vr

a novel

Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

June 1999

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

From: Murder
Date: 1 June 1999
Subject: The agony of Defeat

"How's Dan?" "Oh, we broke up." The matter-of-fact tone of her voice instantly radiated sweet thrill and regret through my body, from the top down, like the first gulp of that cheap Southern Comfort whiskey Nichelle and I drank together that one time. "Oh." Silence. The intoxication was instantaneous. "So, uh, what happened?" Sophia is the only woman I would probably have sex with behind Erin's back, as it were, if given the opportunity. We took long afternoon jogs, walked on the beach, and danced and partied the nights away last summer at Domaine Forget in Quebec. I traveled ninety minutes each way on the train with a bottle of syrup to have breakfast at her upper-west-side Manhattan apartment. After an evening of Mahler and French fries, I slept in her bed with her since I had missed the last train to New Brunswick. I even attended her Carnegie Hall debut recital. She's single, Erin's in Oregon, and temptation abounds. I distract myself by reading Kafka and a translation of Alain Finkielkraut's The Defeat of the Mind. A truly inspiring performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis last night at the Philharmonic reminded me why I still want to be a professional musician. Tomorrow, tennis, teaching, trepidation.

Murder

From: SAGReiss
Date: 1 June 1999
Subject: Meltdown

The 'puter is in a coma. I'll have to take it to Jerusalem for CPR. I'll be off- and online, more off than on. I'm learning to read and watch TV and bide my time, no money to go to the bar. I'm reading Faulkner and Proust, watching news and sports. I hate this shit.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 1 June 1999
Subject: So spake the Goddess who was

Some days it seems to help to wear my lucky underware, even when there's but a dirty bath tub and an overflowing drain and no towels 'cause I've sent mine to the laundry so I dried my head with a clean wife beater. The grocery store stocks bottles of Berger anisette which I remember from the Midi though mostly unknown in the North of France, so I won't have to bear your vodka envy any longer. My life is writ on burning hard drives, paper copies locked in forgotten cellers, lost forever, words gone up in smoke. I get on a roll, get lucky for a few days or weeks or months or years, then vanish and begin anew in a new land speaking a new tongue whose alphabet I haven't even been able to learn yet. I begin Hebrew lessons tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. The heat and dust are unbearable. I'm suffering badly from lack-of-alcohol poisoning. I really need to find work, but I don't think I can muster the moral strength necessary to go to Berlitz and beg for a job. My mind feels strong and lithe and clear, ready to attack this ancient language with all the fury and rage and wrath of which I am capable in the intermezzi of my sloth and deadening apathy. I'm hoping to learn enough in two months to land a busboy's job at the Crown Plaza or adjacent conference center near the casbah in East Jerusalem. Five pages on the Odyssee is an odd topic, to indulge my scorn of the university no more than that. I would choose a short passage, between five and fifteen verses, preferably from the Sirens' chapter, since half of you, Nichelle, Murder, Joy and Lauren, so far as I know, are musicians, and I am not. It might be interesting to see how the poet represents in words beauty of another order, as Proust does his Sonate.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 2 June 1999
Subject: Josephine

"Do we need a cat?" "My dog has flees. My wife has flees. Do you know a cat that we might need?" "No. Just checking." I blamed it on his wife, and she's blaming it on me, but we've got a cat, a tiny six-month-old kitten called Josephine. She was living under a phone box in front of the house. I gave her some dog food. We became friends. I took her to the veterinarian. He said she's OK, worms and signs of a recent eye infection, nothing to worry about. He didn't say anything about flees. She is very hostile towards Ding. When she saw him for the first time she hissed and spat and shat on my white shirt. I've got her a litter box, but she doesn't seem too interested for the moment. The dog seems aloof, but he's known to hate cats he doesn't know, Marmelade notwithstanding. Josephine is far too young and small for unsupervised contact yet. They'll have to get used to one another.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 2 June 1999
Subject: Color

Oops. I forgot. She's gray and white with big blue eyes.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 3 June 1999
Subject: Fore and Aft

Murder, you dog. You make puns and crack jokes while pulling high-school tricks: "I'm sorry. I missed the bus. I guess I'll have to sleep here." I suppose she doesn't have a couch? "It always gets hard after dark. Please don't take offense." I notice you don't mention what instrument she plays when she's not playing yours. Are you embarrassed? What could be worse than the oboe? The tuba? The triangle? Bongo drums? Cow bell? I need to know these things.

