The Wasted Night-watchman

Henry in bed all day with a sore throat, needing a hot drink, finally getting out of bed and dressing, on his way to Chaim’s Deli.

Sitting in a booth at Chaim's, Ruby his regular waitress approaches looking concerned and saying “You look ill Henry,” he says to Ruby “ I need some of that Jewish cure-all Ruby baby, a bowl of chicken soup with matzot.” Henry drinking Robetussin mixed with hot tea as well. 

Still in Chaim's, high from the cough syrup, he begins to day dream,  recollecting the time he spent working in the Sinai.

Henry lived the Sinai in the mid seventies.  It was geographically like Mars, treeless, surrounded by red mud and rusty iron ore colored hills. Most people living near or on the beach in straw huts, module housing units and caves. Henry sleeping on the beach, working as the night watchman for the Nama Bay Inn. 

Nama Bay was on the Red Sea side of the Sinai Peninsula, the Red Sea famous for beautiful coral.  The Bay attracted a mix of cultures, IDF Soldiers, UN soldiers, Bedouins, hippy travelers and divers from Europe. It was a big party, the UN people would arrive in their white deuce and a half trucks loaded up with Heineken beer in coolers and cases of Irish Bristol Creme. Everyone had hashish, the only people who had nothing to share were the hippies. They would perform for dope and booze, put on poetry readings and play music as the hippy girls did spirit-dancing shaking and showing their tits.

There were huts on the beach that served as bars and restaurants, The Last Oasis and The Parrot Fish to name a few.  

Henry’s job as night watchman was to make the rounds and keep an eye on the beach area, the bars, restaurants, the diving center, and the module motel.

One night Henry was in the lobby of the Nama Bay Inn talking to the night clerk, a Druze named Boaz came running in, looking whitish with a paper cup in hand, saying he was bit by a scorpion. Henry looks in the cup and sees the scorpion is dead, He looks at Boaz and says “You got it backwards Boaz, the scorpion is supposed to live and you're supposed to die!”

On free days Henry would go to the beach and smoke hashish. He had stepped on a broken bottle of Heineken while on his night time rounds. The coral in the Red Sea gave off a large amount of bacteria, so he had to stay out of the water or risk infection. 

High, lounging in a hammock at the beach he noticed a Israeli soldier girl walking on the beach, she was all tits and ass in her thong bikini. They began to talk, her father was a famous Israeli artist in Tel Aviv, Henry invited her to an abandoned module housing unit a couple hundred meters from the sea. The two sitting on the floor in a blanket, he rolls a joint mixing hashish with tobacco. Her name was Freida, she was a a real free-spirit, a beatnik. They began making out with out much formality, and then got it on, sweating in the desert heat. Freida later invited Henry to stay with her and her family in Tel Aviv. 

Henry was only in Nama Bay a few months but it seemed like years. He got into the habit of sleeping outside while there. For a long time after he left Nama Bay he slept on the floor or outside when he could. 

Henry’s time in Israel was a test of limits he thought, partying as much as he could. After a few years there he left for Greece via Haifa on a ship. 

Henry gazing outward at the Mediterranean Sea on a ship headed to Greece, in reflexion, wondering if his stay in Israel was enlightening?  Some modern day hedonist wisdom came to mind—

He who can party and screw the longest and hardest before he drops, WINS!