The Dog Jumps - הכלב קופץ

I am sure you are not shocked at this statement!

It has been about 2 weeks and Bono is missing. I hope he either has a nice new owner or his demise was humane. It is just really sad to sustain such hit to lose a beloved pet.

I have all this space suddenly! My closet is empty, my dresser is empty, my house is really empty. I have been avoiding putting things into the empty space. No real reason, I just don’t want to look at it right now.

But I placed a sweater into the dresser and just started to cry. In like 5 seconds. Amazing.

So here I am at two weeks out from the mess. I am sitting at a friends house in Manhattan after a long week at work and looking through photos. I was told my facebook photos were scary and out of date. So out cones the laptop where I have some 9000 photos of my life ranging back to the mid 90’s. It started to become really hard as we looked through photos of Idan and me over the last 4 years.

What changed? Where did it go wrong? Who was he then vs. who is he now? What the fuck happened? What happened between this kiss (at left) and this distance and unhappiness on his face in the other photo?

And Jesus it sucks about Bono.

It sucks that he is trying to put this all behind him while I am trying to figure out where my life went.

When I think about how deeply I love him I start to get angry.

But it isn’t like I didn’t know this would happen, I met him when he was 21 and I was 31. I knew he had a lot of growing and changing to do. Even at my age I know that we are still evolving, let alone 21.

I recall my 20’s. Boy do I!

I had assumed we had a bond that would allow up to weather any storm. The things he said to me over the last 4 here were reason enough. I have cards, notes, emails, and memories that attest.

So while he might be working to put his past behind himself. I, again, am missing a guy who I love, who I would forgive anything.

If only I were asked.

Today has been hard so far. It is strange how certain things just set you off. I was taking care of breaking apart the family plan that used to comprise me, Idan, Katie and my mother.

Part of this was to disconnect Idan’s old phone. I had always imagined this moment so differently. I had imagined one of two things; he would decide to move back to Israel and I would need to turn it off or I would be moving with him and all the phones would need to be terminated.

I never imagined, sitting in my office, feeling like crap, triggered like this.

I am thinking back to how badly I missed him when he would be in Israel and how hard it was to be apart from him. This pain I feel right now is so much more intense, probably because I have to remind myself that he isn’t flying into Newark next week. More likely, we will not speak for a while to come.

The funny thing is that I don’t feel like I wasted 3.5 years on this, like I did some of my other relationships. I had a wonderful time with Idan; we did some cool things, were there for each other, and only in the end did it get bad. Maybe it was so good, when it was, that is why it hurts as bad as it does.

There is so much that can be said right now as I dissect the last few months, but here is the overall chain of events as I know them. There is a lot more detail but this is the big picture.

Idan Bitton had been planning on breaking up with me for some time, no matter the reason it is what it is.

He wanted to come on this vacation so we would have a nice ending to our relationship. I didnt know that. Nor did I know he had already met another man, some guy named Craig (his info on facebook). Keep in mind he was making plans for Monday night with this guy, our anniversary, and planning on canceling on me last minute. I discovered all this when I looked in his cell phone. Yeah something I shouldn’t have done, but I did it anyway. I own being a sneaky whatever on this one.

I also read a bunch of messages the two of them sent back and forth about my love being “cute, for a show” which shot hot daggers through me. When I read this and Idan’s reply, I got in the car and left him at the beach. Later, offering to give him a ride to any transportation center he needed me to take him to.

There is much more craziness around this event that is not important, like he broke my flip flops chasing me, I drove away with him banging on the car, etc… it was not pretty. I am not proud of this moment, but I was devastated at his duplicity. I felt like I had been stabbed with hot knives. I wanted to be dead at th moment.

Only the night before we had soaked in the hot tub and drank champagne and things seemed like they were working out.

Some how this turned from, “hey I want to live on my own”, to “I want to date this other guy”. Oh I forgot to mention that when I busted him in the lie, he told me the guy was some drag queen he met and even had a photo to show me. Instead of just telling me the truth. He tells me he was protecting me.

We parted ways at Avilia, I went to LA to see Adam and Lisa (my brother and his girlfriend) and he flew home early. I now need to work out getting him his stuff and getting my keys back and what to do about the dogs.

Dan is helping me sort of clean up the house as needed. I am going to place all the things that make me sad into a box and file them away for a while. I am not the kind of guy that destroys stuff like that.

What sucks so much about all this is that I gave Idan everything I had emotionally, just everything, I tried very hard to make this work and I love him very much. I really want him to be happy and find his way in life. I had hoped it would be together with me, but that is not going to happen.

I am not perfect and I own a lot of mistakes, I can be impatient, erratic, manic, and down right crazed at time. But one thing is I love him.

I never lied to him and I always gave it every bit I could to make it work - from helping him at Culinary, helping him pay for it, giving him rides back and forth, letting him live in my home, sharing my life with him, remaining faithful to him as he traveled to Israel and Central America and beyond. All of me was his.

As you can imagine it now hurts to have that disregarded so easily, but one of the things that age and some therapy help you sort out is what is yours and what is the other persons to own as well as perspective. I realized in the last few months that the nostalgic Idan that used to smile with a huge smile when he saw me had become trapped in something he didnt want anymore. I cannot recall that last time he smiled when with me. That hurts. It hurts he was already moving on. I am in a lot of pain right now.

