Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish

by Shana Liebman

  “Rosen,” he squealed, “how’d you like to be on a porn show?”

  A porn show? I had so many questions. Gay or straight? Would I have to be naked? Would there be a really hot transsexual on the show who would seduce me and then later I’d find out—whoops—she had a penis? This was a long-standing fear of mine. Plus, I thought Darin might be kidding. He had kidded me many times before. Only recently, when I was really high and hungry, he swore he’d buried a Kit Kat in Tompkins Square Park.

  That didn’t turn out to be real. But this did. Darin’s voice deepened as he told me how this porn possibility had come to pass. On Christmas Eve, he attended one of the myriad Jewish singles events: the Matzo Ball, the Part the Red Sea Hop, the Hide the Afikoman Orgy; parties where Jewish singles met other Jewish singles, then cabbed home together for guilty, kvetchy sex. At whichever one he attended, Darin hooked up with a young woman named Bootsie—Bootsie with an ie, the Ashkenazi spelling. In the bright light of the morning after, he found out two things: Bootsie was only 19, and her mom was a woman named Star England. As in, Sleeping with Star England, the second most popular porn show on cable access, right behind The Robin Byrd Show. (At the time, it was a real Leno/Letterman-esque rivalry.) Bootsie invited Darin, plus a friend, to be on the show.

  The next evening we headed over to Time Warner Cable studios on East 23rd Street. We’d already partaken in a few drinks, and the alcohol had us convinced we were going to be fucking hilarious. We were about to be on a porn show; it was the goddamn American dream. We called all our friends who weren’t away for the holidays and told them to prepare themselves for the comedy event of the year. As we approached the building, I had my own internal moment of excitement. This seemed like just the kind of absurd event to get me out of my rut and kick-start 1997 with a bang. Perhaps even literally.

  We entered, elevatored up to the fourth floor, and found the studio where the show was broadcast live. It was a tiny, windowless room; picture a walk-in closet with six chairs, two potted ferns and a camera. Bootsie, in an account executive–esque black skirt and blazer, and Star, in a cleavage-revealing satin shirt and pants so tight I almost got a yeast infection, were waiting for us. The first thing that struck me when I saw them was how nice it was that families could be together for the holidays. The second thing was the overwhelming, almost clichéd scent of stripper perfume: equal parts patchouli, hairspray and chlamydia. Darin introduced me to Bootsie, who in turn introduced us to her mom. As she shook my hand, Star glanced down to her chest and asked, “How do my tits look?”

  Jewish moms, I thought. They’re all the same.

  We sat down beside them and made small talk as the single cameraman snaked a few wires around us. Then, without any real explanation of what was going to happen, boom—we were live on the air. I was sporting a striped zip-up sweater and Caterpillar cap for the event, a sort of nerdy Jewish NASCAR ensemble; Darin wore a black leather coat, which, with his long black hair, was an obvious homage to Travolta in Pulp Fiction—or Sally Field circa Hooper. We weren’t exactly ready for our close-ups.

  Sleeping with Star England, we discovered, was basically a live call-in show—with strippers. These soon joined us. Guest number one was Angel, a Latina dancer and actress who also had a gig “making private fantasies come true.” A porn hyphenate, if you will. The second guest was dancer/actress Honey Mellons. Granted, this wasn’t the most original porn name for a woman whose selling point was her enormous breasts, but I felt the two l’s gave it a certain je ne sais quoi.

  Things started civilly, with Star holding court like a slutty Oprah. She asked us about our latest projects. I mentioned I was working on a new advertising campaign for Fila; Darin said he was working on a novel about Siamese twins; Honey and Angel said they were going to be at Goldfingers all week. Then Star took the first call of the night; it was a dude with a whiskey-and-cigarette rasp.

  “I want to see the little guy fuck the big guy.”

  For all our talk of comic genius, we didn’t have any witty comebacks. Darin weakly parried with a quip about the caller being his dad, but it fell short. In truth, we sort of cowered. Star sensed our fear, and like the protective mother she was, she turned to us and threw a softball.

  “So, what’s it like to be on the show instead of watching it from home?”

  I tried to be clever. “Well, it’s a lot different without the tissues and moisturizer, Star.”

