The Oy of Sex
Page 1
Copyright © 1999 by Marcy Sheiner.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc., P.O. Box 14684, San Francisco, California 94114.
Printed in the United States.
Cover and Text Design: Scott Idleman/Blink
Cover Photo: Phyllis Christopher
Logo art: Juana Alicia
First Edition.
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Notices of copyright and reprint permissions appear on page 220.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The oy of sex : Jewish women write erotica / edited by Marcy Sheiner.
-- 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-57344-083-3 (alk. paper)
1. Erotic stories, American. 2. Jewish women--Sexual behavior--Fiction.
3. American fiction--Women authors. I. Sheiner, Marcy.
PS648.E709 1999
813’.01083538’082--dc21
99-11003
CIP
eISBN: 978-1-57344-887-1
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my publishers, Frédérique Delacoste and Felice Newman, for their enthusiasm and guidance; to Sandra Marilyn for her generous matronage; and to Joan Nestle for her decades of work on behalf of women.
Thanks to Corrinneshikel, Shoshana, and the rest of Mothertongue Theater for helping me solidify my Jewish identity; to Judith Linzer for her scholarly advice; and to my personal rabbi, Shar Rednour, who does what rabbis are supposed to do—figure out answers to ethical questions.
Thanks to the WELL online community for all their hilarious title suggestions, and in particular to the Jewish conference for their input about Judaism and sexuality as well as their helpful Yiddish definitions; to Andreas Ramos for sending me the Israeli personal ads; and to Lilith magazine for their help and support.
And a big round of applause for Miriam Wolf, who came up with the winning title.
For Andrea, my sexy Jewish soul sister
Contents
Introduction
Marcy Sheiner
Nice Jewish Girls
Susanna J. Herbert
The Gift of Taking
Joan Nestle
The Babka Sisters
Leslea Newman
Bagels and Bialeys
Gayle Brandeis
L’Chaim: A Shiksa’s Story
Carol Queen
Catholic Boys
Harvest Garfinkel
Mother Was Right
Judith Arcana
Shayna’s Shabbat
Claudine Taupin
One Single Night
Susanna J. Herbert
Shabbos Mitzvah for a Jewish Princess
Sara Leder
The Nanny of Ravenscroft
Joyce Moye
Pierced
Emma Holly
Out of Brooklyn
Robin Bernstein
To Celebrate the Ordinary
Elaine Starkman
The Locusts
Cara Bruce
Linguistic
Stacy Reed
Israeli Personal Ads
From the Internet
From He, She and It
Marge Piercy
The Feast of the Harvest
Ariel Hart
From Any Woman’s Blues
Erica Jong
About the Authors
About the Editor
Glossary
Introduction
GENESIS
The idea for a book of erotic fiction by and about Jewish women had its genesis a few years ago, when I was writing an “Erotica Roundup” for the Valentine’s Day issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Plowing through boxes of anthologies generously loaned to me by the Good Vibrations library, I noticed themes ranging from fairy tale motifs to vampires, along with several ethnic collections. African Americans were represented by Erotique Noire, Asian Americans had On a Bed of Rice, and Latinas had Pleasure in the Word. I was immediately struck by the notable absence of sex writing specifically by Jews, particularly by Jewish women, arguably the most verbal ethnic group in America. Maybe, I rationalized, the heyday for Jewish women’s writing had come and gone with the 1970s women’s movement; still. Erica Jongs “zipless fuck” notwithstanding, that burst of confessional novels and feminist theory was for the most part devoid of explicit sex.
Having been around the erotica scene for a decade, I knew that as many Jews as gentiles were writing the stuff—maybe even more. So why no collection?
JUDGES
Jews have always been subjected to nasty stereotypes, sexual and otherwise. Hitler labeled Jewish women pigs, and the Nazi regime perpetuated an image of Jews as lecherous pornmongers. Dirty Jew. Jewish Slut. Filthy Kike. The list goes on.
