jessejames21's Journal

1:09am: I love shopping in Haredi areas. Especially Bazaar Strauss (clothing-and-child-accessory-store, for those of you who don't live in J-lem). It's very much a women's zone, and very aggressive, with small details that are mildly disturbing. The children with tiny Tehilim books in hand. The creepy way that the underwear salesladies are always Ethiopian. However, the prices are generally so cheap that you can come out with a trunkful of stuff while having paid very little. And I loove buying clothing intended for the religious.

Dos design is a wonderful thing. The higher class it is, the more tackylicious it will be. Giant gold-thread appliques. So many sequins, you're sure that a dozen Thai children went blind hand-sewing the damn thing. Not to be all postmodern or anything, but Haredi clothing is more of a symbolizer than it is actual, practical outerwear. Symbolizer of gender, social class, event. None of it's very well made, some of it's coming apart in the store. The same line of dress in a different cloth could mean Bar Mitzvah, everyday, funeral. Modesty dictates that the dresses be pretty shapeless, making them look more like shells, or membranes. Membranes with glitter and outrageous pricetags.

It's not a coincidence that dragistim like to shop in Haredi stores. Cheap, extremely gendered clothing. And for the kings, more boys-wear than you can shake a stick at. A white button-down shirt is just a white button-down shirt, of course. But there is something slightly subversive about using a shirt you know was meant for some good little boy's Bar Mitzvah as a tool of lesbian desire. :)

9:14pm: Somebody just crapped in our hallway. As in, just outside our door. I am now the proud bearer of the prize for Worst Apartment Building, Ever.

Let me be clear: I am amused by this. I can afford to be amused, simply because I'm not the cleaning lady for this building. Jeez, poor lady. The problem is that the Va'ad can't really do anything about it: there's a mess, they make sure it gets cleaned up, but it's street people doing it. Like the perpetually broken elevator: when it's broken, they make sure it gets fixed. It just keeps on breaking, because it's at least a couple of decades old. Hhhh...and the day was going so nicely, too..

5:31pm: Because angry rants are so out-of character for me!

( Leftist pigua-related material after the jump )

8:01pm: One more short little note:
The asshats yelling 'Shaaab-has.....Shaaaaaaab-has' outside my window are damned lucky they're on the other side of the street. I just had almost a full carton of eggs go bad on me, and the mood I'm in, well...

I don't hand out condoms in their neighborhood, they should leave me the hell alone in mine.

7:17pm: There's an interesting discussion going on in the drag community forum now about the parade, and the responses toward it in the media, and what our response as a community should be. It splits us pretty well between liberal and radical: those of us who believe that the purpose of the parade is to prove that we're just like everyone else, and that the way to go about achieving civil equality is by using the system, and those of us who see the parade as a way of demonstrating power, and celebrating difference, and who see the system as inherently oppressive and would rather subvert it.

My personal opinion is that the Open House didn't know what it was getting itself into when it agreed to host WorldPride. The responses of Knesset members and our own municipality are getting more and more virulent, and it's forcing us to reconsider our place as gays in society in ways that we may not be ready to. I realized recently that I don't actually know what my rights as a gay person and as a woman are in this country, where we stand compared to other Western countries (are we a Western country?). Are we really so badly off? Would it make more sense to ignore the bigoted politicians from the right, who aren't really saying anything unexpected? Aren't we able to do just about anything we want, and isn't that what counts? Or maybe this kind of thought is justification for inaction, based on my own fear?

I love radical politics, but I'm suspicious of radicals. I was talking to Orel about it, and he was furious at the kind of opinions being spewed on the news websites. He was right, of course, but as usual for the recently radicalized there was little involved in the forming of his opinions other than raw emotion. He didn't even know what Stonewall was. We are without historical context..we're creating our own context. I don't know if this is revolutionary, or just stupid. I don't know how much of it I agree with, or where my place in it is (after all, I can easily pass as straight if I want to). Not that that'll stop me from spraying graffitti with him and Gur next week. :)

11:02pm: I really am trying
Reminder to self:

1. It's OK to say no to people when they ask you to do things that you don't really want  to do. You are not a bad person, no one will inflict physical violence on you- in fact, they will respect you and not treat you like a doormat.

