by Nick Frost
We were usually pretty hammered coming straight from the disco, you had to be, and sometimes a collective insanity erupted. The noise of the machine and eight of us a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ meant the chickens began to wake, but not all at once; the nearer you got, the more of them would rouse.
I used a technique that’s known in the trade as the four-bird lift. If you had to breathe it was in deep hard gasps through the mouth. No matter how drunk you were the smell of all those hens crammed into a shit-filled shed in ninety-degree heat was too much to bear. I’d run in and grab the birds by the legs, four in each hand, they’d then be transported to the vehicle and stuck into a metal crate. Grim.
We mostly encountered little or no resistance. Mostly. Some of the bigger, bolder roosters would rally and slash at us with their razor-sharp talons. The defence of their hens, though noble, was ultimately futile.
Small running battles would break out all across the front which had formed across the width of the hen house. Every now and then you’d hear the word ‘cunt’ shrieked out as an angry cock slashed at our soft white hands with his ankle daggers. It would be a point of honour to pursue the male who had cut us and dispatch him into the vehicle.
Within four hours it would be over. The house would be clear. Sun rising, we’d stand, breathing heavily like Gomer Pyle, vodka wearing off, ashamed, confused, some considering veganism. The Israelis kindly let us keep all the dead and dying birds we found, they allowed us to eat them. Not raw – we’d BBQ them and serve it with a kind of simple chimichurri sauce we’d invented, we weren’t barbarians.
All this work and high jinks soon led up to my first Christmas in Israel. It was actually really nice. We’d become a little family at this point. A rag tag bag of emotional refugees, fleeing who knows what. These were my friends and through my own choice the only family I had or wanted.
Arrangements were made for a proper Christmas dinner and a carol concert, not usually my kind of thing but fukkit, vodka. The Israelis screened films for us all day, they asked us what we’d like to see and the answer was simple. Bond, James Bond.
We all got up early and exchanged gifts. (Vodka.) Then, still in our jimmy jams, we made our way to the common room where we snuggled in to watch a Bond triple-bill. I loved this time in Israel, where you’d all just hop into bed and have a cuddle. It was fairly innocent in a kind of ‘tops and fingers’ sort of way.
The English girls spend half the day preparing a fantastic Christmas lunch. We have a tree and some decorations and the Christmas dinner itself is absolutely delicious.
Eventually I have to speak to Mum and Dad. It’s Christmas. I can’t remember the conversation but I remember crying a lot. Our lovely Welsh den mother Mary came and cuddled me. Lots of people came and cuddled me. Sorted me right out. It felt amazing. I’m not sure I’d ever felt so loved. (Not true but I know what I mean.) I think I was crying because I finally felt like there was enough distance between me now and me back there to afford myself a moment of Yuletide acceptance. I came out of my foxhole, Mum came out of hers and, with Dad refereeing, we played football in no-man’s-land.
***
A little while after Christmas the weather turned bad. Until that point it’d been hot. Not chilly, not wet, not cloudy but hot. Then it started to rain. A lot. Which was nice, torrential and cooling, and it meant no flies, which was also nice. The flies were terrible. At times we were forced to shit in an old paint tin and cover it in syrup. It would then be left some way from the house so the flies would feast on that instead of the liquid in our eyeballs. It’s an old Berber trick apparently.
The downside of the cooling rain was the hordes of giant black spiders it would drive into our living quarters. I remember watching ten stout men do battle with one of them in a shower block one night. It was horrible and it was weird. I watched the beast bristle and shimmer forward, the shirtless men panic and run here and there. To and fro the battle went. Why? It was a thing so heavy it made a pudpud sound when it walked. Eventually it fell. No one ever mentioned it again.
By mid January the rain stopped, and it started to snow. I never imagined, stupid young man, that it would snow here in Northern Israel but it did. It snowed loads and that meant one thing for hungry volunteers. Chips! Lovely, lovely chips. When it snowed on kibbutz they served chips. What an amazing rule. Chips, proper, handcut potatoes, deep fried in sun-hot golden oil. It was a very special thing. I still didn’t have a great relationship with the food on kibbutz. Too many vegetables. I know chips is a vegetable but it was deep fried so fuck it.
