Disarmed

by Izzy Ezagui

  Don't you think this is getting out of hand?

  You know you're in trouble when Phantom starts questioning your life decisions.

  I've got problems. Yeah, I'm really messed up. But I have no intention of dealing with anything, not now. Not until I've finished wreaking havoc on what's left of my body. I may have lost my mind.

  In the morning, Snoop and his new girlfriend stage a mini, ad hoc intervention. “You're getting out of control. You know, all you went through—”

  “All I went through what?”

  The next day I leave them there in their love nest and fly to Laos.

  LAST LEGS

  February 2012. I'm convinced that what I need right now is a place to live wild without repercussions. Why not one of the last remaining Marxist-Leninist bastions in the world? When I arrive in the capital, Vientiane, I can tell I'm not exactly in the best headspace. I haven't gone more than six hours without a drink in the whole month prior, when I was in Thailand. There's a name for that. And maybe I was a little more tightly wound from the constant state of pressure I was living in for nearly four years—one war or another. Maybe I'm not entirely unwound yet.

  So I “show up” to get “messed up.” Which is pretty easy in Laos. I go straight to Vang Vieng, which is known as “the world's most unlikely party town.” The first few days are like living in a stack of still frames, going from one surreal image to the next without remembering what happened in between: Dancing on the bar. Launching out over the Nam Song River from stupidly dangerous swings and slides where scores of even stupider tourists have smashed their skulls and killed themselves. Twirling fire poi (ropes with weighted-end wicks soaked in fuel, lit on fire, then spun for dramatic effect). Scalding my leg. Vomiting in the street. Vomiting in the jungle. Vomiting in the sacred Nam Song. Vomiting on snakes curled up in the world's most disgusting urinal trough. Kissing a blond girl, possibly from Canada. Kissing a Latina girl, possibly from Spain. Kissing a tall British girl with spectacular teeth. Vomiting on the tall British girl's flip-flop. Sucking nitrous oxide from the cheap balloons they sell at every bar. Everyone sounds like Charlie Brown's parents, and everything is hilarious.

  A Boston chick in my room, so out of it I have to wake her up and walk her to her hostel, delivering a stern lecture about not going home with random boys in bars because some boys are not so good, and won't do what's right. “I've got three sisters,” I say, “and I pray…” But the girl's already passed out. I never see her again.

  Tubing down the Nam Song with hundreds of twenty-somethings from Australia, Germany, and South Korea, every one of them bombed off their asses. Small boys, nearly naked, fling out ropes for us to grab, and pull us in to shore at every raucous bar, all their stacked speakers competing and colliding over the swift-flowing water. Scraggly dogs trying to snatch my stick of spicy chicken. Chickens on the tuk-tuks. “Ladyboys” in all the bars, eyeing me with sultry looks. Kissing a freckled Dutch girl so they don't get the wrong idea.

  Suddenly, while lying on my back atop a picnic table, spinning on nitrous oxide, people playing beer pong on either side of me, I realize Phantom's gone. Vanished. As though I've just remembered I've left him on the baggage carousel. A certain pang. I can't possibly miss him. Can I? A French girl, buxom, hands me another balloon, pinched at the sphincter between her fingers. Kissing the balloon. Kissing her, too.

  On day four, give or take a few, I find myself standing behind a noisy, crowded indoor bar that smells of cheap beer and frat boys. The floors are made of pallets, some of them broken and splintered. I'm pouring drinks. I must have a job. It feels good to be on this side of the bar, even if my only pay is “room” (shack) and “board” (booze). I could stay here forever. The DJ and his girlfriend, both tattooed South Africans, become fast friends. The other bartenders, mostly Brits and Canadians, every one with a sad story rendered temporarily happier by chemistry, become my unit. The Lost Boys. We all get wasted together. And otherwise live as though there are no costs or aftermaths to this behavior.

  Very soon, Israelis whom I've never met begin ordering their drinks in Hebrew, high-fiving me. News has traveled on the Southeast Asian backpacker trail that Vang Vieng has spawned some crazy mutant bartender, you gotta meet this guy. Soon after, New Zealanders who heard about the one-armed barman from French Canadians on Philippine beaches are stopping by for a drink; Londoners coming from Cambodia and on their way to trace the Ho Chi Minh trail; Bulgarians who met Greeks at crappy hostels in Bali who told of the mythical one-armed loon behind the bar—he's real. I'm known. A destination. And it feels good.

