Circumcision and the Blood Libel

1751bloodlibel /490  words

May 28, 2018

Circumcision and the Blood Libel

By

Harley L. Sachs

An open letter to all Icelanders:

There are often people who want to tell others how they should practice their religion. A case in point is the attempt in Iceland to ban circumcision, allegedly as a cruel and unnecessary operation. The real reason is likely Icelanders’ fear of Moslems taking over their country and polluting the well-regulated gene pool.

The claim is a baby has no ability to choose whether or not to be circumcised.  But neither has a baby a choice to be baptized in the Christian faith. The parents choose.

Circumcision is a widely practiced ritual performed not only by Jews and Moslems but by other cultures where it is a puberty rite. Besides serving religious and cultural traditions, circumcision is healthy, a preventive in the transmission of AIDS and other diseases.

When it comes to banning religious rituals, turnabout is fair play. Consider the Blood Libel. The earliest incidence I know is Hugh of Lincoln, mentioned in Chaucer’s The Prioress’s Tale. Hugh of Lincoln was a child found murdered and drained of blood. The claim was he was killed by Jews so they could use his blood in the making of matzos, the unleavened bread used in the Passover Seder. Presumably Chaucer did not know that the Jewish laws of Kashrut forbid the eating of blood. Kosher slaughter of animals  requires that no blood remains as “the blood is the life.” Jews do not eat blood pudding, blood sausage, or any food that includes blood. Who does?

The essence of Christianity is the human sacrifice of the Jew Jesus as the sole son of God who “died for your sins.” By partaking in the Eucharist, Christians  accept the Jew Jesus as their Christ Savior.

In the Eucharist participants drink “the blood of Christ” and eat “the body of Christ” a ritual reminiscent of what a tribal warrior might do when eating the heart or liver of a brave victim to acquire that person’s courage. It’s an act of cannibalism sublimated into a sip of wine and a wafer.

Bur what if, like those hysterical reactors to the Hugh of Lincoln story, Jews went berserk, rioted, and burned down churches because Christians were drinking Jewish blood and eating Jewish flesh to gain salvation? The priest solemnly offers the chalice with “the blood of Christ” and a wafer “the body of Christ.” I was there. I heard it.

It seems incredible that to drink the blood of a sacrificed Jew and eat his flesh is a way to Salvation but that is what Christians believe.

After all, how do we know it’s not just wine in that goblet but really the blood of some murdered Jew? Maybe this practice should be banned along with cannibalism.  It would prevent gullible, hysterical Jews from running amok.

We may be in the 21st Century, but atheists and agnostics notwithstanding,  ancient rituals like circumcision and symbolic cannibalism still persist.

My career in politics

1751politics/220  words

May 16, 2018

My Career in Politics

Though in a monarchy the son and heir to the throne may be a dofus, he should have grown up in a house where management decisions were made. In a democracy, however, an essential fact is that any ignoramus can be elected to office, whether to a county commission or even the presidency.

I never took government or civics in high school or college. My concentrations were in science and literature. A few years after we moved to Houghton, Michigan and a job at Michigan technological University I had no knowledge of local government and had never held any public office. I was totally ignorant.

Then at ten o’clock one night I got a call from the local Democratic party. How would I like to be a county commissioner? What’s that?

I had no idea there was a county commission or a township commission. Those local offices were unknown tome. I asked, “What does a county commission do?”

What I was told was wrong. The county commission did not control the road commission.

All I had to do was show up the next noon at the court house a couple of blocks away and sign a petition.  I was curious. Well, why not?

When I got to the court house I found that the application to be put on the ballot required a few signatures, but those five or six names had already been entered. I signed, and ta-dah! I was on the ballot. Unopposed. The Republicans had failed to call anybody.

I was duly elected to a newly formed fifteen man county board of commissioners for a two year term. My education in government had begun.

One of the first issues that came before the board was a recreation bond fund. The county was entitled to a five percent cut of tax money to be used for parks and recreation. Ah, but we had no parks and recreation commission.  We needed a Resolution.

I saw what a Resolution looked like. Seemed pretty simple: “Whereas the state… etc. and Whereas, etc. until Therefore we do establish…”  As a professor of English I volunteered to write one. Easy.

It was moved, seconded, and passed unanimously. We now had a parks and recreation commission. Then, to my surprise, because I had written the resolution and was therefore knowledgeable, I was made chairman of it.

