#antisemitism mention tw

[chilewithcarnage]

y'all can't go back to stanning azealia banks just cause she did the bare minimum of doing what literally everybody else on the internet been doing for the past two weeks calling out taylor swift for fucking a nazi. when she literally made a post on her instagram calling rabbis that do circumcisions pedophiles

[destiel-news-channel]

context: Hubert Aiwanger who had antisemitic flyers in his backpack when he was in school and did not apologize for that and his party, Die Freien Wähler, got the second most votes in Bayern (Bavaria, a state of Germany) and had the biggest increase in voters of all parties.

[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers 'apparently being accused of being an antisemite gets you more voters instead of less now' to Cas' 'I love you'. /End ID]

People in Germany: Please Vote so people like that don't get that much influence!

[saulweissberg]

Last night I told a stranger all about you They smiled patiently with disbelief I always knew you would succeed, no matter what you tried And I know you did it all in spite of me —IN SPITE OF ME, MORPHINE

content warnings: neglect, abuse mention, drugs, alcoholism, death, depression, grief, homophobia, allusions to antisemitism.

I’m a bad father. This is an unfortunate truth about myself. I am a loving father, but a neglectful one. I do not hit my son, I don't yell or mess with his emotions, I haven't gone to jail or drunk myself into a stupor or picked drugs over him, but I am still a bad father. I am a loving, affectionate father, and I try to give Micah everything that I can. I buy him whatever he wants. I take him on trips—or I did, when he still allowed me to—to wherever he wanted. I told him how smart, how handsome, how funny he is, a million times over. But none of that will make up for what I didn't give him—my time. I chose work over him. I chose work over everyone. 

Every attorney I've ever known has done the same. 

My own father had done the same, to a lesser degree. A lawyer just like me, though our specializations are different, and sometimes I wonder if he would be disappointed by me going into family law instead of criminal law like he had. (By that metric, would he be even more disappointed by Levi, my twin, choosing academia over the law?) My father was there, physically, but his mind was often somewhere else. He was busy thinking about how to get his client off on man two instead of man one, or expatiating on the meaning of mens rea, or just something. Just something that gave him a faraway look in his eye, something that captured his attention instead of us and we could only get it back if we were too loud, or if we called his full name in our boyish, shrill voices, which he hated to hear because children should always respect their parents. So, he was there in body, but the mind…

Our mother made up for that. Where my dad was distant until it was time for a lecture or a punishment, my mother was overly involved. She wanted to know what Levi and I were talking about so late into the night, or if we had girlfriends yet, or who was better: Bon Jovi or Van Halen? As if we didn’t know she thought good music consisted of two names only—Frankie Valli and Meat Loaf. She was sometimes a little outnumbered by her hyperactive children, but she has always been a strong woman, and she has always taken everything in stride. The only thing that ever got in her way was my father’s death. It was so sudden, so abrupt, that it changed the very nature of all three of us for the rest of our lives. My mother fell into a deep depression for a few years, a fugue that was only broken by our high school graduations and an opening on the country club’s board. Levi and I were always codependent, but our father’s death made us circle the wagons—mom was too distracted, dad was gone, and we were mostly on our own. We only had each other. We kind of preferred it that way.

That’s not to say that I had bad parents. My parents loved me. My mother still loves me. Even for the generation that they came from, or being New England Democrats in the eighties, my parents were rather progressive. They hated Reagan deeply and looked… favorably upon gay people. They never taught us to hate anyone—except Conservatives—and we were told to look at the world through a lens of understanding. The Weissbergs were proud to be contemporaries of the Kennedys and the Wadsworths. A long, long blue blooded lineage of doctors, lawyers, professors, and authors. We were like the rest of high society, except for our differing religions, and I think that kept us humble. To know that we could waltz right into a party, but know we wouldn’t be entirely welcome. That there were some doors that would always be closed to us, no matter how long we have lived here or how far back our family tree goes. We weren’t as stuffy as the WASPs. We know how to have fun… as long as we don’t bring any shame to the family name. 

My parents knew something was different about me, and in their own way, they had accepted that. They accepted it in the way someone ignores someone’s drinking because at least it’s not meth. Particularly at that time, when my father was still alive. Now, my mother’s a sweet old lady, but even she had some reservations about my behavior when I was a teenager. I made sure never to do anything in front of them, but in the microsociety that I grew up in, rumors were told more often than truths. Part of what came back to them was true. I was… lecherous. Despite barely clearing 5’5” for most of high school (until a last minute growth spurt), I had a natural ease with people. Especially girls, but not only girls. Even after the death of my father, I have always been able to just walk into a room and now I’d be leaving with someone that night. My parents tutted and shook their heads at my antics when it came to making out with a senator’s daughter at the country club, but my close relationship with my childhood best friend Aharon was outright ignored—denied—best as they could. Not because they thought it was wrong that I liked another boy, but that I'd do it so openly.

