Chariots on the Highway
Page 29
“They’ll leave only after they see you’re okay, baby, and understand they have no reason to wait. They might still be thinking you’re going to turn Orthodox and develop a taste for women; it’s up to you to show them you’re okay and crush their hopes at the same time.” Dan grinned.
“You can call them in now, but only if you stay with me,” Tom replied.
“I'll talk to the doctor, they don’t let more than one visitor in at a time, two at the most in the recovery room.”
“Excellent! That means it’ll be short and quick. Let’s get it over with!”
Dan approached Dr.Or and explained him what Tom's wishes were regarding his parents.
The doctor nodded with understanding and went outside with Dan to call them in.
“Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, please follow me to the recovery room, you can see him now. You only have a few minutes though, and I'm reminding you not to stress him!”
They stood up and walked behind him, Dan walking next to them and Deborah giving him a look of contempt. “We’re going in alone right?” she asked the doctor.
“No, Dan will be present!” the doctor replied.
“This is outrageous! What kind of hospital is this? That's our son and we can’t see him privately?” she barked at the doctor.
“In this hospital, Ms. Freeman, we respect the patient’s wishes! The patient has clarified that he will not let you in without his partner being present!” the doctor angrily answered her.
She had nothing to say in response, and Dan appreciated him even more for his loyalty to Tom’s wishes. The three of them got inside and came near Tom’s bed. Dan went to his right side to hold his hand. It was his natural place ever since the injury; next to Tom’s right hand.
Ehud and Deborah stood on the other side and looked at him, as if to assess his condition with their own eyes.
“How are you, Tomer? Are you in pain son?” Ehud asked him.
“I'm hurt, but I'll live,” answered Tom, avoiding eye contact, “and please don’t call me Tomer! My name is Tom!” he added.
“Tom. We were very sorry and frightened to hear about your injury. We did everything we could to get here as soon as possible, and thank God we got here safe to find you injured, but alive,” Ehud stopped for a moment and continued, “We love you very much, son. It’s true we don’t agree on many things and I blame myself for that. But the lord works in mysterious ways, and I'm sure that his wisdom is what brought us here for you, son. We are here for a reason,” Ehud told him.
“If he was the one arranging this meeting, why did he have to kill half of my team in the process?” Tom answered him, “And you know what, Dad? If there is a reason for us to meet, is for me to tell you once and for all who I really am, and what I really want, and if you can’t accept me and my choices, then I'm saying goodbye, here and now, forever.
I'm gay! I always have been, and I don’t want to or can’t change that fact. I'm a non-religious Jew, I live in Israel, and intend to stay here. I live with the partner you’ve already met, his name is Dan. He’s my present and my future and that’s all I have to tell you! Now, I'm hurt and I'm tired, and I don’t have the energy to hear your bullshit about God. So I'm asking you nicely to go back to Kansas and let me live in peace. I'm fine. You saw it with your own two eyes!”
Tom spoke with a broken voice that Dan knew meant he was holding back tears. The monitors showed Tom’s pulse rising, increasing Dan’s worry.
“Tom, darling, listen to me!” Deborah came near him, while trying to get him to look at her, “You’re injured and confused right now. You’re affected by a whole bunch of people who brain-washed you. Let us take you home and take care of you, sweetheart. I promise that everything will be okay, we’ll solve all of this together. God willing, you’ll find answers and forgiveness.”
Dan saw the pulse in the monitor climbing higher. He panicked.
“Dan, get them out of here! I can’t do this anymore!” Tom looked at him with tears in his eyes, begging, but Dan didn’t have to act. The doctor had heard Tom’s monitor beeping and quickly got to the bed, “That’s it, this visit is over! Come on, get out!”
The doctor stood his ground, waiting for Tom’s parents to leave.
“We’ll wait for you, Tom, we’ll talk again when you get better,” Deborah persisted.
