by Ron Bahar
Growing up in Lincoln in the 1980s, I was the only Jew in my class. I was the only one who looked Middle Eastern, the only one who shaved by age twelve, and the only one whose family spoke Hebrew at home. I wasn’t a particularly good athlete, and I was continually compared to my two older, really-fucking-smart sisters.
To the casual observer, my ethnicity was difficult to identify. My blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Israeli-born, half-Polish, half-Belarusian mother conceived three children with her Indian-born husband of Iraqi-Jewish descent. Sadly, the end product of my disparate and “interesting” lineage was not a portrait of “rugged good looks.” Instead, it was an unfortunate and ironic mix of Lou Ferrigno’s head and Bill Bixby’s body, neither Incredible nor Hulky.
As part of my Saturday morning ritual, I toweled off, plugged in my Sony Walkman, pressed play, and began to alternate between karaoke and lip sync, this morning to the music of Billy Idol. At the risk of sounding cocky, I was an exceptionally gifted singer, and, unlike my abilities as a student, I never had to work hard at it; my voice came naturally and effortlessly, and I never took a lesson. If my parents didn’t pressure me to pursue a career in medicine, they would surely have wanted me to become the cantor at our temple.
Despite being told more than once by old Mrs. Goldberg that I had, “the voice of an angel,” I would rather have pursued a life of crime than become a member of the clergy. I was wildly proud of my heritage and the risk my parents and grandparents took in uprooting their lives so that their children and grandchildren could have better ones. Though the spirituality and parables of Judaism fascinated me, its rituals and services bored me to tears, leaving me to resent my father’s early morning “call to prayer.”
“Ronnie, move it!” my father commanded, as he pounded on the bathroom door. “We’re leaving for synagogue in five minutes . . . and what is that garbage you’re singing anyway? Using your voice for anything other than religious purposes borders on sacrilege.”
While I ignored my father’s proclamations, I understood that we remained at an impasse. So instead of concentrating on music, I appeased him by focusing on my application to six-year medical schools that would allow me to matriculate directly out of high school. “Full steam ahead,” he would say. “Anything less is a sinful waste of time.”
Music was indeed my comfort food. Though my own skills were limited to my voice, I did play a respectable air guitar during karaoke-lip sync:
“I’m dancing with myself
when there’s no-one else in slight . . .”
I was the youngest of three children. The oldest was my sister, Zillie—yes, Zillie—short for Zillah. Try growing up with a name like that in the Midwest. My parents didn’t mean to torture her. She was named after my maternal grandmother, and was born in Israel, where the biblically derived moniker was perfectly acceptable. It was, therefore, imperative that she grew thick skin; there would be no other means to survive the nickname “Godzilla,” which haunted her for the twelve years she lived in Nebraska. Mercifully, my parents grew to understand this cruel reality before they named their younger two children. It was no accident, then, that in choosing a college, Zillie sought only East Coast melting-pot schools, where assimilation was not necessary and where visiting Lincoln would be conveniently inconvenient.
Those born in Israel are described as “sabras,” a reference to the cactus-borne fruit that is prickly on the outside and soft on the inside. Zillie personified this description; while her brutal honesty was painful, her loyalty was unrelenting.
She called me early that morning to shoot the shit, and while she made me run late, she offered me both solicited and unsolicited advice. “Ronnie, stop trying to please everyone,” she explained. “If you want to become a doctor, become a doctor, and if you want to sing, tell everyone to fuck off.”
“Okay, okay,” I answered dismissively.
“Don’t ‘okay, okay’ me! That’s patronizing! And, by the way, I will always have your back, dumbass.”
My middle sister, Iris, was home from college at the University of Illinois. I was certain she attended engineering school to pander to my engineering-professor father, but it turned out she was just wired differently and more successfully than I was. I loved Iris, but she had no patience for her baby brother. Though she was quite familiar with my Saturday morning bathroom customs, and though she was about as enthusiastic about going to temple as I was, she was not one to procrastinate. My sisters and I shared one of the two bathrooms in our three bedroom, one-story stone house, and I had gotten used to feeling like an only child when both of them had departed for college. Iris thumped loudly on the door. “Ronnie, give it a rest! We’re going to be late!”
