The Hummus King and the Bathtub Queen

Chapter 1-2

"Cause in five minutes, or tomorrow, or a month from now, you can get a completely different answer."

I'm an i***t, so when I was asked what I wanna be when I grew up from age 6 to 28 I've answered the same thing.

She said she wanted to travel the world for about two years, and that she wanted to start a business that would give work to the homeless people, and that she wanted to be a chef, and live by the sea, and that she wanted to be a salesperson in a toy store, and she also wants to study architecture, and a million other things and she wants all of them at the same time. She said she had lots of "I's" to her, but not one "I" that is her. There's the "I" that wants to fool around and have a good time, and there's the "I" that tells her to be serious and think of the future and how to promote herself, and there's the "I" that wants to take care of others and make the world a better place, and the "I" that wants to only take care of herself, and lots of other "I's" and that each of them wants a different thing and she doesn’t know what to pick.

I was shocked. Five hundred courses about spirituality filled with "Ommm's", meditations, yoga, and she already knows it now....

I asked her if she knew George Gurdijeff and she said no.

"Gurdijeff was some sort of philosopher, who allegorized our lives to the one of a ship trying to get from point A to point B. One captain goes on deck and turns the wheel to the left, then ten minutes later another captain goes and turns the wheel to the right, then two days later they switch captains and this one drives the boat back where they came from and a week later a new captain comes and breaks the wheel to the left. So how will the ship get to point B? That’s how we’re like, us humans. We don’t have just one "I" that’s in control, every few minutes a different "I" gets on deck and takes the ship wherever it wants. What you’re saying right now is exactly when Gurdijeff said."

"So what do I do with it, how does knowing all of this help me, I already know this!"

"We have to aim for one "I" to lead us."

"But how do I know which "I" to choose when every five minutes or few days it changes?"

"It's not like you have that many "I's," it’s the fact that we live like slaves of our passions and ego, and they are the ones that throw us up and down and make us think that there are many. "I's". Someone that’s important to you gives you a compliment on a drawing you made - you’re over the moon and imagine yourself at an architect's firm. You failed a test in college that everyone passed - you want to become a social worker and help the world. You gained a few pounds and some asshole on the street asks you how far along you are - you want to go to Costa Rica and live on the beach cause you’re sick of everything. I'm exaggerating, of course, but what I’m trying to say is that we’re affected by our environment like a leaf in a storm and we have to be stronger on the inside."

I have no idea if Gurdijeff even said that, but it seemed about right.

"But how can we do anything differently? Is this all there is to life?!"

"It's not all there is to life, it’s looking at yourself through others, it’s giving in to your passions and ego, it’s always wanting "more" - looking better, be more successful, be happier. You fulfill a passion and then another one comes along, it’s like a bottomless pit and no matter how hard you try to fill it, it’s always going to be empty. You’re going to spend your whole life trying to fill this pit and it only guarantees you a life of emptiness. They say in the Bible "a small organ, man has. He who feeds it is hungry and he who is in hungry is full." So the more you f**k, the more horny you get. If you stop f*****g, you'll be full. It works in reverse, you see, and that’s how it’s like in all areas of life. You’re always going to want to look better, to have more money, and more w**d to smoke, and another chick and another piece of cake, and a bigger car. The moment we stop chasing our passions we'll be full and happy and content, you get it?"

I leaned backwards and felt content that somehow I comprised an answer that seemed to make sense to me, and if I could light a cigarette this would be the perfect time for a satisfaction smoke.

"So I’m never going to follow my passions and desires cause they're never going to fill up the bottomless pics, ok. So what will I follow, what will I do with my life?"

She nailed it to me, that little shithead. 21 years old and she nailed my a*s. They never ask you these questions in the workshops, how do I even know the answer to that?

The restroom was vacant and this guy with a cowboy hat approached us, all fat and jolly, one that eats steak all day and has a lot of s**t in his a*s. We held hands super tightly and covered each other's mouths because we felt bad for him to hear us cracking up while hearing his loud "flops". Every flop sounded like a ship that fell from the sky into the ocean.

