The Boys Across the Street

by Rick Sandford

  One day, while I was at the check-cashing place I usually went to on Santa Monica Boulevard, there was a black woman standing behind me in line. She must have been in her fifties. As I came away from the window with my money she approached me. “Are you Jewish?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m just wearing this because—well—”

  “They’re good luck,” she said, interrupting me and saving me an awkward explanation. She reached up and touched my yarmulke, repeating, as she did so, “They’re good luck.”

  But what I was doing didn’t have as much to do with the outside world as it did with the boys, and my primary aim was to have it on at all times whenever I was out and about in the neighborhood. The news that I was wearing a yarmulke had spread throughout the school, and I never wanted the boys to see me without it. When they came out to play or go to the store they would all look to see if I had it on and then talk about it among themselves, and I guessed it must have thrown a monkey wrench into their sense of propriety. What did it mean? Was I becoming Jewish? Was my wearing a yarmulke a compliment or an insult? Was I emulating them or making fun of them?

  They kept asking me why I was wearing it, and my answers varied, but I usually said that I wore it because of them, “because I like you.” One of the boys, when I told him that, flung his arms out in a gesture of despair and, spinning himself around in a circle, exclaimed, “Oh, man!”

  My yarmulke had become a part of my person and it fit so neatly atop my head that I didn’t really need the paper clip unless I was on my bike or the wind was really blowing. But one morning, while I was taking a walk with a friend of mine, my yarmulke did blow away. The wind wasn’t much more than a breeze that day and I hadn’t taken the time to clip it to my hair. I wasn’t aware my little kepa was gone until sometime later when I reached up to make sure of it and it wasn’t there.

  The next day I returned to Fairfax and the store where I’d bought my Tanakh. In the back there was a rack filled with yarmulkes. I pondered them, feeling a little nervous about actually trying one on. As I held them, one after another, and examined them, some adorned with elaborate embroidery, I realized just how flimsy and insubstantial the yarmulke I’d been wearing was.

  I found a simple black velvet yarmulke that seemed big enough for my head, and I went to the counter and asked how much it cost. Five dollars. That wasn’t too bad. I went back and looked at the other yarmulkes some more, to make sure I had the one I wanted, and then I saw some little packets labeled “For Your Yarmulke.” I picked one of them up and looked at it more closely. Inside were four strips of Velcro that would adhere to the underside of the skullcap. A notice on the packet said it wasn’t good for men who had lost all their hair. One package cost $1.75.

  When I went to the counter with my purchases a young woman helped me. I braced myself for the question: “Are you Jewish?” but she didn’t ask it. Instead, she just rang up the prices, accepted my money, and put the things in a bag.

  When I got home I opened the packet, took the paper from the back of the strips of Velcro, and, spacing them apart evenly, stuck the pieces on the inside of my yarmulke. Then I put it on and, as the instructions stated, pressed down where the pieces of Velcro were. I shook my head and, sure enough, the yarmulke didn’t come off!

  I looked at myself in the mirror. The black velvet was much prettier than my first yarmulke had been, and it offset my brown hair in a cute sort of way: beneath a rather sober symbol of spirituality, my unruly mass of hair stuck out in all directions.

  I looked great.

  That Saturday night I was in my apartment reading when I heard loud singing coming from the school. I already had my yarmulke on, and as I went outside I grabbed my binoculars. I walked down the sidewalk a ways until I could see where the music was coming from.

  In the parking lot on the other side of the buildings that faced my street was a crowd of men. They all had beards and were dressed in black, with old-fashioned dress hats instead of yarmulkes. They had their arms around one another and were dancing in a circle and singing loudly. As they danced around together they seemed ecstatically happy.

  I looked through my binoculars and tried to see if I could recognize any of them, but I didn’t. I wasn’t even sure who they were but suddenly I felt very excluded. I wanted to join them. I wanted to dance and be happy.

  And then the noise and the movement came to an end. They were laughing with a kind of exultation and they all started hugging one another. In another couple of minutes they were getting in buses and cars and then they were gone.

