Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish

by Shana Liebman

  After that day, my mother began amassing a sizeable collection of scissors, combs, neck buzzers, thinning sheers, plastic aprons and hair tonics (the kind of equipment the state requires one to have a license to use on the general public but which somehow is available for purchase over the counter). Every six weeks or so she would open the bathroom cabinet where the haircutting arsenal was kept, and one by one, my brothers, sister and I would go in for our turn in the home-style barber chair—a sturdy upholstered chair that started its life as part of a dining room set. Having your hair cut by your mother in the bathroom is not necessarily a bad thing; it was just an uncommon practice this far from Appalachia. But the sad fact was that none of my brothers or my sister or I ever had a professional haircut by a licensed barber until we went off to college. And even then, the positive effects of professional hair care were largely undone over Thanksgiving break. Most people associate the smell of astringent and talc with getting a haircut, but, to this day, a waft of L’Air du Temps makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on edge.

  On a drizzly Sunday morning in the fall of 1994, I got a call from my friend Mitch, once a regular in the after-school driveway basketball games of my suburban youth and now a Manhattan Assistant District Attorney.

  “Hey, a bunch of guys from work are playing touch football in the park. If you want to play, come by at Sheep’s Meadow around noon.”

  “It’s raining out” was my response, but I’d have been just as likely to beg off on a crisp, sunny day. Football has always been my least favorite playground sport, as it is premised on speed and size, both of which I lack. To make matters worse, I can only throw a wobbly spiral, and passes thrown directly at me have a way of bouncing off my chest. But Mitch added the detail that he knew might overcome my disinterest:

  “My buddy John is supposed to show.”

  He knew that I knew whom he meant.

  An hour later, I arrived at Central Park in sweatpants and a slicker, along with another good friend from high school, Rich Rosenthal. We hopped the fence that was supposed to keep people from playing football on the recently reseeded lawn and approached some guys tossing a football around. As I got closer, I could see that the one wearing the backward Jets cap was John F. Kennedy Jr. I was about to play touch football with John-John and I could almost smell the chowder.

  Quick introductions were made among the 10 or 12 of us, and I took my cue from the group when we all pretended that John was just another one of the guys, no different from all the Daves, Steves and Mikes. We chose up sides and I was assigned to John’s team. Mitch and Rich were on the other, not-John team.

  On offense, John played quarterback while I quietly assigned myself the task of trying not to be an obvious detriment to our team’s effort. As we played in the cold, light rain, I noticed some photographers huddling on the other side of the fence. From that point on, I stayed close to John in the huddle, mindful of the expression on my face that might be seen in the next day’s Daily News. As good-looking as he was, I would describe my response to him as a heterosexual crush. I wanted to play well so that he would like me, but that was unlikely, as I had never played well in my life. As the game went on, the team on defense quickly learned that I was the weak link on our offensive line and they assigned larger, quicker players to line up against me to get to our quarterback. I was reassigned out of necessity to be one of two or three eligible receivers but never tried terribly hard to break free from my defender. This gave John little choice but not to throw to me and he seemed happy to oblige—except on the one occasion when the guy covering me slipped on the wet grass as I left the line of scrimmage, leaving me wide open as I ran down the field. John spotted me as I broke free, pumped once, twice and then released a tight spiraled ball, thrown with some zip, as I waited near the end zone for it to arrive. The ball hit me like a precordial thump, bounced off my sternum and went two feet up into the air, giving me a chance to drop the same ball twice, which I did. It was the last pass he threw to me for the rest of the game. There was no way I was going to be invited to Hyannisport now.

  As the game disbanded and the East Siders headed east and the West Siders headed west, I worked my way into the circle of sweaty rain-soaked guys who surrounded John. We had met once before, I reminded him, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and segued sharply from there to tell him a story I thought he might find amusing: that once upon a time my mother cut my hair to look like his and that was the reason for a childhood of home haircuts. He smiled graciously at my anecdote. Then he had a question for me.

  “Does your mom still cut your hair?”

  “No.”

  “Good for you.”

