Sleep Talkin' Man (4 page)

Adam, a joyful, creative little soul, had taken the “play” aspect of this philosophy and run with it, and had consequently become a darling of the school. Throughout his early educational career,
his parents received glowing (if vague) reports regarding his progress and talents. They were so pleased at how their younger son was excelling academically. At the age of six, Adam took the entrance tests for the new school to which his parents hoped to send him. Faced with this novel situation, Adam made his best guess, based on previous experience, as to what was expected of him. You can imagine the dismay of the test marker to receive an exam back that was covered in intricate, lovingly drawn doodles, but didn't offer an actual answer to one single question. Well, what would you expect from a child that had never taken a test in his life, and—by the way—couldn't remotely read or write? The letter the prospective new school sent to Adam's parents suggested that perhaps their son was retarded. Adam did get accepted to the school in the end, after being sent off for a full battery of tests with a psychologist to prove that he was not, in fact, mentally challenged. Here is his father's response to the acceptance letter, which I came across while going through Adam's old school records:

Dear Headmaster,

Thank you for your letter of the 2nd March with the good news that Adam has won a place at your school. I enclose herewith duly completed the acceptance form with the acceptance deposit. I trust you will excuse the teeth marks in the acceptance form. The family's general air of excitement transmitted itself to our dog, who managed to get to the post with the ensuing results.

Yours sincerely,

R. H. Lennard

One wonders if perhaps the headmaster thought the whole family was a bit special.

It
'
s the belly button button.
Press it and go to hell!

As Adam entered the double digits, the free-spiritedness that defined him in his younger years started to give way as the insecurities of adolescence crept in, and the little embarrassments and setbacks of secondary school did nothing to help. When it was time for Adam to begin secondary school, he joined his older brother Darren at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Boys, a posh private school with a strong focus on academics (play having been proven inadequate preparation for our non-play-centered world). It may not have been quite the right fit for sensitive, creative Adam, but he made an earnest effort to find his place.

One such endeavor was to join the music department. Adam had always been interested in percussion—in fact, he would later go on to become a downright decent drummer. But these
were very early days in Adam's music education, and his teacher thought it best to start him off on the forgiving triangle. This instrument propelled Adam into an elite society of the school: the Haberdashers' Aske's third orchestra.

(Note the “third.” That means there were two that were better. To get a sense of the level of talent—and enthusiasm—we're talking about here, go to YouTube and search for “Orchestra Fail.” Make sure your speakers are turned up really loud.)

Adam's parents remember with great relish Adam's first (and last) concert with the orchestra. Seeing him up there on that stage, surrounded by violinists, cellists, and flutists, the Lennards were bursting with pride. As the conductor tapped his wand on the stand, Adam raised his triangle with an air of gravity, preparing himself for his triumphant debut.

It just so happens that, in the piece being performed that evening, the triangle was to remain silent for the first 148 bars, only entering in the final climax. For 148 breath-holding bars, Adam's parents watched him, arm held high in the air in front of him, clutching his triangle
aloft—looking for all the world like one of the Hitler Youth—nodding his head dramatically to each beat as he carefully counted the bars. Finally his moment approached, and it was with an expression of triumphant ecstasy that Adam raised the striker, and struck that triangle with all the passion he could summon.

Unfortunately, Adam had forgotten that he needed to hold the strap on which the triangle is hung, rather than the triangle itself. So, when he finally struck his fair instrument, he produced nothing more than a dull, discordant clang. From his place on the stage, Adam saw the front section of the audience recoil in horror at the cruel assault on their unsuspecting ears.

Thus came to a close Adam's tenure with the Haberdashers' Aske's third orchestra.

