I Am Michael

By Sam Mael

When Michael, a recent immigrant to the United States loses his corporate employment and is not able to provide for his growing family, a chance job offer leads him on a path of self-discovery that will take Michael, his family, and friends on an unexpected wild ride, full of humor, action, and romance, changing their lives, minds, and hearts forever. Will Michael find his American Dream? Open your mind, your heart, this book and discover...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sam Mael
• Release date: Oct 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310782800

Sam Mael

SAM MAEL books are a collaboration of two great friends whose regular jobs have nothing to do with writing. Their passion for storytelling, combined with their unique and often opposite views of the world, results in unexpected and entertaining narratives, spanning multiple genres. I Am Michael is their first baby, but siblings are being birthed as we speak. Enjoy the book and stay tuned for more!

Book preview

I AM MICHAEL

By SAM MAEL

Be yourself, everyone else is already taken. Oscar Wilde

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Sam Mael

Formatting and cover design by Caligraphics

Everyone was in the office once again that Monday morning. I looked up questioningly at Alex. Well…, he said, looking straight at me, I want you to be gay! I must have had a blank look on my face because Alex repeated carefully, but firmly. WE WANT YOU TO BE GAY."…

CHAPTER 1

Coming to America

Let me start at the beginning. My name is Michael Bloom and this is the story of my American Dream. As an immigrant to this great country, I never imagined that equality and freedom for all would take me into a world totally unlike my own and test all my insecurities, preconceived notions, and boundaries, to make me into a better, more authentic version of myself. But this funny, heartwarming, unexpected tale is a great one. It taught me and some of my closest friends and family valuable lessons that I hope I can teach my beautiful children and their children one day, so they too can live and contribute to a world where kindness, tolerance, honestly, and hard work are celebrated above all else. And what a wonderful world it would be!

So my story began a little over a decade ago after my immigration from the former Soviet Union to Chicago, right after I finished University with a Bachelor’s degree in Communication. I came from my birth city of Cherkessk, like many other Russian Jews who immigrated after the split of the USSR, scared by the growing religious unrest and violence, which was so prevalent in my home region specifically.

Cherkessk, to give you a little cultural background, was a capital city of the Karachay-Cherkessia autonomous region, a sub-region within Russia, situated at high altitude in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. Somewhat like America today, Cherkessk was a melting pot of sorts with many nationalities living together –Karachays, Cherkess, Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and many others, each with their own languages, traditions, and religious beliefs. The bulk of the population, the Karachays and the Cherkess came from the nomadic cultures whose ancestors were once part of the Ottoman Empire that occupied these territories before the Russians took over. The hot blooded, Conquistador ways of these nationalities dominated their look and attitude. Thus, I grew up surrounded by this society of macho, dark haired, brawny men, characterized by historical customs of horse shows and sword fighting, and consumption of obscene amounts of shashlik – the traditional Caucasian meat kabobs made on the open fire, still my favorites to this day.

Unfortunately, under the Communist USSR’s iron fist, the melting pot of the whole Caucasus region, which was also comprised of Armenia, Georgia, Chechnya, Azerbaijan and other similarly hot-blooded republics, was under a tight lid. The ethnicities were not allowed to practice their religious traditions and beliefs openly. In addition there were constant disputes between regions and sub-regions in the area over territories, stemming from historic occupations and governmental changes. This troubled pot had been boiling over for years, erupting into a giant volcano at the end of 1980s, into an all out civil war throughout the Caucasus. In 1992, after breakup of the Soviet Union, Karachay-Cherkessia became a republic of Russia, but this newfound stability was short lived. With the outbreak of war in the nearby states of Georgia and Chechnya, and with the rise of Islamists groups in the region, the economy fell even further and the religious strife intensified. My mother finally decided that it wasn’t safe for us as Jews, who were never accepted in the region and discriminated against in Russia in general, to stay in Cherkessk. So we left for Chicago in 1998, with just a couple of suitcases and hopes of a more welcoming world.

In Chicago my mom and I moved into a tiny rental apartment off Devon Avenue, routinely the first living location for all immigrants coming from the USSR to Chi-Town. I immediately began attending Truman College in the city to improve my English, which at the time was a horrible combination of Russian staccato, Jewish burring, and a cockamamie British accent leftover from the way English was taught to us in school back home. Consequentially, even asking for a pack of zat toos paste at the corner market lead to miscommunications, embarrassing situations, and raised eyebrows.

Eventually my accent improved tremendously, although it still jumps out occasionally, but at least I learned to get most of my points across. As I gained confidence in the English language and learned to get around my beautiful new city, I also enrolled in a computer programming course that claimed to teach you in three months what you would learn in four years in a traditional four year college. With the tech industry booming on the heels of the internet revolution and tech job openings aplenty, these courses were extremely popular. There, I quickly learned the summary of C++, Java, and Computer Networking and started applying for work.

