16/1/00

Go on. Laugh at him.

    I was beating the young man mercilessly, until finally he shouted for help. "Somebody, stop him, I'm just a poor, handicapped boy!" he wailed.
    Half the people in earshot squirmed in embarrassment; the others roared in laughter.
    He really is handicapped, and I really was beating him (at Scrabble).
    That's Ben. That's been Ben since I first met him.
    He reads your discomfort and addresses it, like a cream pie in the face. You're afraid he'll make a scene -- so he does. Edge away, and he'll come at you, tortuously toying with you, forcing you to confront what he is.
    Ben's cerebral palsy contorts his handsome face, warps his strapping body so that he moves like a flimsy marionette on strings, slurs his speech so bad he's nearly incomprehensible. But he will not, WILL NOT, hide in shame.
    Go on, laugh at him. Can't? He'll do it for you. "Hey, you know what happens when I have a few beers? I talk clear and walk straight." And then he'll laugh at YOU.
    He wants to be a standup comedian. When he told me that, I assumed I misheard. A what?!
    "A standup comedian. I've tried it, in college. It was wonderful. It's mostly spontaneous humor, I make people get over their fear of laughing at me. They look around and say, 'Are we supposed to laugh now? Is it OK to laugh?' 
    “I give speech therapy to the crowd, teaching them to speak the way I do. I make them repeat the letters of the alphabet after me, with all 26 letters sounding exactly the same.
    “And then I teach them ‘the walk.’
    “I’m playing with people’s limits, challenging them to laugh.” Sometimes they respond with hysterical laughter; sometimes, with stunned slience.
    “After about five minutes they're at ease with me, not nervous anymore. Mostly I laugh at life, at my life; I'm a good observer of people and their insecurities."
    But, uh, wouldn't it be a good thing if the audience could understand the gags? "I know, the first time you meet me, it's incredibly hard to understand a word I say." It's not just the atonal slur: he speaks very slowly because he must clear the saliva after every three or four words, and as if that's not enough, there's a strong Manchester accent. So what, he shrugs: "I make people laugh."

BENJAMIN Harry Bloom was born dead 24 years ago.
    "I'm my mother's only child. She's Israeli, her English then was very poor, and I was born in England. She was 10 months pregnant and felt there were complications, she screamed for help. They thought it was normal labor pains. There was no qualified doctor in the room, so a nurse delivered me, but it took 36 hours. Only after 12 hours, a doctor arrived.
    "I came out dead. They thought I was stillborn. But 72 hours later I came to life. Then they thought I would be a vegetable, and said that if I survived a week it would be a miracle."
    A few months ago, after a nine-year legal battle, Ben settled out of court with Manchester's Hope Hospital. He is now, in the most grotesquely literal sense, a self-made millionaire.
    At the age of 14 he moved to Israel, then on to the US to study, earning a BA at St. John's College in Maryland, a double major in philosophy and mathematics. He plans to pursue an MA in fine arts or creative writing -- that is, if he can overcome his other double major, laziness and procrastination.
    Well, that's how he describes himself. He doesn't do speech therapy, he says, because he's lazy; he hasn't worked because he's lazy; now, he's a lazy millionaire who doesn't HAVE to work.
    He's schooled in the Greek philosophers, but it's Popeye who provides his philosophy on life: "I yam what I yam," he says. 
    What he "yis," is an amazing can-do guy. He likes mountain-climbing and rappelling.
    "If I can't do what other people can, it obsesses me. Most people look at a mountain and say 'I can't do it'; I say I can't only after I've tried  and failed."
    He so struggles just to walk, yet he plays soccer, American football, basketball, handball, baseball. A few months ago, he came home from the US Open Table Tennis Championships for the Disabled with a runnerup trophy. He won the Novice Division of a Scrabble tournament at Neve Ilan, and he's now one of the top players in Tel Aviv. (And probably the fastest: he recently set a Jerusalem club record by playing eight games in the time it took others to play three.)
    He's a passionate Manchester City fan, and joined supporters from around the world for a spectacular soccer weekend. "We played a game, and as usual, I was the last one to be picked. I played goal -- and won the Man of the Match award! By the end of the game the fans were cheering my nickname, Benny Blue! Benny Blue!"
    If you want to get him real mad, make the mistake of assuming that because he's Mancunian, he must love United. "That's very annoying," he drawls, glowering. "To be a Jew is to support City. To suffer. City is painful. The disappointment: oh, why us God, why us? We are God's Chosen Team."
    He has a marvelous knack for off-the-cuff poetry: give him any subject, give him 15 seconds, and ...
    (How others see him:) "Hobbling down the corridor, just look at his walk; address him in person, just listen to his talk. You can't understand a word, except that beautiful smile, but it all comes clear if you wait a little while."
    (On being a millionaire:) "Struggling through my days, life was a bitch, those times are over because now I'm rich. Happiness does not come directly through money, but since winning my case, I have me and my honey."
    His honey is the sweetest woman in the world, Nurit. And there's no man happier than Ben.
    Ben and Nurit met in August at a social club for the handicapped. For both, this is their first true love.
    Speaking of her, he turns tender, astir with warmth. "She was very shy when I first met her. When I asked her out, to my amazement, she said yes. Now, I feel loved for the first time. To have someone tell me she loves me, I never thought I'd hear it. We're incredibly happy together."

WHEN BEN first burst onto the Israeli Scrabble scene at the age of 15, we weren't prepared for it. He was young, unknown, brilliant, funny. He was cocky. He looked very strange.
    By the end of that two-day tournament, he had won us over. A murderously funny retort did it.
    One of the crankiest players we'd ever seen got her comeuppance so electrifyingly that she was never heard from again. She'd been whining all through the tournament, which must have helped, because with one game to go she was in second place. Ahead of her was Ben.
    The pitiful-looking kid clobbered the kvetch to clinch first place. Throughout the game, she grumbled that he was getting all the luck, all the good tiles. At the end of the game, instead of congratulating him, she said, yet again, "I just can't believe your luck."
    Well, you know Ben. He leaned right into her face, gave an extra-big shake of his gawky limbs, and, his mouth contorted, he laboriously and loudly responded:
"Lady, you call THIS lucky?"
    The place went nuts.