Again, I did not have bad parents. It was the eighties, so all things considered, my parents were a liberal safe haven. That’s as best as we could ask for back then, just the right to exist. To be acknowledged. Because even if they were turning a blind eye, you’d still have known something was there to turn away from it. And, despite all the petty arguments I used to get into with my father, I know he loved me. I know my mother loves me, but she’s not always proud of me. I don’t know if my father would be proud of me. I have every success in the world, but I don’t have my son. I don’t have a wife anymore. My firm is all I have. My work is all I have. Sometimes, that’s okay with me. Because it has to be. I have nothing else, and that’s by design. I just didn’t realize what that design was until it was too late. It made me successful, but it made me a bad father.

It’s not that I didn’t want to be there for him. Or my wives. I just wanted more than anything to be able to do both. To be the father and husband that they needed, and the lawyer that I am. I couldn’t do both. I don’t think anyone can. Most of my colleagues in New York came from the same type of background—rich families, a legacy admission to whichever ivy league, an expectation for success, a wife and kid at home. The majority of them had the same kind of proclivities. Some were actually worse than me, if you can believe it. Drug and alcohol abuse runs rampant in the legal circles in any city, but particularly Manhattan. Particularly in prestigious white-shoe firms. A few of them would proclaim they’d hate for their children to follow them into law, that the stress and environment wasn’t worth it, but most of us would be lying if we said that. It’s sort of the ultimate validation, isn’t it? Your children wanting to follow in your footsteps, to be like Daddy because that’s exactly what we did. Even if we did things slightly differently, like choosing a different specialization, we still became lawyers like our fathers.

That’s the thing, though. I never pressured Micah to pick law school. I never pushed it on him, or said ‘you’re going to Columbia like I did and that’s final, anywhere else—especially a state school—is a betrayal’ like some other men did. I have always wanted him to be happy, to find his own path. If he wanted to be a lawyer? Then that would be amazing, it would make me glad, but it was never a requirement for my love and attention. I never wanted anything for Micah but the very best. I guess the very best doesn’t happen without a more attentive father. That was what he needed and I hadn’t realized it until it was too late, because I thought what I was doing was the very best—giving him whatever he wanted with the money I earned. Showing my devotion to him through setting him up for life, so he could go to an ivy league school or climb mountains or just whatever the fuck he wanted to do. The freedom to do what he wanted, to be who he wanted to be.

Okay, yes, there were some days where I convinced myself that it was okay because Micah didn’t need me. He had Terry and he had Tamara to give him the parental affection he needed. The long hours and the missed baseball games and postponed dinners were okay in the long run, because I could fix that later. I couldn’t represent Kelsey Grammar’s ex-wife again. I couldn’t impress the partners with my work ethnic by doing all my work later. The success would be long term, but the actual work was temporary. Opportunities lost at the firm wouldn’t come back again, even with the last name Weissberg to do the heavy lifting. I had to sacrifice my relationships in order to just be a tenth successful as the guy above me, and for some stupid reason, I thought Micah would always be there. I don’t know why I thought that, since my own father wasn’t there forever, but I did think that. I thought Micah would never stop being excited to see me. I thought I’d always be his hero. I thought he would never stop loving me, simply because I am his father. I was wrong. 

That’s the most horrible part, I think. That I was so stupid to think that Micah would always be okay because I’ve always been okay. I’ve come through my father’s death, all my divorces, every horrible case being okay. Maybe Terry, Tammy, and Thalia would say otherwise, but all things considered… I guess I just figured Micah wouldn’t suffer any hardships, or if he did, he’d bounce back just like I had. I was wrong. If I was a more attentive father, maybe I would have figured that out years ago. Decades ago. I’d have been able to help him in some way. If I had known… If I had forced myself to know, maybe he wouldn’t be so bad off. Or I’d be able to get him treatment earlier. Protected him from whatever happened in high school. I don’t know what it was, Ravi wouldn’t tell me, but if it set him on this path where he can’t handle goodbyes or keep his head on straight or just be okay, maybe I could have stopped that. I don’t know. 