  The owner of the bar, Mrs. Thong, owns another on the river circuit. So my friends and I unpeel ourselves from our various heaps every afternoon, and chip in for a tuk-tuk down to the river, so we can work behind the bar, serving drunk young tourists with their passports and their cell phones in overpriced plastic protectors around their necks, which we behind the bar all know will never keep the water out.

  If there were ever a movie made of my life, I would want it to start right here, with me juggling bottles of Laotian vodka, the awesome one-armed bartender on a ridiculous river, deep in the limestone karsts of Laos. I'm sandwiched between two Swedish girls covered in tattoos that I drew all over their bodies in Sharpie: “I love one-armed men!”

  One day I wake up to find that all the male bartenders are putting on dresses and makeup. We all lose our boxers and head to work free-balling, nitrous-balloons crammed into our bras. I spend the whole day that way, pouring drinks on the river, not caring that I can feel a breeze on my biscuits for the first time ever, or that all five of my nails sport shiny red nail polish. Girls keep manhandling my balloons, and they don't seem to mind when I man their handles in return.

  Two weeks in, I do mushrooms for the first time. It's a happy accident. Still drunk between the day and night shifts, I flip-flop to the restaurant across the street and order a pizza with mushroom topping. I down the entire pie without thinking twice, and run to the nightclub to get to work. Twenty minutes later, beer bottles start asking me for directions to the nearest ATM. Stools are dancing techno with the ladyboys. My Tasmanian coworker takes one look at me and proclaims, “You're mushed out of your mind, mate.” So he buys some shrooms, too, and we spend the night hallucinating together. Some guy from another bar turns into a flying, horned purple imp and freaks me the hell out, but my mate is able to talk me down before he goes off to start a long conversation with a giant fishtail palm. He might have proposed.

  It's difficult to explain why all of this feels so liberating. Or maybe it isn't so difficult. There's just something very freeing about being so far from people who know me—I mean the “heroic” me. Here, I don't have to behave in a way that fits the image people expect me to uphold.

  When I call my mother from the airport, right before my flight back to Israel, I'm still drunk. They're boarding, and I'm still drunk. I tell my mother I'm going to stay longer, that I'm not ready to go home. She begs me to board the plane. So I do.

  How do I get back to doing the right thing—even when nobody's watching? I probably need therapy. But I've got reserve duty coming up. And if I stay in Laos it will kill my mother.

  NO LEG TO STAND ON

  2011–2012. Why can't I meet a girl when I'm sober? I have this recurring dream: A Number 12-alef bus pulls up to the stop in front of Sheba rehab. The doors unfold. “I have to go,” says Katya, but her eyes tell me a different story. What started as med-student/patient is clearly evolving—in this very moment—into full-on love. What a day. My God, her eyes are so…radiant.

  Behind her, the hydraulic sigh of the green giant sings its impatience. It sounds oddly human. The sun is reflecting off the row of tinted windows, and it streams over her translucent skin.

  Why is my married therapist suddenly so into me? What's my move?

  Now the bus engine growls. I raise my hand to silence it, and instantly it settles down to a puppy's whimper. Katya cocks her head quizzically—yes, with
this hand, I can do magic, Katya.

  A lock of raven hair slips down her forehead, begging me to brush it back. My hand is getting closer. I tuck the strands back in place behind her ear. I touch her arm. Goose bumps erupt beneath my fingers. I lean in for the kiss. I go precisely 80 percent of the way, and she moves the rest. Our lips touch, and the bus stop rockets upward, thirty feet into the air, then explodes like fireworks. Her eyes reflect the explosion.

  “You're about to miss your bus,” I say. I kiss her again. “You have to go now.”

  I watch her force herself up the steps and into the first vacant seat. She peers through the glass. She's searching for me, but I'm completely unrecognizable. A thick beard is sprouting from my chin, handlebars from my upper lip. I'm a man.