Perhaps Jews had been sufficiently silenced by such epithets. Maybe they were afraid that a collection of Jewish sex stories would feed ancient—and not so ancient—hatreds. Whatever the reason for the lack of a cohesive Jewish erotic sensibility, I decided to remedy the situation by providing a forum. Once I decided to do a book, though, I faced another rude awakening: when I began sending out calls for submissions and telling people I was putting together a collection of Jewish women’s erotica, they invariably snickered and asked, “What’s different about Jewish erotica?” Taken aback, I replied, somewhat apologetically, that I simply wanted stories by and about Jewish women; they may or may not be different; we’ll see what they write. Even I didn’t expect heavy Jewish content in the stories—but that is exactly what I got.
With one or two exceptions, the stories in this collection are heavily laden with Jewish symbols, holy days, customs, cultural references, and a hefty dose of Yiddish—so much, in fact, that I decided a glossary was necessary. Either my guidelines were interpreted literally, or there’s a vast mine of Jewish custom and lore woven into our sexuality that’s just been waiting for an opportunity to burst forth. To those who wondered what could possibly be distinct about Jewish erotica, The Oy of Sex is the beginning of an answer.
DEUTERONOMY
So what are the stereotypes that plague Jewish American women? Two of them are exemplified in the following joke: Q: How do you get a Jewish girl to stop fucking? A: You marry her.
This, one of my all-time favorite jokes, first heard when I was an adolescent, can be interpreted several ways. On the surface, it says that Jewish women only “put out” to get the brass, or gold, ring. On the other hand, it tells us, frankly, that Jewish girls like to fuck. Unburdened by the Christian admonitions against carnal pleasure, the Jewish girl is more likely to rejoice in her sensuality. This is, of course, a positive identity, one we can at last proudly claim. On the other hand, it feeds the stereotype of the Jewish girl as slutty.
The other half of the joke is the allusion to the JAP, the Jewish American Princess, the Sadie of Funny Girl, who wants her husband to “do for me, buy for me,” the spoiled brat who remains untouchable lest her hair and makeup get out of whack.
Other stereotypes are even more unkind: Fat. Loud. Aggressive. Moneygrubbing. Unfeminine. The only some-what positive stereotype is the beloved Jewish mother, who cooks chicken soup by the gallon and bestows kindness upon one and all—but she is generally relegated to the kitchen and seen as an asexual frump.
And where in our cultural images do these stereotypes ever get contradicted? Certainly not by Fran Drescher’s whining Nanny. Certainly not by her predecessors, Molly Goldberg and Marjorie Morningst
ar, Jewish mother and JAP, respectively. In Talking Back: Images of Jewish Women in American Popular Culture, edited by Joyce Antler (New England University Press, 1998), June Sochen points to Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Joan Rivers, Barbra Streisand, and Bette Midler as representatives of “three generations of Jewish women entertainers who operated as shrewd and funny observers of the battle between the sexes, the double standard, and sexuality.” Tucker, in particular, “looked like Mother Earth and sang like a red-hot mama.” Her schtick and her songs were full of double entendres. But huge, boisterous Tucker was not someone whom most contemporary Jewish women would wish to adopt as a role model.
CHRONICLES
The stories in this collection shoot stereotypes straight to hell. “The Nanny of Ravenscroft,” in her bunny slippers and nightie, is a far cry from the trashy Nanny of television fame. “The Babka Sisters” defy images of asexual grandmothers. “L’Chaim,” written by our token shiksa, praises the Jewish woman in ways that we could never do for ourselves.
If there is one stereotype about Jews that rings true, and that we willingly embrace, it’s our vast capacity for humor. The protagonists in “Catholic Boys,” “Mother Was Right,” and “Out of Brooklyn” laugh at themselves and get the rest of us to laugh along with them. The “Israeli Personal Ads,” which have been circulating on the Internet, are hilarious not by accident. Just finding a name for this collection produced a bevy of jokes from Jews and gentiles alike: suggestions included A Mitzvah in the Night, Hugs and Knishes, My Davenatrix, The J-Spot, Matzoh Balling, and Chicken Soup for Your Pants. The Oy of Sex, coined way back by editor Miriam Wolf of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, won by a landslide.
