My facebook status a while ago proclaimed that I was going to have a busy Sukkot, but I really had no idea just how busy it was going to be. I had no idea how queer it was going to be.
Sukkot started off with Shabbat at Ahuva's, which was pleasant but fairly unremarkable. Sunday was also fairly unremarkable; I started my internship at JOH, but all I did was meet with my boss, Dalit, and do some brainstorming. The excitement really started on Monday, and it really hasn't stopped since.
I've been told that there's very little gay stuff in Jerusalem. There's Jerusalem Open House, of course, and a few gay-friendly cafes, but there's pretty much no nightlife--with one exception. On Mondays, Hakatze has a gay night complete with drag queens. Since we are both on Sukkot break right now, Ahuva and I decided to check it out. I forgot to ask the people at JOH what time things start there, so we went by the website: the show starts at 22:30. Yeah, right. Well, we got there at 10:30, or rather a bit before because Ahuva wanted to make sure we got good seats. The place was empty. We waited a while, and the place was still empty. We knew we were in the right place--our entrance receipts said Hatatze--but there was just no one there. Finally I went up to ask the bartender what was going on. Yes, it was drag night. No, she doesn't know what time the show is gonna start. "It's drag queens," she said. "You never know with drag queens." Apparently, all the Israelis knew this already. They started trickling in around 11:15; the show didn't actually start until 12:30.
It was worth the wait, especially since this is the first time I've seen drag outside of Pride events. I took some videos of the performance, but they're currently not working. It's very sad, especially because I can't really describe it in words. It was mostly in Hebrew, but a lot of the songs were in English and the drag queen MC would periodically joke with the audience in English. There was also a drag king there, but I wasn't so impressed with him. Overall, though, it was good. They took a big break in the middle, during which Ahuva and I attempted to swing dance to music that very obviously not created for that purpose. We are also both very out of practice, so it was more funny than anything else. And a nice change from standing on a chair for forty-five minutes, of course.
We left at 2:30 and went back to Ahuva's apartment, where I promptly collapsed. (I'd expected this and arranged to stay with her overnight--the buses don't run that late.) I was up again around 7:00 because of the sun and noise from the construction, read a bit, and then fell back asleep. Next thing I knew it was 14:52 and I'd missed a call from Jessica about our JOH event.
That night was our second JOH event, a showing of The Bubble. We (Ahuva, Alexis, and I) arrived at JOH at 19:30, at which point I spent an hour trying to locate various pieces of technology and convince the movie to play. It mostly failed since Yotem told me to play the movie from my computer, which Dell apparently didn't fix. We finally got it going with a JOH DVD player--which we really should have tried in the first place.
That is one powerful movie. I mean, I knew it was. We watched it at Brandeis, but I still wasn't prepared for the ending. I don't think anyone was. We had some pretty intense discussion afterwards about it, which was nice. Then, as I was cleaning up (around 22:30), Ahuva asked those people who remained to relocate to her apartment and eat birthday cake--because she'd been eating cake nonstop since Friday and still hadn't finished it. So we (Ahuva, Alexis, Devorah, Lynley, and I) bought a carton of ice cream and went back to Ahuva's. And... never left. We were just talking, telling funny stories, and it was fun. We completely lost track of time. Alexis left around 4, but by that point Lynley, Devorah and I figured that we might as well wait another two hours and take the bus back to campus. So... we did. Just stayed there talking from 23:00 to 6:00. And then it was all over. I went back to campus, went to bed, and got right back up again for the Gateways festival.
(To be continued)
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