This was 2001, a year of the tech and economic boom in the United States. Soon I was interviewing for a Computer Programmer position and found that the first challenge of snagging a job in America would still be the culture barrier, as apparently I didn’t know where I would see myself in five years or what my three worst traits were. I honestly was hoping for on the beach with a drink which was hardly professional, and had a hard time coming up with negative attributes about myself, as I only heard positive ones all my life from my dear Jewish mother. But I knew Bubbeleh and Shayna Punim will not do. So after a couple of such ‘funny’ interviews, the first decent offer from a company providing tech support to the telecommunications industry, with health insurance and 401K to sweeten the deal, seemed heavenly. It didn’t matter that it was all the way downtown and I now resided in the Northwest suburb of Niles and my commute was going to be close to an hour. I was ecstatic to start working at last in corporate America!

I enjoyed my job a great deal, maybe not the day-to-day grind of writing code, but the ability to support myself and contribute to the company. It made me feel quite grown up, even though I was still living with my mom at the ripe age of twenty eight. But the economy was booming, mortgage rates were great, and soon I even managed to buy my first piece of real estate, a two bedroom condo in the suburb of Skokie. The condo was sunny and perfect and close to my mother’s apartment, and I even splurged to remodel it to the heights of Russian bachelor standard – hardwood floors and modern, European, bright colored furniture.

And it was then that my luck improved even further. I met and fell in love with my future wife – a traditional Russian-Jewish girl from Moscow named Natalie. Natalie immediately captured me under her spell, with her petite and toned ballerina’s body, warm and captivating dark eyes and a mane of beautiful curly auburn hair. The attraction soon turned to love, as Natalie was sunshine personified – honest, kind, and outgoing, slaying me with her humor, wit, and charm. I couldn’t get enough of this girl and she was even quickly welcomed by my tough-when-it-comes-to-her-Bubbeleh mother. So it only took me a few months to propose and for us to spend most of the savings I accumulated from my job on a lavish by our immigrant standards, beautiful wedding, complete with Jewish Chuppah and traditional Russian food spread, and hours and hours of dancing.

Natalie moved into my condo and redecorated it into a real family home that I just loved coming to each evening. I continued working, but now my savings helped pay for Natalie’s school. When she finished with a degree in Public Health, she started looking for work. This is when the downturn in the economy began and Natalie struggled to find a job. And when she got pregnant, she stopped looking for work altogether. Little Alice was born in April of 2007. She was the most wonderful, beautiful thing I ever seen and I swore to myself to always do everything to protect and provide for her and my Natalie. We did ok for the next two years, enjoying our little family, as Natalie stayed home with our precocious and so reminiscent of me, always running and babbling, toddler Alice. But then life threw us an unexpected curveball.

In May of 2009 I was called into my boss’s office and told that today would be my last day, because my firm was being completely outsourced to India. Of course I knew that more and more of our company’s daily work was done out of Bombay, but I was hopeful in a traditional passé Jewish way that I would not lose my job in the midst of an obvious horrendous recession that was eating America alive. I was given two weeks’ severance pay, was instructed how to apply for COBRA insurance, and was wished good luck in my future endeavors. I walked out of the office holding a small box of my office belongings, which ironically held a copy of an old Bollywood movie, The Disco Dancer, so beloved by many Russians as one of the few foreign movies we were allowed to watch in the socialist USSR, a movie that I brought in awhile back to show to my Indian-American coworker. Sadly, he was also packing his things in the cubicle next to mine.

Although I personally knew dozens of laid off friends and acquaintances, I was still quite shocked and upset. Being let go was not a part of the Russian culture – it seemed like jobs there were for life or until you decided to retire or quit. Knowing that Natalie hadn’t been able to find work in three years and I was the sole provider did not make me comfortable at all. So as I was miserably riding home in the Metra, I felt scared and ashamed, knowing that I had to find a job and find it quick.

As soon as I got home, I called my friends in the industry, who knew other tech recruiter friends, who looked over and beefed up my short resume and sent it out to numerous companies in the IT field all over Chicagoland. Weeks passed with simply no calls. I edited the resume again, making myself into an all knowing, an almost a Steve Jobs type guru, and edited my objective to pretty much I will be your tech slave as long as you provide me with health insurance. Still no calls came and within six months, with COBRA running out and unemployment benefits not being nearly enough, I really started to worry. Natalie, initially so upbeat and supportive, now looked permanently concerned, especially when I stood in front of the open refrigerator nightly, absentmindedly stuffing my face with Alice’s sweet snacks to calm my own nerves. Not surprisingly, I gained quite a bit of extra weight during this period, which did not help me feel more confident about my professional and personal state.

This is when Natalie suggested, that while I continue to look for a position as a programmer, I can try some part time work to bring in a little money and keep my mind and hands from going crazy. She said that our friends Alex and Elena needed help in their wedding planning business, Elena’s Weddings, and were willing to hire me. I promptly called Alex, who told me that the business was doing just ok, with only a couple of weddings per month, but they could use someone to help them with actual wedding operations – setup and organization onsite the day of the event. Alex mentioned that they now had a partner named Dan and he would be working directly with me on this. I agreed to start immediately at $10/hour and this would be just a few days per month.

Elena and Alex were another young, fairly recently married Russian couple who became friends with us while helping to plan our wedding. Elena was a tall, leggy and very attractive blond and Alex was a short, skinny, bold, nerdy-looking guy in glasses. But they were a match made