  She just sneered and shook her head. “Hilarious, David.”

  We were not going to be funny on this show.

  As the girls’ clothes came off, as the vaginal jewelry was displayed, as the whipped cream licking and girl-on-girl kissing began, Darin and I just sat on our stools behind the ladies, dumbly. The whole thing was like the movie Zelig. What were we doing there? It wasn’t working out remotely like I’d hoped. Darin and I even whispered about splitting at the commercial break. (Yes, commercials ran on these sex shows, mostly for the now-defunct 970 numbers that got so many of us into trouble in high school. Who could resist 970-PEEE?; the extra E was for extra pee.) But before we could slink off… out came the kielbasa.

  Eighteen inches long, two inches thick, smoky-smelling—I’d have been intimidated to barbecue it, let alone deep throat it. But, other than her melons, one of the things Honey was famous for was her lack of gag reflex. And so, she slipped the plastic wrap off the meat stick (price tag still attached: Gristede’s, $6.99), opened her mouth and eased the kielbasa in. Inch after unbelievable inch, the whole of it went down her throat. At its deepest, I imagined it must have tickled her spleen. I was awed and I was nauseated.

  After the first endeavor, Honey had Darin hold her throat as she repeated the trick to prove she was really swallowing the sausage. There must’ve been doubters out there, disbelievers who thought she used mirrors or a false throat. And then it was my turn. As I watched her eyes roll back and felt the kielbasa inch down her trachea, I wasn’t really freaked out. Well, maybe a little. But more, I was impressed. I thought, “Hey, good for Honey. She was born without a gag reflex and with triple-J boobs, and she’s making it work for her the best way she knows how.” I started to think about my own life. Here I was, young, single, just starting out in a new city. I had my own apartment, a great job where I didn’t have to shower every day—the world was really my oyster. But was I giving it my all, like Honey? Was I swallowing all 18 inches, in my own life?

  Then the kielbasa slid back out, Honey coughed a little meat juice onto my arm and I lost the epiphany.

  Finally, the show came to an end. In any theatrical production, when the houselights come on, it’s bittersweet. All the new friends you’ve made, all the seemingly deep relationships are suddenly over. As I slipped on my coat, Honey, still naked, labia pierces clanking like wind chimes, walked over. She handed me her card and shook my hand, like she was a good corporate soldier and we had just finished up at a networking conference.

  “It was a pleasure working with you,” she said, smiling.

  There was a tear in her eye—well, I was guessing, I wasn’t really looking at her eyes. But I felt like we’d bonded.

  “It was a pleasure working with you too, Honey. Honestly, I feel like I learned something,” I told her.

  “Thanks, Darin,” she said to me.

  Then the ladies all went out for post-show drinks—and didn’t invite us along.

  DRUGS

  Let It Breathe

  By D.C. Benny

  I’M A JEWISH COMEDIAN married to a black psychologist who specializes in sex therapy. We live in Brooklyn and have been described by a neighborhood old-timer as “the Spaniards.” A casting director recently referred to me as “swarthy.” The West Indians at my wife’s job swear she’s a closet Guyanese, passing as a black American. One of them actually tried to “out” her by asking for her rice and peas recipe, just to see if it would slip out. We both look like everything but what we really are, which in Brooklyn means we look like everybody else.

  Our res
pective families accepted our decision to be together, but there were some adjustments. Here is an example.

  I started hanging out with my wife’s recently divorced uncle, Willy, who had grown up in the South and was obsessed with conspiracy theories about racism. Although he wasn’t really fond of white people in general, he had a soft spot for Jews, since he was the only black member of a Jewish fraternity at a college in some godforsaken state where blow jobs are still illegal. It was the only fraternity on campus that allowed blacks in and he was the only black person at the school. On display in his home is a sepia photo of him with some guys who look like a gang of tax preparers. He is standing triumphantly in the middle, insulated from a world of whiteness by a sea of curly hair and pronounced noses. The photo could be a target at a Klan shooting range. Willy would be the bull’s-eye, but if you hit a Jew, you still win a blueberry pie. A homemade blueberry pie.