Terry says self-pity does not become me or some shit. But it’s all I have sometimes. Am I not supposed to be sad about how I failed my child? Would it be better to act as if I have done nothing wrong? It is an unequivocal truth: I have failed Micah, and I cannot fix it. I cannot be forgiven for it. But I won't stop trying. Never.

I am a bad father. But I love my son, and nothing will ever change that. 

I repeat, nothing will ever change that.

I repeat, I love my son.

I repeat, I am a bad father.

[gay-david-tennant]

y'know one of the things that piss me off the most about the elections in germany? that the party (Freie Wähler) of the guy who didnt even apologise when it got out that antisemitic flyers had been found in his backpack at school had the biggest increase in voters in bayern (bavaria). and the nazi party (not the same btw. its called AfD) got the second most votes in hessen (hesse) and the third most votes in bavaria.

[anti-ao3]

i'm feeling very conflicted about tangled. first the villain is an antisemitic caricature, and then there's the fact a grown man became interested in a girl who barely turned 18 (and iirc he still met her shortly before her bday). like an age gap on itself isn't the problem, but it just feels creepy that a 26 year old smth fell in love with a sheltered 18 year old girl like that

[golvio]

Also, the only reason they have that hold in the first place is because the US government wants it in the Middle East to help it maintain control over the region and its resources, like most militarized colonies have done since colonialism was a thing. The US government is not some poor widdle boo-boo bear who was hoodwinked by mean ol’ Israel into supporting a genocide because they just didn’t know any better.

The same people enabling this genocide are the same warhawk ghouls who bayed for Afghan and Iraqi blood during 9/11, when Bush launched his fakey-fake war to “avenge” the victims of the terrorist attacks. (By an organization that, surprise! Ronald Reagan and pals funded and armed to keep the region unstable and suppress democratic movements in exchange for oil rights.)

These people know exactly what they’re doing, and haven’t changed much, if at all, in the twenty years since then. They’re bolstered by the jingoistic propaganda campaign dehumanizing everyone who could be interpreted as “Islamic terrorists” to help manufacture consent for slaughtering large numbers of Afghan, Iraqi, and now Palestinian civilians in the name of maintaining their military chokehold over the region so the territories they control continue pumping oil and other resources back to the greedy, insatiable motherland.

Abandoning Israel now that its far-right ethnonationalist coalition is enacting their wildest genocidal wet-dreams is not in the American government’s best financial or military interests, even if their reputation takes what they see as a temporary hit. The only way to stop them from supporting Israel is to convince them that the potential costs for allowing Israel to run roughshod over the entire Gaza Strip and beyond outweigh the financial and military benefits. That this hit to their reputations isn’t “temporary,” and could potentially cost them a crucial election that determines the difference between their comfortable status quo continuing as-is and a manchild wannabe dictator seizing power permanently. A wannabe dictator who’s got the “less reasonable” pro-genocide wing of Christian Dominionists collectively whispering in his ear. The Christian Zionists who want Israel to start WWIII so they can fulfill their dork-ass woo-woo apocalyptic prophecy they got from a book written by a charlatan making wild-ass misinterpretations of Revelations sold in the grocery store discount rack that will let them magically noclip into Heaven and wipe out Islam and Judaism on earth in one fell swoop.

let me clear something up real quick, because a lot of people just try to muddy the waters.

it is antisemitic to say the jews control the media. i, and most that are for a free palestine, can agree on that.

it is not antisemitic to say that israel has a chokehold on the media coming in and out of palestine and israel— a hold they have because of the backing of western powers like the united states.

israel is not a representation of all jewish people. don’t conflate them, and don’t be obtuse when people say the government of israel is limiting the perspective of palestinians and assassinating palestinian journalists.

it is ignorant to try to cancel out the suppression that israel is putting on palestinian media. the assassination of journalists like shireen abu ablek, yasser abu namous, hassouneh salim, and countless others should not be minimized.

[jewish-joy]

A very progressive group at my college just posted an infographic that states “ Zionists believe that Jewish people are indigenous to Israel” and I am losing my shit.

They said this in a post including that it’s okay to kill Zionists and they explicitly support all armed resistance

This is quite something. This is really quite the situation.

[i-aint-even-bovvered]

All these stories I hear about people removing anything that even mentions Jewish people (not Israel, just Jews in general) from public view and citing the ongoing war as their reasoning behind it is very telling. The people doing this have wanted to do this for a while, they just needed a good enough excuse

[jewish-vents]

One of my neighbors is antisemitic and threatened to shoot my dog. My other neighbor has now made it a habit to have her gun within reach and openly carry it with her when I take my dog out to pee. I'm both very grateful to have someone who will be a bodyguard for my dog and exhausted that my dog needs a bodyguard to pee in his own yard.