The same thing happened when we had a chance to apply for public housing funds. We needed a housing commission and a Resolution to establish it. I wrote that one, too. It also passed. Again I was appointed chairman.

So now I was not only a county board commissioner, but also the chairman of parks and recreation and public housing. I knew nothing of those roles, either.

In Chicago those appointments might be the ticket to significant income, bribes, payola, and salaries. Not so in rural Houghton County. The county board members were not paid a salary. We got $40 a meeting plus mileage. Since I lived three blocks from the court house, I needed no mileage allowance.

Ah, well, being chairman of two commissions and a member of a third, my per meeting income was tripled.

  For Parks and Recreation I gathered a small committee of about five members. We invited proposals for the funds. We got three proposals. One was for an indoor ice hockey rink in Hancock. A second was for improvements to the Mount Ripley ski hill, part of the university.

Now I was faced with a conflict of interest. If we gave the money to the ski hill, I, as a faculty member of the university, could be accused of cronyism. If I gave the money to hockey rink, I could be seen as disloyal to my employer.

The CFO of the university appeared before our little parks and recreation commission to make the pitch. He was the chief financial officer and I was a mere assistant professor at the university. It didn’t take long to arrive at a solution. We approved all three proposals, but gave priority to the hockey rink. Naturally, the rink was built.

Though I took no credit for the hockey rink, when I visited it I felt the sense of accomplishment that comes with the power of government. You can actually get things done.

We were not so lucky with our public housing proposal. Houghton County is in the Upper Peninsula, about six hundred miles from Detroit where the HUD offices were. Though I did make a trip there, we were outgunned by the heavy clout of down state politics and money.  We might have had some support from our state senator, but public housing also has enemies: landlords who see HUD as unfair competition to private enterprise. Our application got “lost” in the files.

That, basically, was all my two little commissions were able to do in the two years I was on the county board.

AH, but the count board also ran the marina. The marina had cost the county nothing, for the land was used as an in kind contribution. The board also did play the salary of the harbor master, but the slip fees were income. There is also a launch ramp and this became a conflict.

The sea scouts were permitted to park their little sail boats next to the launch ramp, but they had to pay the $2.00 launch fee whenever they launched a boat. I asked that the scouts be given free access to the ramp. It’s important to support teenagers in an activity that is wholesome and rewarding. The board refused.

I suggested that the Marina offer a ten dollar season ramp pass for  which was the equivalent of launching a boat one a week for the short Upper Peninsula summer. The season pass was accepted.

Then  the next meeting I asked that the sea scouts be given a free season ten dollar pass for use of the ramp. For ten bucks, how could they refuse? They accepted, but they knew they’d been outfoxed.

From then on I guess I was seen as devious and dangerous.

When I two years were up I ran for reelection, but I was beaten by twenty four absentee votes, an old trick. The Republicans wanted a local person, not a university professor who might be dangerous. I was replaced by a local man who worked for the university in the maintenance shop and was related to half the town. He never did anything during his two years in office but occasionally second a motion. He actually apologized to me for having run.

I did not want to establish a fiefdom on either of the commissions and though willing to remain on them did not want to be chairman. They soon died for lack of interest.

As parks and recreation commissioner I had made it a point to visit every park in the country, every launch ramp, every beach. The exploration revealed there was choice property at White City near the Portage Entry of the waterway, close to Lake Superior, but sheltered. It was ideal for fishing, boating, and a short walk to one of the few sandy beaches in the Keweenaw. We were lucky to be able to buy a lot when they became available and spent our happiest days camping there. Had I not been on the parks and recreation commission I would never have known about it.

My income from service to the county was about $1200 a year. I knew that $40 a month could easily be piddled away, so saved it. The first summer, 1971, I spent the money on a trip to Europe for the whole family. We had a VW camper delivered in London and saved the cost of hotels and meals by living in it all summer. The second summer I spent the $1200 on a small Shasta trailer.

Ah, but my political career was not over. I was appointed to the library board. This was appropriate for a wannabe author like myself. The librarian had been in the job for about twenty-five years. The library was her life, her career. She used an old manual standard typewriter and would not go near a computer.

One of the library board members latched onto a pair of old IBN computers from the local Savings and Loan and installed them in the library. The librarian quit and never returned to the library. Not ever again.

The Portage Lake District Library is now part of the state-wide library network, connected with computers, web site, the whole technological bit. The old manual typewriter is probably gone.