  I didn’t know it then, but the spring break for the yeshiva had just begun.

  All at once, the neighborhood was unusually quiet. There were no more boys going up and down the street to the store, or to the park to play ball; there were no more late night conversations going on in the dorm rooms, and as the entirely uneventful days passed, I realized I was lonely.

  It was strange. I hardly ever feel lonely: I always have the gym to go to, or books to read, and the only time company with myself seems particularly burdensome is New Year’s Eve, which also happens to be my birthday. It struck me as slightly unnerving that I felt a loss at the boys’ absence.

  But as the days passed I got an idea that excited me: when the boys came back from their vacation, I would look just like them. I had a black coat and some black pants, and I already had my yarmulke. As soon as my unemployment check came, if they didn’t cost too much, I would get some tzitzis. I couldn’t do the peyos, the long hair on the sides, or a beard unless I let my hair grow—but I wasn’t working, so I didn’t have to get a haircut, I didn’t have to shave: I would grow peyos!

  I’ve never shaved on my cheeks, and my beard and mustache are so light they could never really amount to much, but I could still do it. I could look like that boy they called Catfish.

  When my unemployment check finally came I went back to the store on Fairfax and in the rear, behind the rack with the yarmulkes, were shelves of tzitzis. They were made of several different kinds of material, some of them were striped, and they had different prices. I chose a white, fine-textured cotton one for ten dollars. Again, when I went to buy it, I expected the girl to ask me if I was Jewish, but she didn’t, and as I left the store I felt I had achieved some kind of coup.

  I now had the capability of passing as an Orthodox Jew.

  8 / avi

  Orestes called me and asked me if I wanted to come over and have sex later that night. I said I did. Orestes was Latin and my whole Orthodox outfit probably wouldn’t mean much to him, but it was the first excuse I had to get all dressed up. I put on my black pants and shoes, a T-shirt, the tzitzis, a white shirt over that, the black coat, and my yarmulke.

  When the boys are in school or just hanging out, when they aren’t all dressed up for services, they usually wear their shirt-tails out, giving them a rather unkempt appearance. Now, as I looked at myself in the mirror, I began to understand why. If I tucked my shirt in, and wearing a coat seemed to demand at least that much, there was suddenly a problem with the tzitzis: they were very uncomfortable.

  The whole point of the tzitzis is that they should be seen, but since they were part of an undershirt I was wearing beneath my dress shirt, I had a problem. A knot or two inevitably ended up between the waistband of my pants and me, digging an impression of itself into my side. It was not a good feeling.

  But at the moment I didn’t care about that so much. I just cared about how I looked and I thought I looked great: if anyone saw me they would think I went to the yeshiva.

  I wasn’t going to see Orestes until nearly midnight, so I decided to go to the gym wearing my yarmulke and tzitzis. I got a few looks when I arrived and left, but for the most part no one seemed to care. The ones who would definitely notice me were the old Jewish men who came in the morning, but now, in the early evening among the bodybuilders and the socialites, I was just an insignificant aberration.

  When I got back home I was at loose ends. Ores
tes and I weren’t getting together for several hours yet, and I didn’t really have anything to do. What I wanted was to have some kind of interaction with the boys. School had begun again the day before, but I still hadn’t found an opportunity for showing off my full regalia.

  I went outside and walked the length of one of the walls that bordered the walkway. Across the street the school was quiet; a light was on in one of the windows. Looking down toward Waring, the nearest cross street, I saw two of the boys walking west. They were probably going two streets over and then down to Melrose, to the little convenience store there.

  I decided to follow them. I ran back in the house just to make sure how I looked. My yarmulke was in place, I had my shirttail in, the tzitzis were hanging at my sides, and, all in all, I looked passably Orthodox.