"But Palestine", the guy says, whenever he sees me, and I want to scream. My dog is not oppressing Palestinians. He's peeing in a yard in Wisconsin. No Palestinian lives will be improved by shooting him.

It's not about Palestine. It was never about Palestinians. It's about getting to be hateful and live out their fantasies of harassing others and killing animals, which for them probably includes both myself and my dog, given how they see Jewish people as ((the elites)).

.

[saulweissberg]

saul was certainly a professional. it had been the world he was born into, after all. he was well attuned to the politesse of high society; he knew exactly which fork he was to use during which course and to take only one pat of butter for his bread (lest he looked greedy). edna and gideon trained their children well, even when the weissbergs of the world weren’t readily accepted into certain high society functions. they were contemporaries of the crowninshields, lowells, and sedgwicks; his uncle morris bragged about attending harvard at the same time as jack kennedy, feeling somehow special that he was admitted during a time when there was a jewish student quota. his parents taught him to not hide their family’s wealth: no one liked a rich kid playing at poor, and the weissbergs had to be proud of their name when they collectively worked diligently to make it so prominent. part of that prominence meant tedious country club luncheons and overly long charity galas. in a way, to saul, it was an honor. every invitation to a high society event was evidence that his family had made it.

“how are you supposed to know they’re worth it if you don’t give them a chance?” saul countered, brows raising pointedly. perhaps it was a miracle in itself saul had been able to get past her cool exterior many years ago. the poise and elegance she held was really just a smoke screen, he quickly found out. for a yogini that was often described as a gazelle, she bumped into nearly everything and her small, coy smiles were born out of social anxiety, not a conscious effort of mystique. she always looked bored of everything and everyone, and she often was, but for different reasons than assumed. later, saul learned why there was a smoke screen, why she protected herself so fiercely. her childhood had been split up into two by a horrific event that he couldn’t fathom fully, but understood partly with his own grief for his father. death—though, granted, her experience was more abundant and horrible—cleaved lives in halves. he understood the need for her smoke screen, and in a way, he had one as well. he had a part to play, but saul had enjoyed playing that part. he enjoyed being a high society elite, like the people around them that thalia apparently didn’t find worthy. maybe that should’ve been an honor, too, that thalia had, at least at one time, considered him worthy.

he pulled out her chair—again, the politesse!—before he sat on his own. “well, birdie, no one’s going to just come up to you and ask your thoughts on the hierarchy of the sciences or floriography. not a venue like this, at least.” deep philosophical conversations happened in dive bars, the country club types cared too much about their image until they got really drunk, then it was hard to get them to shut up. “you’ve got to meet them at their level, get a few drinks in them, then you can talk about more than just fashion and mommy groups and sorority reunions.” he pressed his lips together and canted his head. the concept of a game or challenge was interesting, but saul was a career lawyer: he knew never to agree to anything without first hearing the terms. “i suppose that depends on what you have in mind.”

She supposed it used to be easier. Maybe it was just because at that point, Saul's arm would be around her waist. Even when she was in conversation with unknown individuals, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. They would spend every other moment making fun of the people who couldn't imagine a single person not savoring a BLT. Now it was different. She would be returning to the table with her old name on the embossed card and an empty hotel room. But if she didn't try, why go to Chicago in the first place? Why not spend another night supporting her sister in their childhood home turned hospital waiting room?

"I like to believe that should there be someone worth the conversation, it would not be difficult." That was the worst part, wasn't it? Out of the numerous events she went to, there had been no one she connected with like him. Surely there were others who could both hold a conversation and be worthwhile of her quiet comments. Thalia didn't believe she was so unique that everyone else was below her. There was a very good chance that someone one table over could entertain her in a similar way. But considering that Thalia could barely get herself to talk to her customers about a subject she loved, she was unlikely to meet them.

"Once again, I find myself subjected to discussions on designer dresses, jewelry decisions, the audacity of a young individual to wear a suit and not conform to expected gender standards." The fact that Thalia could possibly steer the conversations herself was not a logical step. She would rather mentally disengage than be stuck in a forced conversation with someone she didn't respect. "I must have forgotten how dull these are. I have more pleasant interactions at Caffelicious." But that was a classic Thalia conundrum. Her embrace of solitude was putting her even closer to hiding in a castle for her whole life. That wasn't the attitude she intended on when she meditated after her yoga class that morning. This was meant to be a growth opportunity. She took another sip then turned to look at him. "A challenge then, or a game. Otherwise this will be simply too tedious. Are you interested?"

