The Masada Faktor (18 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

T
he white, heart shaped balloon came bouncing toward me carried by the slight hot breeze. It said
I love you
in bright red ink. I burst into tears. Then the balloon exploded with a boom. It probably was due to the steaming, broken sidewalk but I took it as a sign: I needed to be shocked back into reality. It did stop my tears and I noticed that I was on the corner of Binyamin Nahalot and Kalisher, near The Brown Boutique Hotel in Tel Aviv.

With no hesitation I decided to check into The Brown where, no matter what happened now, I could feel peaceful and cozy, or in a worst case scenario die happy. I would try to get a flight out of Ben Gurion Airport. Meanwhile, I would lay low.

With Hamas intermittently firing rockets in the airport’s vicinity and some airlines already suspending their flights in and out of Tel Aviv, I wasn’t sure what could happen if I couldn’t get out. I was truly sick and tired of all the ‘what if’ scenarios but I would be okay while I was at The Brown.

As I walked into the lobby the stereo was playing
Going to San Francisco,
the 1967 hit by Scott McKenzie and I took it as a sign to leave Israel as soon as possible. I was able to get a room on the first floor and was assured by the desk clerk that we could easily reach the temporary bomb shelter in the parking garage if a code red alert started to wail. My free glass of Cava, which wasn’t cold that day, was swallowed in two gulps. I couldn’t wait to get to the room, turn on the air conditioning and relax.

As soon as I flipped the air conditioning switch and stripped naked the vertigo hit, immediately knocking me to the floor. As I laid there breathing deeply there was a strong rap on the door.

I hollered “Come in,” before I remembered that I was naked. I had no time to grab something to cover myself before the unlocked door was pushed opened and a dark, muscular guy a few inches shorter than me said, “I am Kobi. I have brought your luggage for you.”

In a split second the handsome fortyish Israeli was in the room and threw my bags down. With his left hand he unzipped his pants and pulled out his beautiful pink member and I jumped up and couldn’t help but throw myself into his arms.

He smelled like cardamom, cinnamon, lavender, cumin, and cigarettes but I didn’t care. I jumped up onto his prick anyway which, by then, was rock hard. Amply wet and slippery by my own juices, I had no problem fitting his massive cock inside of me. Kobi’s lips reminded me of juicy sweet cherries and his kisses were soft and sensual. He had a melodic, low tone to his voice and murmured sweet sounds to me.

Still standing, we began to move rhythmically to the music of our panting which was getting louder and I think I began to wail because he put his hand on my mouth but not in a violent way.

“
Beseder,”
I nodded, “
Besede
r.” Whatever he was saying to me didn’t matter and I started to suck his tongue which put both of us in a frenzy.

We were still standing and I was taller, so I was able to keep his cock inside of me by squeezing my thighs and my pussy and balancing my body on his shaft until I was sure that we were both finished. It was like riding a human horse without a saddle. Then he let go of me and I fell backward onto the bed. I closed my eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I
awoke to the deafening roar of passenger jets flying extremely low. The flight patterns had been changed because the Syrian civil war was spilling over into the Golan Heights in the north east where civilian planes normally flew.

There was no sign of Kobi and I didn’t know when he had left. Looking around the room, I didn’t see my luggage that he had brought in. Panic seized me and I grabbed the hotel desk phone to call the clerk.

“Where is my luggage that Kobi brought to my room?” I urgently asked.

“Kobi?” The clerk sounded surprised. “There is no Kobi working at The Brown Hotel. Your luggage is back in the storage room. Would you like me to send it up?”

“No, I will come down for it.” I needed to do some deep breathing. After a while, it was all clear to me. My heart skipped a few beats or possibly even stopped as I recalled my wild sexual experiences from the last six months in Israel.

I saw each face in my mind as a slide show: Monique, Saul, the Filipino, Eli, Jami, and Kobi. They were all figments of my imagination. Each time after the vertigo hit, I dozed off and then had wild sex. After it was over I then fell asleep and upon wakening, discovered that my partner had vanished.

They were visions, hallucinations, dreams, or something where I was in control of my actions but did not realize I was dreaming, like in a black out. Since I did not know it wasn’t real I cannot classify them as lucid dreams.

If I couldn’t decipher between reality and fantasy was I insane? At the very least, I was relieved to find that I had not been horribly promiscuous while in the Holy Land but woeful that the experiences had not been real.

I didn’t believe that Saul had come to Israel. He wasn’t at Masada. He was in Key Largo, Florida. What was it, a mirage that we had sex on Masada?

Saul was my enemy, yet I hadn’t regretted our sexual experience because it felt as if it connected me with the Masada Zealots in a very human way. Other Jews there, a long ago time had sex on that mountain, too. Except I hadn’t.

On the positive side, might the vertigo be my secret power to enter a rabbit hole of fabulous sexual satisfaction without the commitment of problematic relationships? Could I control the episodes to my enjoyment? So far they had been great.

No tests had been conclusive so far that there was any medical etiology to explain the vertigo. So that would remain a mystery until I could find a doctor who believed me, that the vertigo caused the sexual illusions. Or were they delusions?

Millie was still out there. I hoped I would never see her again but would not place any bets on that. At the same time, I knew that I was powerless to stop the ramifications of whatever plans had been hatched by the Nazis at the end of World War II.

The hatred toward my people cannot be changed. I wish I could call it an aberration, not the norm. I could only bear witness to it. I wanted to run. To get out of Israel, but only for the time being. I knew that Israel was my home now. But I needed to go away for a while.

The Masada Faktor may not have been the specific conspiracy that was to bring Israel down. But were there really any coincidences? As Mother used to ask, “Does fate really exist?”

You can add up all of the scenarios to kill the Jews and what do you get? Too many other likely suspects with similar plans.

Is Israel doomed to be destroyed by its many enemies? Or, will she persevere despite the age-old existential threats against us? We can intellectualize why so many disparage us when we exalt in our endeavors. We have made the desert bloom, built a democracy that accepts all people’s rights, contributed innovations to the world as we are surrounded by enemies. Israel became the greatest power in the Middle East. We are done being the dog that gets kicked.

Never Again
is what we live by, yet it happens again and again. It is especially painful when fellow Jews collaborate with the enemy, become the enemy. We ask God why, without getting an answer. The perfidy by some of our brothers and sisters makes us sad; as hard as I have tried, I cannot understand what makes them so. Has God put them there to make us stronger? Are we still not strong enough?

We have only one choice, and that is to continue to exist. Each one of us does what we can, to ensure that it is so. And I will keep trying.

Three days later, on September 1 at 11:30 PM, I boarded a US Airways flight at Ben Gurion Airport and flew off over the Mediterranean Sea on a direct flight to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States of America.