by Sidney Hart
“Melvin.” Harlan said in reproach.
“Stay out of this Harlan. You really want Rosie? Seriously? I’ll introduce you to her, but don’t ever say that I didn’t warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“About the possibility of venereal diseases, the clap, the syph, who knows what else she might be carrying, and the most miserable affliction of them all—the afters.”
“What are the afters?” I knew about gonorrhea and syphilis but I had never heard of “the afters.” Ron had made it sound like something terribly ominous.
“I can’t tell you that. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”
I turned to Harlan but he just shrugged.
3.
When I arrived in the Catskills that summer I had one clear goal: to earn about fifteen hundred dollars to pay my college tuition and to provide pocket money. My other aspirations were clouded by uncertainty because I truly believed I had no control over them. I’ll call them the prizes. First and foremost was whether I’d be accepted to the freshman class at Columbia but a very close second was whether I’d lose my virginity, or in the language of the time, perhaps of all times, score; get in; get laid. My anxieties about these two intentions brought me into the Catskill mountains with a discomfiting sense of powerlessness. It was a mystery to me if I’d get either prize.
So, while there were these two mysteries—would my brain and my body both be rewarded that summer—it had taken almost no time at all for there to be yet another mystery waiting for me in the Catskills, Harlan Hawthorne. What the hell was he doing there? I have already described him briefly to you but you must understand the effect his demeanor and carriage had on me was profound. His was a very different style, one that relied on a withholding of his opinions and a general quality of self-containment and restraint. This was in stark contrast to the relentless babbling of opinions and gibes that characterized the generic mountain rat. Morning until night, from the showers to the dance floor, a snide recitative droned all around me but Harlan, wearing a bemused smile, hummed quietly to himself. The target of many taunts and jeers he’d simply cock an eyebrow, smile tolerantly, and shake his head gently from side to side in a gesture of muted disbelief. He was somewhere else.
While he was an enigma to many of us working in the dining room, Sammy had an especially difficult time understanding Harlan’s style.
“Who does he think he is? What does he want here? What is he looking for?” These questions were posed rhetorically, Sammy’s way of thinking out loud. No one believed that Harlan was working as a waiter because he needed the money, not the Jewish boys from the city, not the basketball players from the south, and certainly not Sammy. Abe was mute on the subject. The puzzle so frustrated Sammy it made his usually artful jibes cruel and clumsy.
“Harlan, come to my room later so I can circumcise you. I can’t stand the idea of a putz working in my dining room.” Seeing his perplexity Abe explained to Harlan that while a “shmuck” was the entire male member, a “putz” was just the foreskin.
“What is it Harlan, you’re schmekele is cold? It needs to wear a turtleneck? Do you think a Jewish girl wants to have to deal with that? She’d probably faint when she sees it.” Harlan countenanced this barrage with composure and equanimity saying nothing. Girls didn’t seem at all put off by him, quite the contrary, whether or not they had seen his anatomical anomaly, the foreskin being anomalous only among Jews. Indeed, mothers and daughters could sometimes be seen elbowing one another out of the way to get in front of him, the mother’s being more seductive than their pouting daughters had ever imagined possible. It was something amazing to observe.
“They don’t really know what to make of me, do they?” he asked me as we lay in our bunks staring at the ceiling one afternoon after lunch in mid-July.
“You are very different, Harlan. They can’t understand why a Harvard man is waiting tables here. At the Concord or at Grossinger’s there might be an Ivy but at Braverman’s?” I was hanging “they” as a curtain in front of my own curiosity.
“I didn’t have enough experience to work in those hotels. They’re more demanding in their hiring practices than the Bravermans. I’m here for the same reasons all of the rest of you are, to make money.”
I heard “all the rest of you” as “JEWS” and bridled inside, but then saw an opportunity in that statement. “That may be so Harlan, but all the rest of us are also Jewish and you’re not.”
“And the basketball players from Mississippi and Kansas?”
“They’re basketball players. They’re different.”
“And I’m different too, Melvin.”
Whenever people called me Melvin instead of Mel I always felt that they were angry at me, an imprinting by my parents who used my full proper name to alert me to their imminent castigations. I didn’t want Harlan to be angry with me and I didn’t want him to call me Melvin. I didn’t want anybody to call me Melvin. “I wish you wouldn’t call me Melvin. Mel is fine.”
