Run Catch Kiss

by Amy Sohn

  “Thank you,” said Urinal Boy.

  “What do you mean, ‘Thank you’?”

  “Now we don’t have to learn Hebrew. Thanks!”

  “I changed my mind,” I said. “You’re coming back in with me.” We opened the door and went in. It was like a scene out of Shock Corridor. Someone had written PENIS BREATH on the chalkboard, one kid was hiding under the table, one was banging his head against the wall, one was doing a split on the floor, and the rest were throwing not only dittoes but sharp pencils, textbooks, pieces of chalk, erasers, and articles of clothing.

  No wonder their last teacher had quit. When I went to Hebrew school, the most obnoxious we ever got was flicking small pieces of mucus at each other and eating Chinese spare ribs on the front steps. What was becoming of my old neighborhood, my old shul? I walked slowly through the maelstrom toward my chair and clapped my hands to get their attention. I shouted, “Be quiet!” but they ignored me. Finally I gave up, rested my head in my arms and let them keep messing around until the period ended.

  •

  When I got home my family was gathered around the dining room table. “How did it go?” asked my dad.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

  I went into the bedroom and threw my bag on the bed. There were three business-sized envelopes on the pillow, from GQ, Esquire, and Vogue. I ripped them open one by one. The wording was slightly different for each, but they all amounted to the same central thought: Are you out of your mind? We can’t run nonfiction by a confessed fabricator!

  “Did you see the mail I put in there?” called my mom from the dining room.

  “Yes, I fucking saw the mail!”

  “Someone’s testy,” I heard Zach murmur.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the rejection letters. I wanted to keep a positive attitude, but how could I? I knew the score. If those three magazines all had the same thing to say, the others wouldn’t say anything different. My journalistic career was over—pure and simple.

  But I had to look on the bright side. The disgrace couldn’t last. It might take a few months—but eventually my name would lose its taint. It had to. This was an attention-deficit world. And besides, there were tons of once-shamed has-beens who’d been able to jump-start their careers later in life. Vanessa Williams. John Travolta. Even Judd Nelson. I was living in the era of the comeback. It was far too soon to lose hope.

  The next day, Hebrew school went a little better. I got through half of the ditto before the kids started throwing things at one another, and no one said, “Fuck you.” But then I took them down to the sanctuary for tefillah, the prayer service, and when we got to the Kaddish, Urinal Boy (whose name turned out to be Ezra) and his friend started shouting each Hebrew word that sounded vaguely like an English swearword—like “TUSH b’chata” and “b’rei SHIT”—and poking each other in the ribs. I finally had to pull them outside, and again they thanked me.

  •

  On Wednesday after class, I went to meet Adam for dinner at Souen. He hadn’t gotten there when I arrived, so I picked up a copy of the City Week from the stack in the foyer and sat down at a table in the back to wait. I started to flip forward to “The Mail” when something on the bottom of the front page caught my eye:

  “WHEN NAVAL LOVER TOLD ME HE WAS MOVING BACK TO Seattle, I went to the bathroom, stuck my finger down my throat, and vomited into the toilet. It wasn’t the first time I’d made myself puke, though. I’ve been doing it on and off since I was thirteen years old . . .” Sara Green. “I-Level,” p. 27.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” I shouted, quickly flipping forward to the story. It was called “Purge-atory” and it was a very depressing account of Sara’s breakup from Rick, her bulimia, and all her problems with men and self-hatred. It was god-awful. Hackneyed and sensationalistic—the worst confessional journalism had to offer.

  The door to the restaurant opened and Adam walked in. He kissed me on the cheek and I passed him the paper. “What is it?” he said. I pointed to the teaser on the front. He squeezed my hand and opened to the story.

  “So?” I said when he finished. “What do you think?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think it’s pretty good.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I found it very heartfelt. She’s working a lot of things out here. I think it’s an intriguing portrait of a self-destructive young woman.”

  “It’s horrible!”

  “If you weren’t so competitive you’d be able to see how good it is.”

  “I can’t believe you’re siding with her!”

  “See what I mean? You turn everything into a contest.”

  “No, I don’t. It’s just hard for me to respect someone who’s blatantly riding the coattails of my fame.”

  “All Sara’s doing is capitalizing off her natural assets. What’s wrong with that?”

  “That part about how much she loves anal sex—she’s shilling for the patriarchy in the most obvious way!”

  “If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black . . .”

  “I’m not saying I didn’t shill! Of course I did! But at least I was a skilled shiller!”

  “I can see why this might be hard for you. But Sara’s going to want your support. You’re her closest friend.”

  Not for long, I thought.

  But when I got home and my mom told me Sara had called three times, I felt guilty for being so hard on her. Just because Sara was totally talentless didn’t mean I had to ditch her as a friend. I took the cordless into my bedroom and dialed.

  “I had a reason for not telling you in advance,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The day I found out they were running it was the day you got fired from BankAmerica. I didn’t want to upset you any further. So what did you think?”

  “I thought it had some . . . strong moments. But Sara. Naval Lover?”