  I walked to the store instead of taking my bike, and as I strolled along the street, my hands in my pockets and my eyes cast down, I began to feel romantically “religious.” When I got to the store one of the regular bums there asked me for a quarter. I had a pocketful of change, and a quarter was practically in my fingers. I handed it to him, and felt I had thereby exonerated any hint of mocking that my clothes might imply.

  At the door I noticed one of the Orthodox boys by the newspaper stand; the other one, tall and gangly, was in line at the cash register. As I walked in, the boy reading the paper by the door didn’t look up but the other one, at the cash register, immediately took me in, and as our eyes met I recognized him: it was Avi, the boy they called Catfish.

  Avi wasn’t the only one taking me in. Right behind him in line was an acquaintance of mine, Sam, a musician friend of my neighbor Chris. Sam had been one of the first people to read my story about Isaac and Moshe, and his comments had impelled me to make the ending more explicitly sexual. He was Jewish, and as he looked at me now in my full Orthodox outfit he had an absolutely incredulous grin on his face: he couldn’t believe he was seeing what he was seeing.

  It was a weird moment. As I walked in the store I was approaching both Sam and Avi, my attention on the Catfish, but my obligation of communication was with Sam.

  “You haven’t converted!” Sam exclaimed. “I don’t believe it—you haven’t become Jewish, have you?”

  I pointed to Avi, just ahead of him in line. “He converted me,” I said. Avi was looking at me, and as I defined him as a catalyst in my life, I felt in him a sudden falling away of understanding. He knew I was kidding, he knew it wasn’t true, but he still wasn’t sure what the joke was.

  There was an awkward several moments: purchases were being made, there were other people in line, and in a way I had begun two conversations at once. I retreated down the aisle away from the cash register and got some peanut-butter cups. After Sam bought his beer I explained to him that I hadn’t become Jewish but I was emulating their fashion sensibility. Sam laughed, and after we said goodbye, Avi and his friend approached me. I didn’t know the friend, a rather nondescript boy, but he was the one who spoke to me first.

  “Why are you wearing tzitzis?”

  “I’m wearing them because you do,” I said, indicating them collectively.

  “But you’re n-not Jewish,” Avi stated.

  “So? Not everyone who’s Jewish wears them.”

  “But the Orthodox do,” Avi’s friend said. “The Chassidim do.”

  “What’s that—what’s—” and I tried to say the word I’d just heard.

  “Chassidim; that’s what we are. Chassidism is the kind of Judaism we practice.”

  I thought about this for a moment. “When I bought my tzitzis, the woman in the store didn’t ask me if I was Jewish.”

  “Do you know what the tzitzis mean?” Avi asked.

  “They stand for the six hundred and forty-three laws of Moses,” I said.

  “Six hundred and thirteen,” the friend corrected me.

  “Six hundred and thirteen,” I repeated carefully, to set it in my memory.

  “Where’d you get them?” Avi asked, at the same time as the nondescript boy asked my name.

  “Atara’s on Fairfax,” I answered Avi, and then gave my name to his friend.

  People were passing us in the aisle and it was getting crowded. I excused myself and made my way to the counter to pay for my peanut-butter cups. Avi and his friend went outside, and as I paid for my candy, I could see them through the window talking together and waiting for me. When I joined them the nondescript boy regarded me for a moment. “Your name is Rick?” he asked and then, “Are you gay?”

  I answered in the affirmative.

  “We d-don’t believe in that,” Avi said, setting up a boundary for definitions.

  “I know: Leviticus. Men who are homosexual should be killed. That’s one of the six hundred and thirteen laws of Moses, isn’t it?”

  Avi nodded, and with this framework established, we looked at one another, not really knowing where to go with it next.

  “You have sex with men?” the Nondescript Boy asked, repeating his question about my homosexuality, but this time a little more explicitly.

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that disgusting?” he pursued, and I felt a really interesting conversation between Avi and myself slipping away, a philosophical inquiry into the ramifications of Judaism, while I had to—once again—define homosexuality for a boy who had never met me before.

  “Why do you think it’s disgusting?” I asked. “Do you find your own body disgusting?”