At times – and when I say at times I mean most of the time – there was a shared lunacy among us, among the volunteers. Our life was so monotonous you’d be forced to focus on and cling to the smallest things.
Apart from six hours of hard labour a day you had the other eighteen to do what you wanted. Usually those precious hours of R and R revolved around drinking, heavy bastard drinking. I had left my junior drug fetish behind and had effortlessly slipped into the guise of a semi-professional alkie. Mum would be so proud.
At one point during chip season and the spider battles the DVF was formed. The Drunk Volunteer Force was an unofficial paramilitary (paralytic military) arm of the Israeli Defence Force. It meant that we drank a lot but unlike the other drinking that went on this was officially endorsed by us. Lovely.
The drinking club invented some fun called ‘the Shotgun Challenge’. You take a can of beer, cut a small hole in the bottom of it, hold it to your lips, pull the tab and suck down the turbo-charged brew. Easy. It starts off as a bit of fun, something to do. But with the official formation of the DVF shit became real, we sat and wrote rules, we knocked it into shape.
An official table was constructed, essentially a cardboard league ladder where competition drinkers could be moved up and down according to official timings as the season progressed. I’ll try and explain the rules as I remember them.
A shotgun was only official if it was witnessed by three or more members of the DVF. It could only be counted official if it was timed using the official DVF Alcometer, essentially my watch, a simple Casio. Once the hole was cut into the can it had to be scrutinised by two DVF officials. The size of the hole was important. There’s a set of stringent measurements. The hole could be as small as you wanted but it couldn’t be bigger than the rigid specs laid out in the DVF bible.
The officials, once satisfied that the regulations had been adhered to, gave the nod and the drinking could begin. Almost. The competitor would raise the beer gently to his or her mouth, being careful not to overflow the shotgun can’s newly jagged aperture. As the official timer I would say the words that every official shotgunner heard.
‘In your own time, when I hear the click.’
I’d stand, fingers ready on the buttons of the Alcometer, a collective hush hangs, all betting stops, a small cancer-ridden Vietnamese man screams ‘Diddi Mao!’ And this thing is fucking on. Once I hear the first hiss rush out of the can I’d press start.
An eruption of sound and immense noise, pushing, screaming, weeping, two or three other emotions. Generally the best technique and one that, like the Fosbury flop in high-jump, completely revolutionised the sport, was the ‘Suck and Squeeze’. As the name suggests you’d open your throat – not everyone can do this – and suck the turbo-charged beer down while squeezing the golden piss out of the can.
The shotgun challenge was quick, fast and explosive. At the time there wasn’t another spectator sport in the world as fast-paced and exciting as the Shotgun Challenge. We were it. The only game in town. Once the competitor was finished the can would leave his or her lips and the Alcometer was stopped. The can was immediately handed to me; failure to do this would result in instant disqualification. I’d then place the empty can on an officially endorsed flat surface, a step or something, and the precise measuring could begin. The can is swarmed by DVF officials scrutinising the vessel.
If any liquid could be spilled out of the can, even as a t
hin vapour, it was immediately classed null and void. If nothing dribbled out of the can it was a good shotgun and all eyes moved over to the official timer, moi. The time would be read out, cheers or commiseration would then follow. Your tab would be moved up or down the league table dependent on your time. What mindless larks. Everyone loved it.
Being a face around there and a world-class drinker I was close to the top of the table. It was a long hard season and your surge for glory had to be timed just right. I was competing against some real fucking animals, big strong boys all vying for the crown. Top of the league was a powerful Dane called Hans Jacob Jespersen. He tweeted me a few years back. He was doing great, a big shot in the Danish army. Towards the end of our time together he admitted that he dreamt only in English, which I found amazing as I dreamt entirely in Danish. I once asked Jacob what was the worst swear word in Danish he could think of. He pondered and told me he’d have to think about it.
Later that evening there was a soft knock on my door. It was Jacob.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said.’
‘About what?’ I’d forgotten.
‘About the swearing thing.’
‘Oh, go on then.’
