“This is something that is never ever funny. How can you laugh at this? How?!” Immediately I fight like hell to find something to take me out of this moment; the gaunt ceiling, the bunny-poop covered floors, the British flat mate in tighty whiteys, anything to keep me from looking into those endless blue eyes. Her anger filling up the inside of her eyes like captive ocean water.

“No, no, Maya, we’re not laughing at what happened, we’re laughing at the situation, this guy, this douche bag….the context…” Danya blurts out in between puffs of her Camel Wides. The heavy smoke pushes its way into the crowded room, finding its way inside her prizewinning cleavage.  My travel partner smuggled her favorite smokes to Israel inside the lining of her suitcase like Grade A heroin. Covered in star tattoos, piercings, and a Malibu tan, Danya’s sexuality and aggressivness flowed together like rain and no Israeli was immune to it. She had lived nine lives. I felt blessed she had found me in the middle of her tenth. My stomach nerves awoke to the present as I caught a glimpse of Danya’s dark gums.

Shit, shit Danya don’t smile, don’t you smile too….we’re assholes. This isn’t funny. The more awkward it gets the more utterly impossible it is not to smile. Shit.

Maya untangles herself from our web a limbs, which a few moments earlier was a series of fabulous chick flick moments. She hovered right above us – a million miles away.

“How can you laugh right now? I don’t understand.”

Maya’s question had been one I’d been asking myself since landing on this very holy, very epic, very very very funny land. I’d never met a group of people who were as prone or as insistent on laughter being a part of every conversation.

“Read the torah in Hebrew. Now that’s comedy.”
“Jesus was a lazy Jew.”
“What kind of stuff did you do in the Army…”
“…We killed Arab babies”

It wasn’t as simple as “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” but moreso, that you should do both and, when the situation calls for it, at the same time. Like most things in life, our tears should come from both ends. As an outsider it was sometimes hard to gauge where the line was and where my place was in crossing it.

“Can I make the Nazi joke?”
Should I? I’m the silly, smartass, “Jewish” girl back at home. Always the first one to crack a joke, especially at my own expense, but here I was beginning to feel a little behind.

And this is how it went w/ my Maya, the coolest gift Israel gave me and the funniest girl I’d ever met (at least when I could keep up with her). Like most people I fall love with, upon first impression she left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t as simple as too salty or too sweet but like some weird underground spice I’d never even heard of. In between her strict diet of Parliament Lights, Guinness beer, and french fries, Maya would feed me with stories of her life growing up on a Kibbutz, her time training Commanders in the IDF, and her current life where she was new to both Tel Aviv and law school.  Maya didn’t have dreams. She had plans and it was only a matter time….  The coolest thing about Maya was how serious, how insanely serious she was about being funny.

Suddenly, the Brit in his undies turned off the “Let’s Get It On” track he’d handpicked moments earlier as the soundtrack for our love fest. He was facing the doorway now, thinking of a way he could leave his own room.

“All right, then, tea anyone?” he was already halfway in the kitchen.

Still trying to avoid Maya’s Baby Blues, I reached for a bottle of generic lotion and eagerly applied it to my sun whipped skin. Since returning from the southern beaches of Eilat a few days earlier, I was existing on a steady cycle of Eat, Drink, Smoke, Moisturize, and repeat. Like everything else in Israel, nothing in moderation. Eat until hummus comes out of your eyeballs, smoke till you can’t talk, bake in the sun until way after you should and fall in love, hard and rough and over and over again. Was this what it was to be Israeli? Or was I just another silly American who masked cultural immersion in mindless consumption? Either way, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt more fulfilled.

As the lotion ran out of skin to soak, I took a deep breath and opened my big mouth:

“Uh Maya, I’m so sorry we- didn’t know, uh the things is a joke not the tractor terrorist, no that’s not a joke – but the guy, this guy who was going on about crocs, he’s using a terrorist act to market shoes, it’s so sick it’s funny, ya know?

“I’m so sorry Maya.” I said, as if I ate her last french fry, like it’s not something that you apologize for, it’s something you just don’t do in the first place.

“I’m just kidding, you freaks!” she said, giggling and falling all over us. We erupted into laughter not because it was funny but out of sheer relief that we didn’t piss off another Israeli - our host, our tour guide, our friend, our Maya (though she was kind of everyone’s Maya).

“You guys fall for it every time!” Victory on both sides and the tickle fest continued as the Brit brought in teatime.

Before even getting on the plane, I promised myself I wouldn’t go through this trip perpetuating the stereotype that young liberally educated American’s think America just sucks. That Americans are boring, stupid, and way too serious - the typical American Jew that moves to Israel because they just “can’t handle being American” anymore…but I couldn’t seem to shake this feeling that Israeli’s seem to be having much more fun than us. They talked more simply because they had much more to say. At twenty-four, their lives seemed to contain a lot more living than mine. Their connection to themselves, their land and especially each other was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Strangers became best friends on a bus ride from one side of town to the other. Best friends were like blood and to be a solider, of any kind, was as sacred as any religious act.  Sure, our generation “fucked Bush” together but we didn’t line up for buzz cuts. We lined up for Pinkberry.

“When are you guys going to learn? I’m never serious!”

Soon I thought to myself, my stomach nerves can’t handle much more of this. Pillowed inside Danya’s cleavage, I turned to give Maya a good old-fashioned American wedgie and suddenly Marvin Gaye made his second appearance of the evening.