As he got older, Adam, still looking to find his place, took a stab at mixing in with the “bad” kids. One day the school board members had come for a meeting, and Adam's friends decided it would be amusing to steal all of their Mercedes hood ornaments. When the theft was discovered, the headmaster rounded up all of the usual suspects,

Adam among them. The first kid emptied his bag—out clattered a Mercedes ornament.
Clinkety clank.
The next kid, same thing.
Clink clank clinkety clank.
One after another, all of the boys were forced to dump out their prized booty on the headmaster's desk. Finally, the headmaster faced Adam at the end of the line. Adam sheepishly upended his bag, and out clattered … a Ford ornament.
CLUNK.
He had been so worried about the damage he would cause to an expensive car, he had passed up all the shining Mercedes for an unassuming Fiesta. Thus ended Adam's stint among the hoodlums of Haberdashers', such as they were.

From all family and school reports, Adam was a delightful little boy: sweet, funny, harmlessly mischievous, creative, outgoing. But alongside those traits, he was also a sensitive, emotional child, and as he got into his formative years, that sensitivity transformed into a consistent struggle with low self-esteem. Recently, I got a chance to go through all of Adam's old school records. I expected to find lots of humorous comments from teachers proving just how much of a character
he was. Instead, what I found over and over, year after year, was some version of “Adam is a wonderful, bright boy with lots of potential. But he needs to work on his self-confidence.”

Now, many soul-searching, therapy-attending years later, Adam has a very healthy sense of self. He's secure in who he is and genuinely happy. But what does this all have to do with the sleep talking? Well, it turns out that many psychologists believe that, in the deepest layers of the mind, lots of the growing up and maturing that we all do doesn't penetrate. So, somewhere in his subconscious must live child Adam. And perhaps, when adult Adam is asleep, when his conscious mind lets down its barriers, the sensitive, insecure Adam of his youth is left exposed. But now, in a playground all his own, he has the opportunity to do it all over again, as a guy who has the balls to stand up to anyone, who says what he wants, swipes whatever metaphorical hood ornaments he wants, who knows that he's the best damn thing that ever walked the face of the earth. And you know what? If that helps my husband claim back some of the tougher
moments of his childhood, I'm all for it. Because in those wee hours of the night, when STM appears, that triangle rings out as clear as day.

There was so much blood!
Oh, there must have been at least five llamas. Totally unprovoked attack by those puffins. I managed to clip their wings. This is llama turf.

Not being able to do something could teach you a lot about yourself. Mmm-hmm.
Like what a fucking loser you are.

Really? If you can pee that high, DEFINITELY join the fire brigade. Yah.

Darling, with an ass as big as yours, innocent bystanders could get hurt!

I am Mediterranean Man! Hear my cry:
TZATZIKIIIIIIiiiiiii and tremble with fear.
I will cut you with my throwing pita.
But not at three o'clock, ‘cause it's siesta time. TZATZIKIIIIIIiiiiiii and away!

Now I
'
m going to batter you to death with chicken drumsticks!
It
'
ll be really messy, but I
'
m going to enjoy every hour of it.

Tiptoeing elephants? Come on guys, give it up. I can see you! You're huge!

Stand further away. You can't possibly appreciate my greatness this close up.

I'm like a god. Only, it'll hurt more when I judge you.

Listen: Some people play Scrabble.
Some people play chess.
You? You play turd puppets.

Well that's just great. Peanut butter in my crack. Goddamn it.

I've written your epitaph. Yup.
I did it early. You wanna read it?
“Here you are, lying dead. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Hey, boobs! Stop staring at my face!

Oh yes, I must have an enema.
And I'm going to keep what comes out, ‘cause it reminds me of you. I will take it home, dry it, make it into paper, and write your name on it as many times as possible, and frame it. Put it on my wall, and there it will remain. It will be my memory of you.
I may do it more than once, depending on what I've eaten.

I need this like I need a second crucifixion.

It
'
s growling. Shhh, it
'
s growling closer … It
'
s an angry thing, a big angry thing. It likes cabbage, though.

I'm not waving at you. I'm just building up for the big fucking slap you're gonna get.

I could go find somebody who could surgically remove that stick from up your ass.
Or, you could just chill the fuck out, Batman.
Choose.

