*
The first photograph of the show is of the poster. Red background. Black letters (a combination of colours that rockers starting out seem to like). Their funny name, Licorice, is in huge letters, and under it, the names of the group members. David’s name is the same size as the others because ‘Just because I write the songs and sing them doesn’t mean I’m more important than the bass player.’ That’s what he told Amir when he showed us the sketch a week earlier, as excited as if the show was just about to go on in our living room. On the right of the poster, I managed (taking a professional risk, I went out into the street) to catch part of the door to the Pargod Club: a heavy wooden door with an arch on top and iron buttons on the side, the kind of door that, if you pass it during the day when it’s closed, you might easily think is a monastery door. Below the Licorice poster is a poster for a different show — you can see the date and one word of the group’s name, Shabess. I think the whole name is Shabess Dance, but I’m not sure. Behind, as background for the posters, is a greenish kiosk covered with notices. Behind that are a few Jerusalem stones that are part of a large wall, and behind the wall — this you can’t see in the photo — is the beginning of the Nachlaot neighbourhood, or more accurately, the nice part of Nachlaot, the one with the narrow lanes.
It was in those narrow lanes that Amir and I almost had our first kiss. It was two weeks after we started going out. We’d just come out of the cinema — Fearless with Jeff Bridges, which I saw not too long ago on the movie channel and it turned out not to be such a bad film — and we talked and talked about almost every possible subject: about the importance or unimportance of archaeology — on the one hand, what’s the point of digging up the past, but on the other, without the past, how can we understand the present; about Jerusalem as a place to live — on the one hand, it’s so beautiful, but on the other, a little too intense; about my dream of becoming a photographer, and about his dream — which he still wasn’t sure he could call a dream — of becoming a psychologist. We talked for hours, covering up the simple tension of when the kiss would come with long, complicated sentences. Every once in a while, we stopped next to an entrance with ornate ironwork, or a window through which the sound of a saxophone was coming, or an announcement about a special prayer meeting to be held in a square in front of a synagogue before the Sabbath. Finally, we sat down in a small park between buildings, on a bench that still smelt of fresh paint. The kiss was in the air, we even looked at each other’s lips while we talked, but we kept drawing out the tension longer and longer. Later, at four in the morning, when we were lying in my bed exhausted and purring after three times, one of them with the addition of mocha-vanilla ice-cream, Amir said that he hadn’t been sure I wanted him. That he was afraid I was interested in him only as a friend. I don’t know. I think we both — after all, I was there too, and in the past, I’d bent first to kiss guys — waited with the first kiss because we knew that after it, there’d be no going back.
After I took pictures outside the club, we went inside with our heads bent so as not to bump into the low ceiling. I’d already been to the Pargod a few times (in my freshman year, I saw the Brera Tivit group three times, each show more thrilling than the others), but still, even this time, going into the club was a surprise: This is the whole deal? This is the Pargod? A small, cramped space with ten rows of plastic chairs, a narrow aisle, damp walls. If it had stalactites and stalagmites, it could officially be called a cave. While Amir was buying tickets from the club owner, I studied his face. For the first time in months, the light was back. Those visits to the Helping Hand Club, the pressure of his studies, and something else, something he doesn’t talk about, had made him seem stooped. Three grey hairs had popped out in front, about five years too early. His twitch was twitching again. And the deep furrow on the right side of his face seemed to be getting deeper. But that night at the Pargod, everything was reversed. He smiled at everyone, hugged David’s mother in excitement, danced lightly as we walked to our seats and kissed me on the neck once a minute. I don’t believe it, he said and pointed at the lit stage where all the instruments were, I just don’t believe it. He drummed on his knee and mine, as if they were bongo drums, to the rhythm of the pre-show music, and I found myself again, for the millionth time, amazed by his ability to be really happy, with his whole heart, for other people. Without a drop of jealousy. Without a smidgen of egoism. He was just happy for David. So happy that when Licorice came hesitantly on to the stage, he leaped out of his seat as if they were nothing less than U2 and he dragged the whole audience in that little cubbyhole along with him into a cheering session — including David’s mother, who was trilling along with the cheering crowd — that went on for two straight minutes.
The show itself started with feedback — grating guitar squeals that startled the audience and caused a wave of embarrassed muttering. That’s what happens when your soundman is a teenager. But it got better. Licorice got more confident with each song, David’s voice opened up, the bass blossomed, the drummer came out of his hiding place behind the cymbals and reinforced David’s voice with his own soft, almost feminine voice, the audience of fans applauded during the choruses and lit their Zippos during the ballads, and the bald critic from the local newspaper — everyone knew who he was, but they tried not to show it — nodded at least twice in satisfaction. Every once in a while, through the screen of distortion, you could make out a few lines of the songs, such as ‘Love is a jittery DJ’, or ‘The dam on the I river has collapsed’, making me think that they should consider handing out lyrics during the performance, not just with the CDs. I had my usual attack of jealousy of musicians because they can create together and help each other create individually, because they can signal each other with a look, with the strum of a guitar, that it’s time to end the song, while photographers have to make all their decisions alone and make mistakes, mistakes all the time.
Towards the end of the show, I even managed to forget that I was at the performance of someone I know. I closed my eyes and just let the music fuse with my body and take me off on a trip. During one instrumental passage, I was on a yellow hill in the Negev leading a herd of red goats. In another, stormier passage, I found myself in the middle of a brightly coloured festival in a village from One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Modi appeared in front of me and handed me a purple cocktail.
After the last song — a weird reggae version of Benzine’s ‘Freedom is completely alone’ — the audience naturally called for an encore. Licorice didn’t bother with the usual ritual of walking off and then walking back on to the stage at the audience’s insistence because they didn’t exactly have anywhere to walk off to, so they stayed on the low stage. The guitarist exchanged his electric guitar for an acoustic one. David took the microphone in his hand and spoke. His voice was hoarse from so much singing. His forehead glistened with sweat from the heat of the spotlights. I remember almost every word. ‘I want to thank everyone who came tonight. I won’t say you were a wonderful audience, because that’s bullshit. You were a loving audience. I only hope we have audiences like you at all our performances. (Wild applause.) I want to give special thanks to three people without whom I wouldn’t be here today. Yoni, Matan and Amir (here, Amir squeezed my thigh). Without their love and affection, I wouldn’t have survived the last few weeks and I wouldn’t be standing here now. I dedicate this next song, “Spread your Grace”, to them. I think that this is a time when a little grace wouldn’t hurt any of us.’