And so we went through an inventory of my things—my books, my bike, my computer—and they asked me if I’d be upset if this or that thing was stolen, and as they did, it was embarrassing to feel in myself the fact that I really did place a value on things, on material objects.
I was not as free as I pretended.
The late afternoon twilight was just ending when Moshe came over to see me. He was all dressed up in a gray suit, in preparation for the Sabbath.
“Where’s your yarmulke?” he asked.
I looked at him for a moment, wondering how to answer him. “I forgot to put it on,” I said, answering his accusation with guilt, and I ran into the house and grabbed my kepa, pressing it and the Velcro onto my hair as I came back outside. After I sat back down, Moshe looked at me as if he was waiting for me to finish talking—as if it wasn’t he who had come over to see me.
“I spoke to Avraham’s mother this morning, and I told her that I wasn’t Jewish, and didn’t believe in God, and was homosexual.”
“What did she say?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “She didn’t seem to care.”
“What’s AIDS?”
I took a deep breath.
How amazing: he realized as much as I did how unresolved all this was.
“AIDS is a disease that lowers your body’s immune system, and its ability ...” I began, and gave it up. “AIDS is a disease that doesn’t have a cure. You can get it in three ways. You can get it from having sex, you can get it from sharing needles if you do drugs, and you can get it from blood transfusions—that’s very rare—and there’s a fourth way, a mother who has it can give it to her child if she’s pregnant. When the disease first started, mostly homosexual men got it: I’m homosexual—”
“Do you have AIDS?”
“No.”
“But if you had it, you could give it to another man if you had sex?”
“If I had it, I could. You can’t get it from talking, or anything.”
“What’s a ‘faggot’?”
“A ‘faggot’ is a ‘faygeleh.’ It’s a name for a man who’s homosexual—a man who has sex with other men. It’s a slang term. Like some people might call a Jew a ‘kike.’ ”
“A ‘kike’? What’s that?”
“It’s a name people used to call Jews.” I suddenly realized I didn’t know what it meant.
Moshe scrutinized me for a moment, as if professionally assessing my words and performance, and then he gave his verdict: “Fine. Well, I have to go. Bye.”
I watched him walk back across the street.
Something had gone unspoken between us the night before, and Moshe knew I wanted to make up for that as much as he wanted to hear from me what it was all about.
As I watched him disappear around the corner at the end of the block, I was humbly in awe at our understanding.
21 / tailing sea horse
When I went back into the house I looked up “kike” in my Slang and Euphemism dictionary:
kike 1. a highly derogatory term for an uncouth Jewish merchant.
2. a highly derogatory term for any Jewish man or woman. From Yiddish kikel, the “circle” which was used by illiterate Jewish immigrants in place of a cross (X) as a signature, [both senses, U.S. slang, early 1900s-pres.]
That was interesting.
I looked up “sheeny”:
sheeny (also sheen, sheenie, sheney) a derogatory nickname for a Jewish man or woman. Considered to be a strongly derisive epithet, [slang, early 1800s-pres.]
Not so interesting.
I was just about to turn my computer on and start writing about my day when I saw a police car drive slowly by. I went outside and saw them park just up the street and then two officers got out and walked down the adjacent driveway toward where Avraham and Yaakov lived. According to my neighbor Chris—whose windows were opposite the stairwell of the building next door—there was always a lot of shouting going on. Avraham’s family lived in an apartment across from two lesbians, and apparently the two groups of tenants didn’t get along: either the dykes were fighting or Avraham’s siblings were screaming or else the two households were yelling at one another, and now, apparently, someone had called the police.
When the officers returned to their car about fifteen minutes later I went over and spoke to them. I asked them if there was any law that prevented me talking to some children, twelve years of age and younger. I told them that I had been threatened by some people at the school who told me that it was my responsibility not to talk to the children. The policemen said there was no law against it and that it was a school problem.
Good.
I was about to go back home when I remembered something else I wanted to ask. Was there a law against looking at people with binoculars when you were on your own property? I was surprised when they said there was—that it was an invasion of privacy.
They said it was a misdemeanor.
When I had finished reconstructing my day on the computer I didn’t feel like going to bed, so I decided to take a walk. It was the Sabbath, I knew people would be dressed up and walking around, and so I got dressed up myself: white shirt, black pants, black coat, and hat.
I started walking south down Alta Vista. Two men, all dressed up, were briskly walking away before me. At Waring I stopped and looked over toward the entrance of the yeshiva. No one seemed to be about, so I turned west and headed toward the minimart on Melrose, two blocks away. I turned south on Fuller and was almost to the store when I saw a tall boy in black pants and a white shirt standing on the corner. He was very tall, and although I couldn’t tell if he had a yarmulke on, it looked like Sea Horse.
Hmm.
I thought I might go up to him and say, “I thought you weren’t supposed to be on Melrose.”
I started walking toward him.
