We met at a Shakshuka bar on our town’s main street. He was from a small city just north of us, the same place we went to for school supplies and shoes before our town had its own mall. Our town banned heavy industry, and the mall was in an area we called “the industrial zone” though all it had aside from the mall was a bakery, a clothing outlet, and two massive grocery stores.
Before that, there were the shops and restaurants on the main street that often changed within two years, and a tiny movie theatre on the other side of town.
Everyone knew the Shakshuka bar wouldn’t last. It took a classic, takes five minutes to make it at home dish and made it fancy and expensive. There’s nothing people around here hate more than feeling like they’re being ripped off.
Seriously, you open a can of tinned tomatoes, throw them in a frying pan, add some spices, a tiny bit of honey if the tomatoes are acidic, throw in some eggs, cook on low heat, and there you go. Microwave some pita to eat on the side. Take some hummus out of the fridge. The end.
This place added greens and kale and feta cheese and olives and shallots and mushrooms and all kind of abominable things, and yet my best friend loved it. She found it sophisticated and interesting, and she offered to pay for me, so here we were.
Hila was technically my third cousin. To her all food was conceptual. She liked, in her words “li’tom hakol,” to taste everything. I was the opposite. I could easily devour things whole, mindlessly and constantly. I had to remind myself to chew and force myself to stop.
I was all instinct; I liked to experience first and analyze after. She liked to be deliberate and measured. She took so much pride in self control I thought it was ridiculous, but I still loved her and even grudgingly admired her sometimes.
When we were kids it was always me who got into trouble. Hila had the best poker face even we were five. Her name meant halo and adults would see her blonde wavy hair and bright yellow dresses and believe anything she said. I felt guilty before we’d even done anything, and I never even tried to lie about it.
We were both artists. I played violin when we were younger, and she danced ballet and modern. When we were older, I played guitar, and sang and wrote songs, and she painted.
Neither of us liked anything trendy, so we went to the Shakshuka place as a joke but then she started to love it.
Her favourite dish was the Shakshuka Parmigiana, which was full of mozzarella, eggplant, and parmesan, along with the usual things. I once ordered what I thought was normal Shakshuka, but it was full of tiny chili peppers, and I accidentally ate two whole. After crying in the bathroom, not being sure if what I was seeing was chili peppers, tomatoes or blood, she made me promise we didn’t have to go back.
I was surprised when Omri wanted to go there on our first date. Hila had mentioned it once, so he assumed I loved it too.
We met two weeks before, at a house party. A few days later he showed up at Hila’s apartment, where we were lounging on the balcony. I figured either they were good friends, or he liked her. Guys always liked Hila, and it wasn’t just because she was pretty, it was because she didn’t give a shit about any of them. She’d ignore them completely, or fix them with a withering stare, her eyes frozen jade, her long, dark blonde eyelashes fluttering prettily as her lips said fuck off, and they’d compete for her attention. I was the opposite. I saw infinite possibilities in all of them, their talent, their humour, their potential sweetness and sensitivity. I could have fallen in love with any of them, on any day, so I tried to hold myself back.
It turned out, Omri was there for me. He offered to walk me home, and the next thing I knew he was kissing me, his teeth scraping my bottom lip. His parents were out of town the next weekend so he invited me over. I was on birth control, not because I was regularly sexually active but because my skin was a mess without it. I wasn’t scheduled to get my period that day, but I did, and the next thing I knew the sheets on his single bed were stained symmetrically like rose petals but he said he didn’t mind.
He was gentle until he took off his pants. He told me he’d had other superficial girlfriends who cared about things like size, which was crazy because he could do anything a bigger guy could do, and he was generous and eager to show me when my cycle was over.
I stared at him, his thick, dark eyebrows knitted into an upward arrow, his brown eyes darting all over the room. “Omri, I like you,” I find myself saying, even though I wasn’t sure how much or why.
He kept calling and texting after that.
