Last Friday Night, Chapter Three: Identity

(this is where the bouncer stamped me after he finally decided to let me into the club. historically fascinating...)

At half-past midnight, fueled by latkes and lasagna, the seven of us decided to go out. Like, OUT out. I did not even know it was possible to go out like this in Jerusalem on Friday night--this, the town where the buses stop running at 3 o'clock on Friday afternoons so everyone can stop running around like mad as they do in this city the rest of the week and instead go home and concentrate on their brisket and their family and resting, already.

But yes, there is an entire secular subculture that thrives downtown in the liminal space between the week and Shabbat, in the slice of time between Friday and Saturday that to many religious Jews is all part of the same day--the day of rest. We changed into go-out clothes and made our way to that steep, skinny alley just east of Rehov Yoel Solomon, the one with that totally un-kosher sushi place, and found ourselves at Nir's suggestion outside the gates of Jerusalem's Euro-style hipster dance club--Gotham. The bouncer told us sorry, they weren't open yet, and that if we wanted to dance we should come back at one but that things didn't really get started until closer to two. Okay. We'll wait...

At the bar across the alley Sam and I went up to order drinks for our table and I felt proud to put my ulpan, Hebrew language class, skills to work. Unlike last summer when I came to learn Hebrew and was in Kitah Alef, First Grade, and spent five weeks learning the alphabet and simple present-tense singular verbs now I am in Kitah Alef Ploos, First and a Half Grade, and I can say much more useful things. "Slicha, ani tzricha..." I began my conversation with the bartender. "Excuse me, I would like..." Four half-liters of the famous Israeli beer, Goldstar, and three cocktails later she returned. "One hundred seventy-five shekels," she said in English as I dug into my pocket for the money. "Where are you from in the States, anyway?" she wanted to know. "San Francisco," I replied, "is it that obvious? I've been practicing so hard in ulpan!" "It's not your Hebrew," she laughed, pointing at Sam's and my shoulders, "it's your coats. Only Americans wear North Face." It seems no matter how hard I try to assimilate, there are always things that give me away.

An hour and a half later we were back in line at Gotham, waiting to get in and start dancing. "Teudat zehut, ID please," the bouncer said when it was my turn to go in. In defiance of everything Lonely Planet always tells us to do (leave your documents locked up in the hotel safe!) I had tucked my passport into the waistband of my jeans before we left the house and now held it up for his inspection. Seeing him examine the photo and then my face, I folded it shut and began to put it away. "Rega--rak shniah. Ze lo b'seder." Wait, just a second--it's not okay. He called to another guard, this one with a gun, and put his hand back out for my passport. The second man came to examine it, shining his flashlight over the information printed inside and then into my eyes.

"What's this, now?" Kenneth wanted to know, coming up from his place at the end of our little group. "Yesh ba'aya?" he asked the men. There's a problem?

"Ken, yesh!" Yes, there is, the first bouncer answered as he waved my passport in the air. Seeing my North Face jacket, or maybe just my American passport, he switched to English. "This woman here is clearly not the person represented by this document or shown in this photograph."

"Oh, but it's really her," Kenneth replied calmly as I stood there dumbfounded. "What makes you think it's not? The document is obviously authentic and valid."

The second guard turned to me and offered an explanation. "There's no way you are as old as this passport lists your age to be. You look twenty-four, maybe twenty-five at the most but this says you are thirty three years old. It's not possible."

The people in line behind us began to complain and the bouncers, with Kenneth's not-so-gentle encouragement, let me in. For the second time in one night a stranger made an assumption about me based on my appearance--incorrectly, this time. It made me think about how the identity we create for ourselves sometimes matches the identity others attribute to us, and sometimes does not. But I didn't think about it that long--at 1:30 in the morning it was finally time to start dancing.