We agreed that when he comes out of the restroom we'll pretend to be asleep, cause if we accidentally look straight at him we wouldn’t be able to hold back from laughing. He came out of the restroom and nodded his head to us like a guy who just came back from an epic win at a wild-wild west style combat, like him and his flops have nothing to do with each other, like there was never a flop at all. He kept on walking across the bus with the pistol still smoking from battle, and Philly and I felt our lungs tearing up.

Sometimes I think that if I can have such a raging laugh attack at least once a week I’d be the happiest man alive. How do you make these bursts of laughter come to you more often than once every two years? How?

Some guy in front of us picked up his jacket from the seat next to him, and three seats in front of us we saw someone stretching, and in front of us on the left side some woman started looking for something in her purse, so we realized that we're almost there. We laughed about the fact that if you look around you, you can recognize premature signs to everything.

It always happened, when you’re not allowed to do something and then all of a sudden it’s allowed, you do it with more joy, so when we got off the bus we sat on the pavement in silence and smoked. It was time to be in silence, enjoy a cigarette. A reunion cigarette.

Our friend's name was Guy, but his nickname was mister Penk. Guy was a low-key LSD addict who somehow found himself studying at Wharton, one of the best schools in the world for business management.

A year before he got accepted in that school I was surprised to receive an invitation from him to come to Jerusalem, cause he was founding an organization whose goal is to widen and go more in depth in the conversation between Israelis and Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem. I was surprised, because what does Mister Penk have to do with a no-profit and peace, did the LSD eat his brain cells that badly? Afterwards I realized that this is the only reason he got into Wharton. They like entrepreneurship and social movements.

We took a cab to Mister Penk's place and the taxi just drove and drove, and we didn’t know when it’d stop, but we liked it. Until it stopped. We dialed Penk's apartment number and he came downstairs to greet us, we hugged and went up to his place, and Philly really liked his apartment. He talked a bit about this and that and went downstairs to eat something light on the way to the party Penk promised us, the one we came all this way for. To be precise, it was a sophomore year wrap party for the business management students at Wharton.

We took a cab to the party, which turned out to be a faggot party like no one has seen before. Twenty-year-old Americrappers, rich, stupid, empty and shallow, each of them trying to show the other just how much fun they’re having. The guys were dressed in suffocating ties and expensive suits, and the girls had fancy dresses and torturing high heels. There wasn’t a single move on the dance floor that wasn’t carefully planned out, not one dance move that came from the heart, from feeling, from loving music and dancing.

It felt like every guy and girl had a poster of their parents hung on their backs, and based on how important that person was you could examine the giggles and smiles around that person. The ones with famous posters walked around like peacocks and looked like the noise around them was usual. Most of them weren't even dancing, if you could call what the other people there were doing the dancing. It was a complete disaster. Philly was super bummed, that cutie, and I was extremely upset with Mister Penk and his never ending persuasions for us to come to that party. What happened to him? Does he not see what’s happening around him? Does having loads of money really make you that blind?

At least I enjoyed watching Philly being bummed, cause she was so cute doing it. Every time she's upset she frowns with her eyebrows like my nephew and perks her lips. It amused me how on the one hand she’s so mature and smart, but on the other hand she’s still that 21-year-old girl that gets completely bummed if she doesn’t get exactly what she wants. At my age I've eaten so much s**t in life, so many disappointments, that one more doesn’t really matter to me. Let’s just say that these days I’m more surprised to not be disappointed by something, than I am by being disappointed by it. The only thing that disappoints me is that I’m not disappointed by anything anymore, which in other words means I have no expectations of anything, which in other words means life beats me.