He was mostly facing the street, watching the people passing by, the weekend revelers cruising the street and showing themselves off to one another. As I looked at him standing there like that, all by himself, I remembered when I first came to Hollywood more than twenty years ago and how, night after night, I would walk up and down the boulevard all by myself, looking at the marquees and the stores and the lights and the people . . .
I felt such aching loneliness coming from him, so many desires: to become one with the flow of humanity so close and yet so far away—
Suddenly he stepped out onto the sidewalk among the people and started walking east on Melrose.
I was about fifty yards away from him, and even though I didn’t particularly get the feeling that he was aware of me— Orthodox apparition that I was—I suddenly wondered if he had caught sight of me and knew who it was or whether he suspected I might be some admonishing authority. Or . . .
I stopped and was about to cross over to the minimart and forget the whole thing when I suddenly decided: no, this was too interesting. I started walking again, a little faster now so as not to lose him: just see where he went.
A crowd was getting out of the Groundling Theatre, and he moved through them rather briskly. I followed at a nice pace about a half block behind him. I decided I wouldn’t hurry, or run after him, or anything like that. I would just follow after him, and if I lost him, so be it.
He crossed Poinsettia, still going east, and made his way through another group of people in front of a nightclub. Beyond that was our street, Alta Vista, and I thought he might turn up there, but he didn’t. As I crossed the street after him I passed two queer fellows and looked into the eyes of one of them matter-of-factly. He looked back at me: I was a foreigner, I could sense that in his eyes, but what else—did he wonder if I was queer, if I’d thought about it, or what?
Sea Horse was moving easily down the next block, and there were no more people now. Just him, and about half a block behind him, me. Now he knew I was there, and every so often he looked back to see if maybe he had been mistaken, but no— I was there every time, whoever I was, and I was watching and following him.
He pause
d for a long moment when he got to Alta Vista. If he turned up there, he would be right back at the yeshiva. I think he was wondering what to do, and then, when I was just a couple of store-widths away, he stepped out into the street and continued walking east.
So did I.
There were only two more streets before La Brea and he cruised over them without breaking stride. He was walking faster now.
Melrose and La Brea is a major intersection, and there’s a traffic light there. When he got to the corner, the light for La Brea was red, so he turned and crossed Melrose, heading south. I arrived at the corner just as the light changed.
While I was standing there I wondered if I should really continue doing this. Up to now I could pretend to myself (and him) that I wasn’t following him, but if I crossed Melrose any pretense that I wasn’t tailing him would be gone. When the light turned green I crossed the street and leisurely started down La Brea, watching him as he looked in windows as an excuse to see if I was coming after him.
I was.
At the first street below Melrose on La Brea there is another light. Here he stopped for a moment and, after some brief consideration, crossed La Brea. I thought he might actually go in a Jewish building of some kind on the southeast corner, but instead he turned and headed back up the street, toward Melrose.
Now, with this second light between us, he was getting farther away from me, but I didn’t hurry myself. I just pushed the button to change the light and stood at the corner, waiting patiently. When it finally turned green I crossed La Brea and started on up the street after him.
Now there was absolutely no way I could not be following him. I could sense him getting nervous, his looks a little more furtive, a little more desperate. At the big intersection he crossed back across La Brea, and then back across Melrose, heading north, past Pink’s hot dog stand.
I was quite a way behind him now, but with each passing moment I could feel my power increasing, myself becoming a dark and inexorable force, casually shadowing his every move.
I had just started back across Melrose, and could see him in front of me half a block away, when suddenly he turned aside into some doorway or driveway and disappeared. For a moment I deliberated going after him, but then I lost my nerve.
After all, what was I doing?
An image of him jumping out and attacking me briefly crossed my mind.
I turned down Melrose and headed home.
I’d gone about a block when I noticed three individuals approaching me on the sidewalk, a man and two women. The women were conservatively dressed and the man was in classic
Orthodox attire: a black suit with a black dress hat. As we neared one another the man said, “Shalom.”
I burst into a big grin.
We passed one another, and I caught an inquiring look from one of the women.
I couldn’t say anything: I was too overwhelmed.
I just hoped my big, truly happy grin was enough.
Suddenly everything was okay: they thought I was one of them!
I wanted to dance in the streets.
They thought I was a Jew!
22 / levi
Moshe and Yitzchak stopped by the next day. Because it was still the Sabbath they were all dressed up. While we were talking, my neighbor Dan left to go teach a tennis lesson. We exchanged pleasantries and then, after he’d gone, Moshe turned to me. “Did you fag him?”
“No, I think Dan’s straight. He has a girlfriend.”
Moshe mulled this over, and I tried to take in what he had said: “Did you fag him?”
“Fag” had become a verb. How fascinating the mental process whereby the act that defined “faggot” had become “fag.” And I wondered: could “God” become a verb just as easily?