  But now my beard begins to stink. I can taste it. Like someone's insides. I shake and shake my head, but I can't escape the rancid funk. I shake so much I always shake myself awake. The first time, it was the night Benny shat himself in the next bed. Tonight the stench is coming from my own dry, liquored breath.

  Here's my take on the dream: There's something inside me that's repugnant, and eventually it'll find its way out. It's obvious why, even in my dreams, I don't get the girl. If I can't see my own self-worth, how can I expect her to see it? I thought I'd be married by eighteen. Now I'm not sure it'll happen at all. What scares me most is that the idea of staying single forever is starting to scare me less and less. Maybe I'm just not meant to share my life with anyone. Maybe I should get a dog.

  Maybe I'm too picky. Maybe I'm aiming too high up the chain for a one-armed nerd with ears that can pick up DirecTV. When does the zombie in the movie ever get the girl? Well, there was that one movie. But I'd rather rot alone than settle for second best. That's an expression, right?

  HANDS AND KNEES

  In 2012, a year or so after I finish my active service, Ziv Shilon, the officer who saved me from the infinite pull of my own black hole on my first, failed, day back in service, is on a foot patrol on the Gaza Strip near Kibbutz Kissufim. He's been promoted to captain of his unit. Snipers have been picking off Israelis from the windows and rooftops of Gazan buildings on the border. Instead of attacking these targets from the air, the IDF employs squads of foot soldiers to isolate the firing locations and take down the terrorists at close range. It's the company's final mission of operational training. Soon they'll all head by bus to their combat qualification ceremony. But first they have to pass through one last gate along the border.

  Ziv orders his men to wait one hundred fifty meters behind him—he knows the risks. He says, “I'll be right back.” Then he advances slowly toward the gate. That's when an IED explodes in his face.

  The blast obliterates one of his arms and horribly mangles the other. He scoops up his limbs and heads back toward his men, who are mostly frozen in shock. He head-butts one of them to get him back in the game, then orders the guy to apply tourniquets and start an IV.

  In the following months, he'll have dozens of operations. He'll take that nightmare ride though the long, dark night of the soul. And then he'll make it over his first proverbial wall, tentatively at first. And up his first rope. But far sooner than I, he'll kick ass and take names again. Run marathons. Get married, have a kid. I still don't feel comfortable placing myself in league with guys like Ziv (or Yakir or Zvika). But I like to think that maybe I played a tiny role in his recovery. He knows it can be done, he can recover—because I did it while under his charge. I hope whenever he suffers a setback, someone pats him on the back and says, “You rocked today. I was watching you. Don't sweat it, guy, you'll be back in form tomorrow.”

  A HEART THAT BEATS FOR TWENTY

  In 2015, I see Ido Dan after my reserve duty. We meet for dinner before my flight back to New York, where I've been living. He doesn't look anything like the boy who volunteered to surrender his bedroom to a recovering stranger. His eyes, now sunken and worn, seem to scan our surroundings without pause, searching for signs of danger—he's been posted in Chevron. He wears the same purple beret his father, David, wore as a commander in Givati, at the same age. The same one I wore. But he's achieved so much more than I did. At eighteen, he was drafted, along with most Israeli kids, into the IDF. Within a year and half, he earned the rank of lieutenant. He and his twenty troops have been attacked by Molotov cocktails; they've been ambushed with blades, bombs, and gunfire. He hasn't lost one yet, but he still has a few recovering men in the same rehab where his mother met and adopted me into the Dan family.

  My flight time is approaching all too fast. He's hardly touched his food. “Are you doing OK? I mean, really OK?”

  Ido smiles tiredly, and around the eyes he looks like his mother, Shachar, at her most fretful. “Just need a good night's rest.”

  “Good thing you don't have some random schmuck entrenched in your bedroom.”

  We embrace farewell. And there, beneath his uniform, beneath the rifle he holds in a vise grip, I can feel his heart beating. It still feels like a child's heart. Once it beat for me. Now it beats for twenty.

  A SLAP ON THE WRIST

  December 2015. Brutal week and a half of reserve duty training. Even the Spartan-like reservists are falling like Confederates at Appomattox. Epic trek, freezing rain, harsh wind. I just want to lighten the mood. So when we get back to camp, I walk around, borrowing officers’ rifles, never telling them why. I take off the straps and shove eight M16s in a neat row on their butts into the whitewashed pebbles, barrels facing the night sky. Then I stick a candle in each, light the four on the right. I pose and have someone take a picture. I post it on Facebook: “Happy Hanukkah from the IDF Reserves.”

