So at some point I knew I needed a towel so we went to the Mecca Mall and wandered around. I heard Stereo Love playing in one of the stores, which I had also heard when I was in Berlin. Made me think of Isaac. I got a cape from Forever 21 of all places. The mall was weird and different from America. And this is how: all the people working in the stores were men. And they tried to make suggestions to me about lip gloss colors, to which I was subjected to this strange kind of torture where he swatched about 15 colors of lip gloss all over my hand until it was a goopy colorful mess. It’s like, honey you are the last person I need help from…

So, all toweled up in the Middle East on a sunday, we got hungry and Lex and I went to Chili’s of all places, since every other place we tried was closed or no longer serving food. We listened to Bon Jovi and Metallica because that’s what they played in the Chili’s. Then we wandered over to the liquor store and bought some Arak.

Mostly to go with our idea to make hash chocolate and dig into this (probably shitty) middle eastern acid. So…here is Alexis in her kitchen tea bagging with Bisseh while the chocolate and LSTea heats up on the stove and we painted our nails with the nail polish we bought at the mall.

Meanwhile, also curling hair, prepping the hookah, mixing up hashisha. I think we were kind’ve determined to gom somewhere that night but it really ended up feeling like we were in one of our bedrooms in high school.

So all night we kept saying:

• “I don’t think it’s working yet.”
• “I feel so weird!”
• “I don’t think anything’s gonna happen…”
• “Something is happening, though…”

So yeah here is Alexis with her bedouin knife between her palms:

We made this portrait of Alexis via her belongings:

Here’s me channeling Hunter Thompson trying to get high on some herbal tincture:

So anyways, we stayed up til like 9 am asking “Is it working yet?” until finally I saw some gay ass rainbow pattern between my eyes and the ceiling and thought, oh, I guess we needed a lot more…

So we slept the day away and went into town later and got some food and made it an early night. I felt all weird like i was going to have a panic attack or something or that I was crawling outside of my skin.

So the next day we headed to Aqaba, which is like 4-5 hours south. That will be in the next entry. =)