe fifteen people. Ricky came slumbering (once again) from around the corner slinging his cane with a tourniquet still on his arm saying "I am here Mr. Steve, where are you?" This time I laughed and then he started doing the same and our overly maternal doctor Sudha grabbed his arm and told him "don't be so stupid and get back in the lab room to get the blood drawn." He laughed more and said "it hurts."

I waited on Ricky and gave him a ride home. He lived on Spottswood in a part of Memphis I never had seen and never really thought I would, around Semmes and South Greer, this is rough Memphis - Hustle And Flow type Memphis - in the heart of what is called Orange Mound. He could tell where we were in the car within 50 feet. Said he can sense everything by memory and was glad "I could see for the first years of my life." Ricky said he still goes to the lake at the botanical gardens, can hear birds chirping, can hear the "skiddles ball when they kick it...but I can't touch my mama's face no more...I see it in my head but it ain't the same." Ricky had guided me into the small complex where he lived, odd setting, kind of like "quad-plexes" or something, brick, pine woods to the north and seemingly quiet. Then I heard the train and realized his $150 a month government subsidized apartment was literally a couple hundred yards south of the freaking Memphis Country Club. Blind man Ricky put his hand out and said he hoped to see me again at the doctors office, laughed, and said "you know what I mean new friend". I told him that tomorrow was my birthday and meeting him was the best brithday present I could have received. As he stepped out of the car he turned toward me and said he wished he had some birthday cake for me and told me to have a nice day and said "welcome to Orange Mound brother."

Happy 4th Of July - Welcome Back To Fallujah

It was a cold, wintry, dark February day with the ground well covered in snow that I sat in what I then called “cattle rooms” smoking cigarette after cigarette and reading the newspaper in the Cincinnati Airport. The news always seemed to go from grim to desperate… the promising Lebanese politician Rafik Harari was killed by a car bomb in Beirut, North Korea and Iran screamed that they had nuclear weapons, another suicide bomb detonated in Baghdad, gay groups were considering adopting intervention tactics to track men with HIV who engage in risky behavior (read that one again! Talk about Orwellian life), ETA detonated a bomb in Spain, Bush and his military advisors had no exit plan for Fallujah, on and freaking on…

Fallujah was one of Arab histories pearls for many years. It was quiet, peaceful, scholarly, hosted numerous Jewish academies through the centuries, and fared better than many other urban areas through the advent of Islam from the Abbasid and Umayyad dynasties to the modern day “re-conquesting inquisition” led by the neo-cons in Washington and their lavender bitches in London.

I looked up from the paper and in walked this beautiful Marine with my defacto standard: small, baby faced, smooth skin, and a hollow gaze. I would be lying if I denied any immediate carnal ideations but those were quickly quelled when the young Marine sat down next to me and asked if he could “bomb a smoke”. I told him gladly and we introduced ourselves.

Fallujah for years linked the trade route from the Nejd Province in modern day Sa’udi Arabia to the areas of Mosul and Aleppo and was known as the desert highway between Amman and Baghdad; it rested at a crossroads then and is once again at a crossroads as both Sunni and Shia Muslims have joined together to rebuild the 70-90% destruction that the city incurred from the US Military beginning in 03’.

“Names Adam, thanks for the smoke.” Adam was a 19 year old fresh faced kid raised in Chicago, was 100% mid-west, and was on his way home for a few days from Fallujah due to the graces of the US Department of Defense granting him a seven day hardship leave due to “stress and unnatural acts of violence perpetrated against a member of the United States Military” to see his mom and girlfriend. He said he couldn’t wait to put his eyes on Wrigley Field and hoped he somehow could get inside for a brief reprieve…said it would make everything “good to go.”

We talked about why he was in the Corps, my time in, his love-life, mine, our families, baseball, hockey, his plans after the Marine Corps… told him I was gay and thought he was gorgeous; he laughed and said he had a girlfriend back home he would be seeing and appreciated the compliment. He hated the snow and ice and thought the desert was cool but didn’t understand the problems in Fallujah.