  “No.”

  “So why would you find another man’s body disgusting?”

  Since we were all going “home,” they to their rooms at the yeshiva and me to my apartment across from them, we started walking back up the street together, three guys with yarmulkes and tzitzis engaged in conversation.

  “Have you ever had sex with a woman?” the Nondescript Boy asked.

  “No. I think their bodies are repulsive. I don’t like soft things. I like hard things, men’s bodies with strong muscles and big hard cocks.”

  They thought about this for a moment and we walked on a bit in silence. I had a suspicion they liked big hard cocks, too. After a moment the Nondescript Boy asked me when was the last time I had sex.

  “Well, I had sex about an hour ago at the gym,” I said.

  “At the gym?”

  “In the sauna. Me and a couple of guys jacked off together.”

  “How long did it t-take you to spit?” Avi asked.

  I shook my head: to what?

  “You know, to squirt, pop your nut, shoot your load, what? Thirty seconds?”

  I was surprised and impressed with Avi’s stockpile of slang. “Well, actually I didn’t come,” I explained. “I’m going to have sex later with a friend of mine, and I didn’t want to get off yet. But the other guys jacked off.”

  “You just jacked off in front of other guys?” Avi asked rhetorically. “That’s n-not having sex.”

  I shrugged: then I didn’t have sex.

  I watched Avi as he loped along and I tried to imagine his life: dressing in funny clothes, studying ancient scriptures all day long, incessantly praying to a god that doesn’t exist, a prisoner of his virginity, and yet feeling that jacking off with a bunch of guys was not having sex.

  We reached the corner at Waring and were about to head east, back toward Alta Vista, when the Nondescript Boy suddenly spoke up. “So, Rick, do you like me? Do you think I’m good-looking?”

  “No,” I told him, and I pointed at Avi. “I like him.”

  With this determination of his attractiveness, Avi jumped out into the street, pounding his fist into the air victoriously.

  The Nondescript Boy made the best of his rejection. “It’s a good thing you said no, or else I would have told you to get the hell out of here.”

  I started to explain my philosophy to him. “I like big noses—”

  But Avi, who’d apparently heard all this before, interrupted me. “I have a big nose but a small cock.”

  “Oh?” I asked. “How do you kn
ow? Do you guys have contests to see whose dick is the biggest? Do you know who has the biggest cock over there?”

  They dismissed this supposition, but I detected a certain ambivalence. Did they know who had the biggest cock? Or was it simply that once the question was posed, it wouldn’t go away unanswered?

  “Oh, by the way, speaking of big cocks, whatever happened to that bodybuilder that used to work out in your room?” I asked.

  “He was n-nuts,” Avi said.

  “They kicked him out of the school,” the Nondescript Boy explained. “He wasn’t a real Chassid.”

  “Well, he sure was beautiful,” I mused. “You know, I think all you boys should work out more—”

  The Nondescript Boy suddenly interrupted me. “Aren’t you afraid of getting AIDS?”

  God, I hated this terrible and inevitable association of homosexuality and disease. “Look,” I said, “I’ve known about AIDS since the early eighties, and for a while I really was afraid of getting it, especially around 1984 and 1985, but you just can’t hold on to that kind of fear forever, you just can’t do it. So, no, I’m not afraid of getting AIDS.”

  “You don’t care if you die?” the Nondescript Boy asked.

  “I don’t want to die,” I told him. “I mean, think of it this way: I wasn’t alive in 1945 and it didn’t bother me, so why would it bother me if I’m not alive in 1995?”

  “So, do you have AIDS?” Avi asked.

  “No,” I said, simply and definitely, but the quiet with which this was received compelled me to amend that answer: “I don’t think so. I’m part of a group called the UCLA Gay Men’s Study, and they’ve tested me every six months since 1984. They send me my cell counts after each visit, and so far I haven’t gotten sick. Actually, I don’t even know if I’ve been exposed to the virus. They’ll tell me if I ask, but I don’t want to know.”