My service to Houghton County was like getting a Masters degree in civics. It was a great education. The ignoramus had learned something about politics.  

goodnight kisses

1746bedtime/640 words

1/6/2018

Goodnight Kisses

By

Harley L. Sachs

When a dog gets ready to bed down for the night, I’m told she turns around three times before she’s settled. I’ve never had a dog, but recognize the role of bedtime rituals.

My bed is large, queen size. I bought it because, when my wife had her stroke, the therapist said our futon was too low for transfers from wheel chair to bed. I would need something higher, twenty-four inches, so though our futon was perfectly suitable, even after we moved from a studio to a small one bedroom, it would have to go.

We already had a memory foam topper, so I could settle for a basic bed. I ended up with a queen size mattress, with memory foam topper, and a waterproof washable cover should my wife prove to be incontinent after the stroke.

It was all to no avail, for in spite of the therapists’ determination to always be positive, as in “She’s making improvements,” she was not.  She is now in her fourth year of twenty-four hour care, served by shifts of capable helpers who hoist her out of her wheelchair or bed using a contraption called a Hoyer. The Hoyer cannot fit into my apartment.

So after fifty-five years of sleeping together, I now have to sleep alone. It is a lonely business when you’ve been accustomed to lie beside someone warm and willing for so long a time.

When I hitchhiked through Europe with two Swedish sisters, Åsa and Ingrid Henning, we were traveling companions, friends, but not lovers. As we bedded down in my inadequate,  liberated double army sleeping bag, the last act before turning in was a goodnight kiss. It was not a passionate kiss, but affectionate. To tuck in without it would be unfriendly. The goodnight kiss was like the Swedish expression, “thanks for today.”

It was the same ritual for me and my wife of over half a century. Got to have that goodnight kiss. It was essential, but for me alone in my big bed, it’s missing. That’s sad.

I’ve had to adjust to sleeping alone. Bedtime for one has become a routine. It’s a big bed, and I tend to sleep on the edge, which can be dangerous. Every year people fall out of bed and die. I know one woman who fell out of bed and was paralyzed for two years with a broken neck. Beds are not that safe. We take our chances.

I have a rather thin but usually adequate quilt. It’s not large enough for two people, and if I am not careful which way I lie with it, I can end up with cold feet. The trick is to use the quilt lengthwise with enough overlap to tuck around my feet. If not, I’ll have to resort to hospital footsie bed socks.

With my feet tucked in, left and right edges of the quilt tucked under, I work my way up, tucking both sides under me and ending with the top over my head. Hiding under the cover and breathing into the space warms it up quickly. Then I can poke my nose out .like a mouse in a nest. 

I like to sleep with a window slightly open for the fresh, cool air but by four in the morning it’s time to close the window. Sometimes the room gets too cold even with me tucked inside the quilt like a sausage. Then it’s time to break out my Pendleton wood blanket for another layer. So wrapped, I’m enclosed like in a mummy sleeping bag, cozy, cozy, but alone.

Alone, I depend on my own body for warmth. It’s not the same as when you have company, but I have no choice. For now it’s bedtime for one, no kisses. Damn.

Two Bicycles and Love

1745twobikes /1500 words

Dec. 5, 2017

Two bicycles and love

by

Harley L. Sachs

When I first saw Ursel Mathilde Hintz she was a South Schleswig girl of Danish extraction with a German passport. She spoke no English and was working as a shop assistant in a Konsum grocery store on the ground floor on Rindogatan in Stockholm. She was a lapsed Lutheran.

I was an American expatriate with a master’s degree who eked out a sort of living teaching English as a second language, two three month terms and two paychecks a year. My GI Bill had run out. I was also working under cover for the CIA. I was a secular Jew.

The only thing Ursel, known as Ulla, and I had in common was we loved to bicycle. At Indiana University I rode one of only three bicycles on the campus. Ulla had used a borrowed old fashioned bicycle to ride from her job in Sonderborg, Denmark to her home town in Germany.

In Stockholm neither of us had a bike.

After three years in Sweden, starting at the International Graduate School, I spoke Swedish. Ulla, having gone to Danish school after the war, spoke Danish and soon learned Swedish, but had not lost her accent.

When my number came up to be served at the Konsum store  Ulla asked, in the formal Swedish used in those days, “What does the gentleman wish?”