  “That was their edit! I named him Dick, but they changed it!” I gritted my teeth. So Turner and Jensen were out for my blood. “There’s something else,” she said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I had a meeting at the Week today and they’ve offered me a regular column.” The box was kicked out from beneath my feet, the noose tightened around my neck. I died a quick, painless death, spasming for a few minutes before my body stilled and swung slowly in the breeze, in front of fifty thousand delighted onlookers.

  “Did you take it?” I whispered hoarsely.

  “Of course I did. They’re paying me three fifty a week. I could use the money.”

  “They’re paying you three fifty?”

  “Yeah. They offered me two fifty but I said I wouldn’t do it for less than three five.”

  The rigor mortis kicked in and I began to spasm violently in the wind. “I thought you wanted to be a musician!” I shouted.

  “I can be both!”

  “How can you do this to me?”

  “This has nothing to do with you! This is about me! You don’t own the paper! Jesus. I was hoping you’d be happy for me.”

  “How can I be happy when you’re stealing my life?”

  “How can you be so recklessly self-centered?”

  She was right. I was being self-centered. And the truth was, it wasn’t fair to blame her. The real culprits were Jensen and Turner. What kind of skanky, low-budget pornographers were these guys anyway? Didn’t they have any integrity? Any standards? They’d spread open the legs of any girl who stuck her feet in the stirrups. They could find “talent” in the work of the dippiest chippies in town.

  “I’m sorry,” I sighed. “This is a little hard for me. But I am happy for you. Really.”

  “I’m sure you mean it.”

  “I do! What are they going to call your column?”

  “ ‘Sex und Drang.’”

  “ ‘Sex und Drang’?” I cried.

  “Yeah. I kind of like it. It’s a little cute, I know, but I t
hink it’ll grow on me.”

  “It’s . . . not bad,” I said, crossing my fingers. “What’s your first column going to be about?”

  “My fucked-up relationship with Jon.”

  “Sounds terrific,” I choked, hung up, and went to work on my Hebrew lesson.

  •

  Over the next month, as Sara chronicled lousy dates and drew hate mail from my once-faithful detractors, I watched Jewish twelve-year-olds flick chalk and curse. The week after “Purgeatory” came out, one guy wrote a letter calling Sara “a bigger bubblehead than Ariel Steiner—which I didn’t think was possible,” and Name Withheld said she “should make an appointment for a hysterectomy immediately, so he can ensure that her spawn will not wreak havoc on the earth.” She went unlisted the next day.

  Turner and Jensen hired a new illustrator for her—a semifamous cartoonist with a monthly ‘zine, Mike Cella, who was known for drawing dead women better than anyone else in town. He gave Sara huge bulging breasts, long shapely legs, and a full pouty mouth. I couldn’t stand it. Even her cartoon was hotter than mine.

  But after the first few columns came out, my jealousy began to fade. I was monogamous now. Adam and I weren’t having any problems—aside from the fact that we always had to go to his place when we wanted to have sex. As far as readers were concerned, my life was over. If I had kept writing the column, it would have lost steam, and Turner and Jensen probably would have fired me eventually anyway.

  Besides, I tried to tell myself, I was doing noble work. I was nurturing young minds instead of young cocks. My daily moron-sitting was a mitzvah. I was making up for the shame I’d brought upon my family by doing something positive for my community. I was reaching the kids even if I didn’t seem to be, and years from now they’d remember me as a great mentor.

  I tried to be inventive with my little demons. For one of my Judaica classes, I let the kids act out a bris with a doll. I wrapped the doll in felt and said it would represent the foreskin, so at the moment of circumcision, the mohel would cut off a piece with a pair of scissors. Naturally, when we got to the role assigning, they all wanted to be the mohel. I picked the calmest and most mature kid in the class, a boy named Jesse. But as soon as the mother and father approached him with the doll, he put on this ghoulish face, said “Give me da baby!” in a Transylvanian accent, and began violently stabbing at it with the scissors. I had to wrench it away and stop the skit right there.

  One April day I was on my way out of the synagogue when Elliott pulled me aside and said, “I’d like to talk to you upstairs.” We went up to his office and he gave me a rueful look. “The religious school committee had an emergency meeting last night,” he said. “One of your students, Ezra Rothman, was reading the Post for the sports stats and accidentally came across that item about you yesterday. He told his mother and she called the emergency meeting.”

  “What item in the Post?”

  “You didn’t see it?”

  I shook my head no. He reached into one of his drawers and handed the paper to me. I knew which page to turn to. On the bottom right corner of Page Six was a grainy shot of me exiting the synagogue, next to an item that read:

  From Wench to Mensch

  SPOTTED: Former City Week sex columnist Ariel Steiner, on her way out of Temple Ahavat Shalom in Brooklyn Heights, where she’s currently working as a religious school instructor. Personally, we wouldn’t let her near our kids, but maybe God has taken a more generous attitude. We can only wonder what career move is next for the reformed sex writer—rabbinical school?

  I stood up abruptly, crossed to the window, moved the curtain aside, and looked across the street. There was a man leaning against a lamppost, but he didn’t have a camera around his neck. Halfway down the block was an unmarked van. Maybe my paparazzo was hiding in there. Suddenly the lamppost man looked up—right at me. Maybe it was him. Maybe he was using a tiny spy camera. I quickly dropped the curtain, panting. I felt like Malcolm X in that famous photo. Except Jewish and without the gun.