“That’s the idea,” I responded.
Now my mother had reached her limit and took it upon herself to extricate me with a lighter, but more urgent knock. “Ronnie, hurry up! I put your clean panties in your room!”
Chills ascended my spine. “Jesus, Mom, I asked you never to use the words ‘Ronnie’ and ‘panties’ in the same sentence. I wear underwear!”
“What does Jesus have to do with your panties?” she responded, lost in translation. “We have to leave!”
My concert had concluded. I left the bathroom, dressed, and ran to the kitchen to shovel dry cereal down my gullet in an attempt to prevent starvation at the seemingly eternal services. After only a few bites of Frosted Flakes, a repetitive honk emerged from the car. I was generally not allowed to drive until the end of the Sabbath, when three stars in a hopefully cloudless sky signified the end of its traditional observance (thus leaving Tommy’s car down the street to avoid conflict) and the beginning of a new week. However, according to my parents’ interpretation of Jewish law, the “convenience loophole” superseded this rule so that we could then drive specifically to services. On cue, I would run out, plead with my father to stop waking the dead, and jump in the car. I never begrudged my parents. I simply and genuinely didn’t understand them. Most things never changed.
CHAPTER 3
“Mm, but it’s poetry in motion
And when she turned her eyes to me”
—THOMAS DOLBY’S “SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE,”
FROM THE ALBUM THE GOLDEN AGE OF WIRELESS, RELEASED
MAY 10TH, 1982. IT PEAKED AT NUMBER FIVE ON US
BILLBOARD’S HOT 100 SONGS.
I had perfect grades, but in order to achieve them I studied endlessly. To complicate matters, my sleep hygiene sucked. After studying until 3:00 a.m., I would wake up at 7:00 a.m. each weekday and drag myself out of bed to shit, shave, and shower. “Breakfast” typically consisted of shoving those same dry Frosted Flakes directly from the box into my mouth with one hand while precariously steering and racing my ’70 Plymouth Duster to school with the other. My mom hated that I didn’t eat “like a real human being.” I do indeed remember summers in Israel, where my grandfather would meticulously prepare cucumber and tomato salad with freshly baked bread, a slice of farmer’s cheese, and a giant glass of milk. Best food ever. I agree that only the latter meal represented human food, but I was simply trying my best to behave like an American teenager.
I was always exhausted. Despite the exotic lure of nonkosher food, the thought of consuming subsidized school lunches featuring mystery meat wrapped in stale Midwestern tortillas repulsed me. Because I lived so close to school, I often ran home during lunch to think and eat. And eat. And eat. I could finish an entire box of Kraft Mac & Cheese in one sitting. The key was to strike the right balance of milk, butter, and starch to maximize adolescent-male satiety, while avoiding nausea. Paradoxically, Kraft managed to create a cheap and delicious alternative to human food. After school, cross-country practice would ensure that the thousands of calories I devoured would be burned, and my bony physique would persevere.
Once I reached home, I was spent. My legs twitched. After a half hour with my parents, Dan Rather and the CBS Nightly News at the dinner table at 5:30 p.m., I would sleep for about an hour. I would t
hen awaken, still groggy, and watch a mindless show to help rouse me. The 7:00 p.m. time slot was critical. Monday night’s selection—no, not Family Ties (8:00 p.m.), and no, not M*A*S*H” (8:30 p.m.), but Square Pegs, was a taunting metaphor for my life. I would procrastinate a couple of hours more with phone calls and Peanut M&M’s, and then finally begin the slog of homework that would last until the wee hours of the morning. Calculus. Chemistry. English (I pretended to be well-rounded). Then I would crash and wake again at 7:00 a.m. The harrowing cycle would continue until Friday night.
“THAT’S disgusting,” said Amy.
“No it’s not. It’s fucking awesome,” I responded.
