by W. E. Gutman
The old man who’d stood by my side at the railing since daybreak was gone. He’d bid me good luck and I’d seen him clamber down toward the lower decks in a state of euphoric agitation. Passengers were now disembarking, scrambling down the gangplank and spilling into the arms of loved ones massed in clumps on the windswept pier. Dawn’s dank murkiness had turned into day and New York was now towering above me like a cyclopean citadel. I would have given anything to stir awake from this unbelievable dream and find myself in bed in my little Montmartre aerie, the aroma of fresh croissants rising from the bakery below.
Aunt Mary -- Malku -- who’d come to fetch me, had noticed sadness in my eyes, weariness in my voice. The curtness of my replies, in response to a thousand questions, further accentuated my discomfort and fueled my feelings of alienation. I knew I should have faked a smile, simulated a semblance of joy for this woman, my father’s sister, who so generously offered me shelter during my first few months in America and kept her home and heart open to me for years to come.
“Won’t you tell me what is troubling you,” she’d asked, kindness and concern radiating from her eyes.
“Maybe some other time.”
I kept my feelings to myself, determined to weather the inevitable, eager to prospect the knowledge and challenges this senseless adventure might yield. I’d spent ten days at sea. The voyage, it seemed, had just begun. I was 19. It was best that dismal thoughts of home be brushed off like desert sand from a pilgrim’s sandals.
*
I heard a key turning into the lock.
“Louis’ home,” chimed Mary. I rushed to the door, opened it and spread my arms, ready to embrace him. Prematurely gray, a tall, lanky man with stooping shoulders stopped me gently but firmly with one hand on my chest and offered me his hand instead.
“You’re in America now. A handshake will do.”
Words don’t hurt until they’re uttered.
I would forgive the affront but I never forgot it. Accustomed to my parents’ warmth, I found the snub incomprehensible, almost hostile. Spurning a hug, I thought, even from a perfect stranger, as I was to him, was cruel and boorish. I would learn in time that Louis’ reserve was less the product of ill breeding than an inbred inability to demonstrate affection. His father Sam (Schmiel), my father’s paternal uncle, was a sullen old man who denied relatives a glass of water but invited derelicts to his table. His wife, “Meema,” was a stoned-faced, acerbic borderline schizoid woman. Her pinched lips, furtive glances and calculated irascibility betrayed meanness beyond pathology.
Meema and Sam had immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s, when Louis was just a boy. Soon after the end of World War II, Louis, at my father’s behest, had invited Mary, his first cousin, to come to America and become his bride. I don’t think Mary ever forgave my father for engineering the compact.
A veteran of New Guinea, the Philippines and Okinawa, Louis was intelligent but utterly lacking ambition. He earned a living pressing ties in a sweatshop in New York’s garment district. He and Mary produced two daughters -- Pearlyn, who was eight, and Sherry, still incubating in her mother’s belly when I landed in America. Now in her fifties, my pretty, dreamy-eyed cousin Sherry had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was thirty or so. I’d called it “Meema’s revenge.”
Soon after I arrived, Louis took me to Macy’s for a complete makeover. He bought me a see-through plastic raincoat that folded into an envelope-sized pouch, a fedora that aged me but did not impart the look of respectability Louis had hoped it would lend me, and a pair of “rubbers,” hideous overshoes that old men wear in the rain and snow. I never wore either.
Eager to dazzle me, Louis, who’d never been to Paris, also introduced me to the Horn & Hardart Automat, then located around the corner from Macy’s West 34th Street store. At first, I considered the whole concept of mechanized dining bizarre, something out of Flash Gordon. But as time went on I found myself drawn to this immense den of anonymity gleaming with chrome-and-glass coin-operated machines, art deco mirrors, marble floors and fancy marquetry. The automats had by then became an American icon. With their uniform recipes and centralized commissary system, they were America’s first major fast-food chain. Patrons composed their own meals. Hot food was always hot and tasty. The huge rectangular halls were filled with shiny, lacquered tables, and women with rubber tips on their fingers -- “nickel throwers” -- perched on high chairs in glass booths exchanged paper money for the five-cent pieces required to release food and drink. There were many advantages to this style of dining. Patrons could see the food before buying it. The glass-fronted compartments and gleaming fittings looked reassuringly clean. The coffee was probably the best in town. At a dime a cup, it was also a great buy. The last automat closed in New York City in 1991.
