Figure This Out:
by Albert Russo
I have a hunch that Bonka,
in his heart of artichokes, might want to settle
in Tel Aviv, on account that he would no longer
feel ashamed of his homey closet status.
What next? Ok, it’s nice here, but there is
one condition for which it would be possible.
Bonka would have to get married to an Israeli in
order to get his Israeli residence - and here it
doesn’t matter whether his better half is a
he or a she (he won’t go for the latter); he
would have to be better than him, coz my uncle
needs a total mind makeover, on account that he
is too pussy-mousy in a country where
sissies can’t keep pace with this tchik
tchak (forever in a hurry) folk. Washmore,
we would then both have to learn Hebrew, reading
and writing from right to left. Their letters
look like bloomin high-row-glee-flix.
Can one ever learn this stuff without going
bonkers and land upside down or right-to-leftways?
Even in English, I can’t write with my left
hand.
So that I should be less
annoyed at the prospect, my uncle gave me
examples of English words that come directly from
the Hebrew, like ‘alphabet’, which here
is ‘alef bet’,’halleluya’,
‘amen’,‘sabbatical’, and two
forks and ding dong. A fat lot that will help me.
Look at this and tell me what you make of it,
except if you wish to specialize in calligraphy:  , which means, ‘Tel
Aviv is a cool city’. Cool, ha! It gives me
the hots - upstairs in the gray cells, you
pervert!
“How would you like to
spend the evening in Old Jaffa with us? We could
go with a couple of interesting artist friends of
ours.” offered Avi, the blonde hunk.
Giggling, Ariel, his
muscled husband said: “Oh, guys, I must tell
you what Avi’s mom’s reaction was after
she had met them the first time. It’s
priceless.”
“Yeah, very
interesting people alright! The girl is full of
sophisticated piercings, one dangling from her
nostril, almost reaching her mouth, another one
hanging from her chin, which make her look like
some kind of Hindu goddess, and if that isn’t
enough, she has two of them stuck at the tip of
her tongue and high up in her ears; where else, I
don’t dare ask. As for Wahala Mahmood, apart
from pulling prozacked rabbits from his
hat, he paints the weirdest faces, no, not like
Picasso or Van Dongen - did he have his limbs in
the right place with a name like that? -, all
dismembered and squashed, they’re figurative
all right. He tattoos their foreheads and cheeks
with bleeding stars of David and Islamic
crescents, and if you look closely enough, you
realize that they’re fighting. I wonder if
those two, even if she is a gothik renegade
Jewess and he a non-practicing fatwa’d
Muslim - that’s what he claims to be - aren’t
plotting a terror attack together.”
|
