Author and Columnist
09.29.24
-Cliff James
How can we speak to each other like equals when one of us is holding a gun?
An Olive on the Seder Plate
I'm backing up when my drunken neighbor stumbles toward my car. I roll down the window anyway. He tries to shove money at me and tells me it is so we can have a stray cat wandering our property neutered. Amber and I have told him we will probably have this done for free at Amber's animal hospital once we catch it (but it tends to approach us to pet him and once followed me for seven minutes as I walked away, so it shouldn't be a trial). I realize that accepting the money is the only way to get him to let us leave. At this point, I figure out it is a fifty.
The evening before, Jake caught me coming into my apartment. His eyes were the most bugged out I have seen on someone as he stared at the two daughters of another neighbor. He asked what they were doing, which was nothing. They were playing in the yard barely fifteen feet from their front door. I am immediately worried that Jake has said something to these girls, but they seem ignorant of us.
"Well," he said, "it can't be that bad yet if they are still out. The black helicopters aren't here."
I looked with worry at this possible psychotic break. I do not know alcoholics well, but I've heard the jokes about them seeing little pink elephants. Perhaps hallucinations are precedented, but not like this.
I talked to him a little more to assess whether he was in danger of spooking the girls—I decided he was not—and then enjoyed the excuse of the ground turkey burning on my stove.
Days before that, I came home to Amber telling me Jake had kissed their hand because they had pulled him from the lawn and guided him back into his apartment—even though he outweighs Amber by sixty pounds, they do deal with heavy dogs at their job.
Jake is not doing well. However, given that he told us a few years ago that he had stage four cancer and is still spry enough to do repairs around the property and mow the lawn, perhaps he is doing exceptionally well. Maybe alcohol did for him what chemotherapy could not, pickling his tumors.
"Just... spend it... whatever," he says, leaning heavily on my car, "On gas. On the kitty. It's probably better if you have the money than me. Maybe it will stop me from getting drunk on vodka." He looks back at the apartment. "Sorry, I'm such a crazy, drunk, old asshole."
I nod. That spares me from having to imply this delicately.
"Thank you for being my friends and neighbors," he slurs. "Could you... just watch to make sure I get back into my apartment?"
"Of course," I say. I have twice cleaned Jake's blood off the steps on our development from when he took a tumble and incurred a head injury. We can wait a minute to be sure he is safe.
We are driving over an hour to see my friend Ren. Amber has not met them before, but I assume they will get along. Getting along with Amber is a prerequisite for long-term friendship.
Ren has been communicative and responsive with me. They text me unbiddenly, so they're serious about being my friend. It seems strange that I was so affected by somebody texting me pictures without my having to solicit them. I have had a bad run of potential friendships.
We eventually find the diner somewhere in Albany, though we pass it once without seeing it. It is nestled so tightly between two other buildings that one would not be off-base imagining it is just a sketchy parking lot.
I ask Ren why we met here of all places.
"Destiny--" I think this is the name Ren says, and they seem like the sort of person who would have a friend named Destiny "--is a diner connoisseur."
This is oddly believable, as only someone who specialized in these things would have the slightest idea this restaurant existed. There are only five possible parking spaces, two perpendicular in a way that would all but block in the other three. This barely qualifies for the alleyway I assumed it was. Within is a diner so busy there are no seats. Ren stands tall, with their undercut toward us, highlighted by their hair twisted up on one side and not the other.
I make the briefest introductions, pointing at Amber and Ren and saying their names. As with our first meeting, there is no sense that I haven't known Ren for years, that this was the first time Amber had met them.
Over this late lunch, we talk mostly about pets, a safe topic that is only tangentially different from our talking about cryptids when there were only the two of us.
Ren invited us to see a play their friend is in, though they clarified that it is actually a series of small plays loosely connected. I feel a quiver of worry at that, but I am here to see them, not art.
The play is within a Jewish community center. Before it, a banner and yard signs read, "We Stand with Israel."
"Can we leave?" Amber asks.
"No," I say. "I've bought the tickets; it is not the actors' fault."
"I want to step on the signs," Amber says, as standing with Israel these days seems synonymous with "I willfully ignore apartheid and genocide" these days. Amber notes the sign informing them there are security cameras--as well there should be given how some people, especially in our government, purposely conflate Judaism with Zionism. That Israel is actively bombing within miles of our eldest niece might contribute to our dislike of the colonizers. Acts of terrorism are revolting, and Hamas should return hostages. Still, Hamas is not Palestine, and this is not an excuse for the Israeli government's mass murder of innocent Palestinians.
Amber taps one of the signs.
I nudge them. "You are going to end up on the front page of the paper for hate crimes."
Amber shrugs, pretty sure they won't be.
When Ren enters, they say they are likewise annoyed by the signs. However, it is a Jewish community center, and it is unlikely they will have "Free Palestine" emblazoned anywhere. We cannot assume that those who patronize this center are a monolith.
The play Love/Sick occurs in an elevated reality where one can have an impulse condition that results in making out with a stranger in a grocery store, breaking up via singing telegram, threatening to murder a partner out of boredom, and having a conversion disorder that causes one to become deaf-blind in the presence of joy. (Sorry for the spoilers, but not significantly. I might have liked the playlets more had I known what I was getting into.) Most actors play their roles broadly, as one might expect, because this is a community theater production playing to twenty-five people and because of the nature of the material. The exception is Ren's friend, who appears in two skits. They are more grounded in the first silly skit. In the second, in which their partner detests being a housewife and mother and wants to run, they are heartbreaking. Even when other skits deal with somber subjects, the actors chew only half the scenery they usually would. I do not suspect this is an incidental choice.
"Your friend reminds me of Mae Whitman," I tell Ren. Before they can google who this is, I already have pictures pulled up.
Ren concurs.
When the friend comes out, Ren tells them that I think they look like Mae Whitman. I show them my phone, and they disagree. "I used to be told I looked like Eliot Page."
I agree that I can see that, though add how much transitioning changed Page. "He got abs all at once."
"That's what money does," says Ren.
"I don't think those abs are real," adds Amber.
"He should have forked over to get arm implants then," I say. "He would be more balanced."
As we wait for Amber to use the bathroom before our long drive, Ren, looking in a closed gift shop, asks, "What is the point of the plates? Why do they have seven indents?" Each concave space has a Hebrew character, well beyond something I would understand.
"Oh, those are for Passover. One is for bitter herb. It was always horseradish when I had it, but I can't imagine that's the original bitter herb. Another is a green with salt water on it to represent tears. Then you say, 'Why is this night different from all other nights?' I forget the rest, though they were more pleasant. Maybe there was a bone? There was always matzo ball soup, but that might more be a general Jewish thing than a Passover thing. It has been a while since I've been invited to seder, but I was engaged to a Jewish woman years and years ago. The sense memory of eating salty parsley and horseradish remains strong, though. I think they only had me do it once, after which her parents said I could watch and just eat the soup."
Another plate has the contents of each indent spelled out, making my out-of-date Jewish-by-proxy knowledge moot.
Walking to our cars, we continue talking. It remains at a low simmer, not as though this will be the last time we see one another. I ask Ren if it is okay if I hug them. I have learned not to presume these things, giving friends a few hugs where they were stiff or startled. Ren says it is okay and hugs Amber and me warmly.
last watched: Futurama
reading: Absolution