“You don’t like your name, do you. I’ve seen you grimace when Sammy or Ron call you Melvin. What’s wrong with it?”
“Haven’t you ever seen Jerry Lewis do his Melvin routines? Do you have any idea what it felt like to be a Melvin when that was the name that meant hopeless moron, shmuck?”
“I understand. It’s not the most square-jawed of names, is it? I bet people tell you, ‘Hey, there’s Mel Torme and Mel Ferrer and they’re great,’ right?”
“Were you hiding under the bed? That’s exactly what they tell me. And don’t forget Melvyn Douglas, who just happens to look like my father’s twin brother so how can I complain? Yeah, that’s exactly what they tell me when they’re not yelling at me to stop feeling sorry for myself.”
“Then, why don’t you change it? You can call yourself anything you like. You can call yourself–Jack. I like that. Jack. That’s a good name. Jack and Jill, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy! You are now Jack.”
“There are Jakes where I come from, Harlan, but no Jacks,” I objected.
“Great, then you will be the first, that’s even better. C’mon Jack, do it.” I looked over at him lying on his cot. His hands were clasped behind his neck, his arms forming triangles on either side of his head, and he was smiling a smile of genuine pleasure and satisfaction. “C’mon.”
“I don’t think I can do it, I really don’t think so.”
“Jack, I’m going to tell you something and I don’t want you to repeat it to anyone. Can I trust you to do that? Because if I can’t trust you, Jack, I’ll be terribly disappointed.”
“I swear.” I almost promised to cross my heart.
“Once, at Harvard, when I was trying to impress a TA, that’s a graduate student who is teaching a class for a professor, I told her my name was Packard Studebaker because I didn’t want her to look me up in the student directory and find out I was only a sophomore. The name just fell out of my mouth, and she just fell into my arms. With the right name in the right place you can reach for the things you dream about from the shelter and safety of a new identity. Jack will be like your suit of armor.”
“People will laugh. Sammy and Ron and the others will be merciless, they’ll ride me day and night, they’ll …”
“Forget them. Just let it roll off your back. What do you care what they say. Are they the rest of your life, or is Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy, the rest of your summer?”
“I could never do that …” It was such a recklessly bold and exhilarating proposition I began to laugh, as if intoxicated, silly, giddy laughter.
“You can and you must. Listen to me. This could be a critical crossroads, Melvin,—your moment of truth. You can live the life you want to live, or you can be a spectator to it, a resentful, unhappy spectator. Take a risk, take a chance, take the name Jack.” His tone was fierce.
“How will I explain it to everyone?”
“It’s your middle name and you’ve decided to use it. You don’
t like Melvin or Mel and so from now on it’s Jack. Say it. Say ‘Jack.’” He was staring up at me with an intensity that informed me I had no choice but to do as he said.
“Jack. JACK! Jack, Jack, Jack. I am Jack White, pleased to meet you. My name is Jack White, what’s yours? Hi, I’m Jack.”
“Keep saying it until you believe it. You have to feel you are Jack, feel it inside you. Say ‘Jack’.”
It was becoming frightening to me. It was beginning to seem more important to Harlan that I be Jack than it was to me.
“Cut it out, Harlan, I’m Jack, okay? Let’s not get carried away with this. I promise, from now on I’m going to be known as Jack White.”
“Okay. I was just trying to help you out, don’t get so tense.”
Perhaps a more experienced and less credulous person would have become suspicious of Harlan at that point. It had been so easy for him to solve my problem by breaking through the conventions framing ordinary existence, such an effortless rupture of propriety, that I was both thrilled and appalled. But to have balked would have seemed hopelessly middle class, the single most searing epithet amongst my brilliant high school friends, and accepting his advice did feel thrilling and liberating, over the edge.
Later, walking to dinner, I told Ron what I had decided to do with my name.
“Jack? You really like that? Jack?”
“Well, like Harlan says, it is a simple, square jawed All-American name, as in Jack Armstrong, All-American …”
“The only All-American you know is Ivan Goldman, the All-American basketball player from the Bronx. Jesus Mel, I thought you were sharper than that. I told you Harlan isn’t somebody you should trust.”
