He was consciously lying.
The game ended because time was up and the boys had to get back to school, but also because the teacher was exasperated with a heated disagreement that had sprung up about one of the plays. As soon as he said it was over I was down the bleachers, on my bike, and home.
A few minutes later, when the boys arrived back at the school, I was sitting out in front of my apartment with my newspapers in front of me, reading away, as if I’d never left. As the boys walked by there were a couple of calls to me and some queries as to what I thought of the game, but then a large antagonistic group came by led by Mordecai, and he was vociferous in his abuse.
I turned on him. “Mordecai, I saw you deliberately lie about getting that guy out at first.”
This specific retaliation surprised them and there was some muttering (“Faggot!”), but, with this allusion to what they all knew to be true, the pack quieted down and straggled back across the street, Mordecai among them and in a rage.
Poor baby.
He may be trying to be a strong man and a good Jew, but he’s just a sex object to me.
The next morning, after going to the unemployment office, I stopped by Atara’s on Fairfax to buy some of those strips of Velcro for the boys. When I’d bought mine several weeks earlier they had been in a plain package and cost $1.75. This time they were packaged differently and cost only a dollar. It seemed to be the same product as before, only now it was cheaper and had a brand name (“Stickippah”). The label advertised it this way: “holds on to your yarmulke/no more clips or pins/One size fits all/Works with all hairstyles/simple to use/comfortable to wear.” Unlike the kind I’d originally purchased, there wasn’t a notice for men who’d lost their hair.
I bought five packets.
I gave the first to the boy with the brown yarmulke that matches his hair, the one who looks as if he could pass as a non-Jew, the one who mooned me. I was sitting in the bleachers waiting for the baseball game to start when I noticed him over on the basketball court, dribbling the ball and shooting baskets. His yarmulke kept coming off, to the point where it became an actual part of his routine: dribble, throw, retrieve ball, replace yarmulke; dribble, throw, retrieve ball, replace yarmulke . . .
I approached him and he backed away. “Get away from me.”
“I have something for you. It’s something I got at Atara’s to help you keep your yarmulke on.”
“I don’t want it,” he said.
“You really should have it,” I said. “You spend so much time trying to keep your yarmulke on.”
And I tossed the little package of Velcro down on the center of the court. I then turned and walked back to the bleachers to watch some of the other boys who were warming up on the baseball diamond.
I don’t know if one of them picked it up, or if they threw it away, but it wasn’t on the court where I’d thrown it when I left the park sometime later.
I gave two of the packets to Avi and his friend the Nondescript Boy. They accepted the little packages and thanked me.
“ Why are you wearing a yarmulke?” Avi’s friend asked, as if hoping to finally get it straight this time.
“I’m writing a story that is supposedly by a Jew and I want to feel like a Jew while I’m writing it.”
“But you’re not Jewish.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You know what I did for the first twelve years of my life?”
“What?”
“I worshipped a Jew.”
“Who?”
I looked at the Nondescript Boy incredulously. “What do you mean, who? Jesus, of course.”
“Jesus wasn’t a Jew,” the Nondescript Boy asserted.
Avi was embarrassed for him, and corrected him under his breath. “Yes he was.”
“Well, he wasn’t a Jew when he died.”
Avi was even more embarrassed this time. “Yes he was.”
“Well, he wasn’t a good Jew.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” I told them, “there’s hardly any proof that he even existed at all. But, true or not, that story is the most important story in Western culture and I want to make a stab at it.”
The boys seemed unimpressed.
“Have you read the New Testament?” I asked. “The Christian Bible?”
“No.”
“You should,” I told them. “I don’t believe in any of it, to me it’s all just a story, but it is very interesting. And, as literature, the Christian Bible is a sequel to the Tanakh. I think you would want to read it for that reason alone.”
“It’s not the word of God.”
I shrugged my shoulders: What are you going to do?
A little later the Serious Young Man I’d spoken to a couple of times walked by with a friend of his. As they passed me, he said, “You’re sick.”
“Why?”
There was just the slightest pause before he answered, “You’re a fag.”
I watched them walk away up the street, past the next house, where a bunch of little kids were playing outside. The kids were aware of this brief conversation and I think its antagonistic tone made them nervous.
When the two boys walked past again, on their way back to the yeshiva, the Serious Young Man said something I didn’t catch, and I came back with my planned response.
“You’re sexy.”
They stopped in front of me and the friend answered me, “Boys can’t be sexy.”
I laughed, and they walked on, but a moment later the Serious Young Man came back by himself. “Why are you wearing the yarmulke?”
We’d been through this before. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not really sure.”
“You know that our religion and that—what you do—they don’t go together.”
“I know.”
“So then why are you wearing it?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Why were you watching us play baseball the other day?”
