Brilliant Men and Funny Women

After what I saw, how I want to spend my life

My friend Scott Church is a photographer. He began as a forensic photographer in Operation Desert Storm. He did his duty as a member of the military, photographing grizzly scenes of those who died serving our country. When he came home, he made a vow that he would only photograph beautiful things from then on. He takes pictures of beautiful women, all sorts of women, and occasionally some men. In a world where the internet has created some truly disgusting pornography (fine with me if you like it but I can’t stand the stuff), Scott takes pictures of women that are sexy and capture the essence of woman as goddess, not object.

I met Scott through a mutual friend who was a reader of a blog I wrote many years ago. The story of how he came to make a living photographing beautiful women always inspired me. He saw truly terrible things, and lived. Having escaped with his life from a place of death, he decided to only affirm life, in the best way he knew how.

I’m not a photographer, though I do a decent flower close up. I’m a writer. My experience teaching in the public schools, which I did for a total of almost four years all told, was a lot like my Afghanistan. No dead bodies, but dying souls everywhere. Dying dreams, dying futures. I saw a generation of young black Americans walk headlong into their doom as they threw away the chance to get an education and embraced the behaviors that will land them in jail or dead.

I don’t want to think about that anymore. I have done what I can and that was not much. Now I want to think about and write about beautiful things. More than anything, I want to be funny again.

I was surprised at how quickly my funny side came back. Working with my writing teacher I strung together some one and two liners that got a very jaded I mean experienced critic laughing in minutes. Some were a bit off color, but I long ago left behind the world of leftist woke blank blank, waking up in a world where we can admit that sex exists and laugh about it. How I walked on eggshells in the liberal nonprofit world… egg shells that cracked more than once. At least none of my conservative friends take my Game of Thrones quotes literally. In liberal world, they were mistaken for both death threats and marriage proposals. Considering that I have never made a death threat or proposed marriage to anyone (though I’ve been on the receiving end of a few of both), you can pretty well assume that a GoT quote is just me being colorful.

Nuclear war is serious. War for our people’s survival is serious. Attacks on us worldwide are serious. But as my writing teacher put it, Jews deserve to laugh too. Other people can write incisive commentary about the political situation. I leave that to Mike Doran, Gadi Taub, Joshua Hoffman, and my many friends who know more and are better equipped to explain political issues that I am.

I am going to be funny. At least sometimes. As much as I can be. My beloved worldwide family knows that I take the tragedy very seriously. But I need to laugh these days and I bet you do too.

When I was trapped in the public schools, for the second time, I felt like my brain was dying. Faced with kids throwing themselves like seventh grade missiles at me, screaming so loud that the kids who wanted to learn could not ask their questions, and treating me with a level of disrespect that would shock you and probably make some of you throw up, I retreated into the limbic brain. Pure survival mode. I noticed that I had started to hunch up again, as though waiting to be hit, probably because I was waiting to be hit. The narrative side of my brain could barely eeek out a word, and only Friday night infusions of Israel Update could bring me back to life.

Fortunately I’m free of all that now, free to make a living on my writing and my research once again. For the first several days after I came out of the fog, all I did was talk to brilliant men and funny women. I happen to be friends with some of the most amazing men on the planet, probably a result of recognizing them and having interests in common. My female friends, while not numerous, are extremely funny, kind, loyal, and almost all Jewish women. My college roommate and I can make a joke out of anything. Even as “F off Zionist” signs went up all over the neighborhood, my female friends and I managed to find things to laugh about, including making fun of the Chickens for KFC themselves.

I’ve been working on some funny writing. Like Erica Jong, I write about my life, attempting to protect the innocent (and the guilty, who I don’t blame at all) while bringing the reader into the scenes. There are so many things that have happened to me about which I say, “That would be so much funnier if it had happened to someone else.” Maybe it happened to me so you can laugh about it. I hope so. That would be enough.

Do not attempt to adjust your dial. There is a place between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his desires. It’s funny. Stay tuned.