A true story about Alaska

On the morning of my twenty third birthday I copied down the number of a hooker from the back pages of the free “LA weekly” magazine onto a small, torn piece of paper I then stuffed into my pants pocket. I called her in the late afternoon from my parked car. I’d like nothing more than to assure myself beyond a shadow of a doubt that I did so without ever intending to go through with it, but I can’t put such a claim in writing. Water was pouring onto the windshield of the used gold Saturn I'd been driving around the streets of Los Angeles. It was my first birthday away from Israel. It had never rained on my birthday before.

During the first few weeks at my new job I’d foolishly believed that I could tackle California without a car of my own. On one of those frustratingly helpless nights, my only American friend Michael had driven me back to my grandmother’s house in his red truck. After idle but enjoyable conversation about the characters in our office, the industry and, as always, luck, I asked him “How dangerous is it to order a hooker?” He laughed, perhaps because of my clumsy wording. Not yet completely comfortable with English, I was still speaking translated Hebrew.
“It’s not dangerous.” He said. “I guess the only danger is STDs.”
“Yeah, but I’m not talking about the danger of fucking her, I mean the danger of having her over. If she’ll show up with some violent pimp or bodyguard, if she’ll rob me.”
“Yeah, but if you have a hooker over you’re going to fuck her.” He said plainly. “You wouldn’t order a pizza and then just sit around with it. You’re going to fuck her.”
The word ‘fuck’ was violent and wet in our mouths.

I could almost laugh, thinking back to my eyes glazing over the sex ads and picking out one that looked like an obituary and soullessly promised a “nice Jewish girl”. She had an ashtray voice over the phone and managed to speak in lethargic impatience. I knew in an instant that I wasn’t seeking sex, only sadness. I felt obligated to inquire about prices, didn’t even bother to listen and then quickly said “I’m sorry, I can’t afford you.”, which, for some reason, sounded like a bitter, layered joke to my ears. She hung up. I was close to tears in the car, sunken in my shameful state.

I proceeded to sluggishly shrug it off, and declared in a phone conversation to Israel that I’d decided to store away all the pain for at least a few years. Even though I was straining to pack as much petulant hurt into my resolute words as possible, my friend Tal answered cheerily from across the ocean: “That’s great, man. I like your attitude. If in a few years nothing’s changed you can move to Alaska.”