The Confessions of Noa Weber Read Online Free
from a thick glass purchased in the Machaneh Yehuda market in Jerusalem. The kind of love potion imbibed by Tristan and Isolde, who as far as I know had no psychological reasons for their love either.
JULY THE SECOND NINETEEN SEVENTY-TWO
Nineteen seventy-two was an eventful year. Richard Nixon defeated McGovern. Bobby Fischer defeated Spassky. The Pope visited China. Brezhnev was taken for a ride on Apollo 15. Terrorists poisoned the pandas in the Washington Zoo. I’m not being serious here. I could have done a bit of research to refresh my memory, but I don’t leave the house now, and what do I need research for? I’ve already warned you that there isn’t going to be any historical panorama here, only me, me and my life, that in the summer of ’72 received its present form.
I can’t describe what I was like before the second of July, but if it’s really necessary, think of a formless entity of a girl. Naturally I didvarious things, like most of the people around me, and voiced opinions like them—more emphatically than most, as a matter of fact—but these deeds and words did not shape the entity I was into any particular form.
Because what can you already say about a seventeen-year-old girl? That she’s a good student, but not a nerd? That she’s athletic? That she collects stamps? I didn’t collect stamps. That her relations with her parents are strained and her relations with her younger sister a little less so? Open any teen magazine and you’ll find hundreds of girls described in precisely the same terms.
When I say formless, I mean mainly in the bodily sense. My measurements haven’t changed much since then, only my style of dressing has undergone changes; in the summer of ’72 I went about mainly in batik skirts and Arab kaftans, and my sense of my body underneath them was as loose and fluid as the garments. In hindsight, that body seems to me like a sea mollusk without edges, as if it hadn’t been properly packed into my smooth girlish skin.
Of course I didn’t think of myself in those days as a formless mollusk. In April I began to fuck and in May I discovered how to come. The earth didn’t shake, even though I wanted very much to convince myself of a certain tremor, but in any case at the beginning of July, with the experience of about ten orgasms behind me, I saw myself as a model of decadent sensuousness, Liza Minelli playing Sally Bowles.
I began to fuck, I say, but in those days in our school nobody “fucked,” not even the boys. “Going to bed with,” we called it politely, or “going all the way,” or best of all: “making love.” And since I had “made love,” or more precisely in order that I could at long last “make love,” I was naturally obliged to assume that I was “in love.” My boyfriend’s name was Amikam, and he too was officially in love.
In order to “make love” we would go for hikes in the countryside on holidays and weekends. On ordinary weekdays, we would go to the Jerusalem forest, a place which should more properly be called the Jerusalem woods, and it was all as nice and delightful and enjoyable as it was supposed to be, except for an alarming weariness that sometimes overcame me on the way back. This weariness sometimes came over me without any connection to anything: a gray heaviness that poured in and overpowered me so that I had to sit down on the curb. My head like a hot sponge, my eyelids stuck together, hearing the cars go past, smelling asphalt and gasoline, and losing my limbs that refused to take messages from my brain. How many times did it happen? Five or six, I don’t remember, but I do remember Amikam’s hands massaging my shoulders, invading my bra and retreating with the noise and heat of another passing car, the hands of a boy trying to awaken Sleeping Beauty.
Sex is supposed to wake you up, love is supposed to wake you up, but me, a healthy and athletic young girl—first in the thousand- and two thousand-meter races—it put to
JULY THE SECOND NINETEEN SEVENTY-TWO
Nineteen seventy-two was an eventful year. Richard Nixon defeated McGovern. Bobby Fischer defeated Spassky. The Pope visited China. Brezhnev was taken for a ride on Apollo 15. Terrorists poisoned the pandas in the Washington Zoo. I’m not being serious here. I could have done a bit of research to refresh my memory, but I don’t leave the house now, and what do I need research for? I’ve already warned you that there isn’t going to be any historical panorama here, only me, me and my life, that in the summer of ’72 received its present form.
I can’t describe what I was like before the second of July, but if it’s really necessary, think of a formless entity of a girl. Naturally I didvarious things, like most of the people around me, and voiced opinions like them—more emphatically than most, as a matter of fact—but these deeds and words did not shape the entity I was into any particular form.
Because what can you already say about a seventeen-year-old girl? That she’s a good student, but not a nerd? That she’s athletic? That she collects stamps? I didn’t collect stamps. That her relations with her parents are strained and her relations with her younger sister a little less so? Open any teen magazine and you’ll find hundreds of girls described in precisely the same terms.
When I say formless, I mean mainly in the bodily sense. My measurements haven’t changed much since then, only my style of dressing has undergone changes; in the summer of ’72 I went about mainly in batik skirts and Arab kaftans, and my sense of my body underneath them was as loose and fluid as the garments. In hindsight, that body seems to me like a sea mollusk without edges, as if it hadn’t been properly packed into my smooth girlish skin.
Of course I didn’t think of myself in those days as a formless mollusk. In April I began to fuck and in May I discovered how to come. The earth didn’t shake, even though I wanted very much to convince myself of a certain tremor, but in any case at the beginning of July, with the experience of about ten orgasms behind me, I saw myself as a model of decadent sensuousness, Liza Minelli playing Sally Bowles.
I began to fuck, I say, but in those days in our school nobody “fucked,” not even the boys. “Going to bed with,” we called it politely, or “going all the way,” or best of all: “making love.” And since I had “made love,” or more precisely in order that I could at long last “make love,” I was naturally obliged to assume that I was “in love.” My boyfriend’s name was Amikam, and he too was officially in love.
In order to “make love” we would go for hikes in the countryside on holidays and weekends. On ordinary weekdays, we would go to the Jerusalem forest, a place which should more properly be called the Jerusalem woods, and it was all as nice and delightful and enjoyable as it was supposed to be, except for an alarming weariness that sometimes overcame me on the way back. This weariness sometimes came over me without any connection to anything: a gray heaviness that poured in and overpowered me so that I had to sit down on the curb. My head like a hot sponge, my eyelids stuck together, hearing the cars go past, smelling asphalt and gasoline, and losing my limbs that refused to take messages from my brain. How many times did it happen? Five or six, I don’t remember, but I do remember Amikam’s hands massaging my shoulders, invading my bra and retreating with the noise and heat of another passing car, the hands of a boy trying to awaken Sleeping Beauty.
Sex is supposed to wake you up, love is supposed to wake you up, but me, a healthy and athletic young girl—first in the thousand- and two thousand-meter races—it put to
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