  “What was that all about?” said Elliott.

  “Nothing,” I said, sitting back down.

  “Anyway,” he said, “Mrs. Rothman convened the meeting and said she didn’t feel comfortable with her son being taught by a former pornographer. She brought up the mock circumcision as an example of your negative influence.”

  “But the kids loved that class!”

  “I tried to defend you, but there wasn’t much I could say. They took a vote on whether to dismiss you and I’m sorry to report that the outcome was not in your favor. This is still a rather conservative neighborhood. But I know a lesbian rabbi in Park Slope who says her religious school would be happy to hire you in September.”

  I nodded, picked up my bag, and walked out. I wasn’t just a failed writer; I was a failed shul marm. It didn’t get much more humiliating than that. And from a financial standpoint, this was the worst possible timing. April 15 was coming up, and I barely had enough in my bank account to pay my taxes. Steven Jensen the neo-Nazi didn’t have enough integrity to put his columnists on staff, so none of my taxes had been withheld. I needed a job that provided a quick cash flow. I also needed a job that didn’t include cleaning up spitballs as one of its main responsibilities.

  On the walk home from the synagogue I started thinking about my marketable skills and realized there was still an area of shit work I hadn’t explored: waitressing. I had shied away from it in the past because I always suspected I’d be far too neurotic to pull it off, but these were desperate days. Besides, it was one occupation in which my reputation couldn’t matter. No one could rightfully argue that my past made me unfit to serve salads. All that was required was a polite manner, a sense of balance, and an ability to take accurate orders.

  I picked up a copy of the Voice at a newsstand on my way to the apartment and scanned the BAR/REST ads. One read, “NoHo Café, busy downtown restaurant, sks exp’d & enthusiastic wait-staff for day shift. Personality & flexibility a must. Apply in person with Tasos, weekdays from two to four.” The address was on Lafayette Street.

  The next day I took the train over. It was a small place—a dozen tables—and the prices on the menu outside were pretty moderate. I walked in. It was dark and a little smoky. Only a few of the tables were taken, and at the bar was a broad-shouldered man in his thirties going through a stack of applications several inches high. “I’m here about your Village Voice ad,” I said.

  “Take one of these,” he said, sliding me a blank application. I filled out my name, address, and phone number, and then I got to the first question. “Define the following: haricots verts, demiglace, steak au poivre.” I racked my brain for any remnants of high school French. I knew vert meant green but I didn’t know what the hell haricots were. Demiglace meant half ice cream, but that didn’t seem to make any sense. And I had no clue about poivre. This baby was harder than the temping test. I left all three lines blank and moved on to the next question. “Name three types of gin, three types of vodka, and three types of rum.” Too bad I’d been drinking nothing but Jameson for the past year. “Name three wine regions in California and three in France.” I figured I’d start with California. Napa. That was one, but the only other regions of California I could think of were the Haight and Venice Beach. Maybe France would be easier. Bordeaux. Cannes? Did they make wine there? Nice? Cognac? Was Cognac a place—or a thing? I went to the “Employment History” section, left that blank too, and slid the application back to Tasos, facedown.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Let me get a picture of you.” He picked up a Polaroid camera sitting on the bar and said, “Stand against the wall.”

  I backed up and tried to smile confidently. Just as he was about to take the shot, he lowered the camera and wrinkled his brow. “I know you,” he said. “I’ve seen your face.”

  “People say I’m the spitting image of Carol Kane in Hester Street.”

  “No. I mean you look familiar.”

  “Some even say I look like Meg
Ryan. I don’t think so at all, but maybe it’s the dimples.”

  “No.” He walked over to the bar and glanced at my application again. “Ariel Steiner!” he said, his jaw dropping. “You used to write that smut for the City Week! What are you doing applying for a waitressing job?”

  “I’ve been having some trouble getting steady work since I left the paper,” I mumbled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’d rather not go into it.”

  “I used to read you all the time. I was really disappointed when I found out you’d made them up. I thought they were true.” He grinned and gave me a once-over. I pretended not to notice. “So, you have no waitressing experience whatsoever.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Tell me why I should hire you, then.”

  “Because I’m an incredibly fast learner, I’m quick on my feet, you used to be a fan, and I really need the money.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned back. “Do you have any idea how many people have applied for the job?”

  “No.”

  “A hundred and twenty-five.”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot of competition, but I promise I’ll do good work.” He shook his head. “Think of this as payback! You’re giving me something in return for what I gave you. You’re throwing me a bone in exchange for me having thrown you a . . .” I batted my eyes.

  He snickered. “When could you start?”

  “As soon as you want me to.”

  “How ‘bout tomorrow?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “The base is five-fifty an hour and the shift is ten-thirty to four-thirty. With tips you’ll probably average about a hundred a shift. I’ll have you trail Christina tomorrow and Thursday, and on Friday you can start on your own. There’s no pay for the trailing unless she tips you out. Wear black pants. I’ll give you a shirt when you get here.”