A second picture from my lunch walk series that I started a week ago. I haven’t made a set yet, ’cause there are only two pics so far. Haven’t taken any lunch walk photos this week, which will have to be remedied soon. Today’s weather was brilliant and warm — around 20C! (68F!) — but I took lunch hour to attend a bargaining unit meeting a short walk away and didn’t take my bag, or my camera. I felt a bit lost without the camera.
* * * * * * * * *
Whenever I see the notice ‘Post No Bills’, I think of my friend Eden Aminoffe, from Israel. I lost touch with him after he visited me in Edinburgh and I hope he’s alright. I wonder because the last time I was able to reach him, Eden was still completing his required military service, something he’d been avoiding by travelling as far away as he could. Our paths crossed in Queensland, Australia, which is about as far away as an Israeli can run from conscription and a home life which included Orthodox (with-a-capital-O) parents. After hearing from him what that meant, I know I’d probably run away, too.
Both of us were working under the table, but it was much more obvious that Eden was illegal because Australia and Israel had no reciprocal agreements for working holidays, while it was common knowledge that Canadians could obtain working holiday visas. I didn’t have one, but it was assumed I did.
Eden and I were both in the same boat regarding money — we were skint, flat broke, didn’t have any. If we wanted to keep travelling we had to work illegally, or get out. (Possibly both, by getting deported.) We had to be careful, and careful with money. So we worked out this arrangement where we would pay for one bed in a hostel by working and sleeping at different times. When Eden was filling out employment applications, he gave the number of our hostel and I would, as “Eden”, pick up his messages for him. Eden would sneak into the hostel at odd hours and sneak back out again when the coast was clear. I can’t remember how long we kept up this charade, but I don’t think it was for more than a month or so because I found a way to live even more cheaply: commune-style, in a tent near the beach.
Eden continued to board at the hostel but we still spent a great deal of time together while trying to stay under the immigration radar. We were so young and naive, both of us fairly fresh from a conservative upbringing. We had NO IDEA what we were doing. We went to our first rave together and even secured some, er, rave materials beforehand. Not five minutes in the club Eden turned to me.
“Do you feel anything?”
“No. Do you feel anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Did we just buy aspirin?”
To give you some idea of how clueless I was at the time, the thought never even crossed my mind that Eden might be gay. It’s not that it would matter either way, it was more the fact that we were always together and the subject never came up. I guess we were too busy with more pressing matters like trying not to get deported and how quickly we could save up to go to New Zealand. I didn’t find out until about a year and a half later, when I was living in Edinburgh and Eden was back in Israel.
I was half asleep sitting on a bus on my way to a mindnumbingly dull job doing data entry at the Royal Bank of Scotland, and I’d picked up a letter from Eden as I was going out the door. In his dramatically expressive way (how could I not know he was gay?), Eden had written in big, bold letters a few words on each page. He always wrote in big letters when he was excited.
I HAVE SOME
*page flip*
BIG NEWS FOR
*page flip*
YOU, GAIL, I AM
*flip!*
F$%*ING GAY!!
*flip!* (loud page turn)
???
*flip*flip* (now people on the bus around me are craning their necks to read)
I AM COMING TO VISIT YOU!
Eden always had a way of spicing up my often colourless days at the bank by writing such letters for me to read on the bus, but this one was particularly dramatic. He told me the part he was dreading was telling his father he was gay. Eden told me the story later in person, and I can tell you that no matter how you may feel about homosexuality, a person would not bring such wrath upon himself willingly if he didn’t have absolute conviction in its truth.
Eden went to the Reading Music Festival before coming to visit, and by the time he arrived in Edinburgh he had a thousand and one questions for me because his English was out of practice. In Australia I was his de facto English teacher only by proximity, and I knew he’d have some trouble understanding the Scots. So where did he visit next? The Fringe Festival…
I think Eden’s eyes were permanently widened after experiencing the Jim Rose Circus. I had to work that day, but came home to Eden trying to demonstrate how a man swung a lawn mower around by a cable attached to his testicles. English simply lacks the words to properly describe this.
After days of attempting to break down English (Scottish, really) into simple phrases for Eden, we were walking down the street and he pointed to a sign.
Whew, I thought. Something easy this time.
“What does ‘Post No Bills’ mean?” Eden asked.
We stopped. I burst out laughing. I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Is it funny?” Eden prompted, wanting in on the joke. “Tell me! What does it mean?”
I could barely breathe, so I pushed out the words one gasp at a time.
“I… don’t… know!”
Eden was totally confused by this, but I really didn’t know. I never considered it. Here I was, the native English speaker, and I had no idea what it meant because all I could think of was “post” meaning “mail” and “bills” meaning what the Brits call “notes”. After living in Australia and learning Queen’s English the hard way (by being made fun of) and then living in Scotland, I’d been mixing up all the vernaculars and cultural references in my head and ended up with a sentence I’d seen a million times but couldn’t make heads or tails of at all!
Eden, my friend. In the name of all that is good and true, I hope you’re still alive. Please Google your name so you can find me again and I can tell you what “Post No Bills” means. I promise I’ll even come to Tel Aviv or wherever you are and tell you in person.
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