“Because it’s fun to watch you.”
“Do you think we’re good?”
“I don’t know anything about baseball, but I don’t think so.”
“So, why?”
“Because I like to watch you play together. I like to see who’s friends with who, and how you pick teams, and how you talk and relate to one another.”
“It would be fun to watch girls do that,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t you like girls?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like people who don’t have sex organs.”
“Women have sex organs,” he answered me, but he didn’t sound too sure.
I looked at him incredulously and then flatly contradicted him: “No they don’t.”
“They have breasts.”
I snorted in contempt. “I don’t like anything soft. I like hard things, hard and strong, and proud.”
“Do you have sex with women?”
“No!” and I made a face.
“So how do you have children?”
“Children? I think having children is the most evil thing a person can do. I think it’s sadistic, and horrible. There’re already too many people on this planet. We don’t need any more.”
“But the Torah says to be fruitful and multiply.”
I looked at him for a long moment, and then answered him slowly and distinctly. “I know it does.”
“Then what do you do?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“How do you have sexual intercourse?”
“Well, I don’t usually. Basically, I’m a cocksucker. I love a penis ejaculating in my mouth. I love the taste of semen. I think an erect cock is the most beautiful thing in the world. I think it is the closest thing I know of to God.”
The Serious Young Man listened to my praise of the male sex organ and didn’t seem completely contemptuous. I think he felt, instinctively, the contradiction of societal mores: that if he found the male sex organ repugnant, he would be
finding himself repugnant—and that didn’t make sense.
Yes.
He looked at me for a moment before he spoke: “Well, have a nice day,” and then, as he started to turn away, I suddenly remembered the little packets I had with me.
“I have something for you, if you want it.”
“What?”
I extended a packet to him. “It’s for helping to keep your yarmulke on. You can have it if you want.”
He took the little package from me, turned it over to read what it said, and then looked back up at me, considering the gift. He finally made up his mind: “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
As he started to walk away, I called after him, “What’s your name?”
He turned around to say something but then stopped himself. After a moment he answered me: “Patrick.”
I mulled that over and nodded. “That’s a nice Jewish name.” He shrugged, and then turned and walked away.
The shadows were getting longer and I went inside and put some more clothes on: my black pants, my tzitzis, and a white shirt over them. I went back outside and continued to read (Jesus the Magician by Morton Smith), occasionally glancing up to watch the children playing next door, including Yaakov and his older brother. One of the little boys, who was very good-looking, kept showing off on his bicycle and his yarmulke kept falling off.
“Excuse me,” I called to him. “I’ve noticed that you keep losing your yarmulke. I have something if you’d like. It helps keep your yarmulke on.” I extended the little packet to him. “You can have it if you want.”
I must have frightened him a little because he backed away. “That’s okay. My yarmulke stays on.”
“All right,” I said. “But I think you need it.”
I continued to watch him, and a few minutes later his yarmulke fell off again. He was quite the little show-off. I guessed him to be about twelve. When the boys had a race on their bicycles and he won, he threw his arms up in the air and shouted exultantly, “And the winner is Sruli Perlman!”
I contemplated him.
One of these days Sruli Perlman is going to be a hot young man.
Just before it got dark and I was about to go inside, I noticed Meir walking up the street by himself. I still had one package of Velcro left and I ran over to give it to him.
“Meir, how are you doing?”
He seemed a little nervous and shrugged his shoulders.
“When you were playing ball yesterday I noticed that your yarmulke kept falling off, and so I went to the store and got these for you,” and I held the little package out to him.
“You bought this?” he asked.
“At Atara’s,” I told him.
“How many did you get?”
“Five.”
He paused briefly, considering them; he seemed to really need or want them. Finally, taking the packet from me, he said, “Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome,” I told him. Then we abruptly parted from each other: he to continue on up the street and I to head back home.
A week later I was once again sitting outside, reading an article on Queer Nation in the LA Weekly, when Orestes stopped by to have sex.
I told him I was waiting for the boys to leave the school and go to the park. He said I should be careful, that an older man he knew once told him the worst thing you could possibly do was to move across the street from a school. I told him I didn’t care and that I couldn’t be threatened by jail because I had no vested interest in life.
Just then the boys started piling out of the yeshiva on their way to the park. A couple of them called out to me, and one of them asked where my binoculars were. I had them with me and raised them to show him. They said they were going to play a game. I pantomimed hitting a ball with a bat, and they said yes.
Orestes was surprised. “They like you.”
I shrugged my shoulders, but I was really gratified by this display. I told him I had to go. I put my director’s chair back in the house, packed up my binoculars, and headed over to the park on my bicycle. The boys were just getting to the field when I arrived, and when one of them saw me he threw up his hands with the exasperated exclamation “Oh, man!”
