Saturday at the movies

A friend and I meet monthly on Saturdays to go see movies at the Smadar Theater in Jerusalem. Brokeback Mountain was playing - she wasn't crazy about seeing this movie, but I really wanted to see this and nothing else piqued my interest so we ended up seeing it today. We both really enjoyed this flick and pondered about it for hours afterwards at the Scottish Coffee shop.

"Could you imagine how many people must go through what these guys in the film went through?" I said to my friend, thinking of all the gay Moslems and Orthodox Jews who have to hide their secret from their communities and families.

Then we went through our dating history thinking about those boyfriends who could have been gay. Like the Irish/Italian dude I dated in the early 1980s who abhored homosexuals. I was working in the music industry and one of my colleagues was Elton John's former boyfriend. He had an assortment of very colorful friends. It pained me to see this boyfriend being such an asshole around my gay friends. So it got me wondering if he wasn't just suppressing his "feelings" by being so homophobic.

Then my friend told me she thought her ex-husband could have been gay. He had a magnetic attraction with men and when she wrote in her diary stuff about him that she detested, which he read like - "you're a shmuck, an asshole, an idiiot, you look like Frankenstein, you're a goy...etc." nothing bugged him except the "you're a goy" bit, because he thought she wrote "you're a gay." And he flipped out over that one - totally.

We laughed so hard over that story that the walls of the old Scottish Coffee Shop shook and thought - oh shit - these nice and quiet European hotel guests staying there had probably never witnessed American/Canadian Jewish females letting loose. I thought for sure, they're gonna come over and throw us out.

Then Tamer called. Poor Tamer. I had to tell him I'm putting all peace activities on hold until after the wedding. I simply have no time. I just have time for chaos and peace will have to wait. He seemed not to have heard me. He blabbered on.

"Can we meet on Sunday? Next Saturday I'm bringing all my friends to your house. Do you think you or your husband can get me a work permit? Do you think you can find me a wife? I think the person you tried to set me up with had many lovers...yada yada yada"

My head was spinning and I politely told him I had to go. To go and get him some ritalin.

And I knew I should not have eaten that Scottish Scone. How will I ever fit into nice mother of the bride clothing in 3 month's time?