[yesterdayiwrote]

Holy Shit...

[jewish-joy]

One thing I think that happens as we try to defend our existence in not only one specific land but globally as well is using the very real identities some Jewish people have as stand-ins for laughable stereotypes .

Two examples-

"When will they learn that not every Jew is some white girl named Rachel from Brooklyn lolol?"

"Not everyone came from Poland so why would we go back there?”

Absolutely, the diversity in Jewish culture is not as represented and discussed as it should be. However, that shouldn't find its place in the discourse here. yeah, there's more people than what American media depicts as the be-all-end-all of Jewishness. But that girl Rachel in Brooklyn is terrified and her community is being constantly threatened. Her "whiteness" or "Brooklynness" doesn't negate that. At all. Often, it excuses the damage when it does happen.

And what about those people who came from Poland or other Eastern European countries? Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, etc. Whose grandparents escaped- or those whose family didn't ? Where they were always considered foreigners? Countries that were so influenced by its Jewish residents that now have so few because those same governments and people murdered them ? And in that case, would it be acceptable for the descendants of people with barely a connection to where their ancestors stayed in diaspora to go back to?

I know people don’t mean it like this. This is such a weird time with everything that’s been going on. I’m not trying to go after people coping with bad jokes or quips. But let’s not canabilize each other ? Let’s hold everyone and their backgrounds with equal value and love as we fight this plague of antisemitism .

[saulweissberg]

sitting so close, just two feet of wood and tablecloth between them, saul could look directly into the eyes that had captivated him so greatly on march 18th, 1993. it might’ve been a thursday night, but saul couldn’t remember that particular detail, just that it was the end of his final year of undergrad and he was a few months away from being able to call himself a columbia university alumnus. he could remember a smoky house on w. 114th street, with drunken college students spilling out onto the stoop and even some out into the street. the living room wall had a poster for some movie called reservoir dogs, though saul had never heard of it, and there were christmas lights strung along the ceiling. it smelled like weed and cheap beer and the vague trace of coty’s exclamation. he thought he could recall madonna’s rescue me playing the moment he saw terry for the first time, but it was probably more likely to be some single off alice in chains’s second album—saul wanted to dance and have a good time at parties, not listen to downbeat flannel-clad guys with dirty hair whine about roosters or whatever—or that stupid spin doctors song he hated back then. it was a rather boring, typical cross-campus college party, if he remembered correctly.

it didn’t turn out to be a typical night, because that was where saul met his first wife. that was the party where he fell in love, instantly and intensely. tucked into the corner of the room, he had noticed the boy first. sharp-jawed with even sharper cheekbones, pretty lips, square shoulders. a clark kent-type, all corn-fed and from the accent he was able to briefly hear from across the room, an all-american country boy. grade a beef was what saul had commented to his friends as they observed him; jeremiah, sung-min, kenny, and dina either laughed behind their hands or rolled their eyes at his ribaldry as they always did.

they had all known saul for years; jeremiah had been his freshman year roommate and the rest he accumulated through various classes and parties he had attended throughout the previous semesters, so they were used to his bullshit. they found his antics funny, if they didn’t participate themselves, and when they didn’t, saul had a whole pantheon of other friends and acquaintances to flit to, suiting whichever need he had for the night. saul had been a restless man. when he found someone in a crowd that caught his eye, he had to meet them, and even if they hadn’t returned the attraction, he never left an interaction with a stranger upset or downtrodden.

that was why, when luke (as he later found out the name of him) moved to the side and revealed a smaller body behind him, his friends all exchanged looks and laughter. that lowenstein girl. dina told him how they were practically a barnard campus legend. unattainable, incredibly beautiful and even more aloof. anyone that tried to get close either got scared off by their calculating stare or their laconic responses. they had looked out of place in the environment, and dina remarked she was surprised they had even come to a party at all—allegedly, her sophomore year roommate’s boyfriend’s roommate tried to ask them to a sigma phi epsilon party and they gave him a blank look, mumbled something about zaha hadid, and took off in the other direction. again, though, allegedly.

well, there were plenty of rumors about saul around columbia, and only half of them were true.

okay, most of them.