“I don’t want to see you! Not tomorrow or ever!” yelled Tom as the monitor beeped, and the doctor had to drag them outside forcibly, “Out! Both of you!”
Dan hugged him and whispered calming words, asking him to breathe slowly, promising him he wouldn’t let them come near him again, even if it required violence.
The doctor came back, irritated, looked at Tom and the monitor, and then at Dan.
“I'm issuing a warning not to let your parents come anywhere near you as long as you’re in the hospital. Is that okay with you, Tom?” the doctor asked.
“Can you make that ‘never again… anywhere’. That’d be great,” Tom answered quickly.
“For ‘never again’, you've got Dan. But forever is a long time, Tom. Who knows? Maybe one day they’ll see the light!” he finished and went on his way.
Dan stayed with him until he fell asleep, then went outside for a little break. Outside the waiting room he was surprised to see Ehud still standing and waiting.
“I hope you’re not planning on going inside again. A warning has been issued to keep you away from him!” Dan said angrily, “You’re so selfish! You managed to upset him in a recovery room after surgery! You risked his life! What kind of people are you!?”
“My wife is impatient, she wants her son back and she never learned to wait for the right moment to speak, and for that I apologize, not to you but to my son. Given that I can’t tell him that on my own, I’ll tell you.”
“I'll be sure to give him the message! So what are you waiting for exactly?” asked Dan.
“I thought we should talk,” said Ehud.
Dan thought about refusing, but then he thought that it would be better if he took the heat, not Tom. Maybe he’d even be able to convince them to get on a plane and get the fuck out of there.
“I'll tell Sarah to go sit with him in case he wakes up, and we’ll get a coffee,” said Dan.
They sat in the cafeteria next to the ER and they both ordered espressos.
“We simply wants what's best for him, you’ve all turned us into monsters,” Ehud started.
“You did that yourself! We’re just the disappointed audience,” replied Dan and continued, “You don’t want what's best for him. You want what you think is best for him, but your perception is colored by selfishness and misconceptions about what ‘his best’ means. What really is best for Tom is to be where he chooses to be, with the people that love him and aren’t trying to forcibly get him to play a role he wasn’t born to play.”
“You’re a Jewish man! How can you speak about Judaism as ‘role’? The fact that I want to bring my son closer to his roots, to his god? The fact that I want him to stop doing that… sin with you. The fact that I want him to get married and start a family? That’s wanting him to play a role? What you’re doing is wrong! It's disgusting and unnatural!” Ehud hissed, so the crowd around them couldn’t here. Dan thought it was funny, how the man tried to talk aggressively, but whispered so no one would hear him.
“Chemotherapy unnatural. Artificial insemination, sedatives, dialysis, defibrillators! That doesn’t prevent your community members using all of those! Loving Tom is the most natural thing in the world for me, Ehud. What’s not natural about it is that you, his father, aren’t willing to love him because he was born different!” Dan told him.
“He wasn’t born different. Something psychological happened to him, and he lost his way a little bit. Maybe he felt lonely and alone when we became orthodox and someone took advantage of it and dragged him into that world. He needs a hand to get him out of there… to save him
“Something psychological that made him be attracted to men ever since he
was a child? Listen to yourself! Are you able to sleep with another man, Ehud?” Dan asked him while looking him square in the eye.
“God forbid! How can you ask such a thing?!”
“But maybe if you’d go through some psychological processes you would’ve been able to? How does that sound? Do you really think there are powers in the world to change your sexual tendencies? Don’t answer! Don’t bother answering that, the answer is clear to both of us,” said Dan, while hoping that statement would probably shut him up.
“Then how you were able to change it?” said Ehud, shocking Dan. He hadn’t seen that one coming, but apparently Ehud had done his homework before the exchange started.
“I'm wired differently, Ehud, I can be attracted to both men and women. But Tom can’t. He can’t touch a woman, he can’t love a woman, and he can’t have sexual relations with a woman. You have to understand that!” said Dan.
