Written 9/21/1999
Hello, and a happy post-Yom-Kippur to all,
Well, I promised an explanation of the name. I call him Odie after the dog in "Garfield" because he likes to lick. His kisses are always very very wet, and he has this fondness for licking my face (for instance) with a big, wet tongue. The problem is - I HATE it. He smokes about two packs of Lucky Strikes a day and isn’t THAT big on brushing his teeth. But I have a problem just saying "Could you please stop licking me!". So I just wipe it off like a 3 year old that got kissed by his aunt. But he still doesn’t get it. He thinks it’s a game and wipes it off for me…
My friend Denise said I should take care of all the little things that bother me about him, and then I’ll be able to really love him. Like I did when we were just beginning to go out. But I think if I ask him to change too much, he’d just be frustrated and he won’t be him!
Anyway - we spent the weekend at his parent’s house in a little town near Jerusalem. They have a really nice house that used to sit right near the border with Jordan, but now the border has moved and their town has turned into a rich suburb of Jerusalem.
We’ve been to his parent’s house for the weekend a few times, but I still don’t feel comfortable there. His family is very different from mine. They’re pretty poor, all the men in the family (his father, uncle, brother and sadly - Odie himself) are unemployed and most of them never finished high school. But although they may be formally uneducated, they have a lot of knowledge about a lot of subjects, which makes me always feel dumb - I mean, I’m the supposedly privileged one who’s spent a few years in a good university, and I still know nothing about many of the things they talk about. I feel somehow like a weaker person - where would I have been if I hadn’t had the head start?
Odie’s mother (who I really like, by the way) is always talking about money - how much everything costs, and yelling at her kids for spending too much although they live off their own salaries (or welfare). I feel very out of place during these conversations. Dinners are the worst. I have to eat enough so the grandmother isn’t insulted, while still keeping with my diet and not looking like a pig in front of Odie’s anorexic brother, The Asparagus. Since Odie’s family is a lot more religious than mine, I feel like I’m always doing something wrong - like putting meat in the milk dishes or not saying "Amen" at the right moments. This weekend I finally got the nerve to tell a story, which had a lot do with clam chowder. How should I know clams aren’t kosher?
Odie’s brother and his uncle always make sarcastic remarks at people. Not at me, because I look so uncomfortable and frightened, but mostly at the little sister, who is only 14 but has already learned to answer back.
I think Odie’s big ambition in life is not to end up like his uncle - 40 years old, unemployed, not married, no children, nothing to live for basically. I think at the point the only thing he has different from that is me. That’s why he hangs on so hard. The Asparagus’ ambition is not to end up like Odie - 28, unemployed, fat, living in an apartment his girlfriend pays for, playing D&D all day and being super-nice to people so they don’t step on him. His main precautions against it is being anorexic and mean.
(Asparagus to 14-y-old sister: Look how much you’re eating, Pig
Sister: You’re the one that gained 10 pounds!
Asparagus: I’d rather be fattening then fat any day!)
See, he’s witty in addition to mean. That’s the worst
God, this turned out long and sad. I think I’ll finish it tomorrow….
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