so, yeah, he dated a lot. hooked up was a more accurate term, but not as polite. he basically got off the train from bridgeport and set off to enjoy everything he didn’t have access to in his little rich boy hometown. there were drugs and alcohol in connecticut, but it was different there. his peers snorted coke to get through country club clam bakes with their parents and stole their mom’s xanax pills to sell to public school kids. they brazenly drank from flasks on the golf course or ordered a scotch and soda at the charity gala bar, a dare in their eyes to the bartender to even think about telling their daddy because that would just get them fired, instead of filling up water bottles with vodka or hiding bottles of zima under their beds, deathly afraid to get caught. the rich kids saul grew up with were begging for their parents to catch them, but even when they did get caught, their parents didn't care as long as they didn't embarrass the family.

new york city and bridgeport might as well have been worlds away instead of just an hour. saul had to get a fake id to enter clubs in manhattan instead of just telling the doorman his last name and having them unclip the rope with an apology for the holdup. it was a foreign land where it wasn’t completely lawless, but the societal laws they had were the opposite of new england’s. his name wouldn’t open doors (often) anymore, but he could do ecstasy in a bathroom with a total stranger and make out with another guy in public without fear of something bad happening to him, as long as he stayed in the right neighborhood and didn’t enter the wrong sort of bar.

his name didn’t open doors, and he didn’t have to worry about tarnishing his family name. there was no worry that mrs. garvey down the street would tell his grandfather that she saw saul and his little friend aharon kissing on the porch. there was no fear that he’d get too drunk at the country club’s casino night and cause the other members to groan about they should’ve never let those weissbergs join the club. he could do whatever he pleased, as long as he kept his grades up. take some girl on a date, take some guy in an alleyway behind palladium, take some mystery pill and see what happened. then sleep between classes, spend hours in the library to catch up on days worth of studying, write up a paper on eisenstadt v. baird, then head back to the dorm for a nap, an episode of the phil donahue show, and then take another girl out…

it was a routine that he followed rather faithfully, and so what, he got bored easily! the world was his fucking oyster and he didn’t want to be tied down for more than a few weeks at a time. he wanted to sample everything in college because adulthood was looming darkly over him, a summit he was supposed to reach some day soon and finally be regarded as a man in the gentiles’ society. that meant a career, a wife, a family. no more fun. no more experimenting. a time to think about bringing shame on his family’s name again, but this time it would be his own family. his children, his wife, his fuckin’ dog and white picket fence or whatever bullshit he was supposed to get once he stepped over the threshold of maturity. all that boring stuff he heard his older cousins complain about, advising him to fuck as much as he could before he had some old ball-and-chain stuck at home.

he had to enjoy it while he could, so he did what he wanted and didn’t mind a slap across the face from an angry ex-girlfriend or a wistful look of longing from some beta zeta tau boy that didn’t want his brothers to know he was gay. he thought he fell in love often, then fell out of it just as easily, but that was a boyish notion. he didn’t know truly what love was until that snowy spring night.

the corn-fed guy moved to reveal the lowenstein girl, and suddenly it was like the lights in the theater dimmed and there was a spotlight shining down from nowhere on her. just like the movies, all the noise faded out—not the typical swell of classical music like in a film, he recalled it was horrifyingly hey ladies by the beastie boys—and everyone else in the room disappeared. her face was doll-like underneath her pall of soft, black hair and her stark paleness made her eyes shine all the more. she was short, made even smaller by the taller men around her and the little corner she tucked herself into might as well have stolen her away. her face wore an impassable expression, but their nails tapping against their cup indicated some anxiety.

well, if there was anything saul was good at, it was coaxing a wallflower out of their shell!

it hadn’t been a challenge or a dare by his friends, in fact sung-min told him to forget all about her and end the night with an easier target, but there was nothing that could’ve stopped him then. he bid his friends adieu with an overconfident raise of his brows and crossed the room, dodging college students making out on couches and trash littered on the floor as he made his way towards his fate. like with everyone and everything, especially since he arrived to columbia, he greeted her with an easy, self-assured smile and some opening line he couldn’t remember anymore.

he had grown into his body within the last few years, no longer one of the shortest kids in class and skinny as a rail; his shoulders had broadened, his chest sturdier, and he was finally an inch taller than levi—something his fraternal twin lorded over him since the fifth grade when he hit puberty and saul didn’t, but levi would forever remind him that he’d always be four minutes older and a last minute growth spurt could never change that. his body now matched his ego, so even if this beautiful, aloof student gave him the brush off, it wouldn’t crush his confidence. or maybe it would have, since he thought he had never seen such a beautiful person before, and he wanted to make her laugh more than he wanted his law degree.

and somehow, in his burberry sweater and gucci loafers, he got the girl that didn’t talk to anyone to talk to him. he was the envy of every man on the cu campus, and probably the envy of most women on the barnard campus, too. she smiled because he struggled to hear her over the crowd noise and rolled her eyes at him in a way that suggested she was entertained, not offended, when he kept calling her by the wrong name.