Did you God him? How funny—a proper verb. Maybe that was it—“God” could become a euphemism for “fuck,” for the ultimate experience we have as human beings. He God me in the ass. They God their brains out.
Of course, “God” should be the same for each tense. They had God one another. They God one another. They will God one another.
God you!
While I was contemplating these semantic possibilities one of the guys in the beit midrash approached us. It was the man I’d seen in Atara’s the day I bought my hat, the guy who’d read one of my stories. All dressed in black, with his hat and dark beard, he really did look quite imposing and I wondered if he was going to give me any trouble. As he passed by I nodded to him and there was a moment when I thought he might say something, but he just continued on walking.
I turned to Moshe. “Are you going to get in trouble for talking to me?” I asked.
“Show me some pictures.”
“Are the bochurs going to get mad at you?” I insisted.
“I don’t care.”
I shrugged my shoulders: All right, fine.
“Show us some pictures!”
I went in the house and brought out Don Bachardy’s Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood, the pictures he drew during the final six months of Isherwood’s life. Some of the drawings were of Chris without any clothes on, and Yitzchak was amazed at this: “He doesn’t have any clothes on!”
Moshe didn’t understand it either. “Why didn’t he put any clothes on?”
“Well, he was very sick, and sometimes it was easier to not have to get dressed, and the artist wanted to draw his whole body, not just his face.”
As the boys continued turning the pages I became aware of the bearded man approaching us again, this time from the other direction. When he was beside us I looked at him and said hello.
He answered me formally. “Hello.”
“How’s it going?”
“What are you doing?” he asked, gesturing toward the book.
“I’m showing them some pictures a friend of mine did of his lover just before he died.”
“He’s dead?” he asked.
I nodded. “The man in the pictures is dead. The artist is still alive. They lived together for thirty years. They met on the beach when Chris was forty-eight and Don was eighteen. Don is the artist. Chris was a writer; he was really famous. Have you ever heard of the movie Cabaret?”
The bearded man barely shook his head.
“It was based on one of his books. He went to Berlin in 1929 and wrote about it, just before Hitler came to power.”
“You know him?” he asked.
“I knew him before he died. I know the artist, he’s a friend of mine—we go to movies together.”
The boys had looked up at the bearded man when we started talking, but after a moment or two they went back to looking at the pictures in the book.
“Your name’s Rick?” the guy asked.
“Uh-huh. What’s yours?”
“Levi.” He said the name under his breath, pronouncing it “Lay-vee.”
“Like one of the twelve tribes,” I proposed, making my connections. “The priestly class, right?”
He nodded a begrudging assent, and then spoke to the boys. “What are you doing here? You should go home. Where do you live?”
The two boys stood up and moved away across the yard, resentful at being ordered around and yet somehow still respectful of this elder of theirs, but a moment later they were back.
“Are you going to talk about sex?” Moshe asked. “I know all about that.”
“Go away for a minute,” Levi said, and when they didn’t he asked them their names.
Moshe and Yitzchak didn’t answer him and walked away across the street, apparently feeling that obeying a command was less onerous than giving away their identity. Were they afraid he might tell on them?
When they were out of hearing, Levi turned back to me. “Are you a homosexual?”
I nodded. “Are you?”
“We don’t believe in that,” he said.
I shrugged my shoulders and sighed.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Forty. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Really? You’re only twenty-four? You look so much older, with the beard and everything. Are you a bochur?”
He nodded his head.
“That means you’re in the beit midrash, right? And you study the Talmud?”
He nodded assent to these questions, and I indicated the book he was holding. “What are you reading?”
“A book about the Rebbe.”
“It’s in Hebrew?”
He nodded again.
I raised the book I was reading. “I’m doing The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. Do you know it?”
“I’ve heard of it,” he said.
“It doesn’t say very much about the Jews, though. Is your book about a specific rabbi?” I asked.
“It’s about the Rebbe, Rabbi Schneerson.”
I shook my head. “Who’s he?”
“He’s our leader.”
“Does he teach at the school?” I asked.
Levi shook his head. “He’s the leader of all Lubavitch. He lives in Brooklyn.”
“What’s ‘Lubavitch’?”
“That’s our kind of Judaism.”
“I thought you were Chassidic.”
“We are, but there’s many kinds of Chassidim. We’re Lubavitch, and Rabbi Schneerson is our Rebbe.”
That was interesting and I said the name Schneerson over again in my mind several times so as not to forget it. “Do you think there’s an English version of that book you’re reading?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I’m interested. I’d like to read about your religion. I’ve already read the Tanakh and a couple of parts of the Mishnah. What would you recommend?”
“A book about us? Have you ever heard of Elie Wiesel?”
“He won the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of years ago. I have Night, one of his books about the concentration camps.”
“He wrote a book about the beginning of our religion called Souls on Fire. You should read that.”
The Boys Across the Street Page 15