“I don’t accept that! It’s a test. The lord is testing him and I as his father have to help him see it. I have to take this chance God has given him to start all over again, to build a life for himself in a holy, sacred way.”
Dan felt this was hopeless. No matter what he said, he couldn’t reach this man sitting in front of him. It felt as if they weren’t speaking the same language.
“Are you familiar with the ant’s circle of death?” Dan asked and Ehud shook his head. “It’s about a rare species of black, dangerous ants, known for their lethal, venomous sting. These ants are blind and they get around only with their sense of smell. They follow the ant in front of them, by the smell of her pheromones, and that’s how they lead their lives. Everything goes wrong when one ants loses its sense of smell and hopelessly, with no sense of direction, starts walking in circles. The ant behind it follows, and the one behind too, and so on. Quickly enough, a giant ant-spiral is formed, moving in an endless circle without knowing where they’re going or why.
They keep walking until they die from fatigue and hunger.
There are amazing documentations of these huge spirals, taken from different areas of the world. In America, there was documentation of a spiral the size of a baseball field. A huge ant community, lost in a circle of death.”
Ehud stared at Dan with a suspicious, angry look, and waited for him to continue.
“Orthodox Judaism reminds me of that circle,” Dan summed up.
“How dare you use that comparison, it sounds like an anti-Semitic slur! Shame on you! Are you even Jewish?” Ehud yelled at him with an accusing tone.
“My grandparents ended their short lives in Auschwitz, so yeah, I think my Judaism isn’t in question. I’m not talking of Judaism in general. I have nothing but respect and appreciation for most forms of Judaism, in Israel and abroad as well, but not for Orthodoxy… not for those who confuse religion and cultism, not for those who put a list of strict rules, that don’t make any sense, above their natural instincts and emotions, not for those who stop thinking for themselves and put their better judgment in the hands of others, spinning them in a circle to nowhere!
These Ehud, I can’t stand!” said Dan.
“These same Orthodoxies you’re denigrating with such poisonous mocking, are the ones that protected Judaism for generations. They’re the ones who made the Jewish people who they are today! The Jewish people only account for a quarter of a percent of the world, but a quarter of Noble Prize winners are Jewish! We’re the chosen people. How can you not see that?” said Ehud.
“Your information is accurate, Ehud. But I don’t remember that any one of those Nobel Prize winners went up to accept the reward with a sthreimel and curly sideburns. Many of the winners along the years were believing people, some of them wearing yarmulkes. They came from every sect of Judaism except for Orthodox. It’s true that Orthodoxy preserved the Jewish people through the years, but it didn’t advance, didn’t progress and match itself to the changes that happened to the nation. It kept on walking in an endless circle, while around it came enlightenment, science, medicine and technology. The world has filled with new and advanced sources of knowledge than those written in the bible. Cultures have changed, countries have fallen and were rebuilt, regimes have fallen and risen, yet you’re still walking around with your eyes closed,” Dan explained as best as he could, but Ehud just got his back up and gave up on the conversation.
“I love Tom, Ehud. I care for him and I always will. One day I'm going to marry him and maybe we’ll even have a child. A child that will be your grandson. But you won't be a part of it, you’ll be far away. You’ll be a grieving father by choice.”
Ehud’s look gave away defeat, he realized that the wall that Dan’s portraying between him and Tom was fortified, and there was no chance for anything to change; the pain of it reflected in his eyes.
“You’re a lost soul! Heretic! And you’re dragging my son with you into the Sodom and Gomorrah of your life. I hope that with God’s help you find your Judaism, and let my son go from this hell you’ve trapped him in,” “Ehud seethed.
Dan got angry, “I've found my Judaism, Ehud. It’s called non-religious Judaism, and it’s the biggest sect of Judaism of all the sects out there. The same sect that’s running this country and growing the best minds that are leading every field of science in Israel and in the world. And even though I have a lot of problems with Israeli culture, I'm proud to be a part of it. I have one god, Spinoza’s god, the one that’s found in each and every one of us and makes us tick as the whole big entity that is humanity. My god is nature, the nature we were born into, our nature! My god has the wisdom and inner morality that’s embedded in all of us, just because we are born as human beings. And no, he’s not walking around with a ledger giving away tickets to whoever breaks the rules!