Another stereotype that holds true is the Jewish love of food: Though contemporary Jewish American women suffer greatly from body image angst, we love cooking and eating as much as our ancestors did. The women in these stories may bemoan their ample thighs or asses, but food is frequently simmering on their stoves and resplendent feasts adorn their tables, whether it’s the breadstuffs in “Bagels and Bialeys,” the vegetarian matzo ball soup in “Shayna’s Shabbat,” or the groaning board in “The Feast of the Harvest.”
LAMENTATIONS
While many of these stories are lighthearted, others are dead serious. “The Gift of Taking” illuminates how body image affects our sexuality; “The Locusts” plumbs the depths of a particularly Jewish grief. “Nice Jewish Girls,” zippy and contemporary, explores the underlying theme of Jewish women’s resentment of Jewish men who take shiksas as trophy wives. And “The Shabbos Mitzvah,” in which Judaic custom is almost seamlessly interwoven with the theme of dominance and submission, is a startling enlightenment.
Fleshy bodies, tempting food, forbidden liaisons, Jewish grief, internalized anti-Semitism, and a few compensating laughs—oyguttinyu, is that all there is? Is it true that being a Jew means suffering, even when it comes to sex?
SONG OF SONGS
Most emphatically, no. The female characters in these stories have a strong sense of their sexuality. They revel in their lusty passions, whether on a one-night stand or within a long-term marriage. They mightily enjoy sex, and they go after it themselves or heed the call when others come knocking.
Jewish tradition is steeped in physical joy, including sexual pleasure. God is believed to combine both masculine and feminine attributes, and sex is considered an earthly mystical union that reflects the greater holy mystery, an act of unity celebrating the divine. The Hebrew Bible’s Song of Solomon, also called Song of Songs, is widely regarded as one of the most erotic, sex-affirming passages in all of literature:
…Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor; thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies:
Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins… This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes…
Come my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages…
While women in the Hebrew Bible are routinely exploited, banished and shamed, nowhere is it written that sex is a sin. In fact, making love on the weekly Jewish Sabbath is considered a mitzvah.
May all your sexual experiences be mitzvahs.
Marcy Sheiner
January 1999
Nice Jewish Girls
Susanna J. Herbert
“Jewish girls are the world’s best cocksuckers and everybody knows it.”
I was assured of this factoid by my best friend, Rachel, who considers it a fundamental truth, as basic as Torah. This becomes somewhat ironic when you consider that Rachel is a hard-core dyke who has never slept with a man and “wouldn’t touch a dick if it was attached to a gazillion-dollar check from the Publisher’s Clearing House.”
I thought again of her words as I lapped an exquisite, pearly drop of precum that hung, seemingly transfixed, from the tip of David’s chubby kosher cock. I was teasing him; his ragged breathing inspired me to use my tongue and cheeks and lips as slowly as possible to consume every inch of his impatient erection. David made love the same way he conducted business: thoroughly and with a ruthless determination to triumph. But when his cock was sucked his façade crumbled and he reverted, once more, to the horniest fourteen-year-old boy in school. There was something wild and terribly amusing about knowing my skills at fellatio could turn the clock back to 1972.
Now my mouth locked at the base of his shaft and sucked hard, from stem to stern, as if drinking in the world’s juiciest popsicle on a hot summer day. He began to moan and squirm, crying jagged monosyllabic pleas not to stop, please don’t stop, oh yes, there, no, yessss, oh yes, please, suck, please, please, suck, yes, god, oh god, oh oh god, please don’t stop, don’t…stop!