  Bar Mitzvah: The Musical!

  By Matthew Loren Cohen

  YOU MIGHT THINK THAT A BAR MITZVAH would be an uninspired topic for Heeb. But I’m going to bravely challenge your assumption and tell you about mine anyway. It’s worth discussing, not because it was the most momentous or the biggest, but because it was the gayest.

  My Bar Mitzvah took place on May 13, 1989. And as you can see from this photograph, I had to stand on a stool to actually be seen over the lectern. (I haven’t grown, by the way.) The place was Temple Beth El in Boca Raton, Florida. I grew up in Boca—we were the poor family. Our house was the one with only four bedrooms (and no, Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia were not home at the time this photo was taken).

  Because almost every Jew in Boca Raton is some kind of ludicrously wealthy doctor or lawyer, Boca Bar Mitzvahs are exercises in excess. No expense is spared. During my seventh-grade year (Bar Mitzvah season), I received several invitations so elaborate that they arrived not in envelopes but in boxes complete with confetti, and occasionally an embedded chip that would play, say, “Hava Nagila” when the card was opened.

  One invitation, for example, was printed on a mini tallis. The production of these easily cost more than my entire Bar Mitzvah. However, as you can see in the following photograph, my mom’s Scottish terrier can now properly attend shul.

  Anyway, the receptions of the Bar or Bat Mitzvahs I attended were held in country clubs and hotel ballrooms to which we were often shuttled in stretch limos. There were cocktail hours with mock game shows for us to play, parties with live bands and DJs (for when the band took a break, of course) and decorations that would have made Brooke Astor blush.

  My parents were part of Boca’s much-less-known breed: the middle class. And at the time of my Bar Mitzvah, they’d been divorced for two years. My mom was raising me and my brother on child support from my dad, a building contractor, and her own teacher’s salary. So knowing that my Bar Mitzvah could not even begin to compete with some of the extravagant galas I’d attended, I had to come up with something affordably superlative for mine. I mean, the reception was going to feature only husband-and-wife DJ team Mike and Bobbie Roberts and I was not allowed to invite all my friends. (Once and for all: mea culpa, Erin.) I had to make a splash somehow.

  I’ve loved musical theater ever since I attended my first Broadway show, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, at age 5. I even acted in my first professional musical (a local production of Pippin) when I was 8. Because there’s an unwritten rule that every Boca Bar Mitzvah has to have a theme, when it came time for me to choose one, I forewent such common choices as sports or movies or piano, and opted for… Broadway! My mom, because she loves a good show, was delighted with my choice, and my dad, because he still calls pants “dungarees,” couldn’t have cared less.

  At a Bar Mitzvah reception, like at a wedding reception, there are assigned tables, and the tables are often named in relation to the reception’s theme. So you can imagine each adult’s delight upon entering my reception to learn which Broadway theater they’d be spending the night at. For instance, my mom’s friend Stephanie Margolis was seated at the Belasco, and my dad, thanks to my mom’s seating plan, was most likely at Broadway’s smallest theater, the 593-seat Helen Hayes. My mother, as you may have assumed, was front-and-center
at the Majestic. This table-naming, by the way, was entirely my 11-year-old idea.

  The centerpieces on each of the theater-named tables were pillars comprised of lots of sparkly stuff. The least gay item was a small wooden piano spray-painted black. The pillars themselves were placed in upturned red, gold and black sequined hats, and they had actual Playbills attached to them (which my cousin in New York City helped procure), as well as long sprigs of gold-and-silver musical-note garlands. Each table was covered in shimmery confetti.

  Above the kids’ table, at which I sat front-and-center (even though, according to the Talmud, I had just become a man), was a giant sign that read “Matthew’s Opening Night” in an Art Deco font. And all my friends (those who were allowed to be invited) received glittery silver hats. You can see the hats in action in this photo of my friends doing a kick line as Mike and Bobbie Roberts energetically spun the Chorus Line cast recording. That night, one singular sensation was me.