Struck by her accent I asked in the same formal way, “Is the young lady Danish?”

She blushed and I was hooked. In the land of free love and open marriages, Swedish girls did not blush. She struck me like a rose bud soon to flower in amazing ways. I wanted to be part of that. She was smart and adventurous. Wow!

It took a lot of persistence and the promise of American apple pie, home baked by this ex-GI, before she would go out on a date. She was independent and always insisted on paying her own way. For a guy who was paid only twice a year that was a good thing.

Our common languages were Swedish and German. Besides the movies, theater, and walks we soon talked about our bicycle days. I had learned that to keep your under cover informants happy in the spy business, you never forget a birthday and always remembered gifts. I bought Ulla a pair of figure skates that winter and got her a student discount on a radio. We had become a couple.

Stockholm in those days was in transition. Cold cupboards with a northern exposure were being replaced by small refrigerators. Automobiles were replacing bicycles. As the winter snow banks melted, abandoned bicycles emerged, often with no front wheel, and generally ready for the junk yard. I rescued three, took them up to my apartment above the Konsum store, and got to work. I salvaged two bikes, one a 26 inch OK boy’s and one a 28 inch woman’s Crescent.

 I bought two used wheels with pretty bad tires. The OK needed a generator and light. The women’s Crescent had a generator but no light. Both were, of course, one speeds with a coaster brake.

I could not have afforded a new bicycle, or even a used one, but with two cobbled together bikes, we were in business. When I gave Ulla her bicycle, she was delighted. I knew then that she would marry me.  

Ulla’s father was a boat builder and I had always wanted a sail boat. Every weekend we would ride those old bicycles to another of Stockholm’s many harbors and boat yards in search of a boat. I hoped that the money I had earned working under cover would be enough. It wasn’t but in the meantime we had fun looking. We even tented one night at Drottningholm on Lake Malaren, taking along a couple of toy sail boats.

Having lived through the war, Ulla was not spoiled by prosperity. Bicycling, tenting and sleeping rough wherever we could pitch the tent  were just fine.

So we fell in love in Swedish and were married in German because her father came to the synagogue wedding and that was his language. Most of our Swedish friends in attendance hadn’t a clue as the service was in Hebrew and German.

The bicycles were integral to our lives and our relationship. When we got married in May, 1960, it was the most natural thing for us to get on those old bicycles and head out, destination uncertain. Naturally, being a wannabe author, I brought along my Underwood portable typewriter on a special cargo rack over the front wheel. It was a heavy load.

We were quite a sight. Laden with everything we needed: tent, cooking gear, sleeping bag, road maps, and food, camera, and the typewriter, we peddled from Copenhagen through Germany and Holland  to the Belgian Channel ferry to England.

Fearful of the traffic on the London-Dover road, we sent the bikes by rail to London and hitchhiked to the city. Once there and with the bikes retrieved, thanks to a good map of England we discovered the Old Foss Way, a Roman road, straight to Nottingham where I had relatives.

My OK bike was not that OK, for the kid who had abandoned it had messed up the rear wheel spokes. It turned out that the number of spoke holes in the hub was not the same as the wheel rim. The spokes were not in the proper order, so were stressed, sometimes to the breaking point. I grew accustomed to replacing broken spokes. I soon ran out of spares and had some made at a shop in Uxbridge.

The rear wheel was also not perfectly round, so had a hump. This wasn’t noticeable until coasting downhill you got a bump-bump ride. The chain guard rubbed against the crank, so it was scrape-scrape with every push.

Ulla’s bike, however, ran like a Swiss watch.

The two bikes were painted the usual black with a bit of white on the rear fender. By today’s standards, they were heavy but nearly indestructible.

We spent the honeymoon winter of 1960 at Borthwick Castle where we used the old Swedish bikes to get from the gatehouse up to the Galashiels road and the bus to Edinburgh.

In the winter we lived there Ulla, always brilliant and determined, taught herself English while I struggled with a bad novel in what had been a cannon port in the basement. By the time she had our first baby her English was fluent.

When I got a contract for a year in Denmark, we had to first store our belongings.  Our possessions which had been in storage in Stockholm, came to Borthwick in an enormous crate. What about the bicycles? They were part of our life. I didn’t want to abandon them. By careful measuring, I managed to disassemble them and fit them inside the crate with boxes of books, footlockers with clothes, etc.