From: Solaris
Date: 3 June 1999
Subject: Re: Meltdown

Actually...don't both the Mosque and the Synagogue offer free lessons in their respective languages? Why don't you try for some lessons? That would give you something interesting to do, and I know you could pick up on it very quickly. Most everything in Jerusalem is in walking distance of anything else... I'm sure you could find something to do that's exceptionally cheap (maybe even easy).

-Cyanne

From: SAGReiss
Date: 3 June 1999
Subject: More heat than light

Some mornings my mind feels white hot. I can recognize about half of the alphabet in script. I can say: "I say that she is learning Hebrew in school in Bet Shemesh." That's pretty good for a beginning, almost as good as looking at Oxana's tits. She's a Russian girl in my Hebrew class. (Lauren, Hebrew lessons are free from the government for everyone. I attend classes Sunday through Thursday morning eight to twelve within walking distance of home.) There's nothing more exciting than learning a new language, except maybe getting a new piece of ass. Once I get the 'puter back, I'll comb the internet for resources. I haven't even got a book. I still haven't figured out how to write silly Hebrew things in my e-mail. It would be a lot easier if it were Spanish. Then I could say: "Let the fuckers figure it out or use babblefish." That doesn't seem like a constructive attitude transliterating shit from Hebrew. What I think we're learning is the present tense, possibly indicative, but it's declined rather than conjugated. (In other words it's m/f s/pl rather than 1st/2nd/3rd person s/pl, as Columbine knows. (I've missed a couple of your columns for the first time. I'll catch up later and criticize them, so you won't feel unloved.) Maybe what they're calling the binyan is not really a verb but some kind of participle.

From: SAGReiss
Date: 4 June 1999
Subject: My first pun

> > As soon as I learn to say it, I'll walk around and ask women on the street:
> > "Wanna shag?" Maybe I'll get lucky with one of the Russian girls at school.
>
>it's "rotza le'hizdayen". but if you go around asking women on the
>street they might arrest you, and then you'll have to move
>elsewhere. z.y.n. is a good root word to learn:
>lezayen - to fuck
>zona - whore, zonot - whores
>lehizdayen - to fuck (passive, perhaps a better translation is to get
>fucked)
>zayin - penis (or the 7th letter of the aleph-bet)
>mezuyan - fucked up
>go ask you ulpan teacher what those words mean. i bet it would be funny.

Morphemics are obviously the most interesting bit in Hebrew. I guess that's why Chomsky wrote his master's thesis on it. There are seven principal parts of the verb, as compared to eight (if memory serves) in ancient Greek, four in Latin, three in French, English and German. I don't think that all seven are in common usage. They are based on a three-letter root, mostly consonants, excepting a few vowels that Hebrew-speakers don't seem to recognize as such. The differences seem to be semantic at least as much as grammatical, indicative, reflexive, intensive, intensive-passive, causative, causative-passive, reflexive-passive. Most of the shit seems to be governed by infixes, with a lot of silly assimilation to deal with. There's a dot (dagesh) they put in the middle (usually) of a consonant which they claim makes a "soft" sound "hard". Actually it just moves the point of articulation slightly back in the mouth, except for the s/sh distinction which turns a sibilant into a fricative (I think). Anyway, as if any of you cared about this shit, scaredycat was teaching me slang, so I wrote back a letter entitled: "ZYN, as in Zionism".