  My special-edition Bar Mitzvah–specific yarmulkes were not made of the usual black fake velvet but instead were shiny silver fake satin. And for souvenirs, instead of the typical “I was a star at Jessica Grossman’s Bat Mitzvah!” T-shirts, guests received a lovely chocolate in the shape of… a theater ticket.

  Finally, the temple’s social hall was filled with silver, white and black balloons. (Admittedly, not so gay.) But when combined with giant Art Deco-esque floor-to-ceiling black and white standees, seen in the kick-line photo, the gayness quotient went up measurably.

  The tiny woman in the photo with the balloons is my late great-grandmother, Rose Stirberg, and the primary genetic reason I’ve been 5940 since the late ’80s. I mention her and the balloons together for a specific reason. In 1989, Rose was 86, and she no longer could see very well. When she was led into the social hall for the reception, she glimpsed the black balloons, turned to my grandmother, her daughter, and whispered, “The band is all shvartzes?!” Even though that really has nothing to do with the gayness of my Bar Mitzvah, it’s clearly worth passing on.

  So you can see that my Bar Mitzvah was not lavish or fancy or extravagant. In fact, if you study the photos closely, you’ll notice how… um… cheap it was. But it was also really gay. And while it certainly wasn’t the gayest in the sense of Pride parade gay, with drag queens on floats and a midnight performance by Daphne Rubin-Vega, I’m proud that it was the most intellectually gay Bar Mitzvah, at least by Boca Raton standards. And even though we weren’t wealthy, it ended up paying off—literally—to be able to invite a bunch of rich kids obliged to bring presents.

  Most importantly, despite the event not being one of Boca Raton’s more notable social engagements, I ended up having a gay old time.

  Herzog Versus Davis

  By Hal Sirowitz

  MY MOTHER AND FATHER USED TO ARGUE over which side of the family had the most famous relative. My mother claimed it was her side: Al Davis, owner and president of the Oakland Raiders football team. He was related to her stepmother, but she wouldn’t let that disqualify him. He treated her like a first cousin, so that was what she went by. To prove he was a relative she called his mother, Rose, and asked her to get him to send me a football autographed by the team. My sisters were mad that she didn’t ask him to send them something. But she was afraid he might send them cheerleader’s outfits. The last thing she wanted them to be was cheerleaders.

  The problem with the autographed ball was that whenever I used it, the ink would come off on my hands. I tried to throw the ball so it wouldn’t land on Daryle Lamonica’s signature, but he was the John Hancock of the Raiders, which made that difficult to avoid. The more I threw the ball, the fuzzier the signatures became, until I could only make them out from memory. I had to retire the ball to preserve the names that were left. Playing with the ball decreased its value. I wished Al had sent me a plain one.

  Al Davis also arranged for me to see his team play the New York Titans, who later became the Jets. After the game, I was taken into the locker room. I had the football so the players could sign their names again in darker ink. My mother had lent me her laundry pen. But the players were in the shower. It didn’t make sense to ask naked men to sign the same ball again. But more importantly, I was transfixed watching the blood from their wounds flow down the drain. This cured me of my fantasies of becoming a professional football player.

  Not everyone was impressed by my Al Davis connection, especially Jets and Giants fans. I also felt like an outsider because before and during each game I had to decide whether to be loyal to my family and root for the Raiders, or to my city and root for the local team. I chose the Raiders. But it was a philosophical nightmare.

  On the other side, my father was related to the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Isaac Herzog, a position made more interesting by the fact that Ireland was never known for having many Jews. The most famous Irish Jew was Joyce’s Leopold Bloom. He wasn’t even a real person. Herzog was eventually appointed Chief Rabbi of Israel. His son Chaim became a general in the Israeli army, a United Nations Ambassador and Israel’s President.

  While the Herzogs rose in stature, Al Davis was going through tough times, trying to replace losing quarterbacks with winning ones. Al had this theory that a good quarterback should be able to throw the ball almost the length of the entire field. He drafted quarterbacks with great arms but bad aim. The purpose of throwing long was to open up the field for smaller gains. But like Icarus, who thought he could fly, the Oakland quarterbacks thought the ball would land in the arms of the intended receiver. They were both proved wrong, though the quarterbacks didn’t die like Icarus. They were just traded.