Hey! You killed my velociraptor, dickhead.
That's so unfair. You do realize how hard it is to find one of those ‘round here, don't you?

You're a complete waste of space.
Just go home and apologize to your mother's vagina.

I need a big room, with strobe lights.
And people riding bicycles … naked.
To classical music, of course.

Two hats for my bunny, please.
Make
'
em smart ones.

He
'
s got to look the business.
And no more fucking spats, OK?

Loving you is an important life lesson.
You learn about all the fucking stupid mistakes you make.

Leave the broccoli alone.
It can sort out its own problems.
Confusion is part and parcel of its life.

… Then out of nowhere, the puffin ninja kicked my ass! Little fucking runt bastard.

Where are we going?
I want to know where you're taking me.
It's all fun not knowing, but now I'm bored, so FUCKING TELL ME WHERE ARE WE GOING! … Ooh, I've never been there before! I hope it's good.

I'd say welcome to the School of Life, but you wouldn't pass the entrance exam.
Dickhead.

All I want out of life is ice cream and cuddles.
Is it too much to ask? Is it?

Half the time listening to you, I'm imagining the carnage of pulling out your tongue and wrapping it around your throat.

Your singing can wake the dead.
So shut the fuck up. I don
'
t want any zombies dropping their jazz hands all over the fucking place.
Alright? Just shut it.

Stupid-fucking-cunty-bollocks-expialidocious

By now you might be wondering how Adam and I met—especially with an ocean between us. I think it's actually a pretty juicy story. And, of course, it involves sleeping.

It was 1991. The Western world was in the early stages of recovery from the cultural atrocities of the 80s. Synthesized pop ditties, rock power ballads, and neon nylon had given way to grunge, flannel, and apathy. But in the Jerusalem nightclubs, it was Duran Duran and “Land Down Under” every night of the week.

I was spending a year between high school and university in Israel on a program with a Zionist youth group. Our year was split between studying in Jerusalem, teaching in a small-town school, and working the fields on a kibbutz. In those first months in Jerusalem, I spent the days soaking up the history, architecture, culture, and
language, and the nights dancing until the sun came up. Sleep was not on the syllabus.

Adam was on a similar program with a sister youth group from the United Kingdom. Occasionally, the leaders of our two organizations threw us all together for social weekends. You can imagine the bedlam: a bunch of teenagers out from under their parents for the first time, in a country with no legal drinking age, crammed into a dorm with another bunch of teenagers with exotic, and therefore inherently sexy, accents. It was hormonal pandemonium.

Aside from treating each other like foreign cuts of meat, I made some good friends among the British guys at those international gatherings, and it wasn't long before I was spending lots of my evenings in their dorm rather than mine, watching them play Risk for hours on end. (Wait, did I say hormonal pandemonium? Maybe I overestimated British teenage guys' idea of a good time.) That's when I first noticed Adam.

Adam has a distinct memory of overhearing me whisper into a friend's ear, “My God, check out his lips,” and knowing that I was talking
about him. Yup, he was right. Even then, Adam had these gorgeous, full lips that just cried out to be gnawed on … But I digress.

It was a cool evening when we all set out from the Brits' dorm to walk to the dance club in Talpiot. Until then, Adam and I had only admired each other from afar. But he had decided that, on this walk, he was going to speak to me. And so he strode up alongside me, and we started talking. To this day, although neither of us can recall a word that was said, we both remember with crystal clarity how immediate the connection was, and the breathtaking excitement we felt. We talked and talked, until we hit the club and the music drowned out all conversation. So then we danced and danced, rapturously, illuminated in the blues and reds and stark white of the ever-shifting club lights, unaware of anyone or anything else. It was electrifying.

We walked home together at six in the morning and stopped at the beautiful Talpiot overlook to watch Jerusalem turn gold with the sunrise. We both knew that something extraordinary was brewing.