  “Machine Gun Menorah” goes viral in a matter of hours. It reaches Russia, Europe, and America. And then bounces back to the desk of the head safety officer of the IDF. I get a call the next day from the commander of my unit asking if I was the simpleton who posted the picture. I confess. He orders me to report to him immediately so he can attempt to save me from the whoop-ass about to come down on me from top brass. “Here's what we're gonna do,” he says. “The rules are, if a soldier is tried within his unit for a crime, he can't be retried by higher military court. So consider this your ‘trial.’ My finding is you're an idiot. My sentence is don't be an idiot again. A menorah made out of guns. What's next?”

  I tell my squad mates that the only reason I didn't get arrested by the MPs is because I cannot be handcuffed. I'm here all day; try the veal.

  SHAKE A LEG

  I'm twenty-seven years old as I put the finishing touches on the manuscript of this book. I've chronicled a slow start, a protracted rise, a tragedy, a stagnation, a miasma, a resurrection, and my present plateau. But I feel that my journey is yet to begin. I'm still confused, often lonely, relatively self-loathing. I still whine at paper cuts. I'm living in New York City with my dog, Punch, a sweet and rowdy Shiba Inu. No mountains here. No ancient temples. And my mother, she keeps asking me over the phone, “Izzy, when are you going to meet a nice Jewish girl already?” Surrounded by hollowed-out hipsters and discarded coffee cups, I don't have an answer.

  I wake up many a morning truly believing that I'll croak before finding a suitable match. There are months when I completely give up, drawing myself ever inward, building an antisocial bubble of self-pity. Carting my lonely bones around in a perpetual state of emergency. Maybe my problem is that I think of this process as “finding a suitable match.” Doesn't allow for much spontaneity, does it? Nothing to do with falling in love. It's becoming increasingly obvious how this simply isn't working.

  Thank God for Punch. He's my best friend. He's got no choice. I'm the guy who feeds him.

  I say I feel lonely. Yet, somehow, I sense I'm not alone anymore. Whenever I return to Israel, and when I find myself with an open palm against the warm stone of the Western Wall, I allow my brain to entertain a train of thought I once considered the ultimate weakness—the likelihood of Rabbi's Higher Power—some version of it—watching over me. And, while I st
ill can't bring myself to actually ask anything of this entity, this possible drunk wizard in the sky, or to recite any of the prayers pounded into me when I was young, I've found a measure of peace in thanking Him—Whoever and wherever He is—for all the good I've received, for all the amazing gifts I've been blessed with, and which I did not in any way deserve.

  I doubt that today's therapists would label the atmosphere of the chilling, bloody place where I first committed to my mission as conducive to healthy psycho-spiritual growth. But whatever their years of research may tell them, I have found that I needed that calamitous event, that long, dark night, and then that wall, and then the rope, and the boots, and all the milestones on my expedition here. We need hurricane winds to blow away layers of nonsense, to uncover our core, the true heart hidden underneath all of our insecurity and guilt and shame that took years to accrete. Moments like the Big Bang that nearly took my life, and yet, without my knowing at the time, also rebirthed me. Assuming we survive such storms and explosions, they allow us to choose how we plan to navigate life's testing tide. Never whether we will sink or swim, but rather which stroke will bring us to the finish line.

  Even if we strive only to endure another day, to not completely give up, we'll find our backbones grow out of our despair, out of the wreckage of our lives. Even if we have to crawl to the call, we ought to crawl. That said, I find it difficult to offer anyone advice. Who am I to tell you how to live your life? I can't be a model for anyone. I'm not a happy person now. But I'm a whole person, probably for the first time in my life. It's hard to put my finger on my problem. If I'm honest, I think it's that I'm terrified that I will never accomplish anything as amazing and improbable as I did when I was twenty-one. I've peaked. That's seriously scary. I don't want to be like one of those fat, bald guys who played football in high school and still gets drunk with his buddies while they reminisce about that one Big Game, that perfect touchdown.