  When Willy heard that his niece was marrying a white man, he was not too happy and would walk around bemoaning the loss of “good sisters,” and how “black men had become an endangered species.” When we finally met, however, we took an immediate liking to each other and he even broke out a Jerry Mulligan LP in my honor. “Mulligan was a white too,” he said. We closed our eyes and soaked in the sad strains of soulful sax. Well, I listened and Willy talked. “Jazz. You see, the French love jazz. And wine. The key with French wine is you have to let it breathe, which is a metaphor for American’s way of life. They just run around in circles, complaining, until they’re winded. They need to do like the French and just… let it breathe!” He then inhaled and exhaled deeply to demonstrate proper breathing.

  After that, we started hanging out fairly frequently. When he wasn’t talking about France, his other favorite topic was race. He would insist that I was not really white. “You look like you a Mexican, maybe a redbone, or one of them Sepharticus Jewish slaves that wandered in the desert.”

  It was nonstop. I once mentioned to him that I was going into a Chinese take-out spot to pick up some General Tzo’s chicken. He stopped me. “You don’t want to eat there,” he said conspiratorially. “You see, the chicken ain’t chicken. What they do is they get the cats from the Puerto Ricans. See, the Puerto Ricans kidnap the cats, keep ’em in the back of their cars, that’s why the salsa music is always so loud, to drown out the meowing. Puerto Ricans kidnap the cats from the Jews, when Jews go on vacation to Florida for those secret meetings at the Center for Controlling the Media.”

  For my birthday party, Willy showed up with a bottle of French wine, gave me a do-rag as a gift, insisted I try it on, and started to mingle. All night, he trapped my friends in conversations, where he did all the talking about his latest theories. I would walk by and overhear things like: “See, you feel that way because you are white. Whiteness is a state of being without color. Blank. See, white people came from ice, can’t feel the cold, that’s why they can walk around wearing shorts in October. White people are all descended from albinos. To be white is a genetic mutation like the way a mole rat is blind, white and hairless. See, the word Caucasian is linguistically similar to the word casualty as in the paleness, or whiteness, of a cadaver. How healthy can it be to have the color of a dead motherfucker if you are alive?”

  I also heard: “Chink is not an offensive word. It’s derived from ‘chink in the armor,’ a slit designed to let the hot air out when a Chinaman went into battle. Very important cuz they balls got hot as hell under that armor like two water chestnuts cookin’ in a wok. And with the little itty-bitty dick, the last thing they need is shrinkage. That’s why they eyes all closed up, cuz they angry every time they look down. Got to let it breathe.”

  Around midnight came a toast. He held up a single malt in one hand and a box of Saltines in the other: “To my nephew-in-law, Benny… finally, a cracker with flavor!” He made quite an impression.

  The next morning I was awakened by a phone call. It was Willy. “I had a great time with your bohemian friends. A lot of interesting folk; creative types and what-not.” Then his voice lowered to a whisper. “I am trying to get some reefer, a dime bag, a nickel… if you could arrange… discreetly… my niece doesn’t need to know.…”

  I hadn’t officially bought pot since college so I was a bit out of the loop with the latest hand signals and lingo. Plus, for some reason, people who sell pot always think I’m a cop. Officer Swarthy. Nevertheless, I called around and contacted a stoner buddy and he suggested a bodega on Flatbush Avenue. “Tell ’em you know Flaco,” he said, “and don’t shave, don’t wear blue, don’t say ‘fuckin’ a,’ and don’t call anyone ‘buddy.’ ”

  When I found the bodega, I did a couple loops around it, casing the joint like a pro. Two old men were sitting outside playing dominoes. I nodded to them, walked inside and browsed through the bags of fried plantains. A lady with an ass that looked like a Buick had double-parked in a pair of bike shorts was buying four “loose-ie” Newports that the cashier carefully wrapped in a piece of paper bag. She left and I approached him with a bag of plantains. As he rang them up, I muttered, “Flaco told me to talk to you about smoke.” He looked at me blankly. “Flaco? Flaco who?” My mind was racing. “Flaco. You know… Flaco. That’s all I know him as. Who uses last names anymore?” He took in what I said then said, “I’m sayin’, brother, there’s mad Flaco. Flaco from Sunset Park. Flaco from Marcy houses. Then there’s Gordo, the nigga formerly known as Flaco. Who you with?” I tried to look hard and distant. “I’m not with anybody, I roll… solo.” He put my chips in a bag. “You po-lice? ’Cause if you is, you gotta tell me if I axe. That’s the law.” I thought about how to respond. This guy clearly had the system figured out and I was a novice. “No, if I was I would have busted you for selling loose-ies,” I finally replied. He stopped for a second, then yelled to the stockroom. “Yo, Jock, you got a call.” I was slightly apprehensive when I learned I was meeting “Jock from the stockroom”—it just had that gay-porn ring.

