noahzark

Growing up where and how I did, kissing on the cheek as a way to say hello or goodbye was neither common nor acceptable. This was one of the smaller things that I had to get used to while moving out to Israel.

I was never really too social of a person but since my arrival here I have tried my damndest to get out and meet new people... shake things up a bit, get a little crazy. Aaaanyways, I went out to a party one night in Haifa on the edge of a cliff on the side of a mountain. A little camping style party with a bonfire, everyone was sitting around drinking beers and speaking Hebrew, joking around and all that other social crap that people apparently do. I however do not drink beer and at the time spoke very little conversational Hebrew. My drink of choice is and always has been whiskey. So on the rare occasion that I do go out I always buy myself a little bottle of whiskey instead of bringing a six pack to the party. Surprisingly though people are for more apt to accept a beer that you tear off the plastic rings than a shot from a bottle you pull from your pocket, so I usually end up drinking the majority of the bottle to myself. Anyone who has ever drank with me knows that I enjoy drinking my drink and then laying down. Usually I don't even care where we are, camping, town square, someone's house, even the occasional restaurant... I enjoy laying down when I drink. So I am at this party having fun even though I don't really know exactly what is going on. Good weather, nice people, a few good looking girls, a camp fire and some of the freshest mountain air in the entire country. I find myself half a pint of whiskey in when I get the hankering to lay my ass down in the dirt. I am not shy about getting my clothes dirty especially when I have had a fair amount of the creature. So I move away from the group, find a spot with relatively few rocks and lay flat on my back, ipod in my ears, cigarette in one hand, bottle of whiskey in the other. I am sitting there enjoying the air, the sky, my music, my buzz and my smoke for several minutes, when I thought that I heard someone asking about the guy on the floor (between the music and my nearly mediocre understanding of Hebrew I wasn't too sure what I had heard). "Fuck it" I say to myself and I slip back into my relaxing state of ground laying. I actually got comfortable enough to close my eyes for a few minutes. When I opened them moments later there were four or five people standing above me asking me if I was okay. Apparently they thought it was pretty serious because everyone was speaking English at this point. I held my fist out, and popped my thumb in the upwards direction which in my mind meant "I am totally excellent thank you for asking". Apparently though, other people can perceive this sign as, "this guy is too fucking drunk to even speak". In reality I was not quite drunk yet. I had a good buzz and just didn't feel like talking. This was the actual moment where I became known as "the guy who drinks too much and then lays down". This misconception stuck with me for several months. I am the guy who lays down when he drinks but damn it, it is not because I drank too much, it is because I am a huge fan of being comfortable and laying down is the rich man's sitting. I laid there enjoying my own company occasionally imbibing my Johnathan Reddington (as I like to call it) for what I recall now, to be several hours until my friend came and asked me if I was ready to leave. I got up, dusted my ass off and turned off my ipod to begin the goodbyes. Handshakes and "Take it easies" for the dudes and hugs and kisses on the cheek for the gals. Everyone else executed these maneuvers flawlessly... I however was not so proficient in the art of cheek kissing at this point in time. The first girl came up and I just gave her a hug, I didn't even attempt to go in the for the potentially awkward cheek to lip action that could have ensued. Just a hug... and I didn't fuck that up. The second girl comes in for the hug/kiss and for a split second, I have a moment of clarity. Everything seems to fit together and I understand fully that it is me who is the odd man out here, and I am the one who is making this out to be way more than it is, and I am the one who is over analyzing all of this minutia until it snowballs into an an uncontrollable panic attack. It all made sense. Between the moment I could not muster the confidence to kiss girl number one to the moment I was within kissing distance of girl number two I had that revelation. All it took was that little fraction of a second of insight to shatter all the misconceptions that I had built up since my arrival that were causing me such horrid anxiety. I was READY. I leaned in, tilted my head to the left, gave her just the right amount of squeeze in the hug and then I bite her neck.

I bit her fucking neck.


Now when I tell this story to most people they assume that the big blunder in the end is that we both turned the wrong way and we kissed on the lips.... oh how taboo. No I bit her neck. No blood, very little residual spit but the fact of the matter is that I missed pretty badly, socially and physically by I would say about seven centimeters. Where the hell did that bite come from? I have done a lot of "wacky" or, "quirky" things in my life but I honestly cannot piece together the series of events that had to take place in my body in order for me to have pulled that out of left field. I was not embarrassed at all though. Normally I would have been but I had that magic ratio of sleep deprivation and Red Label to keep me from feeling as much as I normally did. Instead..... I laughed. I laughed pretty damn hard too, and no one knew why. It seemed that even girl number two didn't know why I was laughing.
We all piled into the car and in between spurts of laughter I tried explaining that I bit some random girl I had never met and would more than likely never see again. I imagined the conversation she was having with her friends as we pulled away. I wondered if she even cared. She probably did. Bites are not always bad but more often than not, they are.
It took me a few months to get back into the cheek kissing game. I have overcome many little obstacles like this to get to where I am today, but I think that in 2012 I will be able to compete with the best of them.

I still do not do it all the time but now it is because I just feel like I am showing off and not because of being a nervous wreck.





I don't have a good way to end this.