He stumbled slightly, ashamed that he now had these awful sounds inside himself.
‘I don’t really . . .’ He trailed off.
‘Come on, cunt, out with it.’
‘Okay, the worst insult I can think of in Danish is this . . .’ Even I had reached a point where I wasn’t sure if I wanted or needed to hear these mystical killing words. I tremble.
‘Look, if you don’t want to it’s fine . . .’
‘No, I need to.’ After a moment he swallows and says it. The most insulting thing he could think of in Danish was . . .
‘Long-haired communist fag,’ he blurted.
I lay in bed, stunned.
‘What did you fucking say?’
‘I won’t repeat it.’ He nods shyly and leaves, shutting my door quietly behind him. I can hear him on the other side, breathing. After a moment he pads off and that was that.
Swearing aside he’s a giant of a man and a damn fine shotgunner. I liked him very much.
The last day of the championship was upon us; a long hazy season had almost drawn to a close, Jacob sat on top of the table. The final shotgun of the season was mine. And it was massive. All or nothing, death or glory. Something or another something. The lights go green; I hear the words, ‘In your own time, when I hear the click.’
BOOM!
I power that motherfucker down. I care about nothing and no one at that moment. I’m deaf and I’m blind, sucking down that cold can of Maccabee like nothing else mattered.
My lips undocked from the can, I reeled backwards, eyes wide, grunting and held the can aloft, an official taking it off me. By the ripple of cheers erupting from the crowd I knew it was good, it felt good, it felt really good. People crowded the timer, confusion reigned. The can was officially stepped and to my absolute horror a tiny bubble of lagery foam bleeds from the hole. NOOOOO!!! The championship had gone. I knew then that it was gone. What was the time?
1.92 seconds. A new world record. A clear second faster than Jacob, but it didn’t count. I didn’t count. It was the shotgun heard around the world. My career as a shotgunner was over. It hit me hard.
Things in the DVF become darker. I’m becoming a kind of Colonel Kurtz-style character. I spend a lot of time wearing a multi-coloured towelling robe, sleeveless for comfort and convenience. I’ve also taken to carrying around a metallic blue kettle I call the ‘Kettle of Doom’. Where it came from I shall not say. The kettle was our holy grail; our piece of the true cross, our Alma Mater, and wherever it went, alcoholic mayhem ensued. Inside the kettle was a vodka-laced punch and about a pound of rotting fruit, slowly fermenting. My own micro still. I never took the fruit out, and I never washed the thing once.
At volunteer parties the drink of choice was a terrible fruit punch. Fuck loads of it. We’d borrow a massive pot from the kitchen, fill it with bottles of weak squash, fruit would then be added and then the booze, vodka, shitty shitty vodka. It was our drink, it was cheap and plentiful. For special occasions and shots we’d have lemon vodka but there was another kind. Another altogether darker kind. The fathers of the DVF – me, Kiwi Shaun, Little Pete and Dave – one day stumbled upon a new pain. A pain so powerful it had to be purchased in a hardware store. It had a plain white label and always reminded me of the bottle of booze Belloq gives Marion in Raiders. On the plain white label written in Hebrew and English the legend said simply, Alcohol. That shit was 95% alcohol, not proof, alcohol. Bear in mind whisky and vodka are usually 40%. Now with hindsight being 20/20 I can only assume what we were drinking was turps or paint thinner. Agreed it seems like total lunacy but it really wasn’t that bad when you mixed it with Coke or Sprite.
Do you know that feeling when you spill white spirit onto your hands when you’re cleaning a paintbrush? It doesn’t trickle off, it just kind of goes in. That’s exactly what happened when you drank it. It’s making me heave slightly to remember this. I never swallowed a mouthful of that shit, it just kind of went in. A triumph? A disaster? Heave.
If there was a party people would draw lots to see who’d go on the booze run. Usually it needed three of us, not always the same three, but three was the minimum number needed to carry all that booze back. Those going would have to ask permission to leave work five minutes early in order to catch the bus to the nearest town, Safed, the jewel in the crown of the Galilee region.