My cousin told him I was a musician and that I sang and wrote songs, and then he wouldn’t leave me alone. He constantly begged to hear my music.
I demurred because nothing good ever comes of revealing yourself fully when you somehow know that you shouldn’t trust them.
He told me that he wrote his own songs and offered to show me his lyrics. We’ll do an even trade, one day, I told him, and then Hila sent him two of my songs.
One was a song that I’d written for a national contest. I’d won second place. She also sent him a song she said she could imagine on the radio. It was loud and heavy, and sounded amazing with a full band. I recorded them in an expensive studio in Tel Aviv. I worked for two months in a shoe store to pay for three days in the studio, including musicians and production. Still it was the most fun I’d ever had.
They songs were written in my living room, because it had the best acoustics. I had to find the times when no one else was home, when it was just me, my guitar and my voice filling up the space.
If you asked me what my dreams were, and I was feeling open right then, I might have said
I wanted to play to crowds. I had a vision of playing at festivals, seeing hundreds or even thousands of people dancing and swaying and singing back my words. My music made me feel connected to all of them, like a place where we all belonged.
I didn’t want to work in an ordinary job. I didn’t even want to go to college. I wanted to get paid to spend hours every day writing and creating.
I was always aware of my limitations. I had an emotive voice but not a five octave classically trained one.
I’d studied guitar for years but my piano skills were very basic. I wrote too many songs in minor keys. I didn’t know how to write about happy things. I preferred McCartney to Lennon. I never, ever felt cool.
Still, I wanted to be a musician more than anything.
I felt at home in the studio and on stage.
We went back to the Shakshuka Café that night. I ordered the Parmigiana again, because it contained no surprises. We got through all of dinner without him mentioning my songs. I didn’t think I cared that much about what he thought, but I found myself asking him in a little girl voice I didn’t recognize if he liked them.
He looked at me, anger clouding his features.
“At Rotza Lefarsem,” he said, you want to become famous. “I thought you cared about art, and music, but…”
He didn’t finish the sentence and I sat there quietly, pushing my food around, hoping he’d still pay for it.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said when we walked out of the restaurant. “When you look at Hila, and her paintings, it’s art for art’s sake.”
I wanted to scream. His assumption that I wasn’t a real artist, that I didn’t put thought and ideas and emotion into every word, that he didn’t know me or see me hurt the most.
I thought about all the songs that changed my life, the way my hands and knees shook when I got to meet my favourite musicians and singers. I dreamed that one day someone would feel like that about something I wrote and I’d know that I was here for a reason.
“You’re right,” I said to him slowly. “I do want people to hear my songs. I do want people to like them. I want people see me.”
I started to cry, and he reached an arm out but I pushed him away.
I cried all the way to Hila’s house, thinking how unfair it was that our friends who worked hard to develop apps or small businesses, or who went to university were considered ambitious, but if you worked hard in the arts, people thought you were naïve.
“It’ll be a good story to tell,” she said quietly, when I got there, my face pink and tear streaked, and she pulled me into a tight hug. “When you’re famous, and you’re doing interviews, and they ask you about your early days, you can talk about this guy who was stupid enough not to support you. And the interviewer will look at you and laugh and shake his head and say what a fucking idiot. I bet he regrets it now. And you’ll look at him, all generous and loving, like you always do, and you’ll say something like we just weren’t right for each other, and you won’t expect it to feel good. because it was so long ago, but you will feel better, just hearing that reaction.”
Later that night, I found myself sitting outside my apartment building so I wouldn’t wake up my family, plucking at my guitar strings, as angry lyrics poured out of me. I called it Mr Index Finger, and it had a chorus that went “accusing me/pointing it in my face/ treating my ambition like some kind of disgrace.” I imagined it playing on rock and even pop music stations, girls sharing stories with me backstage. I imagined myself feeling confident, maybe finding someone who would understand, and even support me in wanting to be myself. I imagined the interview Hila talked about. As I walked inside, I started to feel a little bit better.