But I’m not willing to accept it. No way. I can’t accept the fact I’m no longer disappointed, because not being disappointed means you’re not surprised in a good way by things, it’s living for nothing, no hope and no despair. I’m healthy and the sun is shining and my family is healthy, and that’s enough of a reason to smile. We all know it, but no one is smiling, and when I say smiling I mean true joy that comes from the heart, not the kind of joy you get from going abroad, or buying a piece of clothing, or a compliment, or a deal we close, or half a bottle of whiskey. Cause we’re going to have to come back from vacation, and the joy you get from buying clothes passes after you wear them for the first time, and the deal passes and the high ends.

I want real joy, joy from a constant love, joy from being happy with what I have to be happy with, joy from gratitude. How do you get that, goddamn it?

We went back to Mister Penk's house and fell asleep spooning on his couch. My hand was resting under her rib cage and I felt it go numb, but I didn’t want to move it cause it looked like Philly is extremely comfortable right now, and besides, I need to be a man, and a man doesn’t complain about his arm going numb when his girl is crazy comfortable. At some point I felt like my arm is about to fall off, and right then she mumbled something like "being with you is so pleasant," and it was clear to me that even if they had to chop off my arm right now I’m not moving it out of there. At some point I felt like it was crossing a line, and that I couldn’t feel my arm anymore, and if I ever want to j******f again in my life I have to get my arm out of there, or start practicing j*********f with my right hand. Yes, I’m left-handed.

I said something to her along the lines of "hmm.. babe... babe..." and she lifted up a bit so I could get my arm out, but I couldn't pull it out of there cause it was completely numb and weighed a million pounds and didn’t react to my brain commanding it to move. Using my right arm, I pulled the dead arm from under her ribs, and my wrist was hanging there like a rag doll. Luckily a few moments later I regained sensation in the arm, and with that also regained my joie de vivre. I started rubbing her back a little, trying to gently bypass towards her ribs, as if I’m not aiming for her boob but just casually rubbing her back, but the road to her boob was blocked by her elbow, which didn’t seem like it's intending on moving from there. No matter how hard I tried to turn her on with small pecks on her back, meaningless mumbling in her ear and light licks to her neck, the elbow didn’t budge and she remained in the spooning position, refusing to turn around for a kiss or a hug. Every five minutes or so I gave up and tried to fall asleep as well, but after a while I got a signal from my d**k that no matter what I command it, he's not going to let me fall asleep like that. You can’t bring the donkey to the watering hole and not let it quench its thirst, he complained, and started avenging me with blue balls. I went on another mission to try and turn her on, which failed, tried falling asleep again, couldn't, another go at turning her own, and that's how it lasted until the light peeked through the windows and my balls were pitch black. First thing in the morning I heard Mister Penk talking on the phone to some faggot and sharing experiences from an amazing night. A man who's a stoner, smart, loves life and truthful, that dancing for him used to be popping two cartons and trip while dancing for 20 hours inside a giant speaker, dances for thirty minutes while waving his hands in the air in a suit and tie and says it was an incredible night? What happened to the man? Could personal agendas change a person 180 degrees? Or maybe changing positions causes a change in knowledge, like the people from the opposition always scream their hearts out against something, but then when they get elected for the coalition they do the exact same things they fought against?

What could I say? Maybe you see things differently from every angle?

Afterwards we went to a cafe filled with brainiacs, and drank coffee in an intellectual environment. Philly spilled coffee on Mister Penk's new shirt and felt very uncomfortable, but Mister Penk, with his newly found Wharton manners, didn’t make her feel guilty at all. We had to go back to New York, so we said goodbye to Mister Penk with kisses and hugs, that despite the disappointment from him and the party, were totally real. What am I gonna do, I love this man.

We kept strolling in the street until we walked in a funky clothing store and kissed a bunch, and hugged a bunch, and then the sales lady said they wanted to close up so we should probably start looking at some of the clothes.

I picked out for Philly an orange skirt and a beautiful white tank top, and when she came out of the dressing room I felt my heart behaving strangely. It started beating really fast and all of a sudden the world changed colors. Everything seemed beautiful, sweet, pink. I looked at her looking at herself in the mirror and got tears in my eyes. In one moment my whole world changed.

I fell in love.