  At some point, I thought having famous Israeli relatives would make Jewish girls like me more. But most weren’t impressed, and they were even less impressed when I told them I’d never been to Israel. I said my father paid for a lot of trees to be planted in the Israeli desert. Therefore, I was indirectly responsible for the increase in shade. That didn’t work either.

  My father would say, “How could you compare a general with a football owner? Even if the team loses, it’s not kicked out of the conference. It’s rewarded with higher draft picks. But if General Herzog loses a battle, the Jews might be kicked out of their country. And even though Jerusalem is old, the Jewish State is new. It’s like a baby having to take care of itself. But don’t tell your mother I’ve said that. Just play along and tell her how great Al is. She knows his team is losing. They both need all the support they can get.”

  That’s the story I was going to tell Chaim Herzog, the son of Isaac, who’s also the Minister of Social Affairs and a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. I was in Israel attending the Kisufim Jerusalem Conference of Jewish Writers in April 2007. Isaac was gracious enough to take time off from the upcoming elections and to bring his wife along to meet me at a coffee shop. It was the first time I met someone important enough to have bodyguards. I ended up telling him another story about how my mother rewrote my Bar Mitzvah speech because I mentioned God too much. Instead of the speech being about my relationship to God, it was about my two famous relatives. When Isaac heard this, he said he felt bad about his family getting in the way of my search for God.

  I never really looked at it that way.

  Fake Farm

  By Laura Silverman

  THE FIRST FAMILY PET WE HAD was a beagle named Ginger. I don’t remember much about her, but I’ll always be indebted to her for giving me a good porn name: Ginger Chestnut. If it hadn’t been for Ginger, I would have been Petey Chestnut. Still sexy. But not as sexy.

  Petey was the fox terrier we got when I was 8. Soon after that we got Nicki, same breed, who was brought in to be Petey’s wife and bear his children. After Nicki had her litter of puppies she pretty much went bat-shit crazy. We had a swimming pool in our backyard, and she became obsessed with biting our ankles every time we tried to go off the diving board. It would start as soon as you even got near the diving board, with a sort of warning growl, and by the time you got to the end s
he was going in for the kill. You had to hope she didn’t have a good grip on you when you took that first bounce, which either forced her to retreat or tossed her into the water. The whole thing resulted in summers filled with bruised, bloody ankles and some crazy-assed dives, which I think is at least partly responsible for who we are today. Some crazy-assed divers.

  Petey, the male dog, had his own obsession. He swam laps, back and forth, all day, every day, a task from which he would not be distracted. If you got in his path he would simply swim around you and rejoin his course. It was as if he were training, compelled by some unearthly force to condition himself for the day that he would receive his calling. Which brings us to the following.

  My parents never loved each other. On their wedding night, my dad took a walk on the beach alone and cried. I imagine that my mom was glad to have him out of the room for a while. Having realized at the outset that their marriage had been a terrible mistake, they did what any reasonable two people would do. They had children. By the time I was nine the situation had become unbearable, and there was only one logical action left to take. Pack up the family and move to a farm.

  Not a real farm. A real farm produces things. On a real farm, animals are acquired, bred and raised to provide labor, or to yield various consumable products. This was a fake farm. A few acres of land with a big red barn, a pond, a creek and some sheds where animals were brought in to create a farmlike appearance, and were otherwise left to enjoy an idle life without purpose. A few days before we moved to the fake farm, my dad’s best friend gave us a baby goat as a gag gift. It’s a great idea to give animals as gag gifts, by the way, because it’s not like the animal is a living thing that continues to exist even after the joke is over. If left alone, the baby goat cried constantly, and we had to take turns sleeping with it in the garage. On moving day, the goat was staked out in front of the new house and its constant crying went unheeded, until someone happened to notice that Petey had the back end of the baby goat in his mouth and was trying to pull it free from its tether.