From: Solaris
Date: 5 June 1999
Subject: Re: My first pun

Heh, thanks for the information there Scott. :) I probably /will/ use it. As far as the principle parts for Greek...I think it depends on which text you study out of... I studied 5 (with various offshoots, like the pluperfect, optative, future optative, etc.) which were the present indicative, future indicative, aorist, perfect and aorist passive....there's WAY too many forms though, especially when you get to imperfect optatives and duals, Oh yeah, and subjunctives... God, now you're boggling my brain. I had a final in Greek yesterday....that was IT! Damnit, now I"m thinking about it again....:P

-Cyanne

From: SAGReiss
Date: 5 June 1999
Subject: Dagesh

Actually I got that backwards with this stupid fucking Netscape 2.0 and Hotmail. There's no margin when I type, so I get one huge line of text and can't read what I've written. I'm going to get the 'puter today. I think it will be fine. I just hope the monitor doesn't burn up next. The dagesh (little diacritical dot) seems to move the point of articulation forward as:

v (voiceless labio-dental fricative) becomes b (voiced bilabial stop)
kh (voiceless ulvular fricative) becomes k (voiceless palatal stop)
f (voiceless labio-dental fricative) becomes p (voiceless bilabial stop)

The s (voiceless dental sibilant)/sh (voiceless dental fricative) distinction is perhaps not a dagesh. They both have dots, to the left or right. Who cares?

From: Nichelle
Date: 5 June 1999
Subject: Re: Dagesh

>Who cares?

Are you asking for a show of hands?

From: SAGReiss
Date: 8 June 1999
Subject: Struggling

Well, friends, this is my new e-mail account. Please update your address book. I'll have my own phone line on Thursday. I can't write too much. I'm feeling a little sad and alone and helpless. I need a fucking job. I just hope I can get one without needing too much Hebrew. Progress is slow.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: SAGReiss
Date: 8 June 1999
Subject: Address

Something weird is going on. My e-mail address should be as follows:
sagreiss@mail
I can't figure out why it says "main" on that last letter. Something must be misconfigured. I'll let you know.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: SAGReiss
Date: 10 June 1999
Subject: Phone lines

Nichelle and I spoke briefly this morning. Israel is ten hours later than PDT (or seven hours later than EDT) so I'm not exactly using prime MOOtime. It remains to be seen how outrageously expensive it is to abuse the internet without unlimited local calling. I'm a little nervous about it, but I won't know until I get a bill. As I was just telling Joy, there are two alphabets in Hebrew. Actually there are a few more, but those look more like different fonts from other time/places. The main ones are print in books and script which people write. I'm learning the script in class and in the workbook, but the textbook, dictionary and verb conjugation book are in print, which is so far an unyielding struggle. One thing to remember is that this is a very old language, far older even than ancient Greek. Here's an example. The names of the letters are also either homonyms or polysemes of words. In English, for example, "I" is a letter and the first person singular pronoun. Among the Hebrew consonants we find such once important but no longer very useful words as: ox, tent, camel, snake, cattle goad and fish hook. I think punning must run rampant here. My favorite word, ZYN, as well as meaning penis, the letter z and the number seven, also means weapon and the abreviation of the masculine gender. It looks as if there isn't so much pressure on me to get a job immediately and without knowing the language as I had thought. Apparently the government will give me some kind of stipend for at least six months, and possibly re-imburse my airfare, though I'll believe that when I see it. Commuting to a hotel job in Jerusalem would be difficult at best, impossible when I attend school every day for four hours. I think I'll concentrate on getting my papers in order and applying for benefits, at least for a few months so I can learn to talk and write a little. scaredycat is not much help. I'm still trying to figure her out. She used to be very MOOparanoid, but has lightened up in the last couple of years. On the other hand, her first reaction when I told her I might be moving to Jerusalem was somewhere between discomfort and outright fear. When I told her I was leaving the next day, she wrote: "Good-bye. Good luck." I've managed to calm her down a little. Obviously there has been no talk of meeting. At school they are all Russians, well some are from Belaruss, Ukrania or Armenia. There is one brother whose wife is Korean. I have no idea how he managed to convince them he's Jewish, but he is an expert money gatherer, which is an important skill in a Socialist country. As soon as I get my paperwork done, he'll help me exploit the subsidies and such. He's from Chicago. He translates everything into English, which is basically useless. That's why he's been here for a year and a half and is still enrolled in the beginner's Hebrew class. He knows the alphabets pretty well, though. The bartender at the only pub in Bet Shemesh is a restaurant pro. He worked the Hotels in Tel Aviv and has now opened his own place. He seems to think I can get by on little Hebrew in a big hotel or conference centre. That might be true in banquets, which is the best place for a hard-bitten misanthrope to work. The truth is I'm just confused. Oh, well. I guess this is more fun than waiting tables at the Tennis Club in Seattle. I'd rather look at a classroom full of Russian girls than a dining room full of Americans. I just have to concentrate on learning Hebrew, and the rest will take care of itself.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: SAGReiss
Date: 12 June 1999
Subject: Old pass-times