Out of thirteen million of the world’s Jews today, half define themselves as non-religious; they embrace the beauty of their religion, but reject the irrelevant elements. The elements that don’t correspond with the era we live in… and my Judaism isn’t less true or real than your Judaism! My Judaism doesn’t prevent me from loving Tom.
My ancestors, 2500 years ago, decided that homosexuality is a sin. While they were living like nomads and trading camels for women, and married multiple women at the same time! We’ve advanced since then. Things have changed, and there are people who didn’t get the memo that this is the twenty-first century we’re living in.
My Judaism is about helping the other, caring for the weak, loving and caring for my woman, or man, of choice. It’s about protecting my brothers by serving in the IDF and risking my life for the sake of my people. My Judaism encourages me to learn, and attain practical tools to help others. I'm a non-religious Jew giving his life to life-saving technology! My father, may he rest in peace, was an oncologist and saved the lives of hundreds of cancer patients. He gave his life to saving other’s lives. My Judaism isn’t limiting my weak-in-the-first-place senses. It doesn’t prevent me from tasting new things, just because someone decided it’s forbidden. It doesn’t prevent me from hearing sounds and songs just because a woman is singing them. It doesn’t prevent me from seeing all the beauty in other cultures out of arrogance… and it doesn’t prevent me from touching the man I love.
I'm a Jew who believes that you need to treat others well and not follow nonsensical rules that serve no purpose. I'm a Jew that, if I one day have a child, would love him and accept him just as he is! I'm more Jewish than you are!” Dan finished and stood up, took out a 50 shekels bill and put it on the table.
“I hope not to see you here again, or at all, Ehud. If one day you decide you want to break free of that circle of death, we’ll welcome you with open arms. Until then, don’t you dare come near Tom, or me!” he finished, turned around, and left.
Tom’s hospitalization took ten days. It was supposed to have been much longer, but Tom was impatient, and everyone who came near him got to hear his begging, ‘Please release me, I want to go home’. He made an immense effort to show the medical staff he was recovering.
It happened with Dan and the doctor present. All of them hid the heartbreak, disappointment and emotional storms that raged within, but the goodbye was inevitable given the circumstances, and they all knew there was no other choice.
Dan stayed with Tom after they left, and hugged him when tears of grief uncontrollably broke out.
Tom knew it was final, and along with the relief and the freedom came feelings of emptiness and grief. Grief, because he understood that from then on, he was an orphan.
Dan, who was just as much an orphan as Tom, understood and shared his sorrow. He felt sorrow despite the anger he had towards the Freemans, and Mrs. Freeman in particular.
But Tom’s bitterness from the encounter, and the separation from his parents, quickly turned into anger and upset. He was angry that no one from the unit came to visit him.
It was his second day in the ward and he didn’t understand where all his buddies were.
Shai had actually come by the hospital on the second day, but Dan didn’t mention it to Tom.
The medical team knew that this kind of meeting would surely bring up questions on Tom’s end. He’d want to know what had happened, who had been injured, who had been killed.
Dan and the doctors were afraid that the news would be too hard to bare in his fragile state. They told Shai, and then Eitan, who also came for a visit, to wait a little longer.
Dan promised them that he’d tell them the moment Tom was ready.
On the second afternoon, Tom was impatient and angry, “Dan! I'm not a baby and I'm not stupid! I know they want to come, and that you’re keeping them away, and I know why! I understand you’re worried and it’s reasonable to think that what I'll hear from them will hit me hard. But if you think you’re doing me a favor by keeping them away, then you’re wrong! I'm upset and I need it. I need closure! Don’t isolate me!” demanded Tom.