The city always had an air of independence: the Imams refused to eulogize Saddam Hussein during his reign and suffered horrible persecution, the British saw it as a “hotbed” of instability in the early 20th Century and suffered through a battle because of it that left several thousand Iraqis and a couple thousand Brits dead, the Wahhibi Sect of Islam practiced in Sa’udi Arabia took root in Fallujah years ago and is still practiced to this day, a couple hundred citizens died in the city in the first Gulf War when a crowded market was “accidentally” bombed, a couple hundred citizens died in 03’ when they were protesting the US Military setting up an operating unit in an old Baath Party Office building across the street from a school and troops opened fire on the people. Still the city of almost 500,000 remained peaceful, quiet and cooperative until…

“…we don’t know what the fuck we are shooting at most of the time dude. The other day we took fire from a corner store and we unloaded on those mother fuckers. When we got to the store there was this little boy lying in the doorway and a lady behind him on the floor. It was weird, they both had multiple gunshot holes and there was some busted milk spreading out on the floor around her and the kid…looked kind of like a piece of peppermint candy because the blood had kind of swirled in to the milk. We never knew who fired on us.”

This was the city where those four renegade Blackwater gaurds were drug from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and then hanged from the girders’ of a bridge crossing the Euphrates. The assault on Fallujah began in earnest in November 2004 primarily as an attempt to regain control of it from the estimated 600-6,000 insurgents in preparation of the January 2005 national elections. The only person at the time who was viewed as a serious candidate for the office of presidency was Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shia Muslim who had for the past 20 years slept with Hezbollah, Iranian politicians, and various Shiite thugs while living in Syria and travelling back and forth to Iran… FALLUJAH IS SUNNI AND WAHHABI and many of the citizens had fled by this time. Did the US Government wish to ensure a sweeping victory in the city for al-Maliki? The insurgents weren’t even 1% of the population. Nation-state building is too nice; this was coup de tat orchestrating.

Adam said he wasn’t sure what to say to his mom…or his girlfriend. I asked him what he meant and he said “I don’t know what to fucking say man…how can I talk to them.” Adam obviously was a perfect example of how the DOD takes care of many PTSD combat troops – ship them home for a while and hope that it all goes away. The Marine said he might not make it to see his mom and girl and may instead take a quick flight from Chicago to Detroit to see a friend and just stay drunk for five days. By this time he was teary-eyed, shaken, and all I could think was that our land of the free and home of the brave were bringing home an entire generation of KIDS that were going to be perfectly fucked up.

My flight number was called and I stood up, threw my smokes to my new friend, told him to keep his head down and said “Semper Fi”; he stood up hugged me and responded with the same. As I walked back into the airport I couldn’t help but wonder if he would make it back home another time because his movement orders (paperwork a soldier will carry validating their dress or leave of absence) returned him directly to Fallujah in seven days.

The fighting in Fallujah ended for the most part in June of 2007 but today the citizens are being practically starved and living off of handouts from Marine units close by and the citizens blame that Iranian kisich Maliki, the Shi’ite Hezbollah-loving bitch. Prior to the cessation of conflict in the city US forces had given out Christian coins to the children at many of the cities crossroads.

Happy 4th of July Amerika.

The Jew Under The Lotus

So I have been thinking a lot lately about when I “came out”, gays, the so-called gay community, A-Lister gays, faerie gays, the Palestinians, the West Bank,Gaza, Golan, Baghdad, Beirut, Southern Lebanon, Bashir Assad in Syria, Afghanistan, Opium, Heroin, China, Jane Goodall, Lewis Leakey, Olduvai Gorge, Lucy, Sudan, Rwanda, Nepal, India, Pakistan, the Dalai Lama…and wonder where it all stops.

I first came out when I awoke that sultry Alabama summer day with my eleven year old BVD’s splattered with some creamy shit around the piss trap and thought I was dying…then I remembered this unbelievable feeling that I experienced a few minutes before in both my groin and head and remembered that I was feeling up my younger neighbor’s ass and inside thighs as he climbed up a concrete wall in the drainage ditch. As I removed my underwear I whispered to myself “Johan”. He was so beautiful and I had a crush on him until I graduated from high school.