2. Ditto for doing things for yourself, no legitimization required. It doesn't make you a narcissist, it just means that you will have seen a movie or gotten a nice outfit that wasn't a hand-me-down. Having fun does not weaken character.

4. Gur is not into you. Enough. Move along. There are other people with even (hard as it may be to believe) cuter asses, who may even reciprocate affection. Also, hard as it is to admit it, the exes current is right. Having crushes on people with whom there is no chance of having anything, ever, is a great way to avoid a real relationship. It could be that this is a time without teh sex. If so, fine. But save yourself the aggravation and stop being so mad about the boi.

Right? Right?

11:50pm: A few thoughts.
Yom Haatzmaut is not my favorite holiday, to put it lightly. I tried to avoid the craziness, but I did have to make a run through the center of town on my way to the Shushan. I was already paranoid, what with the caffeine, and the lack of sleep, and the caffeine. Making my way through the mobs of sweaty party-goers didn't help. Strange, but I feel less safe in a crowd than going home at three AM in my super-sketchy neighborhood. The groups of people seem on the verge of going completely out of control..everything seems exaggerated and grotesque.  Milling, random, potentionally violent crowds bring out the reactionary in me--the belief in the inherent goodness of man, critical in radical leftist thought, is very hard to sustain when you're being beaten over the head with a blue and white blow-up hammer.

What the anarchists don't get is the fact that when they say that they want The People to have control of the state, what they're asking for is actually this: Yom Haatzmaut. All year round. Except without cops. Ye gods.

11:27pm: Loooooooooonly, I'm so looooooooooooonly, I have noboooooody...
Gur is going to sleep, Orel is out with other people, I can't reach Ma'ayan and I don't really want to hook up with Sarah.

I wish I were in Holon. With Udi. And that we were eating ice cream until we're nauseous and watching hour upon hour of downloaded television.

That is all.

Ok, and a tiny little rant

8:53pm: <a href="http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2006/03/put_on_your_big.html" target="_

So, along with WorldPride, this will be taking place this summer. As far as I can see, it's being organized entirely by a couple dozen Tel-Avivim over coffee at Salon Mazal.  As a good little queerophile I went to a couple of meetings (the ones that were in Jerusalem), and I have to say, I was unimpressed.

The twitchy bi-boys, remnants of Rocky Horror makeup still clinging to their faces, complaining about the lack of acceptance in the community towards polyamory. Girls with their sexual histories like visible scars over their faces, talking about the need for a vegan-friendly kitchen at the campout in Sodom. I am a firm believer in politics as having everything to do with personal needs- where it gets dangerous is when people aren't self-aware enough to even know what they want. Sometimes it seems that the more politically radical you are, the less you have to consider yourself as part of the political equation.

Come on, people. Don't we have better things to get concerned about? Violence towards the GLBT community, violence towards women, adoption rights, secular marriage, AIDS awareness...just off the top of my head. Is life here really so fabulous that we can afford to put our energy into organizing bdsm sex parties for awareness raising about the need to end the occupation?

You know what? More than anything, they looked like they were reading off some inner text in their head. Like they knew they were supposed to believe in words like 'queer' or even 'sex-positive feminist', but weren't quite sure what they meant. Or that if they layered enough beliefs one on top of the other (queerveganpolyambiecoexpialidocious!), eventually they would hit on something that sounded right. And I'm past the point where I can just throw myself into a belief stucture without examining carefully what it means, and whether or not I truly fit in.

9:40pm: My crazy roommates, part the jillionth
She didn't have the abortion. I can't believe it. I was sure...how does she think she's going to raise the thing? With her boyfriend? The one who threatened to kill her, then himself, if she were to leave him? 'He's not serious when he says those things', she says. Wonderful. And what about paying for the kid? And the rest of her studies? And where is she planning on living?

All I can say is, the lease on this place runs out in five months. And you can bet your sweet bippy that I'm outa here.

How do you convince someone that they need to have an abortion?

3:48pm: Random Pissedness

( Cutty Cut Cut )

8:49pm:

I'm doing drawing studies while waiting for Carmel, who said he'd be in Jerusalem at seven. The cheapest model is always yourself, so while the blood flows back into my foot, I thought I'd quickly post some random thoughts.