Never dreaming of stopping, I varied my pace and style, using my mouth to suck and fuck him into oblivion. My cunt became hotter, wetter, but there was no time to touch myself and I didn’t want to dilute his absolute need of my mouth. I allowed myself to enjoy the hunger in my throbbing cunt, directing the sexual heat back onto his need and desire. I enjoyed his helplessness, and the power I felt from being so very much in control. I made my movements deliberate, unpredictable: running my tongue along his shaft one minute, nipping his head the next, then slathering his balls with the flat of my tongue. My mouth had become his lifeline, breathing sustenance into his loins as his gasps punctuated the night.
It was time. I used my hands to cradle his balls and then pump the base of his shaft while sucking him in deeper and deeper. My hands roamed to his lush, luscious ass. As his fleshy cheeks tightened in my grasp, the eruption began.
Warm, salty cream filled my mouth, bathed my inner cheeks. I milked him, swallowing every drop, as he babbled rapturous incoherence. He pulled me to him and held me tightly, still the sweet innocent. He kissed me hungrily and we fell into a deep sleep. When we awoke some time later, in place of the boy, forty-year-old David had re-emerged, eager and able to make me come, but too neurotic to enjoy it.
After fucking me to climax (with stops en route for the requisite fingering and pussy-licking), he kissed me nervously—worlds away from the burning embraces we had shared when his cock was hard—and repeated the confession that had become his postcoital mantra: “You know, I never fuck Jewish women.” He said this proudly, as if somehow I should be grateful that he was making an exception in my case.
I asked him why he had such arbitrary prejudice against Jewish women. I expected his reply to be angry or defensive. It was condescending.
“Come on. Jewish women are so…so.. Jewish!”
“And that means what?”
“Loud. Unattractive. Obnoxious. You know.”
I pulled on my sweater and jeans. “I’m going home.”
“Look, I don’t mean you. You’re really hot. You’re not one of those women.”
I was getting angrier. “I am, actually. And proud of it.”
“Now you’re pissed off. That’s so Jewish.”
“Good-bye, David.”
; I drove home trying to figure out just how and why we had become the enemy. Where did all that anger come from? How had Jewish women become the poster girls for the sexless, shopaholic, castrating shrew? Why did every Jewish man on TV have a blonde wife?
Rachel let me vent on the car phone, then offered more gospel. ‘Jewish women are brilliant in most things, but when it comes to their hearts, they give too much and men screw them over. You want to talk history? Ruth? Leah? Let’s talk Adam. He keeps his first wife out of the story completely and gives the second one creation’s first eating disorder.” Her theology was original, to say the least.
“You’re an accomplished, self-sufficient, beautiful woman, bla bla bla,” she continued, “but the bottom line is you’re the quintessential Nice Jewish Girl. There is nothing better than that. Hell, I only fuck Nice Jewish Girls. But these guys don’t want to see you for who you are. They need some bullshit Fran Drescher stereotype to justify their own cultural self-loathing. Why do you put up with that crap? You need to trash this guy from your database instantly. It’s time to ask yourself if the fucking you’re getting is worth the fucking you’re getting.”
Rachel always made me think, but what struck me now was the word “self-loathing.” How much of my attrac-tion to these men stemmed from our shared humor and cultural frame of reference—and how much of it justified my own insecurities and self-doubt?
When I was eight, the ideal woman was Twiggy. By the time I started to notice boys, their wet dreams starred Farrah Fawcett. It didn’t take me long to realize that, as different as these two women were, I was nowhere near either of them on the physical continuum. Whereas the current ideal could go from cool British waif to sun-drenched California babe, the template was always some shade of Blonde Goddess. Despite the fact that I was blessed with a great body and a good mind, I never felt I measured up to what men found attractive. And so I sought out Jewish boys who saw me as one of the guys. (I did know girls who went the peroxide and plastic surgery route, but that wasn’t my style. God bless Barbra for keeping her nose!)