July 8, 2023–1153 words; Feb 18, 2024–2914
From one H to another H
From Hassan Beck, Tel Aviv’s poor neighborhood, to Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles posh area
Hutzpah–Israeli Style
Audacity, Ambition, Luck
Faces, Places, Images: My Life
All About….My Life
My Journey from Poor Hasan Beck to Glamorous Hollywood
Table of Contents:
Part 1: All About My Mother
Part 2: All About Becoming Gay, 1966-1971
Part 3: All About Nathan, 1971-1980
Part 4: All About Rob, 1981-2011
Part 5: All About Me, Single, Widowed, Dirty Old Man?
Part 1: All About My Mother
1: Bulgarian Roots
(trip to Bulgaria, 2018)
2. Hotel Eilat
3. Hasan Beck
4. Elementary School: Geula
5. My Sister
5. My Aunts
6. My Cousins: Lina and Erna
Kibbutz Ginegar; Haifa
7. Yehoshua Ben Nun 16, 1960-1973
8. Ironit hey
9. Losing my Virginity
Teachers: Batya Uziel, Lili Nadlerl Deutsch
10. Military Service, 1964-1966
Part 2 Becoming Gay, 1967-19
Release from Army
Independence Park
Nureyev
Salons:
Danny Lahman
Michael Ohad
Yossi Graber
Mark Segal
Leonard Bernstein
Jerusalem Connection
TLV conncection: Miki Fanass
Dror, Yehda, Benjamin, Mario Danny Mendelson
Henriette Rubin (French woman)
Ministry of Labor: quitting
Assistant Professor
Part 3: All About Nathan
Meeting Hilton Hotel, July 25, 1971
Courtship and Love
Movies: The Godfather
Trips to Jerusalem
Trip to Italy, Sep 1972 (right after Munich)
Meeting Gregoy Downer
Plan to Leave Israel
Part 4: All About Sex
Ptown: Sex with owner
Bob Hayne
Separation from Nathan
Trip to LA and San Francisco with Baruch
Trip to SF: Sodom and Gemora
South of Markey clubs
Pre-AIDS liberation
Part 5: All About Rob
Meeting Jan 29, 1981; Uncle Charlie Downtown
Courtship
Rob Moves In
Schwab House becomes Coop
Inside Price
loans
Worst Year of My Life, financially
Ads in Village Voice
Teaching: Yeshiva, Queens
My Mother’s Visits
Wellesley College
Moving Out West
I’ve always seen myself as a tireless student of cinema and decided early on to dedicate myself to sharing my own passion for film with the general public, not with my academic colleagues.
I see saw himself as an everyman blessed with endless, lifelong curiosity and the chance to take on the subjects that I cared most about: visual history, visual knowledge, visual pleasure.
My fascination with the American Dream, however you define it, has inspired my early works, such as the Oscar Award, Small-Town America, John Wayne.
Hotel Eilat, up to 1954
Hayarkon 60
Collectors: Albelda; how we did not open the door
My mother’s baking cakes
Kindergarten: Haya and Ruhama
My Uncle Nicho
Living close by to the Tir; how Lina and Erna took me there
Hassan Beck
1954-1960
The mosque
One room with an out kitchen and out bathroom; rats
How my sister was afraid
How my father left
How my father slept with my aunt Tika
Our neighbors: Jana, above, Rudy and Yossi and Esther
Neighbors: policemen, remarried, Iraqui, pajamas on Fri with nuts
Two step-daughters: Olivia and Tikva Shemesh
Haviva, his daughter
How I would wait for my momther on Friday afternoon, coming back from long day at the Bakery, bringing cheese cake
How her friends, Bitush woukld come every Fri to pick her up
Saturdays in Yazur, rabbits with the Bakish: Marco, Mimi, and their daughters Madlena and Liora
How my aunt Tika would run away from her abusive husband in Haifa with taxi to Hasan Beck; bring chocolate
How Vivi bought the first record player, then tape-recorder
Elvis songs
Dancing with my two aunts, Retti and Tikka
Movie theaters in TLV:
Yaron, Yona Hanavie Street
Mugrabi
Gan Eden (built in 1914)
Gan Rina
Chen
Esther
Armon David
Elementary School: Geula
Teachers: Bilha, Yochai Wolfheim
Menachem Rothstein, closest friend, Yona Hanavie 23
(later Arba Harazot 20)
Other classmates and friends:
Noga, Kerem Hatemanim
Hannah LIberman
Yona Markovich
Rachel Gustakovski
Malka Malovetz
Eli Appelbaum
Avraham Zinereich
Leon Lahmi, Hayarkon 32
Yaffa Markus
Gabbi Zuckerman
Rami Steiner
Ruthi
Rami Shechter
Esther Sachraov
Rafi (handsome)
High School: Ironit H
Water Tower on Mazeh St.
I began Irnoit H while living in Hassan Beck, then in December 1960, moved to Yehoshua Ben Nun 16
Ami Duek
Tami De Fries
Nili Mintz
Batya Sandrov
Haya Widenfeld
Nili Mintz and Haim Meir
Malka Greenberg
French Teacher: Lili Nadler
1960
We moved in December 1960 to Ben Nun 16, only due to my sister Vivi
My Aunt Retti
Movies
How she gave my mom 10 liras during Suez Canal Campaign
Postcard from El Arish
Her trips to Europe, 1962; 1964
How she took me to a tailor for my first suit
My Cousin Erna
Close rapport. cultivated interest in art and painting
Her wedding in Kibbutz Bet Zera
The best present I got for my 15th birthday, from my cousins, Lina and Erna (their names rhyme) album of West Side Story
One day she came back from the hospital crying. I was alone in the apt and she confided in me and asked me not to tell anyone. I did not for many years.
