“Place the moon at his eyes and her whiteness shall devour the false sights the deceiver has placed there.
Place a swarm of bees at his ears. Bees love truth and will destroy the deceiver’s lies.
Place salt in his mouth lest the deceiver attempt to delight him with the taste of honey, or disgust him with the taste of ashes.
Nail his hand with an iron nail so that he shall not raise it to do the deceiver’s bidding.
Place his heart in a secret place so that all his desires shall be his own and the deceiver shall find no hold there.”
-Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell
Saturday: Saturn’s Day
Four times a year, the reclusive, universally beloved DJ Offer Nissim comes out of hermitage for a blowout show, a kind of trashpop dance rave which swallows up an entire country’s gay community. For no reason I can explain, everybody you know goes: Straights and gays, Jews and Arabs, girlies and boys. But for gay men, he’s sacrosanct, beyond reproach. Seemingly every man I have slept with attends his shows with a religious fervor, stripping their clothes off to trashy dance music in fits of quantum ecstasy. They lovingly refer to him as “Ofra.”
As reported here previously, I attended my first Ofra last September, for Rosh Hashanah. It was a crash through the event horizon, an MDMA twister that ripped my house off its foundations, fired me over the rainbow, and brought me thundering down to oblivion. I went from a shy nobody to a Dionysian god to a wasted whore, all within a matter of hours.
That time, I’d double and triple-dipped, let myself lose control with nobody and nothing to anchor me, and betrayed the tenants of my recovery. I also had a really fucking fabulous time: I kissed about 300 beauties, danced like a lunatic, and toasted Venus as the sun set over paradise. But the next morning, parched for serotonin, I had to beg my friends, and my gods, for forgiveness. Am I a whore? Did I let myself get used?
Today would be the return. It made complete sense to me that this could be the only arena for me to get closure on the last year; that only among thousands of shimmering, burning bodies could I wrangle my selves together, and either embrace or forsake them, at the point where the mirrors reflect each other, and all incarnations rebound endlessly into past and future.
Last year, as the gates blasted open and the vast public park began to fill up, I texted my friends in a panic. I felt smaller and more insignificant than ever — worse than a tourist, just a novelty, or a speck. Nobody had my back. But something was different this time. I kept thinking about the final scene in Brideshead Revisited, that candle left burning in the sanctuary. So many times these last few years, I’ve returned to old homes and haunts, only to feel nothing, to remember nothing. Another purge, reboot, reinvention. This time, some continuity of selfhood remained, a sense of budding acceptance nourished the night before. I was OK. I had my back. I would be OK.
OK, enough of the inward processing. After hours of openers, Ofra emerged, like the hierophant greeting his acolytes. Cut to the three-minute mark in the above video to see the maestro, the genius, the sublime faggot, lording over legions of self-serious muscle queens in his “I HEART NY” T-shirt. I laughed in genuine awe and joy; this whole thing was so lame to be fabulous, so lowbrow to be immediately accessible, the opposite of all the difficult, punishing music I’d survived in New York City. Nobody had to be cool here — but they could still be hot.
I saw some friends, greeted them, and kept moving, through masses of chiseled, golden gods, circuit queens and silly fags and best friends and true lovers. I walked alone, my thoughts still in a cyclotronic whir, the music barely yet occurring to me.
I kept cruising around, hoping to settle in and start dancing. And then, from all corners, I collided with them: past lovers, some from last year and some from a week ago. They were with their real friends and beloveds, committed to the operas of their own lives. Some I avoided, some I approached. There was Amit, whom you remember from Part I, along with his two beautiful boyfriends. Bastards. Like the rest, they were friendly, but not necessarily inviting. I felt appraised and instantly forgotten, an old novelty, an orphan nobody wanted.
Not the orphan mishegas again. I let myself concede to abject insecurity and then forced myself to wake up. Really: who cares? I have real friends, who esteem me as divine, even if I’d run continents away. It didn’t matter if I fit here, or anywhere: in New York or Tel Aviv, or even in Gay Society. If this is it, then let this be my last hurrah. Finally, “Why am I me?” morphed into Ashlee Simpson’s “I Am Me,'“ less an accusation and more like an invitation, a sober arrival.
I bought myself a savagely overpriced gin & tonic and decided to get into it. Dana International, the trans pop star and Eurovision 1998 champion, was set to take the stage. And I was ready to fag out. I found some piece of dirt and staked it as my spot to dance.
Who knows how much time elapsed before I saw him, but there he was: a smoking hot, short-king Arab Superman. He looked right back at me. As our eyes locked, I felt a lurid, near-nauseating wave of rabid desire, burning over me like a radiator. This is true, I thought to myself. Compared to all the others I’d kissed, here, last time, the ones I never really wanted but thought I was supposed to say yes to, I knew this was different. I wanted him.
The approach was shy at first, as I danced into his orbit. The sun was nearly down, now. If he wasn’t into it, it would be fine, and I would just get out of there, all the braver. But he was into it. He didn’t let go of me for the rest of the night, nor for the next 24 hours.
At some point in the blurry hours to follow, I saw Artium, the stacked, disinterested Russian, whom you remember from Part II. I hugged him, and with a rush of satisfactory revenge, returned to the embrace of my new paramour. Artium was kind to me not so long ago, and served a great karmic purpose in my life. But contrary to the guilt fascism I was raised with, we don’t owe each other anything. I could set him free and go be with someone who actually wants me right now.
There had been one other from last year — Adir, the focus of my borderline obsession for months. A small part of me had hoped to see him tonight, had prayed that he could pass judgment and finish me once and for all. But I was spared, by the angel Temperance, the same force which had kept me safe, tonight and the night before, holding me back from the old means of annihilation. For once in my life, I’d chosen discretion, and in return, I’d received protection.
We shared some substances, but just enough to sweeten what was already ripe. The concert ended, and with it one of the best days of my life. I left with him, hand in hand, knowing that I could trust him.

Even in writing these diaries, I phase through dissociative and co-dependent states. I wonder if change is possible, or if all of life is elliptical. And yet, I know something crossed over, and I will be damned if I don’t laminate every victory I claim on the dance floor. Not just the endless deaths and rebirths, but the integrations, the subtle restorations, the chances at forgiveness, the possibility of a kiss goodnight. It was worth it, and it isn’t always.
I live for these diaries❣️