With the hour there and the hour back it gave you about two and a half hours to get what was needed before the last bus returned. It wasn’t just booze, we’d have a long list of things people wanted, needed: good shampoo, chocolate, nail clippers, nail varnish, Pot Noodles, tights etc.
It was always a special treat to leave the kibbutz. Safed was pretty in a bullet-ridden kind of way, built up into the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee. It’s mentioned in the Bible apparently too, if you’re into that kind of thing.
For the booze run itself it was important, no imperative, that you shopped as quickly as you could, booze booze booze then shampoo. Get it done fast, then kick back and eat.
Compared to that healthy muck they served on kibbutz, Safed with its numerous pizza places and falafel stands was heaven. One place stood out though, a pizza restaurant serving perhaps the greatest NYC-style cheese pizza I’ve ever tasted anywhere in the world and that includes New York.
I’m not sure if it was actually that good or just because we were all desperate for it but it was amazing. Crispy, cheesy, buttery. My tongue has a hard-on. Sometimes a couple of us would save up and take a day off, jump on the 10 a.m. bus and spend four or five hours eating slice after crisp buttery slice and downing litres of ice-cold Goldstar beer. It was absolute bliss.
The parties we had were fucking mental. So much so that all I really remember was wearing a toga, and that’s it. Once during the festival of Purim I thought it would be fun to dress up in my friend Eli Azer’s Israeli army uniform. I woke up at 6 a.m. outside somewhere after having the shit beaten out of me by two drunken soldiers. Eli Azer forgot to tell me he was a Military Policeman, generally disliked by the other regiments in the IDF. Unable to talk, I was too pissed to explain I wasn’t an Israeli soldier.
Every Friday was the volunteers’ disco. It was a big night. First you had to get Shabbat meal out of the way. The whole kibbutz would sit together in the main hall eating dinner. The volunteers were ghettoed up one end. The Israelis generally wanted to keep their distance, afraid they’d catch what we had. That was not always the case. If, like me, you’d been there a while you sometimes got invited to sit with a family to eat Shabbat meal. Not me, that never happened to me but I was told it was most pleasant.
Shabbat meal was generally a lot of fun, food and, foolishly, free wine on the tables, sweet, spine-vibrating Shabbat wine. Silly Israelis.
Friday after work I’d swim, play foot
ball for two hours and then sleep until about five o’clock. You’d wake up, shower and, for perhaps the only time that week, you’d wear clothes that you’d brought with you from home. There were exceptions, long-time volunteers could rifle through Vicki’s box of old seventies clothes. Clothes would also be handed down from volunteer to volunteer. People left, clothes stayed.
It was a treat seeing the ladies get all dolled up. During the week they usually looked like part of a socialist land army, sexy in a Marxist kind of way. Friday night though . . . Hello! Make-up, perfume, the lot. Sometimes even shoes!
Once dressed we’d do shots, not too many as you still had a big formal dinner to sit through and Shabbat meal was important, you had to behave. Public drunkenness on kibbutz was frowned upon. As a volunteer you had to behave. Up to a point. Friday was the only time volunteers got table-served by the Israelis. We loved that. Loved making it a bit difficult for them, especially if the Israeli serving us had been a ball/boob breaker during the week. The food was always good too, much better than the usual rations.
There was usually a candle lit, a prayer or prayers, a song, a poem. This bit tended to drag, we just wanted to eat and drink wine. Trying to be quiet would just make us worse. Giggles stifled. People coughing loudly. This high-pitched noise emitted by people trying not to laugh, Errrrrdddd! I’d do this thing where I’d let a long string of gob hang off my tongue and then at the last possible second I’d whip my tongue up and a chandelier of phlegm would arc up and plop onto my forehead. Big lolz from the boys. Admiring glances from the girls. Phlegm chandelier got me so much pussy.
As soon as prayers are over, eating erupts. The drinkers among us had a very important job to do. It took planning, clinical observation, patience and stamina. While hammering through the wine on our table me and the other DVF members would be constantly scanning the other tables around us. How much have they drunk? Are they drinking? When are they going? It had to be played just right though, the locals would frown upon blatant wine collection and hoarding.