When we later arrived in Denmark for a year we were reunited with the bikes. They were our transportation in that city of bicycles. I rode eleven kilometers from Hvidovre to the university where I learned Danish. So now we had four languages in common.

By the time we were leaving Denmark, we had an old VW kombi to ship back to the United States. The freight company allowed us to pack the bicycles inside the car.

Unwilling to part with them, we carried them on the roof of the VW all summer in 1964. By then we had two daughters. The youngest, Belinda, fit into the bicycle basket on Ulla’s handle bar while Anna-Lena, our three year old, rode on the kiddy seat bolted to the frame.

The bicycles were part of the family, integral to our history and our romance. When we acquired water front property for camping not far from a beach, the bikes were our transportation.

We kept them even when Ulla, who fell in Florida, stopped bicycling, and my legs at age seventy were giving out.

After our fiftieth-fourth anniversary when it came time to move to Oregon, we sold all our Michigan property. What about the bikes? By now they were genuine antiques.  So were we.

I was afraid, when we sold our camp site, the bikes would end up in a ditch beside the road to be taken to the junk yard. I gave our mouse infested Shasta trailer to a young man who, it turned out, collected bicycles. He wanted them.

Those two rebuilt junk Swedish bicycles had carried us across Europe, through our honeymoon in Scotland, our sojourn in Denmark, and back to the United States. Parting with them was poignant, but I know they found a good home.

Nothing lasts. I miss the joy of bicycling, the singing sound of the Swedish knobby tires on wet pavement, the wheee of coasting downhill. Ah, but at 86 my legs have given out. The bikes lasted longer than my legs, but the memories linger on.  Ah, those memories.

The Palestinian Cottage Industry in Murder

The Palestinian Cottage Industry in Murder

In 2016 a Palestinian murdered Jewish West Point Graduate Taylor Force. Though other American Jews have been murdered in Israel in the past, this was the last straw for congress. What most Americans don’t know is Palestinian terrorists are rewarded with pensions for their families using American money. Yes, the United States gives the Palestinians aid to the tune of $350 million a year, and a big chunk of it goes to pensions for the families of prisoners who have committed terrorist acts. It’s become a cottage industry: need a pension? Kill a Jew. Congress wants it stopped and will reduce the annual budget to as low as $120 million. Abbas pleads that without those pensions for terrorist acts the stability of the Palestinian economy will be upset.  Source” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 12, 2017

See no Evil -- a short-short story

1744seenoevil/695  words

8/18.17

See no Evil

A short story

Harley L. Sachs

As a final debriefing I had taken Harry up to the Tower for a farewell look at New York City at night. I was told his name was Harry, which is an inside joke in the company, a reference to Harry Lime of the Third Man. I this case I actually knew his real name, for we had met briefly between beers at a super bowl party. He had been there with his young wife and I didn’t linger for a conversation.

Taking agents up in the Tower on their last night has become a routine ritual for me. We don’t  want anyone to spend the last evening in a bar where they might drink too much and talk, like say where they are going the next day. Instead I take them out for a swell filet mignon dinner with red wine. I don’t claim reimbursement for the wine because our bookkeeper is a teetotaler, so I claim the dessert part of the menu and always pay cash. It’s my chance for a hundred dollar dinner before I go home to my wife who’s into chemo therapy for her breast. She’s too sick to cook and I’m no chef.

We call it simply the Tower. Used to be the Trump Tower before the assassination. Nobody lives in the penthouse any more. The building was foreclosed and bought by a shell company financed with laundered Russian money. I borrow a key to the private elevator from the building manager and take the occasional special guest up top so they can see the bathrooms. Everybody always wants to see the bathrooms and sometimes pee in the gilded commode.

So Harry and I were on the top floor balcony, looking down over the city. He said he’s leaving for Hong Kong in the morning but I know he’s flying to Moscow via Warsaw. It’s not etiquette to ask much.

The agent called Harry is in his thirties. I know his history and have to write a contact report on his last evening in the States. I make those reports as brief and innocuous as possible, just enough to justify the cost of the meal. You never know who reads those.

We were standing at the parapet looking down at the city. On a floor two stories down there was some sort of party and on that balcony there were two men who had separated themselves from the crowd. Just two men, talking.

Harry said, “Isn’t that, er, Cannon?”

“Bannon,”  I said. “Steve Bannon.”

“Oh.”

“Been in the news again.”

“Yes.”