I have no idea what will come next! I wish him all the best and love and everything he ever dreams of.

It is very interesting to me that when I think back to some of the very pointed conversations I had in therapy over the years there are a couple things that stand out. One of the most poignant is the one where I was forced into realizing that sometimes you need to do something that hurts really badly to achieve a better long term outcome.

It makes perfect sense, until you have to do it.

For years now I have been going and seeing movies that are part of Nefest, the NY GLBT Film Festival. Besides the obvious silly gay films from around the world, I am often struck by some of the documentaries. I tend to see about 12 movies, with a 50/50 breakdown of serious to fun.

Last night Idan and I saw Be Like Others, a film about Iranian boys undergoing sex change operations to become female. My understanding, from the film, is that homosexuality is forbidden, but transexuals need to be medically treated and in fact the state help pay for this treatment and care.

The movie is very well done, simply, is shows you many sides of the issue in Iran and lets you make up your own mind. That said, it does confront several issue head on; if you cannot be an openly gay male, what other choice do you have?

There are several different people profiled. Vida, is a transexual who is very happy with being a women now. She turns out to be a leader type, even mother figure, to other men seeking this operation. She is the only one in the film who is very obviously ok with what she has chosen.

Anoosh and her boyfriend are kind of a sad case. Before the operation the boyfriend as very loving and kind, later in the movie, post-operation the boyfriend is obviously unhappy and distant. Who can guess why this happened, but it because clear that he probably was in reality gay and is no longer attracted to Anoosh now that he is a female.

There are also several people who, as time progresses, choose not to have the operation. You are welcomed into their fears, how they are treated by strangers and family, as well as the strict Iranian society.

The other point of view you are shown is of a transaexual who post-op has no choice but to arrange temprary Islamic marraiges. This is a form of legal prostitution.

Overall the movie leaves you with a sense of sadness for these Iranian boys and you wonder how they would be if they lived in NYC where being gay isn’t a cause for surgery and moreover, what the exact nature of sexual identity and sexual orientation are. It is indeed very complicated.

Chief Rabbi Sacks does it again! Right out of the park:

True virtue never needs to advertise itself. That is why today’s aggressive marketing of personality is so sad. It speaks of loneliness, the profound, endemic loneliness of a world without relationships of fidelity and trust. It testifies ultimately to a loss of faith - a loss of that knowledge, so precious to previous generations, that beyond the visible surfaces of this world is a Presence who knows us, loves us, and takes notice of our deeds. What else, secure in that knowledge, could we need?

I guess there is a reason this man is so lauded!

When your armed forces are seen more as an illegitimate arm of a neo-fascists regime it is hard to celebrate.

But we Americans find a way. To quote my local Israeli, “You celebrate your war heros by running huge sales on cars and crap you don’t need, then go on vacation, BBQ something and sit in the car for 6 hours?”

Yup, we are The Americans.

One can only remotely ponder what it would be like if we, The Americans, were faced with continual existential crisis and have compulsory military service. Perhaps we would have a few less deadbeats and be a little more gun-shy.

The funny part is, I don’t know if we have ever faced such an insidious threat as we are up against now: ourselves.

I subscribe to Nutrition Action Healtletter a great source of information related to various commercial foods, including my favorite section: Food Porn, this edition takes on Kozy Shack.

This edition has a great set of recommendations for chemicals to avoid in your diet, entitled Chemical Cuisine. Take a look at the pdf, which include a handy pocket chart to take to the store with you. The one that troubled me is Quinine, rated at caution/certain people should avoid. Wow, maybe Gin and Soda is a better option?

Some things to avoid: Propyl Gallate, Potassium Bromate, Sodium Nitrate/Nitrite.

Personally, when I read the ingredients of my food, I think to myself “does this need to be there?” Can I get bread with only grain, water, sugar, yeast, salt? Yes, but it is very hard to find. Yesterday at Shop-Rite it was astonishing that the healthy food seem to be disappearing from the market. I was only there because A&P has already gone that way. Is the rising cost of fuel and food making healthy food too costly?

Last weekend, Idan and I went to the Brooklyn Museum to see the © MURAKAMI exhibit. It included many rooms of his works along with an ultra tacky LV shop smack in the middle. It was the ultimate in tasteless consumerism of art that you could buy on of the over priced, often knocked off, boring bags while trying to absorb the art. It was down right jarring.

Some of his work was a bit repetitive and boring - how many times do you need to see the same DOB in 50 different colors? But there were some very neat items. I have a couple favorites, which include the mushroom group entitles, supernova, and I believe a work called Tan Tan Bo - I have to confirm both of these when I have a moment to crack open the catalogue.

Supernova is a multi-paneled work with many different animation-like mushrooms. On display was well were two study sketches that give you an insight into the process of creating this gigantic mural.

Tan Tan Bo Puking is about the same size, perhaps a little narrower. It too contains many small detailed elements that make looking at it for hours fascinating. It might be hard to see, but center right, on the edge of the sphere is a small blob monster about to eat some of the puke. It was my favorite little detail.

Google Murakami and tons of links come up, so I wont pretend to know lots more about him. I enjoyed the art and would recommend seeing his works anytime you can.