“But Jack is a great name, the hero of most nursery rhymes, a name that has deep, safe associations in our minds, Jack and Jill, Jack and the Beanstalk …”
“Jackass, Jack off, Jack shit, Jack the Ripper. Jack.” He was sneering as the name came out of his mouth. “And while we’re at it, Mr. Whatsinaname, where did White come from, Weiss? Weissberg? Weissman? You know it was never just plain old Mr. White.” I knew he was right, but that was information hard won and I was not about to give it away to him just for the asking.
“You won’t guess, so don’t even waste your time trying. Anyway, White is the name I was born with, I didn’t change it.” In spite of my efforts not to I was sounding very defensive, and totally oblivious of the irony that I could trade Melvin for Jack readily, while cringing at my grandfather’s decision to swap Zwartzoffski for White.
“C’mon, what was it, some thing really grotesque like Baumbergsteinwitz ?”
“No, actually it was Sheenykikemockyjew. We changed it because it was such a bitch to spell.”
“Just asking, Mel, no offense intended. But we both know there were never any Whites, Blacks, Greystones, or Taylors in the ghettos. I could alter my name, but …” That was one of Ron’s jokes, alter Alter.
“There are alternatives I’m sure,” I said, hoping we were done with the genealogical survey of my family. To try to insure that I added, “Boy I’m hungry, I hope some of that roast beef is left over from Saturday night.”
“You want to know what’s left over from last Saturday night? Rosie is left over from last Saturday night. Are you ready for her yet?”
“Sure.” I felt myself blush and my heart flipped in my chest like a fish in a net.
“Then I’ll take you to meet her after dinner. I’m sick and tired of listening to that goddamned cha-cha music in the recreation hall anyway. Do you think the Cubans ever play Klezmer music at their resorts?” Seeing my perplexity Ron waved his hand and said, “Forget it.”
I was distracted all through dinner and Sammy was irritated with me for not schmoozing the guests more enthusiastically. He cornered me in the kitchen as I collected the salads and various dressings.
“What’s the matter with you Melvin, aren’t you interested in making any money this week? Why aren’t your pecuniary proclivities in a pulsatile pandemonium?” Sammy had been studying P words.
“It’s Monday night, for godsakes, get started and be friendly already. You want that I should earn you your tips?”
I kept looking over at Ron’s station but he paid me no mind whatsoever. Ron was being very polite and charming to his guests and totally oblivious of my eager glances. After clean up and the ritual wiping and sorting of the silver he came to my station and asked if I was ready to go.
“Is there really a Rosie?” I asked trying to sound wary and shrewd. “And how come you haven’t pointed her out if she really exists.” I was hoping that she was a fabrication of his, not real, not flesh and blood.
“When you’re done whining we can get washed up and I’ll take you to meet her. She’s waiting for us.”
At nine o’clock we left the waiters’ quarters and cut through the line of trees that separated us from the dormitory housing some of the other hotel employees. Trying to be cool I kicked at a stone as we passed through the weeds, but the stone was embedded in the ground and didn’t budge causing me to stumble and abrade my hands when I fell. “Gee, I’m bleeding. Maybe we should go back so I can wash up.”
“Rosie would welcome you if you were wrapped in a plaster cast from head to toe. Chickening out Melvin? Podus frostus? Feetus coldus?” he rode me gleefully.
I pulled out my handkerchief and dabbed at my palms. “Lets go then.”
Rosie’s room was in the rear section of the building where some of the chambermaids lived. The older ones drove in each morning from the nearby towns but the younger ones, like Rosie, lived on the grounds and their room and board made up a big part of their pay, just like the waiters and busboys.
“Do you have a girl up here Ron?” I asked as we climbed the back stairs.
“Vivian works in a summer camp near Liberty. We don’t see that much of each other up here. We’re going to get married after we finish school. This way.” he said leading me through the rear door.
“Ron.” I stopped and stood my ground until he came back to me. “Please introduce me as Jack. Please.” He rolled his eyes and then nodded his assent.
“Rosie are you here?” he called out. A girlish voice said “Who’s that? Is that Ron? Ronnie is that you?”