I took my place up in the far corner of the bleachers facing the sun. I didn’t use the binoculars so much this time and tried not to focus on any one boy, but it was hard not to pay attention to Mordecai on first base, especially since he had the easiest and sexiest manner of anyone on the field. It was especially interesting watching him now, as he always carefully kept one foot on the base whenever he reached out to catch a ball.
The only boy in the game I’d given some Velcro to was Meir, and not once while he was playing did his yarmulke come off. As I watched him I felt that he was imbued with a strange kind of inner strength, a certain implacability, and it made me feel as if his current youthful attractiveness was more ephemeral than I had previously thought. Near the end of the game, as he was walking by the wire-mesh fence that separated the field from the stands where I was sitting, he hawked some phlegm and wanted to spit it out. He turned toward me, took a step, and then spit through the fence onto the pavement at the foot of the bleachers: a simple expulsion of bodily fluid, not an audible show of contempt. Just before he turned back to the field, he looked up at me and our eyes caught for a moment, and in that acknowledgment was intimacy.
15 / brothers
Although I was mostly interested in the high school boys—their life-affirming testosterone in opposition to their ascetic upbringing—and followed their comings and goings with close attention, I couldn’t help noticing the number of preadolescent boys who were increasingly taking an interest in me.
Whenever these little boys passed me, if our eyes met I would say hello. Sometimes I would get an answer and sometimes not, but my attendance in front of my apartment day after day had become a given of the environment, and I began to feel that my presence there offered them a certain kind of gratification.
The first of these boys I spoke to was the little boy next door, the day he and his younger brother taught me the blessing for the tzitzis. The day after that, when I saw them playing in the yard, I asked the older boy what his name was.
“Shmuel Dovid,” he said.
Oh, brother! I thought. What a moniker for such a cute-looking kid. “Do you mean ‘David,’ ” I asked, “like David and Goliath?”
He shook his head.
“How do you spell it?”
“D-o-v-i-d.”
“Really?” and I tried that pronunciation, “Dovid,” with a long “o.”
“It’s Dahvid,” Shmuel Dovid said, slightly exasperated by my obtuseness.
“Dahvid” I said after him, getting the pronunciation right this time. “And who are you?” I asked his brother.
“My name’s Yossi,” he said.
“Hello, Yossi. My name’s Rick.”
After that I greeted Dovid and Yossi whenever they passed by. Sometimes I would practice the blessing for the tzitzis with them. And still other times I would just watch . . .
In the mornings they cross the street on their way to school and again in the afternoon when they come home. It is fascinating to observe them, especially Dovid. When crossing the street he is very conscientious, leaning his torso out beyond where he stands and looking both ways, a concerned expression on his face as he makes calculations for every moving object in either direction. After working these computations out to his satisfaction he gives an all-clear shout and then he and his brother run across the street. When Dovid and Yossi are with their younger siblings they all hold hands as they make a dash for the other side.
From their house, their mother presides over them at such times, an unseen presence just beyond the screen door, her voice irritably calling out commands and warnings if they aren’t paying close enough attention to what they’re doing.
On Saturdays and holidays the children are taken to services in various configurations but, more often than not, the
father is with the two boys and the mother is never included. On these occasions, the father—who has a luxuriant dark brown beard— gets all dressed up in a long black coat and puts a blanket-like garment (a tallis) over his shoulders. As he walks down the street with his two sons he keeps his posture erect, proclaiming himself beyond reproach for all the world to see.
But then, during the day, when I am sitting outside and there aren’t any services, I can hear him, with his horrible shrill voice, screaming at his kids—infuriated at their breaking some rule or “law” that might make the Creator of the universe even more angry than he already is.
Dovid and Yossi’s house is actually the front apartment of a five-unit complex, each with two bedrooms. Upstairs and in the back is where Yaakov and his older and younger brothers live.
Like Dovid and Yossi, Yaakov and his older brother also cross the street when going to school, but with no mother there to watch them they are much more reckless, Yaakov impervious to danger while his brother, a slight scowl darkening his brows, often seems lost in thought.
One day, when the older brother was coming home from school by himself, I said hello to him and he said hi. He was about to walk on when he turned back to me. “Are you Jewish?” he asked.
“No. I’m studying the Jews, though.”
He thought about this for a moment and then: “Well, bye.”
“Are you Yaakov’s brother?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Avraham.”
“Oh, Abraham—like in the Bible.”
“No, Avraham. That’s the way we say it in Hebrew.”
I repeated the name with the soft “Av” instead of the hard “Ab,” and discovered that it softened the “a” in “ham” as well. “Avrahahm. My name’s Rick.”
“Hi.” I think this second hello embarrassed him a little, as it was almost immediately followed by a second farewell. “Well, bye.”
The Boys Across the Street Page 10