The first book I ever wrote wasn’t called Senseless. It was called Harry and the Fairy. I came across it about a year ago as I scoured my parents’ attic for proof of a high school sweetheart that is still, sadly, pending.

The book was well-received in my close-knit literary circle (mom said ‘nice job’), the public (teacher gave me a gold star, and one to my sister Amanda, age 10, for illustration) and critics (I was invited to the Young Writers of America festival at the Bucks County Library). Everyone was, I think.  

But how can you miss with such a plot line? A troublesome young boy named Harry goes into his closet and finds a fairyland (Yes, a fairyland. Yes, in his closet). Once there, he meets some helpful fairies who have a hell of a chat with him and show him that being a bad kid is no way to go through life. Harry comes out of the closet a changed boy.

Um, what?

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I was throwing rocks into an empty paint can in the middle of a dried out field. The sun was baking everything, including me and my pile of rocks, which were becoming hotter by the second and therefore more difficult to curve. Mark was huddling under the seventeen inches of shade being provided by the oddly shaped ferry building. In the window of the building there was a handwritten note in Arabic, which gave us indecipherable bad news from right to left. A drawn clock with the hands on the 3 was more succinct.

Right now, both the little and the big hands were on the 1 and we were baking in the sun waiting for ferry officials that we needed to see today and who would not return for at least two hours. There was no place to go in the meantime, so we hid under the brims of our hats and threw rocks. This was our low point and it had come as a result of bad decisions.

We had one rule in Egypt: No being outside in the afternoon hours.

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Gifts for the Anosmiac

Being without the ability to smell is sort of like being paralyzed from your pinky knuckles to the fingertips. People vaguely understand that you have a disability, but it isn’t really taken seriously despite the fact that it is a massive pain in your ass. And we’re definitely not getting a celebrity charity.

So, in order to make the life of an anosmiac close to you a little more comfortable, get him a non-scented gift. Some ideas below.

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The people standing in front of me are ugly. Not ugly as in slightly not-good-looking. Not ugly as in ‘I wouldn’t sleep with that person sober.’ Not ugly as in minor defects or growths.

 Their ugliness is spectacular. It’s as though they are either missing a chromosome, have crashed on Earth in a saucer-like craft or have some illness that devolves them to a physical state similar to our cement-browed Paleolithic ancestors. The man is drooling. Yes, drooling. Lady Macbeth seems incapable of not squinting, as though she is actively trying not to crap her pants or wincing in pain at the sight of herself in a mirror. As she never stops making this face, it’s clear that this look is a permanent feature of her face, along with her variety of chins, her topography of moles and the sixteen teeth that dwell in her mouth.

What is most amazing about this couple, aside from the fact that they don’t live in a zoo, is that they are standing over a baby carriage. These people have procreated. Together.

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Now, anyone who has seen how I dress daily knows that I am not only unwilling to make a decision before 9 a.m., I am incapable of doing so. Therefore, my morning tram ride racks me with an anxiety that leaves me unable to make important (gastronomical) decisions throughout the rest of the day. I’ll walk you through a daily Tram Game.

The Tram Game

The Tram Game starts at the tram stop, where you must decide between standing next to two homeless guys (literally covered in feces) eating rolls or the young couple procreating in the tram stand. You choose the homeless guys, since you have always liked the monkey house, and public arousal has gotten you nothing but grief, an orange jump suit and the name #2918302983.

It’s time to get on the tram and now you must decide if it’s OK to elbow old people in the throat. Here’s the thing, old people are far craftier than they appear; they have been alive for a long time. There are never any at the tram stop, but as the tram approaches they come out of nowhere to stand directly in front of you. So, you do one of two things. You elbow one (nobody’s judging you) or you find an alternative, non-geriatric route onto the tram.

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I am getting ready for my shower. Usually, this involves a misdirection regimen that I have been perfecting for two decades. I suck in the belly, tie the towel like a mundu, and focus on my good side in the mirror (if I look at my left eyebrow while squinting, I sort of look like Tom Cruise).

Like all other men who aren’t Ryan Gosling I am drawn to the changes in my body’s landscape. Freckles appear on my body like a constellation of fruit flies, and the rebel grays in my hair are starting to take over the Death Star. Hair is growing out of everything. My ears have a coat of fur on them and a fleece lining in them, there is a Bering Strait connecting my eyebrows. I am stunned by the hair follicular fertility of the top of my nose; I’m thinking of selling the skin to the guys at Baldies.com.

I am feeling very middle-aged.

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I was staring at my feet. Beyond them, two men were giggling at me and beyond them, the white ceiling marked its territory. I became aware of things. For example, all of the blood in my body had settled in my frontal lobe and my ears. The men were taking pictures of me. My head was wedged in the corner where the wall and floor met and the bed that had been standing on four legs when I went to sleep was now on two legs. I was at the bottom end of a seesaw.

It wasn’t clear if the bed had been G’s doing or if I had simply eaten too much linguine the night before. Removing two legs of a bed under a sleeping person in the middle of the night would be the sort of joke he’d not only love, but facilitate.

“Say Sssssspritzer!” G said.

J and I screamed, “Sssspritzer!” for probably the 400^th time in the previous twenty-four hours.

Click.

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We are trying to decipher the meat.

Everything else on the plate is of obvious origin: Eggs, bread, tomatoes. But the meat is like none we have seen before; it’s flat and holds the feel and consistency of a protractor. We are in Israel, thus eliminating the possibility of porcine origin.

It’s 7 a.m. and the café we’re sitting in rests in between Jerusalem’s Muslim and Jewish Quarters. We are enjoying the early morning hour, which is the clichéd calm before the clichéd storm. It’s still cool; the July heat will attack the city in a short while, covering the palms and the Arab rugs, the gunky awnings and thousands of people with an afghan of unbearable heat. We’ll escape the heat in the afternoon by burrowing into the covered markets in the Muslim Quarter and dealing with the stench and dankness in order to not melt. So now we sit in the relative cool and the last quiet moments the day will enjoy until evening.

And we decipher our meat.

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I was surrounded by gods.

We were in the front room of a shop whose walls were full of four-armed Vishnus and Shivas. Hundreds of Ganeshas stared at us with their elephant heads. They were in all sizes, huge ones standing on the cement floor and smaller ones perched on shelves along the clay walls. They were made of many different materials; there were cloth gods, sandalwood gods, cement gods, and marble gods. The overwhelming scent of sandalwood pervaded the room.

“You are friends of Sanjay?”

We nodded.

“Then I will give you a very good deal.”

I moved to a tall wooden Ganesha and pressed my hand against the wall behind his many arms. Whether from the 120 degree Udaipur heat, the sandalwood, or hearing the same sentence 12,032 times in twenty days, I was getting light-headed.

“Once in a lifetime deal,” he sang.

I sat down on the floor. “Oh Ganesha, pull me through.”

“Ganesha is the remover of obstacles,” he said. “He can help you.”

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