“The one and only,” he called out. “Is Rosie here Martha?” A plain looking girl in shorts and a halter top with a terrific figure and a moderately bad case of acne came out of one of the rooms along the hall and leaned herself languidly against the wall. She raised up her right arm, configured her fingers in the shape of a gun and, squinting her left eye, sighted Ron down the barrel of her index finger.
“Ronnie’s looking for Rosie but he’s found Martha,” she said in a petulant voice. Then, as if noticing me for the first time she asked, “Who’s he?”
“This is Jack. Jack, Martha. Martha, Jack.” he said, nodding at us each in turn. “Actually, Martha, I thought you and I and Jack and Rosie could go out for a few drinks, have a little fun, you know.” Martha still had him in her sights. “Rosie has the rag on, Jack, still interested?” I swallowed hard and looked at Ron.
“Of course he is,” Ron said as he walked up to Martha and ran his hand gently along her extended arm over her shoulder and down her neck to her breast. Martha pressed herself against him, took his face in both her hands and kissed him fiercely. So much for Vivian, I thought. They stood there grinding and groaning for I don’t remember how long and I was about to leave them when a pudgy, round faced girl with long black hair still wet from the shower, came out of the bathroom.
“Looks like Ronnie and Martha have got something straight between them,” she said, tugging at the bath towel wrapped around her body. “Who’re you?” she said motioning at me with her chin.
“That’s Jack,” Ron said before I could speak. “I brought him around to meet you. What say we all go to Freddy’s and have some drinks?” Rosie studied me disinterestedly and shrugged. “Come on, we’ll have some fun. Jack’s buying.” Rosie looked back at me and I
smiled and nodded. I felt like I might throw up, but I smiled.
“Wait downstairs,” Rosie said. We did as we were told. On the back steps I took out a pack of Old Gold Filters and, with shaky hands, lit a cigarette.
“What’s that you’re smoking?” Ron said. I showed him the pack. He shook his head and frowned. “Can you get this one right? This is not the rest of your life. This is an initiation ceremony. Put a flag over her face if you have to. Just remember, Diana is out there waiting but you have to go through Rosie first.”
“I don’t know if I can go through with this, and what about Vivian,” I said irately, as if she were my sister. “How can you do this to Vivian?”
“Did you see that body on Martha? Don’t be a prick.”
When the girls came downstairs Ron said he’d drive. He wrapped an arm around Martha’s shoulders and walked ahead while Rosie and I followed behind.
“So, you live around here all year round?” I said, trying to break the ice.
“Yeah.” she said.
“That must be nice.” The clicking of her chewing gum was her only response and it was obvious that Rosie was not adept in the art of making conversation.
“You’re cute,” she said, sliding her hand down the inside of my arm. “What’s your name again?”
“Meh, Jack!” I fumbled, almost bleating my real name as we arrived at Ron’s car. Once inside Martha was all over Ron and it looked as though she was going to sit in his lap for the ride.
“Don’t be so bashful,” Rosie said, rubbing my thigh and crowding me in my seat. “I like that name, Jack.”
“Me too,” I said, like an idiot.
Freddy’s was a townie bar, one that I had walked past when in town for toiletries and such, but I’d never been inside. Even on warm sunny days you could see men hunched over the formica bar when you looked through the windows and there was something uncomfortable and a little ominous to me in that sight. I had been raised to be wary of gentiles drinking alcohol. Visions of Cossacks besotted with vodka had been conjured for me every Passover but others too, whether Irish, Polish or Italian, were always defined as dangerous when associated with alcohol. Throughout high school I argued against these stereotypes citing the friends I had made with members of those groups, but here on unfamiliar ground that early indoctrination triumphed and prevailed. We parked just down the street from the entrance and as we approached the place Martha was hanging all over Ron, kissing him on the neck and laughing loudly. Rosie seemed a little disappointed with me and walked ahead. I couldn’t tell which was making me more nervous, the prospect of a bar brawl or the prospect of sex with Rosie. Either way, my nerves were so jangled I thought they’d sound like a pocket full of loose change if they could be heard. Two men in their twenties came out of the entrance to Freddy’s and stopped on the sidewalk.