“it’s ketziya.”

“okay, katie, i’m saul. saul weissberg.”

“no, ketziya. ket-zi-ya.”

“yeah, katie. that’s what i said.”

even after she corrected him for the final time and he understood he was mishearing her name, he called her katie because it was their own private joke now and it felt special to call her by a sobriquet that no one else used before. like he had made a claim, in that smoky house on w. 114th street: you’re my katie, and fuck anyone that tries to take you away from me now.

they weren’t his katie now, though. they weren’t even terry. they were ketziya, looking at him with some unreadable expression, acting as if he had intruded upon their dinner.

“uh-huh.” saul replied, unconvinced. he doubted the building simply caught their eye, the exact restaurant where saul chose to dine that night, and just pulled them in by some unstoppable, invisible force. again, terry was a purposeful person. this wasn’t running into each other at the bank or passing by each other in the aisles of the grocery store. terry had followed him for some reason, seemingly spending their whole day just observing saul. “well, once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is…” he trailed off with a shrug, brows raising expectantly. 

my attention bothers you, why?

his temper flared. “because you haven’t given a shit about what i do with my life for the last twenty-five years and now you’re suddenly everywhere?” his composure slipped, his fist flexing on top of the table. he breathed deeply and pressed his lips together in order to calm himself—the last thing he needed was it getting around town that saul e. weissberg, esquire yelled at women in public. deacon edwards would surely have a field day with that one. he unfurled his fist and laid his hand flat on the tablecloth. “i just don’t understand why you care now.” besides their shared son, they had lived completely separate for twenty-five years. their lives had seldom intersected beyond micah’s school events or birthday parties or an occasional high holiday spent together for their son's sake. terry had no interest in what saul did with his time back in manhattan, so why were they so enthralled with his daily itinerary today?

any tenuous grasp he held on his composure snapped once again. what a talent they had for turning it all on saul! everything was always his fault, wasn’t it? never could say the right thing, never could make up for his shortcomings. it was a wonder why they were bothering with him at all, following him around like an amateur spy. “don’t you do that.” he warned, nostrils flaring. “don’t act like i’m being crazy or unreasonable.” if anything, he thought his reaction to his ex-wife stalking him was quite understated.

bringing his hands up to his head, he massaged his temples and screwed his eyes shut before he spoke again and snapped his eyes back open, “what is it exactly that you want, ketziya?” because he couldn’t believe there wasn’t some ulterior motive with them, or that this was all some happy accident. if not for their earlier encounter at the courthouse, if this had been the first time he saw terry all day, he might’ve sent over a drink or stopped by to say hello. he would’ve played polite like he had been bred to do, wished terry a nice night, and gone home without a raging fucking headache. “because i’m going to be leaving soon and if i see you outside of my house at one am tonight, i’m calling the cops.”

Terry hadn’t been startled. They’d sensed him sensing them, and, anyway, it was not as if they had made any concentrated effort to obscure their presence, no more than they were used to. He sat on the chair opposite her, drawing the attention of an aging couple sitting next to them as he did, and her fingers tightened around the stem of her wine glass as she contemplated his form, closer, now. 

Ketziya. Their real name, typically reserved for close friends and family, had always sounded so strange in his tongue. For a moment, Terry had contemplated using the same moniker they’d reserved for him when he was being obtuse—Saul Wiseguy—but decided against it. “Weissberg,” they said instead, taking a sip of their drink, allowing themselves to meet his gaze. They leaned back in their seat, cradling the drink in their hand, but found themselves perturbed by the question.

“You make it sounds like I have a nefarious agenda, Saul. I didn’t plan it,” they began, but only as a half-defense, not quite making a formal denial. “There hasn’t been a lot to do while I’m waiting for the fall semester to start anyway.” A lift of their shoulders, projecting nonchalance. “The building caught my interest, then you arrived, and I lost focus.”