“Not good.”

“No.”

One second there were two men down there on that balcony. Then in a blink of an eye, there was only one.

“Did you see that?” Harry asked, shocked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Shouldn’t we report it?”

“What? You report it? You’d miss your plane to Hong Kong.”

“What about you?” Harry asked.

I tapped the American flag pin on my lapel and gave him a knowing look. “Got it.”

“That your Go-pro?”

I just gave him a thin smile like don’t ask. Everyone thinks we’re equipped with button cameras and other James Bond shit.

“Oh,” Harry said.

There was a faint sound of a siren on the street down below. “We’d better go out the service exit,” I said, not wanting to encounter uniforms in the lobby.

When we reached the street I hailed a yellow cab to get him back to his hotel. As Harry got into the cab he turned and asked, “You’ll report it, right?”

I nodded.

He was off.

Before the assassination the president used to fire people. Pence just kills them.

Not my problem. I’m up for retirement soon. We have a rule: see no evil. Works for me.

A year later I learned that Harry had been killed in a car crash in Moscow. I thought it probably was a car crash. The Russians can’t afford to spend a car and driver when it’s cheaper to toss someone out a fourth story hotel window. I wondered what had gone wrong, if the man called Harry had made a mistake, or someone like Cheney had blown his cover. 

The Toilet Police

1741toilet/ 650 words

4/8/2017

The Toilet Police

 by

Harley L. Sachs

I’ve always been a guy. Even when I was only three, people used to call me the little guy. Now with all this bathroom brouhaha my guyness is in question. It’s all because of that Carolina law about who gets to use what toilet. The transgender folks, those who can’t make up their minds if they are a guy or a gal or whatever, have been persecuted. I can see that if I dressed up as a drag queen for the Moose Halloween party, it might look a bit peculiar, but even in a wig and lipstick, there’s no doubt that I would be seen as a guy. Stupid looking, comical, but still a guy. Now all that’s changed.

Now to use a toilet in some big stores you have to prove your birth gender. In Saudi Arabia they have the religious police, in case a woman shows her ankles, bare wrists, or doesn’t cover her eyes. Here it’s the toilet cops.

I was standing in line by the men’s room for my turn when I was stopped by toilet security. This was a tough looking person in a badge and uniform but of. to my mind, uncertain gender. “You have to show proof of gender,” the toilet cop said, very stern.

My gender was never questioned before. I thought it was a joke. “You want to see my circumcision scar?”

I thought it was a joke. Apparently it wasn’t. People who have undergone a sex change might have operation scars I don’t want to see under any circumstances. I have trouble enough with people who pierce their lips and noses. “

“You have to show proof of gender when you were born.”

“How do I do that?”

“Birth certificate.”

I didn’t have my birth certificate on me. Who does? If I were an immigrant of questionable legality I’d have to carry a green card or a proof of citizenship, but not a birth certificate.

Fortunately, that time my visit to the toilet wasn’t urgent. I went home and searched the file of documents, my high school diploma, my confirmation diploma from Sunday School, my military discharge DD214, and found a birth certificate issued by a Chicago clerk. I decided I’d better carry it with me at all times, just in case I’d have to pee.

Sure though, I did. This time I was in a different big box store and approached the public toilet. Again there was a toilet cop guarding the facility. This time I was ready.

“:Proof of birth gender,” I said, hoping not to be kept waiting. This time I really had to go. I showed my birth certificate. There is was: male baby complete with baby footprint.

The toilet cop was skeptical. “This is a photo copy. We only accept original documents.”

“What are you?  Ex IRS?” I once had to re-file my income tax because I sent a photocopy of the return, not one with the original signature.

The toilet cop wasn’t amused. “Got to be the original document. How do I know if you aren’t transgender?”

If I waited any longer it would be too late. I had to go, now. I gave up and hurried out the door. Round the corner, at the back of the building where there are no windows, I peed against the wall. I was in Italy once. Almost everybody pees against a wall in Italy.

Not here.

I was arrested for public indecency.

Funny thing was, they put me in a cell with several violators, some of them transgender. They’d been caught by the toilet cops without the proper birth certificates.

Nobody seemed to care in the jail. They have unisex cells.

I didn’t have cash for bail money, so I have to stay in the joint to  await my court date.  You know what they have for toilet facilities in the jail? A stainless steel commode and no privacy. Everybody uses the same one, with or without a birth certificate.