Dancing with Danger

Many years ago I spent several months in Israel where I got kind of friendly with what I can only describe as the burliest ballet dancer I'd ever seen. He just didn't look right - barrel-shaped on skinny legs. He was camp but straight and was interested in me. A Moroccan Jew he had dark looks, curly hair - all over his body. I think I hung around with him for a day in total, he'd do pirouettes and more pirouettes until I was bloody sick of watching him do pirouettes, he and those pirouettes just didn't do it for me. We spent the evening lying on his oriental rug, him gazing into my eyes and me gazing into his hairy nostrils. I made my excuses and left, though it was difficult as he was holding onto my leg. He had an unusual Hebrew name, of which I cannot remember, so let's call him Moishe. Hebrew or Yiddish? Oh well, it matters not for this tale.

I returned to the youth hostel, a group of us smelly losers had a good night's singing, playing guitars and tapping our knees with an assortment of cutlery. I told my friends about this ballet dancer, told them his name and one of my friends Jed, an American, yelled out "Oh no! Not Moishe, you've got to avoid him, he's dangerous, man!". Remember his name wasn't Moishe, it was more unusual. To narrow down all Moishes I asked him to be more specific. Yes, he was Moroccan, and no, he wasn't sure if this guy in question was a ballet dancer, yes, he was dark with curly hair. Did this narrow the criteria down enough to confirm that this was the man? Anyway what I wanted to know was why this person was so dangerous. "He hit a sleeping man with a rock". He continued, "A big rock, more like a boulder, and on his head". I was shocked to the core. The questions came tumbling forth, why, what, where, when, who and why wasn't he in prison? It transpired that this guy was mentally ill and had been in a psychiatric unit for a while but was now at large in the community. The fact that I'd been in the company of a pirouetting, leg-grabbing barrel-shaped creep, I just did what was natural and typical of me, put 2 and 2 together and came to the conclusion that I'd just been sipping mint tea with a crazed killer. Protecting my head with a pillow that night, I didn't sleep easy.

The next morning, I was tucking into a fried egg and one slice of really good bread, when there was a knock on the hostel door. One of the hostelers went to see who it was. I was busily chewing the crust when I heard my name called "Sonia! It's Moishe". I shot up, told everyone I wasn't there, and hid somewhere in the hostel, perhaps under my bed, I can't remember. A while later the chap who'd gone to the door whispered it was okay for me to come out, Moishe had got sick of waiting.

The same thing happened the next morning, and the following. I was getting tired of being in hiding. In the streets I would be nervously looking over my shoulder all the time, thinking Moishe was pirouetting up to me with a large boulder in his raised hands. This situation had to stop and the solution was quite simple - Jed the American, had met this crazed freak, knew what he looked like. But Moishe didn't show the next morning, or the morning after that. I still didn't feel safe, I still believed he would come looking for me having spurned his advances.

A few weeks later when it had all become a distant memory, Jed was in the hostel's courtyard with a strange looking man, ratty-haired and basically in rags - he also smelled. As I walked past, Jed got up and followed me into the kitchen. "That's Moishe - the rock man", he grinned sadistically at me. I was so relieved all of a sudden, so I'd mixed the dancer up with that stinky tramp sitting in the courtyard only a couple of metres away from me. I drew up a seat and joined them for Turkish coffee.