All the different subcultures and the millions of opinions had formed a crude body politic. The parts did not quite reject each other; the thick stitching and livid joinings had healed over into just skin.  We could lurch around, drink water from the stream, appreciate the flowers, grunting and cooing at them.

We had lactating breasts for the growing population, and the genitals of both sexes; we used birth control and we didn’t.

And we watched the news.

Then suddenly a man appeared at my bedside in the middle of the night.  He restrained me in iron cuffs.  And all night, he ran his fingers over me, searching out the lines between parties, between races.

I had always been conflicted, of course, but I could function.  I had many voices in my head, but they were whispers; the overriding voice was me.  And I could control my limbs, my movements, with pretty good precision, passing laws intended to help.

But his fingers—it was uncanny the way he knew where to press.  As if I had scurvy, my old scars opened… 

The cognitive dissonance I’d always lived with began to scream.  Two voices screaming incessantly, clawing at each other.  Right there on the bed, I started to hemorrhage.  And separate.  There is my hand, bleeding from the wrist into the blanket.  To move it now would take telekinesis.

I can’t unite the voices anymore.  The man is kneeling at my bed again, his fingertips searching.  Mercifully I’m going away.  I hate him, my enemy, my destroyer.  With my last bit of consciousness, last bit of will, I vote for him.

DAVID:  Hath not a Jew hands?  And nice ones? Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Kafka, especially his left…

ZACH:  Let’s not forget the Jews pickpocketing Black artists…

DAVID:  The Jews joining hands with Black activists across the South…

ZACH:  The Hasidic slumlords turning the water off…

DAVID:  Listen, man:  I’m not denying there are cases.  But for every one like that, I’ll give you ten who are doing the opposite.  I’ll show you ten Jewish social workers and fighters for affordable housing.

ZACH:  And most of all:  the Jews expelling the Palestinians, bombing civilians, starving them…

DAVID:  Ah, now we get to it…

Robin, half-Jewish, enters.

ROBIN:  You know what you two have in common?

BOTH:  What?

ROBIN (to Zach):  Your great-grandfather witnessed the death of his great-grandfather.  In Kishinev, in 1903.  Dead child, blood libel, crowd in a frenzy.  Your great-grandfather, Gavril Badoni, was there in the courtyard when Chaim Rosenfeld was stabbed by his neighbor. 

ZACH:  But he wasn’t in on the killing?

ROBIN:  No, he didn’t do any killing during those two days.

ZACH:  Thank God.

ROBIN:  And he also didn’t help the Jews.

She leaves.  Silence.

ZACH:  Well, you can never know what you’d do in a situation till it actually happens…

Silence.

ZACH:  I’m sorry.  The blood libel is stupid.  You wonder how people could believe something like that…

Silence.

ZACH:  But you have to admit, you grow up in a culture that teaches it’s okay to fuck goyim over for money.  It passes to you in your mother’s milk.

DAVID:  I’m not trying to be a wise-ass, but I was bottle-fed.  My mother had me later in life…

ZACH:  In your father’s whispered songs to you, dancing you around on his shoulder.  At the dinner table:  Be clever, and harden your heart.  God is good with it.  Look at all the examples of deception in the Bible…

DAVID:  You believe this? 

A vision of a thousand Jews as Shylock.

Another vision of a thousand Jews as Netanyahu.

DAVID:  I—

ZACH:  But it’s not about you!  It’s about your people!  I could think you’re great.  That’s not the point.

DAVID:  No?  My great-grandfather was killed by someone he’d known for decades; as the knife came toward him, he thought, ‘Yup, Mitya is a lefty.’

Zach imagines this.

DAVID:  So back to me:  when I was born, they planted a tree for me in Ukraine.  And under that tree they buried my foreskin. (Pause.)  And now it’s missing.

ZACH:  How do you know?

DAVID:  I just know.

Silence.  Finally Zach brings out a transparent refrigerated pouch, holds it tightly on the table.

ZACH:  Did it look something like this?

DAVID:  Yes!  My flesh!  Why did you take it?!

Silence.

DAVID:  I gave that to God, you asshole, not to you!

ZACH:  Stop the bombing, let in the food trucks, put all your influence behind a Palestinian state.  Then I’ll give it back.

DAVID:  I’m not Netanyahu!

ZACH:  Stop seeing the Palestinians as sub-human.

DAVID:  I don’t!

ZACH:  But your friends do.

DAVID (after thinking):  Yes, one or two of them probably do.  But I would bet that the majority of Jews, in Israel and around the world, want a Palestinian state. I know a Rebecca Silverman who does art with Palestinian and Jewish kids traumatized by war. We are still a mixed multitude.

Zach thinks about this.

DAVID:  You know, my foreskin fertilized the whole field around it—the whole rich carpet of nasturtium and buttercups… 

ZACH:  The field did wither as I walked away.

DAVID:  You did a bad thing.

Zach slides the pouch over.  After another moment, he rubs something out on the table with his sleeve.

ZACH:  I made a small swastika here with my fingernail.  I’m sorry.

DAVID:  Please call off the dogs.

ZACH:  I’m just one guy too.

DAVID:  Right.  At least visualize differently.

ZACH:  I’ll try.

A vision of a thousand Jews lining the street in Jerusalem as Christ passes, bent under the weight of the cross, surrounded by Roman soldiers scanning the crowd.  The Jews are looking at Christ with compassion (except for a few sadists and collaborators). They clench their fists in anger and frustration, or raise subtle fists to wish him strength.

Yes, to get from point A to point B.  From bed to bathroom to kitchen.

Yes, to pace while thinking or talking on the phone.  Drift to the window and look out, seeing nothing or something…

But more than that—to walk down the street, just walk for a few minutes, and the surprising distance that piles up behind!

Or go deep into the woods, on trails flooded thigh-high, and get to that little valley, that little stream, and stare at moss and branches, the flow over rocks.

Soon I’ll rejoin all the regular people.  Connect again to rabbits and deer.  To everything that works properly—bacteria, supercomputers, the earth’s orbit…

Wasn’t everyone grinding bone on bone and limping heavily?  You in your car at the light, isn’t your right leg damaged on the brake?  You in the crosswalk, aren’t you in pain?

I’ve never seen a limping deer, but they must exist, lying on their good side on flattened grass deep in the thicket.  It’s just getting worse.  The prognosis is not good…

I bonded with an arthritic dog, and that was a consolation.

But now I have things in common with the great walkers—the daredevils who cross whole countries, even continents, sometimes walking backwards!

I relate to the pilgrims, on the way to Compostela, through the Pyrenees and passing Pamplona.  The marchers, heroic protestors of past and present, nod to me.

I stayed connected through pain and limping and a walker and a urine bottle to my father, deceased.  Now as I do wooden laps, my self-image changes; I feel his exterior surrounding me.  I have gray hair, am wearing a yellow sweater; I’m unusually present to children I don’t have.  He/we put in our time, do our laps, get stronger, come back to ourselves.  And soon we’ll unveil a new suave simplicity—nothing to see here!