The not-unlimited local calling is playing with my mind, forcing me to change my internet usage. scaredycat is sending my a list of rates, as the Bezeq (Israeli telephone) site is only in Hebrew. It seems that on Saturday I can pretty much MOO with impunity. Some things are easy, getting in the habit of writing e-mail offline, then connecting to send it. Ultimately the solution is finding a decent job so I won't have as much time nor as many money woes. In the meantime I've rediscovered two old pleasures, reading and watching television. (I don't have money to go to the bar.) I find that I can concentrate and read. The local library has books in English and in French, so I can amuse myself that way. I read a play by Jean Giraudoux yesterday. Today I'm reading the novel Therese Raquin d'Emile Zola. Last night I watched a French film. I really enjoyed it. A bald-spotted man moves back to Paris after an eight-year absence. He renews contact with an ex-gf and her circle of friends, husband, sister, sister's two bfs, all of whom seem to meet up and get involved with one another by coincidence. There is kind of a story line or plot, a few of them, rather complexly interwoven, but there is no beginning, middle and end. One sees, soap-opera-style, bits of one story, here a middle, there a beginning, nothing is ever resolved. What makes the movie extraordinary is that every five or ten minutes one or two of the characters erupt in song, crudely lip-synching while these horrible French pop songs play, from Serge Gainsbourg to Johnny Halliday. The words are sort of vaguely appropriate to the situation, as with an aria in an opera or a duet in a musical comedy. I can actually watch television. This is new to me. News is always interesting, sports, often, and movies sometimes. Between reading and TV, I can amuse myself while cutting down on the 'net. I want to find work anyway. I've been cooped up at home for five months now. It's high time I got out. If I can't wait tables, maybe I can work in the bakery.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: SAGReiss
Date: 18 June 1999
Subject: Ofira

"Are you a religious man?" It's an odd question for a cocktail waitress to ask, but she had asked me yesterday how old I was, and she was still to ask whether I was married. Perhaps these questions do not seem odd in Israel, or maybe they just seem odd to me. (Religion seems to be more serious here. In the States people brandish their faith the way they proclaim allegiance to a baseball club: "God has forgiven me for raping and killing my daughter. Let's go Mets.") Without asking, I can guess her age. She told me she had just been "released" from the army. She also told me she was religious, and not married. "What do you do to be Jewish?" "I gave the Ministry a letter saying that my mother is Jewish." "Did your mother give you a [...]?" She said something in Hebrew, but I thought I knew what she meant. I feigned ignorance. She said: "I can't explain it." Too bad. I wanted to hear her define circumcision. I made a gesture with my index and middle fingers, imitating a scissors, and clipped the end of my nose. She understood that I understood. Anyway, I answered: "If I were religious, I'd have a big beard." Not so, said she: "I am a religious woman, but I don't have a..." "You don't have a beard?" I guess she was refering to something else. She explained to me that only married men must grow a beard, and only married women must cover their head. And one mustn't light a fire on the Sabbath day. Since people smoke everywhere here, I guess the rule doesn't cover cigarettes. Of course everyone seems to bend and break the rules at will, with limited justification, even the boys in the black gabardine suits in thirty-five degree weather. It has probably always been so. The best line of the recent election campaign went to the jailed leader of one of the Saphardic religious parties: "My opponents fornicate with unclean women." You might think that he was refering to ladies other than legitimate wives, but this is not so. He was refering to menstruating women who had not taken the special bath prescribed by religious law. Or maybe religious law proscribes fucking menstruating women altogether. I'm not really sure. It's been a while since I've had the opportunity, so it doesn't seem too relevant to me right now.