I first came out at my friend Robbie’s sleepover when I went to the bathroom and could not understand why I was so engrossed in the remaining drops of piss left by him on the ring of the toilet.

I first came out when a family friend who was attempting to live a life of religious celibacy asked me up to his room to show me the L&N train set he had and then offered me a miniature caboose he made with my name on it.

I first came out when my mother’s pussy dilated a little too much and I weighed a whopping four pounds and a couple ounces as I entered this kingdom.

I first came out when I watched the space shuttle Colombia explode in the sky like a giant dick relieving itself of years of pent up frustration and pain…but then it became serious.

I first came out when I realized at ten that the Leif Garrett album covers sucked me in for only one reason…those TIGHT white pants and his beautiful face.

I first came out when my grandfathers died within a few months of each other and realized for the first time I had lost some pure innocence in my life.

I first came out when I watched Elvis' Cadillac meander up Union Ave while asking my mother where Graceland was and telling her I wanted to be there.

I first came out when the rounds began falling around me in northern Kuwait as I began entreating upon Mary, Jesus, Muhammad, Allah, G-d, Buddha, and Krishna, promising them all that if I lived I would no longer play charades with my life…

…I loved southern Iraq and Kuwait and first came out a few months later while eating Baskin & Robbins ice cream under a date palm grove outside of Kuwait City. My unit was given an eight hour reprieve to visit an Olympic sized pool with volleyball nets and all types of recreation that obviously was built for foreign oil workers. I was lieing on my stomach as this small group of British soldiers squeezed in and began removing their “cammies”. They all were wearing speedos and before I realized it I was zoned in on one particular beauty – dark hair, dark eyes, smooth skin - my dick became more painful when I realized I was lying on top of my own hard-on that was practically lifting me up. I quickly began thinking of some jerk-off Iraqis blood splattered on my face a few days before and got up with a limp dick to get a snow cone at the refreshment stand. As I took my change from some Indian guy sold into servitude to the Kuwaitis or Saudis my hand slightly smacked someone in the balls as it became rested back to my side. I looked up and attempted to say excuse me and it was that British beauty from earlier and he said with a smirk “oh it’s quite alright mate” and I ran.

That evening I walked up to the little compound/bazaar the size of four to five football fields enclosed by a fourteen foot concrete wall and walked past the Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, McDonalds… of which all were Halal, and decided on the Baskin & Robbins. I figured it was goat milk ice cream which sounded nice to me…cream once again. The line was unbelievable. I didn’t know Arabs loved Baskin & Robbins so much and could not help but enjoy the wonderful scenery of all the young Arabs wearing their thobes and the subtle yet very erotic outlines of every curve on their bodies…including their warmly welcoming manhood.

I retrieved my ice cream and walked to a small grove of date palm trees in front of these abandoned oil worker dormitory style apartments and began thinking back to the date shakes my grandma made me when I was a child that had a taste and flavor uncomparable to this day and my B&R serving began tasting the same. My daydreaming soon turned to disappointment when it appeared someone was walking my way and I figured it was some Arab wishing to engage in simple conversation or one who was sent by Muhammad to move me away from his property because I was an Infidel and then realized it was neither. The person appeared to walk in a “western” manner and it soon became obvious it was a soldier with a personal weapon slung over his shoulder and in fatigues. I sat up and choked on my ice cream which I never thought was possible and have not experienced that to this day when I realized it was the British beauty from the pool.

We introduced ourselves, traded recent combat stories, spoke of the heat, explored what would happen to Saddam Hussein, ruminated about TE Lawrence and then his hand began caressing my thigh and before I knew it I was being led by David to the abandoned building behind us. We began kissing, probing, groping, touching and whatever else goes on as soon as we found a door that would open. He found my gay virginity funny and told me he would be gentle. Before I knew it we were in one of the rooms showers and my dick had slid into his glory as if I had done it a thousand and one times before.

I first came out with Muhammad and the Seven Pillars of Islam on my mind and felt like I was Johnathan comforting David and have been under the Lotus ever since.