Amy Andrews and I had originally met in fifth grade, at a time when our fathers worked together closely in the faculty senate at the University of Nebraska. Her father, Steven, was a professor of English, and my dad a professor of electrical engineering. The two of them shared a passion for their work and an absent-mindedness for the rest of the world at large: a match made in heaven. Amy’s mother, Carol, also a member of the English faculty, bared the additional, sexist reality of equal work for lower pay, along with her presumptive responsibility as the primary caregiver to her only child.
My mother regularly and happily invited Amy home with me after school; she was thrilled to have someone apply peer pressure to her distractible, impressionable, and occasionally lonely son.
As a winner of multiple teaching and societal awards, Steven Andrews was tremendously popular with both students and faculty alike. He was smart, charming, and handsome—my mom thought he looked like Ryan O’Neal—perhaps too charming and handsome. During the spring of our sixth grade, he was caught by a suspicious Carol while having a brief, but torrid, affair with a professor from the Spanish Department. Steven and his Latina lover shared a penchant for Jimmy Buffett music, and he and his literal “Mexican Cutie,” Dr. Sonia Mendes, were caught naked, sipping margaritas in a room at The Lincoln Airport Howard Johnson.
The subsequent and ugly divorce proceedings resulted in a permanently scarred and untrusting Amy, who spent many days (and nights) in 1977 and 1978 with my family while Steven and Carol duked it out in attorney’s offices and, eventually, in court. The Andrews depended on the discretion of my parents, who reserved judgment in Amy’s presence. “It’s a disgrace . . . both the affair and the divorce,” repeated my father on a near daily basis.
“You don’t just leave each other . . . you work things out,” my mother would add, completing their mantra. My parents cared deeply about Amy, and so protected her through silence beyond the family circle. God knows they understood how it felt to be outsiders.
———
FROM my naïve standpoint, I just didn’t get it. The Andrews seemed like the perfect little family. Carol was sweet, funny, and attractive, in an I-can-see-where-Amy-gets-her-good-looks sort of way, and Steven doted over the two of them whenever I saw them together. And wasn’t adultery a Top 10 sin?
For the most part, divorce was both relatively uncommon and frowned upon in Lincoln in the late ’70s. Steven was vilified in the community to a degree to which he felt he could no longer function socially or professionally. He eventually departed Lincoln for a tenured position at the University of Michigan, abandoning Amy both physically and emotionally. Amy wore her parents’ failed marriage as a badge of shame. The disappearing invitations to the homes of family “friends,” along with acquaintances who feigned empathy with lingering, pathetic stares, crushed her spirit. I caught her on more than one occasion crying silently in front of the television or a book, and offered comfort in a manner unique to an awkward seventh grader. “Amy, it’s . . . it’s fine,” I finally said, while patting her back stiffly during a particularly bad evening.
“No, it’s really not.” She looked up and studied my face. I nearly looked away; I was petrified that she would discover through my eyes that I thought she was beautiful. “Can we bake cookies?”
“What?” I answered, utterly thrown.
“Cookies.”
“What kind?”
“Chocolate chip . . . Nestle Tollhouse. We can also do that thing where we replace some of the chips with Peanut M&M’s.” She looked down and sniffed. “I know you like them.”
“Um . . . I suppose so. Why now?”
Her eyes returned to mine. “Because you’ve been really nice to me, and because Peanut M&M’s make me happy.” She wiped a tear with the palm of her hand and forced a smile.
I smiled back. Mine was unforced. “Me too. Okay, lemme get Iris. She’s good at—”
“No,” she interrupted. She grabbed my hand before I could leave the room. “Just us.” She held on to my hand a moment longer than was necessary. My eyes scanned the length of my goosebumped arm as I wondered exactly how and why that weird phenomenon occurred. Yes, I understood we were talking about cookies, but at the time, it was the hottest thing I had ever heard in my life. Goddammit those cookies were delicious.
I continued to lust after her throughout puberty. She and I would do homework together, especially during the first year of her parents’ separation, but her presence was sometimes more of a hindrance than a help; I would not-so-secretly stare at her for hours. Though our time together dissipated once the Andrews’ custody arrangement had been settled, my passion for Amy only grew.