Saturday we had a very easygoing kind of day at work. We're working on the face now, and at 14 times it's natural size we have literally more than a ton of clay on the table. It's very slow going, but very interesting. Consider the amount of energy needed to move that much clay, and the fact that the tiniest deformations in calculations of proportions are all magnified 14 times. The thing was, we were too many people- more than Eitan and two assistants and people are all in each others way all the time, and we were five assistants. So we did shifts of three assistants at a time, with Eitan sitting in the back and chatting with the people who were'nt working. And, you know, it was the best time I've had so far at work. We discussed past projects, possible future collaborations, always treating us like we were fellow working artists. It made me want to create, more than this entire past semester at Bez.

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When I'm Silvana, I am simultaneously an object of desire and a () of that desire. Meaning: there are certain behaviors that are culturally defined as both desirable and feminine. A drag queen is obvious overkill- where a fine layer of silky material would suffice, Silvana would wear twenty layers of tulle. Where a delicate shade of pink would work, Silvana would use a shade that David Bowie would be ashamed to leave the house in. But even with all the over-dramatization, there's still the expectation of sexuality. Or I should say, especially. There's a reason for all the 'Kiara-in-the-bathroom-with-half-the-Sushan' jokes. 

Yesterday I performed at a women's night, where Silvana's actions, looks, whatever took on a butch/femme context. Or, as I put it to Sarah, I can count on there being enough people in the audience with enough testosterone to get what it is I'm doing. At regular Gevald night, I always feel like there are 14 guys more femme than I could ever dream of being, watching, going, 'That makeup. Is not on right'.

But. All rationalizations aside. When I'm Silvana, the fact of the matter is that nobody comes near. Not to talk. Not to flirt. Nothing. I'm used to not connecting to people in a party context through either not being noticeable at all (I sideline myself), or well, through being too bald. Which I guess is threatening (..?..). But this, it's like putting a giant red neon sign on your head to get people's attention, and then have everybody ignore you out of politeness.

I really goddamn hope that it's because Silvana's too threatening, and not because the level of my performance is embarrassing.

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Carmel is now an hour and three-quarters late. mavet. I'm going to have to call Elisheva tomorrow and tell hir that I don't have anything for Thursday, and that I need ze's help. Which I seriously don't want to do.  Le sigh indeed.

9:07pm: Hi again.

My apartment is sparkly! Many many hours cleaning revealed more junk than I thought, and our unpaid (!) electric bill. I hope I have until tomorrow to pay..how long until they cut you off, I wonder?

I've stopped taking the prescription meds my Mom has been pushing me to take on a daily basis. i did a little reading up, and while there isn't any addictive quality to the drug itself, the body gets used to the effects very quickly (within a few weeks), and you need higher and higher dosages to get the same effects. Cutting off the medication suddenly can result in all kinds of yummy side effects that I'd rather avoid, thank you very much. Besides which it's fairly common sense not to take prescription meds when not under the supervision of some kind of medical physician. With all due respect to my Mom, she hasn't exactly finished her pharmacology degree yet.

Strangely, performing on Thursday had a calming effect on me. It's four days since my last anxiety attack (which was a doozy), and I should be at a fairly high level of panic right now, if the past month or so is any indication. But I'm fairly steady. I hope it holds.

7:37pm: OK
( Hhhhh.... )

3:53pm: Uurrgh.
Amount of caffeine ingested in the past twenty-four hours:

cans of Red Bull (or cheap knock-off)- 7

cups of coffee- 14

chocolate or sugar (eaten by the spoonful)- infinite.

Gave in the freaking work today. Actually quite pleased. Will post when have slept, and am coherent. In the meantime, be amused with this.

4:12pm: Because my roommates don't get less amusing with time

The amount of pissed off I am with Ronit (third time I've had to clean the puddle out of the living room showering at friends houses like a homeless person freezing my ass off because she can't get her act together to call the plumber argh arhh foam at mouth)?

Nothing compared to Hila. I actually had to dissuade her from calling the lawyer and telling him that we didn't really need a plumber, and that Ronit was making it up, thus forcing her to pay for the repair herself. Nothing serious, just committing fraud. She was so mad that I heard a crash in the living room and felt it necessary to go and check that she wasn't breaking into Ronit's room to put unsavory things in her bed. We have, however, agreed to make all the toilet paper in the house 'disappear', if only for entertainments sake.

