A true story about winners

For an entire year after being discharged from the Israeli army I did nothing but smoke pot and write horrible screenplays, and a rambly disjointed piece of prose I believed in my haze to be a novel. To give my life some semblance of structure I joined a screenwriting workshop that was offered at the time to graduates of the Screenwriting School of Tel Aviv, where I had been allowed to study during my last year of military service as a treat for being such an excellent soldier. The workshop consisted of eight women in their thirties and forties, one aging Israeli actor-director in his late fifties who had never achieved any fame, and myself at twenty one.

In the middle of the heat of August of 2002 we met on the rooftop of one of the women’s seaside apartment, Ricky Shulman, to mark the end of the workshop. Meirav brought incredible food that she had cooked for everybody, with white wine and homemade sorbet for desert. I loved them all that night, all eight of the women and the aging man as well. Noga Brayness had her hair up and was gorgeous. Aya Shva was glowing in her eighth month of pregnancy. Ilana Grushka was sexy in my eyes and even touched my hand despite the glaring warning etched in my eyes. Ricky was crude and insolent as always. We laughed and I laughed too, though I was perched as always on the periphery of it all.

The aging actor had just returned from a shoot where he played a bit part that had apparently left him in extremely high spirits. He clinked his wine glass and volunteered himself to make a speech. “I enjoyed every moment with you all,” he said. “I learned a lot from you, and I can say that in my eyes the one thing everybody here has in common is that you are all winners. You are all winners.”

It was all very convincing in the unbearable humidity of the August night, and we all remained reverentially quiet until one woman said “Wow, such silence all of a sudden.” Small chuckles broke out, and Ricky said “Yeah, we’re all asking ourselves, ‘Me too? Am I a winner too?’”. The aging actor just smiled and insisted that we were all going to make it.

As far as I know, none of us have made it yet. I haven’t heard a thing about any of them, and I can only assume they haven’t heard a thing about me. I hadn’t even remembered that night until I came across it in Hebrew in my old handwriting. At the bottom of the page I had written “I regretted everything I hadn’t said.”