  The door opened and a Korean kid who couldn’t have been more than 15 walked in. Joc. Yung Joc. I started to picture him rapping and it was hard not to laugh. “What’s up?” he said. “I got fitty bags and hunnit bags.” “Fitty,” I said, and he gave me a plastic bag with a fat green bud inside. On the bag was a sticker of a guy in a wheelchair, and underneath it was written “The Crippler.” I debated for a minute about buying pot that would make one handicapped then handed over the money.

  I called Willy when I got home, forgetting how paranoid he could be, to tell him I got the pot. He cut me off and hung up. He then called back from another line and started speaking in code.

  “You got the contract?”

  “The what?”

  “The contract?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I got it.”

  “How many pages?”

  “Pages?”

  “How many pages was the contract?!”

  “Uh, fifty pages…”

  “Fifty pages?! I told you a five or ten-page contract!”

  “A five or ten-page contract is gonna have seeds and stems—”

  “Got-tammit!” He hung up the phone. An hour later he called back from another number. “It’s me. Meet me at the promenade at midnight by the phone booth at the Montague Street entrance.”

  Midnight came around and I just wanted to get the whole thing over with. As I approached the promenade, I almost didn’t recognize Willy. He was in disguise, wearing a trench coat and fedora. He looked like McGruff taking a bite out of crime. He was making a fake phone call at the booth.

  I walked over to him, but something was wrong because he looked both ways and started talking to me in code again. As I tried to decipher one code, he hit me with another:

  “Blackhawk Down… principal’s in the office… abort mission… code red… Mutiny on the Bounty… flippity-flop on the dip-side… hold the onions and definitely NO CHEESE!”

  As it dawned on me that all this meant our transaction was to be delayed, he whispered for me to meet him in the all-nig
ht diner in ten minutes, and walked off.

  I did as instructed and, ten minutes later, walked into the diner, which was pretty empty. I saw Willy in a booth way in the back. As I approached, he put on a show of how he didn’t know me: “Uh, waiter, coffee for this gentleman. What did you say your name was?”

  When I sat down he slid a napkin across the table. On it was written: “5-0 at cash register. B cool.” I turned around and looked behind me. A 70-year-old security guard was buying a cup of tea.

  “That guy? That guy’s not a cop—” I said.

  “Got-tammit!!!” Willy ate the napkin. While he chewed it he yelled at me: “I told you to be cool! That was NOT cool! You gonna get us incarcerated with a bunch of down-low thugs that’s secretly sweet, and when the soap drops, I’m not gonna be there.”

  I had had it. I tucked the bag of weed into his blazer pocket like a green hanky. “That’s it. I quit. I don’t wanna work for this company anymore. Here’s your P.O.T.” I left and went straight to bed. The next day, there was a cryptic message on the answering machine:

  “It’s me. Sorry about yesterday. There has been a new development concerning the last acquisition. I reviewed the contract last night… all fifty pages. I can’t feel my legs. Call me.”

  There’s an old Colombian proverb that I think sums up this story: “It takes only one donkey to stop traffic, but it takes a real ass to be a drug mule.” I’ll have to get that translated into French.

  Grandma Betty

  By Liz Feldman

  I, LIKE SO MANY OTHER JEWS before me, had a big fat loud grandma. I also had a tiny sweet gentle grandma but this story isn’t about her. This story concerns my grandma Betty, a woman who both fascinated and frightened me. She was a woman who knew what she liked: candy, canasta and cable TV. It was probably the combination of those things that her “big fat” status could be attributed to.