So help me god, if he doesn't come today I'm stuffing newspapers under the bitches door and turning on the hot water anyway. Let her swim to her bed for all I care.

9:24pm: Hmph.
My parents are going to Haifa this weekend, mainly to see my Grandmother, whom they haven't seen in ages. They are also going in order to meet my sisters boyfriend, who lives up North. My Dad has promised to bring his very best shotgun, and Mom has promised to bring naked baby photos and that tape they have of her giving birth. Michal says that they may go away to Sinai for the weekend.

Please don't get me wrong. I am enormously happy for Michal. This is the first relationship she's been in that's been stable and long-term. The guy she's with is intelligent, loving, sweet, down-to-earth...In short, everything I could possibly wish for her. They've been together for four-five months now.

But the fact of the matter is that if I wanted to bring home a partner for the folks to meet, they had better be biologically male, or I'm going to run into trouble. I recall when Tamir and I were still dating, and I wanted to bring her home. My folks said that they weren't ready for that yet, and I didn't press, because I didn't want Tamir to become something I used to apply pressure to my parents. Now, we've come a long way. But my bisexuality is far from OK conversational subject matter.

It pisses me off that they're willing to drive up North to meet Michal's boyfriend, but that I have to sanitize what I talk about. I hate that I have to consider how to present someone I'm dating, especially since with the kind of people I'm likely to date, presentation and labels are likely to be of utmost importance. I hate having to do all this tiptoeing! What is so shameful here? Michal says boyfriend, I say girlfriend, so what? It's really not that complicated!

5:43pm: Because my hallucinated life is far more interesting.
So I started to explain to my comic pimp the other day about how there was a screening of Rocky Horror in Jerusalem last week, and how I took my roommate along. She's very innocent- religious background, just got her first boyfriend, has kind of a deer-in-the-headlights, new-girl-in-the-big-city look about her. And I explain that it was for her own good, to get her to loosen up a bit. The initial shock will wear off, and she'll probably have a lot of fun, and-
At which point my comic pimp, being omniscient that way, cuts me off, saying, 'Wait, let me guess. She's cute, right?'

Yes, godammit, she is. She's got that fresh off the farm right wing straight girl look about her that is just so adorable- forbidden fruit, I guess. I like femmey women, the kind that take care of themselves thoughtlessly. I only got that I liked her after the screening- completely unconscious move on my part. Bit of a fluorescent, I am.

No. No. Stop it. This is ridiculous. She's your roommate, for crying out loud. Heterosexual. You swore off straight girls, remember. Concentrate on school work, or at least try to be attracted to women of your own sexual orientation.

7:53pm: Purimy Purim
To a drag performer, Purim is definitely amateur night. The smeary makeup-and-glitter. The cheap polyester costumes- firefighter/cop/cowboy/Haman for the boys, Queen Ester/bride/fairy/slut for the girls. And the horrible fake fur leg warmers. OK, yeah, I'm a costume snob. I also find amusement in frat-boyish types in used clothing stores trying on women's clothes, laughing too hard to cover up how much fun they're really having. Although I do love the carefree feeling in the streets- people randomly wearing feather boas, the girls feeling looser with their clothing, free license to eat candy. So shoot me.

However, I decided to take to the streets and photograph some of the Purim fun. I take pictures in a 'decisive moment' kind of way: I wait until the frame comes into balance, point and click. It's a very miss-and-hit way to go about it, although I have gotten much better in the past year. Comes of photographing drag queens who can't actually see the audience (great big spotlight in their faces), let alone the camera. They won't give you the shot. In Jerusalem these skills come in handy, because people tend to get fairly antagonistic when presented with a camera.

In Tel Aviv they don't mind you taking their picture, but then, they don't care about anything in Tel Aviv; they're too cool for that. Jerusalem, however, is a city with a 2000 year history of both tourism and civil unrest. It's understandable that people tend to look at someone holding a camera with more than a little suspicion. So you develop ways of dealing with dissatisfied customers- If someone says that you can't take their picture without permission*, say that you couldn't help it, they just looked so pretty in their costume. If they try to call you back, keep on walking. And if they cover their faces, hey, they can't see you taking their picture, therefore it's allowed. Or, alternatively, trail them until they walk into a tree.