Even at the tender age of twelve, however, I understood that, to my parents, Amy represented the ultimate forbidden fruit: the non-Jewish girl to the Jewish boy. With regard to my feelings, I knew they knew, and they knew I knew they knew.
Fuck.
Amy was ridiculously smart and naturally curious. Like her parents, she was a voracious reader, and, coupled with her near photographic memory, she made school appear effortless. If she weren’t so goddamn nice, girls would have universally despised her. She had almond-shaped hazel eyes, and during high school she wore a thick mane of feathered brown hair. When she smiled, my adolescent, hormonal eyes actually thought she sparkled. Fall and spring were the best times to see her during the school year, because she had spectacular legs and, when it was anywhere above sixty degrees outside, she exposed them in alluring fashion by wearing denim shorts. Despite her sex appeal, her easy-going personality, her intelligence and her genuineness made her the type of girl you bring home to mother. Unless, of course, your mother was Israeli and thought it was reasonable that her red-blooded American son should only date Jewish girls in a desert of Jews.
AS an underclassman, I had taken Frank Dupuis’ courses in biology and botany. During senior year, he taught anatomy and physiology, and I was his best audience. His unbridled enthusiasm for seemingly mundane subjects—the lifecycle of a jellyfish, or the formation of one milliliter of urine in a human bladder—was infectious. He wore his pocket protector proudly; he was so uncool he was cool.
He was plump and disheveled, and he continuously readjusted his wire-framed, rectangular glasses. However, despite his nebbishy exterior, Frank’s interior brimmed with his interest in the complexities of human interaction and how these interactions related to animal behavior. He could easily have forgone teaching to pursue a career in adolescent psychology. His interest likely stemmed from the early days of his relationship with his wife (then girlfriend), whom he courted unconventionally by impressing her with his knowledge of ferns. Not exactly Richard Gere and Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman, but love assumes many forms. When Sheila met Frank, he was a graduate student at the University of Nebraska, and she worked at Azalealand as a florist. The rest, including the birth of their daughter Fern (yes, Fern), is history.
Mr. Dupuis and I spoke often, and though we had talked frequently about my religion and my ability to sing, we never discussed Amy. Initially, there was no need; he sensed my attraction to her. I’m not sure why; perhaps it was the fact that I continued to gawk at her, hopefully in a non-creepy fashion. He had a policy of seating kids in alphabetical order, and though it had been his practice for years, I swear he did it specifically so that I, Ron Bah
ar, might sit next to Amy Andrews. In addition, I think he may have ensured that students were assigned special twin lab tables with extra-wide tops that hid the erections of young men, which could sprout even with a respectable gust of wind, let alone sitting next to a girl like Amy.
Frank finally tired of my plodding approach toward Amy and eventually took me aside one day after class. “You like her, don’t you?” he asked.
“Excuse me?” I responded, surprised and a little flustered.
“Ron, don’t be coy with me . . . do you want my advice, or not?”
“Well, sure . . . but I don’t think you’d understand.”
“Why wouldn’t I understand?”
“Because you’re not—”
“Not what? Seventeen? I actually was at one time,” he said, smiling.
“No, because you’re not Jewish,” I answered bluntly.
“You’re right, I’m not Jewish . . . and I’m not black or Hispanic either . . . but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what it feels like to be alone in a crowd in Nebraska.”
I immediately felt deeply embarrassed for my previous statement. He was right . . . on all accounts.
“Ron,” he continued, “Did you know that only about five percent of all mammals mate for life?”
“What? What do mammals and mating for life have anything to do with me?”
“I’m getting to my point. Wolves, beavers, bats, and humans are among the only ones who do. Wolves have alpha males, beavers go off on their own to find a mate and build a new colony, and male bats literally sing to females who fly by to try and serenade them . . . some of these animals even risk their lives in the process. But humans . . . humans do all of these things as part of their search for their one true love. It’s part of what makes us human. Biology can be incredibly romantic, don’t you think?”