From that night on, we saw each other when we could, and got to know each other in bits and pieces. Meanwhile, I had parted from my program and found myself an independent kibbutz to finish out my year. So when Adam's group was coincidentally sent to my kibbutz for the weeklong wrap up of their program, it seemed that fate had intervened on our behalf. I was nearly paralyzed by anticipation and nervousness waiting for him to arrive. Had everything we'd experienced in the whirl and excitement of our brief episodes together been real? Could it be sustained beyond those moments on the dance floor or watching the sunrise?

The day arrived. I didn't know exactly when Adam would be arriving on my kibbutz that evening, so I went for a late-night swim (read: scaled the fence around the pool for a skinny-dip) with my friends. When I returned, I opened the door to my room to the surprising sight of Adam sound asleep in my bed. I had never seen anything so entrancing. I couldn't explain what I was feeling, but it was colossal. I watched him sleep for a long time.

As Adam tells it, he arrived on my kibbutz a bundle of nerves, and realized that he had no idea how to find me. He asked around until he was directed to my room, and let himself in. There wasn't much else in the room besides the bed, and so he settled himself down for a bit of a rest while he waited. I find paraphrasing him way too embarrassing, so I'll let Adam speak for himself here: “I got into your bed, and suddenly, my whole body seemed to be crackling with electricity. I could smell you in the sheets and the pillow. I closed my eyes to breathe you in and soon, exhaustion overcame me. The next thing I knew, you were waking me up, all cool skin and wet hair and sparkling eyes. I had never seen a more beautiful sight in my life.”

It was in that moment that we fell in love.

Adam blew off all of his group activities to spend every possible moment with me. I'd get up at four-thirty in the morning to go out to the fields, make it back by eleven a.m., and the rest of the day and evening was ours. We lost all track of time when we were together.

I remember so clearly the day that Adam's
group was leaving to go back to England. We had already kissed goodbye a thousand times, the bus had been boarded and was lumbering away down the dirt road while I wept and waved. When the bus stopped at the kibbutz gate to wait for someone to come out to open it, Adam threw open the emergency window at the back of the bus, climbed out, and ran back up the road to steal another kiss.

(Sometimes I amuse myself imagining how STM would have done it. I envision him leaping out of the back of the bus, sauntering over, looking me dead in the eyes and declaring (as he has in the dead of night), “Kissing's good for your health. So pucker up, baby, I'm gonna make you live past a hundred!” Not quite the stuff of a great romance.)

Adam and I soon found ourselves back in our respective countries, trying to navigate a relationship from opposite sides of the ocean. Remember, this was before the Internet; there was no e-mailing, IM'ing, text messaging, video conferencing. Transatlantic phone calls cost a fortune, especially for a couple of nineteen-year-olds. But it was also before the death of the written letter, and, even better, audio cassettes.

Yeah, remember those? Adam and I raised the art of the mixtape to new heights: our foremost form of communication, we mailed back and forth recordings of us talking, intermixed with music. I so clearly remember those desperate trips to the mailbox numerous times a day, hoping to hear from him, and then the exultation of opening a package and sliding the cassette into the stereo. Accustomed as most of us are now to anytime, anywhere communication, it's not often that we have the opportunity to experience that bittersweet, agonizing anticipation. Even back then, Adam was so emotionally expressive, so clearheaded in his feelings. I would listen to his tapes hundreds of times, until I had every word, every breath memorized.

I was prepared to do anything to be with Adam, even wait. But for him, it was too hard. As he explains, “I was crazy about you, the feelings were overwhelming, unlike anything I had ever experienced. But at nineteen, I couldn't bear the pain of being separated from you, of having those yearnings continually unfulfilled. I dealt with my emotions by burying them, until I could
leave you behind. I buried a huge part of myself in the process.” After a few months, we parted very painfully.

My heart was broken. A part of me harboured the hope that Adam would find his way back to me. Meanwhile, I dated my guts out, looking for someone to fill the void he'd left behind. But no one that I met could measure up to my memory of him. After two full years of anguished pining, I finally moved on and committed to a life without him.