In 1972, I visited her at the hospital at her death bed. She was swollen; shocked by the sight, I made sure to leave her room and fainted in the corridor.
Shiva at my aunt Tika; she sent me to get Salami at the local store
My Cousin Lina and Kibbutz Ginegar
Lina as soldier
Lina’s wedding (Meir and Aaron Shoshani); double wedding
His younger, more handsome brother, Uri, married Galia from
Song: Snuki Snuki, ze bahur lo idioti
Movies on the grass: Ingmar Bergman
Lag Baomer
My uncle Nicho (Chicho Nicho)
How Lina told us about our grandmother’s death (we were in the kibbutz with Vivi)
Going to Kibbutz Ginegar via Haifa; Tika’s cakes
Nail on my foot
Last time I saw Lina on April 10, 2010
Summer there (what year?): stayed with Pnina; everyday siesta, and cold grapes at 4pm
Lina called me Feb 4 for birthday; went to hospital
She died on Feb 10, 2016; aged 79
1966
How I met Motti Miron on Dizengoff street
How I switched from Economics to Sociology
How I met Dr. Abraham Cordova (and his bf Shimon Reisher)
1967:
Six Day War
Danny Lahman
Adi Smarak
1968:
Trips to Jerusalem
Dror Nir (affair)
Yonathan
Yehuda Kimmel (later remet in NYC with his partner musician)
Danny Mendelson, outright bttm that we all fucked (later moved to Amsterdam and met a fireman
1969
July 20, 1969
Man on the Moon; Yamit Campaign
Motti’s nephew, Yuval, 19, was killed
Summer of 1969: Trip to Europe
August 1, 1969 to Zurich (Jerry Melitz)
I befriended the eccentric designer, Jerry Melitz, who was a gay married man; we met in Zurich for one week
We had cultivated platonic friendship, and we would often take the bus to Hertzelia and walk on the beach
Amsterdam
Stockholm
London: Gordon Mackenzie (Stockwell)
Yohai (David Barkan) David Helier
Paris (3 weeks)
Adrian Smarak, a Romanian who made Aliyah to Israel i the mid 1960s.
feminine
He showed me off me off the his frie ds in Laris Oesp. his former lover, Michai Paxinou, who ad eft him for anogher man( and was managing a gallery on Avenue de l’Opera.
To attract rich students, he would live in the 16th, a prestigious neighborhood, claiming it was his work studio, It was actually what the French call “chambre de bonne.” At night, he would pull off a mattress next to his bed, and I would sleep on the floor. (I was 22).
We went to the opera, ballet, theater.
After a week with Adi, I moved to my aunt Mariette Finzi. Since her sister was visiting her from Nice, she was unable to host me. Instead, she rented an hotel for me
I got back to Israel in late October 1969, just days before classes began at TLV University. But, I think that subconsciously I was already determined to live abroad one day–in the near future–to explore my gay sexuality in the big capitals of Europe.
My mother, Retti, and Micki Ference waited for me at the airport.
1970: TLV
Affair with Henriette Rubin (French)
1971:
How I met Nathan Waterman on Hilton Beach, July 25, 1971
Love at first sight
No place to make love
May 19, 1944-June 2, 1989; died of AIDS, 45
Trips to Jerusalem; staying with Viki Reiss and Avner Cohen
Shlomo Almog, roof apartment
We split in Nov 1980, after my trip to San Francisco
1972: Trip to Italy
Sep, right after Munich massacre
I needed to be by myself, think about my future
Nathan was very offended by the trip; in a way we broke up
I began in Rome, then by train Florence and Venice
How I met Gregory Downer in Piazza Navona (later stayed with him in NYC, with Jewish roommate Gershon)
Cut to Aug 14, 1973
1973
Master’s thesis
Aug 1, 1973; left Israel
One week in London; one in Paris
Train from Paris to Luxemburg
Aug 14, 1973 arrived in NYC
The sight of yellow taxi cabs
NYC: 1973–June Cahn
Airport welcome: Ari Marcus (met in Israel the year before, at a gay party at a diplomat in Haifa) and Joseph; June Cahn
I remember the way that June used to look at Nathan, like a woman at a man
She would say, “those eyes, those eyelashes, why didn’t I get them”?
Jack Hamilton, Look editor
Charles Snyder, Lord and Taylor Store
We stayed one week at 11 Fifth Avenue; then at Ari’s West End Avenue
Columbia admission office
Green card from NYU
The lawyer friend of June who helped me. His friend worked in the Mortuary and would tell detailed stories about the corpses he made up
First apartment: 288 West End Avenue
Sarah Speciner, lanlord
Habima
Columbia Years
Diamond
Meron
Friends of June’s, celebrating her birthday on Nov 14.
1979:
Trip to Ptown
Meeting Bob Hayne
My trip to LA with Baruch; then SF
When I got back to NY, around Nov 1980, I knew the relationship was over
1980s
Jam 29, 1981: How I met Rob
