I first met Evan when I was thirteen. He was two years older than me. I was the youngest participant in the Youth Film Workshop at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. In fact, I was too young, and it took some convincing to get the administration let me in. As I was the only kid who took the bus into the big city from a bedroom suburb, which was the very definition of “the wrong side of the tracks”, I was at awe with the city kids. I was an eight grader from a poor family of immigrants, who grew up climbing trees and running on sand dunes, and they were in high school, had famous parents, traveled to Europe and America, and in Evan’s case, already had careers in music, theater, TV and film. Every week, for one afternoon I lived in a fantasy world of color, music, creativity, and surprisingly for a world of teenagers, non-judgmental. The museum where the workshop took place was tucked between the city’s main concert hall and the National Theater; it is Tel Aviv’s version of New York’s Lincoln Center. I could see musicians from the Israel Philharmonic, singers and dancers from the Tel Aviv Opera, and stars of stage and film hanging out on the sidewalks and cafés. Evan knew many of them, and though he came from a different world than mine (or that’s how I chose to see it then), he was never too shy about talking to them, or introducing his somewhat dorky, ill dressed, awe stricken, four eyes classmate (me) to them.
At the end of one of our classes, later that year, a group of us went to a nearby bohemian café. We did that sometimes; the other kids, because it was in their neighborhood, and me, because I just didn’t want to drag myself onto the dreadful bus ride back home to sandville. We discussed our stories and our little productions, and just chilled. At some point everyone else left, and only Even and I stayed there. He looked at me and asked me if he can trust me with a secret. I nodded. He pulled out a notebook, looked at me, and said: “One day I am going to win an Oscar, and I have written my speech.” Now, just to put this in context, for a 15-year-old kid from Tel Aviv, no matter how cool I thought he was, to say back in 1979, that he plans to win an Oscar, would be the equivalent of a kid in 2011, telling you that he’s planning a trip to Mars, and showing you his plans for hiking the Red Planet and being dead serious about it. It would be that far-fetched. Evan read his speech to me, but I didn’t make much of it. I was thirteen, and I probably had homework and “stuff” I was worried about at that point.
The following year I joined the Youth Film Workshop again, this time as a freshman in high school. Evan and I were put on the same team, and our team’s assignment was to create an “epic” project, with sets and wardrobe and real actors. Looking back, it was silly, but we were teenagers and we were having fun. Evan was the director and I was to assist with the editing. The day the four-minute reels of super 8 Kodachrome film came back from the lab (those days before instant re-runs), Evan and I got in the editing corner to watch them. We were excited, and didn’t notice it was getting late. We were sitting in a semi-dark room, at the basement of and empty museum, watching the silent footage of our “amazing” creation. The sound of the rain falling hard outside and the warm glow from the Steenbeck film editing machine’s monitor made that room feel even cozier. At some point Evan looked at me. We were sitting very close, and I noticed he’s not looking at the footage. I glanced at him, and then back at the image on the monitor. He kept looking at me. I stopped the film and looked back at him.
— “You okay, Evan?”
— “Can I ask you for something personal?” he asked.
— “Yeah,” I replied.
There was nothing extraordinary about his request. Many times before kids in the workshop asked for a personal favor from one another. I was getting hungry, and I hoped he would suggest that we split a pizza.
— “Can I kiss you?”
— “What? Why?”
— “Nevermind.”
I didn’t know what he meant. I was fourteen. I was naïve. I was innocent. And I was really hopping for a pizza. I was not attracted to him, so it didn’t even cross my mind that he might be attracted to me. I didn’t even think in these terms then. I had a girlfriend at the time. My second one. I didn’t even kiss her, yet. My world was that platonic. Also, I grew up in a Mediterranean culture where it’s the norm for men to hug and kiss when they arrive and leave, or to hold hands and wrap an arm around the other’s shoulder as they talk. So, when Evan made his request, I didn’t make much of it. It didn’t even feel awkward. I just forgot all about it and moved on.
At the end of that year we all moved our own ways. I became more involved with volunteering and activism, Evan became even more famous. I learned from the papers that he had landed a leading roll in a movie, and later that he joined the armed forces (as all Israelis must, right out of high school) as a lead performer in a military performing troop.
I briefly met him again two years later. I was sixteen. My volunteer work led me to chair a youth conference in Jerusalem, and the entertainment was Evan’s troop. He sang, danced and made us laugh. He was really good. When his show was over, I briefly saw him backstage. The movie he was in just came out to rave reviews and to box office success. I congratulated him, and we decided that we’d get together at some unspecified point in the future to catch up. That was years before cell phones, Facebook and Tweeter made catching up a virtual activity.
That catch up meeting never took place. Three months later, as I was away from home, my mother called me and asked if I saw the paper. I didn’t. She read it to me over the phone. Evan was dead. He died from complications of Pneumonia, brought upon by a sever asthma attack. That was the official line. The terms HIV or AIDS were not used in 1982, not in public anyway.
Evan performance in that one movie he made, won him a Best Actor Award at the Israeli Academy Awards. Accepting the award on his behalf, his family quoted from that secret speech he once shared with me.
I always remember Evan as older than me, but he was just a kid. A kid with a dream and a secret. A kid who will forever remain eighteen.
The years have passed. I am no longer the kid from the wrong side of the tracks. The sand dunes of my childhood are but a fainting memory somewhere on the other side of the world. Most were paved and built on. I live my dream every day. All of Hollywood’s major studios are but a short ride from my home. I pass through those foreboding gats routinely. I bring visitors over, and they are dazzled by the sights and sounds that I now take for granted. Still, every time I set foot on that black, glittery pavement, adorned with pink stars and names of famous entertainers in brass, just outside the Kodak Theater in Hollywood where the Academy presents its Oscars, another ” Kodak moment” pops in my mind. That moment when I was watching super 8 Kodachrome footage, in a dimly lit edit bay, sitting next to a kid with a dream and a secret. A dream so infectious, that it became my dream, too. And as long as I live my dream, I hope that some of Evan’s dream lives, too.
Who knows, perhaps if all of us, dreamers, will keep each other’s dreams alive, one day, kids planning their trips to Mars, will not be a far-fetched fantasy.
Perhaps one day, kids with dreams will not have to keep who they really are a secret.
So I flipped open the card and… AAAHHH!!!
(Yes, these be my sexy, white legs in a leotard and cape)
iquillpen 