RECTVM VINVM
Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

From: Lauren
Date: 18 June 1999
Subject: Re: Ofira

A friend of mine from Israel once told me that women had to be housed in a separate place from the entire household while menstruating. She also said that sex was forbidden until 7 days after the woman had finished menstruating. Yeah, that is pretty weird to me, but my own religion has quirks like that as well...

-Cyanne

From: Hillary
Subject: unlovely
Date: 26 June 1999

(apologies if my references are outdated...i began this letter weeks ago)

Ah, the joys of cohabitation.

[Here I interrupt my typically self-involved narrative to say something extraordinarily self-involved. Murder, for God's sake break up with your girlfriend before you fuck someone else. I went to Oregon over the winter holidays and my New Yorker boyfriend fucked a woman in his poker group, so your anecdote struck a little close to home. There's just no point in pretending to be committed if you aren't.]

Ah, the joys of cohabitation. I drip with jealousy at any woman who has breasts, a job, a car, a dog, or calls herself an artist. One would think that because he asked me to move in with him, I'd be more secure in his feelings for me. One would be wrong. But I love him hard. You can take that any way you like. I have a hangover. Some poor misinformed college student once told me that you can't get a hangover from vodka because it doesn't have tannins. Wrong. (It was Absolut, Lauren, and horribly expensive. You would approve, though I did drink it with lemonade, which you might find shockingly weak.)

Speaking of vodka, I went to a great wedding last weekend. His sister. Very traditional and very Jewish. I'd met the rabbi before. He remembered me. I wonder if he thinks I'm Jewish, since we keep meeting at Jewish weddings. My nose is large enough to superficially pass as a Jew. I don't mean that all Jews have big noses, I just mean that I'm not some pert-nosed WASPy looking person.

I'm never sure whether or not SAGR & I are on the same planet. Intellectualizing an experience is one thing, but desconstructing every moment takes even more moments which must be deconstructed and suddenly one's life becomes meta-this and meta-that and really isn't it much nicer to just sit in the sun and watch the leafshadows move to reveal decades of pigeonshit caked between the cobblestones? The poesy is killing me.

Actually, I'm very angry right now. I set out to spend a perfectly reasonable couple of hours writing in the park. I'm there for maybe twenty minutes when I become aware of a presence two benches down. (please fake a gravelly puerto rican accent while reading the part of Tejano, and a bland, girlish monotone while reading the part of 'me'.)

Tejano: I see you are writing a letter.

(five minutes pass)

Tejano: Are you writing a novel?

(I shake my head. Tejano considers this enough encouragement to move one bench closer. I can smell him.)

Tejano: My name is Tejano.

(several minutes pass.)

Tejano: Are you doing something special tonight?

(I nod. Please note that I have completely avoided eye contact.)

Tejano: What about tomorrow? Are you busy tomorrow?

(I nod.)

Tejano: What are you doing tomorrow?

Me: I'm going to church.

(this is a lie.)

Tejano: Oh, can I come to church with you? I like to go to church. I go to church every Sunday.

Me: No.

Tejano: Why not? What church do you go to?

Me: I'm not going to church. That was a lie.

Tejano: I don't have to go to church. I like to go to church but I am a saint. I am blessed; I don't have to go to church as long as I keep my body and spirit clean, you know?

(I do not know, and his body is not clean. I hope that if I ignore him long enough he will go away.)

Tejano: I am looking for a wife to take back with me to Puerto Rico. Do you think you might be interested in something like that?

Me: No.

Tejano: May I please know why not?

Me: I like New York.

Tejano: Oh.

(Loud sirens pass. Tejano begins speaking. I can't understand what he is saying but the few words I catch sound very vulgar, so I pick up my bag and leave. Enough with the parenthetical statements.)

So where does this greasy guy get off ruining my evening, especially when I clearly did not want to speak with him? He ran me out of the park, so I walked around the village until I was sweaty and calm. Maybe I'm being irrational, but it seemed utterly uncalled for.

apoplexy becomes her:
hillary

May 1999

July 1999

vr: 1999