Terry swirled the red in their glass, watching the dark liquid catch the light from the fixtures above them. Hadn’t that been where everything began? Of Ketziya Lowenstein turning up in some strange place, finding Saul Weissberg there, and then leaving with him? They let themselves sit in the memory—they did that more often these days, they found—for a little while. To drown in the sensory overwhelm, of garishly decorated red cups, bright lights, loud 90s music, stilted laughter, and overbearing young men and women grazing their arm and professing something about them being their first love, first heartbreak, and first regret, and whatnot, but all Ketziya was doing was standing in a corner with Luke, tapping their fingers rapidly against their cup, and counting down the days until their parents would watch them graduate.

Beloved Ketziya, first to attend college, first to graduate, first to leave home.

In truth, they’d wanted to leave. To ditch the party. To walk back to the residential halls with their only friend. To begin packing up what little they’d brought from their dorm room in preparation for moving out day. And, finally, to return to their second-floor apartment in Harlem, flanked between two other units of their tenement building, and which had sat just below their father’s butcher shop, the only place in the world where chaos made sense. 

Then there Saul was, sauntering across the room, tall and lanky and carrying a smile that was purported by the CU-Barnard gossip mill to have launched a thousand heartbreaks. They’d held the sleeve of Luke’s shirt but he’d walked away, instead, leaving Ketziya alone with this marvelous idiot of a man who’d called her by the wrong name and pushed a stray curl back into place as a stand in for an apology. His touch came abruptly and he’d stood too close, and the world was reduced to his blue eyes—solid and piercing—to his honeyed words, to the gap between them. That was one of the first few things they’d been taught: that it was not the light that created the space but the shadows cast against it. Only then did the space begin to transform, to move, to bring the objects comprising the space into focus. Everything existed in relation to everything else.

Even now, or especially now, she couldn’t remember who closed the gap first. Only that against the dark, there was movement, of a body orienting itself to the presence of another, colliding into each other. It was especially powerful to understand the world like this dialogue of contrasts: his thousand-times-over rehearsed movements against her tentative touches, his lightness against her severity, his evening stubble against her delicate skin, his practiced ease and her intense determination to make it work. That first kiss, too, had been a curious permutation of friction, heat, and light. Electric. An energy that she could control.

They wanted to remember something else, some other memory to better paint the picture of them in those early years. Maybe snippets of early conversation where their interests might have collided, where their worlds might have intersected. If they tried hard enough, they could picture vignettes. A memory of a memory. Swaying together as the train rattled into their station on 116th and Broadway. Kissing in library bathrooms scrawled with bad poetry and housing advertisements and political testimonies. Standing in the footsteps of Barnard Hall and watching his figure make the quick, hundred-foot trek from his building to hers. Taking a carriage ride through Central Park past midnight. Of crossing the boundary of 96th Street, past the elegant East Side of Manhattan, and towards the older tenements and storefronts with their loud signs, and introducing a Weissberg to their butcher father, who’d held the tightest of smiles and bid them some nice words before sharpening his chalef knife against the whetstone. 

They were petty comforts. Not even memories, really, but disparate pieces of images pulled out to assign meaning to the decades of resentment and pain and hurt and anger that came next. Because the truth of it was the next clear thing had been Micah, whose presence redefined their world, and the invocation of which promptly put an end to their recollections. 

Reality pulled itself back—to the restaurant, their pasta dish, the silverware, the wine, the presence of him. “My attention bothers you,” Terry said, simply, bringing again the glass to their lips. The weight of the memories slowly lifted with each sip, replaced by the coldness brought by the stern gaze of this man in front of her, whom they could not read at all, or maybe always could. “Why?” And after all this time? They asked, curious, but also in challenge. 

In truth, it was almost compelling to see Saul like this, with his fire contained, so at odds with the demeanor by which he’d moved through the world. Throughout the day he’d appear to almost enjoy wearing that mask of courtesy and professionalism and being the most agreeable person in the room. Yet here he was, jaw set, muscles taut, lips pressed in a thin, downward line, and a voice dripping with displeasure.

Another study in contrasts, then, because how was this man the Saul they knew, thirty decades ago—hell, three minutes ago? 

A muscle in their cheek twitched, intermittently, almost betraying the chuckle threatening to puncture through their lips. The false nostalgia of their encounter a month ago was gone. Now laid only him, older, more gaunt, and with buttons decidedly easier to press. “I’ve largely kept to myself. Fuck, Saul, I’m not trying to intimidate you.” With their free hand, they gestured towards him, the whole of him, the shape of him, and sighed. “You’re the one who keeps announcing their presence today.” A mild accusation, though not an entirely false one, threatening again to touch an indelicate truth. Terry was very much content to slither through the shadows. Only Saul had been daring—perhaps foolish—enough to bring them into the light.