As soon as I get them developed/scanned, I'll post them on Flickr. Would appreciate y'alls input.



*They're wrong. In open areas, a photographer can do whatever s/he damn well pleases. In closed spaces, it's a different story. Always know your rights before doing anything that could get you in trouble.

8:43am: Ok
( (Head shrinker, head shrinker I'm a success/ Three car garage/ Fancy address/ Head shrinker, head shrinker look through your books/ And tell me why I'm a mess) )

12:12pm: Mavet, mavet and a little more mavet.
I got a 60 in Israeli Art. Which is not bad, considering I only answered a question and a half* on the exam. The passing grade is 55, and the bad grade only pulls my average down to 85. Would y'all lose a significant amount of respect for me if I just let it be?








*OK, it's like this. It took me an hour and a half to answer the first damn quesiton, and I knew there was no way that I could finish writing the last three in time. So I walked out, planning to just do מועד ב'.

4:54pm: So
I get this phone call on Monday, right?

"Hello, my name is Yaakov. I don't remember where I got your number from, but do you still do nude modeling?"

(never before in my life)

"Yes, of course!" I answer brightly, because you don't pass up money when it falls directly into your lap. It was cool, four sixty-or-so-year-olds, a break for tea in the middle, an extra hundred shekel in my pocket. The problem was, of course, getting my period Monday night. I feel that it's a fairly major faux pox to bleed on other people's things.

Seriously, though, I think I may be going through a nekked period in my life. After this assistantship thing I'm hoping to model for Eitan (dude I'm currently assisting). Warmer weather is here, meaning fewer layers. And Silvana never liked to be really dressed. A pity that the nekkidness is unaccompanied by, say, sex, but you can't win them all, I guess.

12:50am: My apartment has heat.

Halleuiah.

(This drives out of my mind the annoyance at the Americans who asked me to clean at the same time that they had an installator (!) in the place. Almost. I kinda need it to...I don't know anymore. Be summer? I can't really ask for a semester break, it being the middle of one and all. And it's not that I'm so busy, just..discontent. I don't know.)

9:54pm: Yet another random tangent
"The sphere of authenticity of these sculptures is the consciousness of the fact that any present gaze at other cultures constitutes them by means of the researchers language, while he for his part requires objects of research other than his own in order to stretch his and his culture's discourse between himself and them."

If I'm understanding this text right, than what the author is trying to say is that objects created can only become authentic by virtue of the consciousness of the creator/artist. That is, it takes for granted the idea that there is no such thing as individual 'author/artist/constructor/genius/whatever- everything created is a reference of everything else. There is no 'authentic' anymore. The constructor has no way to make anything that isn't a movie prop, a fake. Or at the very least an act of aggressive apropriation with imperialist overtones (the more marginal you are culturally, goes the theory, the more chances you have of escaping this, but you never really can). So the only honest way to make something today is to create an object that references it's own referencebility- that is conscious of it's own innate otherness, and discusses that state.

Ack! If that's true, than why create anything? What's the point of making art if the only point left is to delve further and further into our own pupiks, corkscrewlike, into infinity?

I may be in the wrong business.

4:16pm: Random Tangent

Y'all would not beleive how chauvinist some of these queens are. Not because they're bad people or anything, it's just this inborn male privilege stuff that's so hard to debunk. The whole 'taking for granted that I am the center of the universe' attitude. And it's difficult to set aside how much of it is because they're Divas and how much of it is that underscored misogynism you sometimes get in gay men- 'we don't need women even for sex, so why pay attention to them at all!'

I see it when Coleesa just assumed that I would fold his stuff for him. I see it when Kiara insists on doing my makeup for me, even when I didn't ask for help. I'm perfectly capable of doing my own makeup. It feels the same way it did in the army, with the mechanics- even though I've done [whatever it is] before, and they've seen me doing it, I still need to be shown, because I don't know, because I'm a....girl. At which point the whole thing just becomes so ludicrous that you have to laugh.

It's not anything I take personally, or anything that's keeping me up nights or anything. Just saying, is all.