*
In less than a month, I found a job as a junior clerk with a shipping company, Overseas Maritime Corporation. I’d withdrawn from Aunt Mary’s tutelage and moved to a furnished room on 113th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. My landlady, Mrs. Neumann, was a stern German Jew who laid down the law: No guests. No music after 10 p.m. No metal-cleated shoes on her shiny parquet floor. No baths allowed -- only showers. No leftovers in the refrigerator. I had no problem complying with four of her injunctions. I deemed the first -- no guests -- groundless and unjust. I’d begun courting several girls, including Priscilla, the daughter of an elder at Riverside Church, and doe-eyed Blanca, the eldest of five children of a working class couple from Puerto Rico. Barred from ushering them in through the front door, I smuggled them to my room, which gave out on the street, by lowering the iron ladder and having them climb up the fire escape. Priscilla, a picture of Protestant primness, had a volcanic libido. She erupted in multiple orgasms, some in mere anticipation of coitus. Kissing her and rubbing my penis against her nipples was enough to send her swooning. Thrusting myself in all the way to the hilt catapulted her from one pinnacle of ecstasy to another until, weak from self-exhaustion, she let out long, tremulous sighs. I often had to place a hand over her mouth to muffle her ululations.
Blanca, Catholic down to her armored underwear and unyielding bra, vowed to surrender only in exchange for an engagement ring. She steadfastly resisted my advances but agreed, perhaps hope eternal springing in the face of crass exploitation, to submit to dry sex, which, faute de mieux, was better than nothing. Those were the days when some girls clung to their virginity, others pretended not to have lost it. I would never get to examine Blanca’s credentials.
Mrs. Neumann, it turns out, was aware of these nocturnal escapades but never said a word until, in search of greater privacy and larger quarters, I moved out of her apartment.
“I must say you were a model roomer,” she declared as we parted, shaking my hand with Prussian vigor. “You paid the rent on time. You were quiet, neat and thoughtful. Of course, I didn’t really expect you to obey all the rules. I am, however impressed by your resourcefulness and stealth, and grateful for your discretion. Good luck, young man.”
CHANCRES AWAY, MY BOYS
Getting up at the crack of dawn, taking a shower, fixing breakfast, running for the subway and riding all the way downtown in a state of stupor to make it to the office by “nine sharp” proved easier said than done. I was partying all night, a routine that, after a while, impairs motor skills and blunts concentration. My job at Overseas Maritime Corporation consisted of monitoring teletype communications and entering, first in a log book, then on a huge blackboard, the flag, registration, provenance, sailing dates, movement, cargo content, and final destination of various ships plying the seven seas. Many of the entries had to be updated several times a day. Bleary-eyed and bored to tears, I soon began to make a number of faulty transcriptions. The first couple of incidents earned me the wrath of my supervisor -- I remember him cursing me in Greek. The last one got me fired.
Fatigue and boredom were not my only foes. Keeping track of ships and ports of call inevitably revived the wanderlust that lay d
ormant within me. I resented being cooped up in an airtight office perched at dizzying heights over a gray landscape of concrete canyons. I lusted for sunshine, fresh air and the limitless expanse of the deep. It was with a sense of relief that I tore up the pink slip and cashed my miserly severance check. The next day I took the subway to the armed services recruitment center on lower Broadway and enlisted in the United States Navy. I would regret this reckless impulse. I had traded one form of bondage for another.
*
“Can you swim?” The asshole! Of course I could swim. Couldn’t everyone? I’d been swimming since I was seven, self-taught, buoyed by the brisk and chilly currents of the Tisza River in Transylvania.
“Why, don’t you have ships?” I asked without a trace of sarcasm. The Navy recruiter looked at me with annoyance. He scribbled a few words on a pad. They could have read, “wise guy” or “to be watched” or “troublemaker.” He then proceeded to fill out the enlistment form.
“Why are you joining the Navy?”
My answer, “so I don’t have to swim the Atlantic,” pissed him off. “Seriously, I added in a conciliatory tone, “I’d like to shorten the naturalization process, see the world and continue my education through the G.I. Bill.”
“Of course.” The recruiter grinned. “Just sign here on the dotted line.” I complied.
Two weeks later, shorn like a rat, riddled with painful injections in my arms, forearms and buttocks, and doused from head to toe with DDT, I learned that the recruiter had lied to me, perhaps to avenge my cheekiness, perhaps because he had his orders. It would take five years to qualify for citizenship. Automatic naturalization had been rescinded at the end of the Second World War. The G.I. bill was no longer in effect, except for Korean War veterans. As for seeing the world, the U.S. Navy, for reasons it did not explain, would station me on a wood-hulled coastal minesweeper that rarely ventured out into the open sea.
An early taste of military life at the United States Naval Training Center in Bainbridge, Maryland, long since decommissioned, would inspire resentment and the urge, later satisfied, to terminate this Neptunian charade and return to civilian life. Company 237, Second Regiment, First Battalion, to which I’d been assigned in boot camp, consisted of Bible-belt white boys with thick, unintelligible drawls who slept with the Confederate flag tucked under their pillows -- “the South shall rise again…” -- and ghetto and rural blacks who found in fractured grammar, tribal malapropisms and intricate handshakes a cozy refuge from a very hostile white society.
Seaman Recruit Sirotta was the only other Jew in a company of some 60 adolescents, many who had grown up believing that Jews sprout horns and feast on small children during Passover. It’s no wonder that Sirotta did what he was told and kept his mouth shut. Mistaking horse sense and opportunism for good citizenship, the Navy assigned Sirotta to a cushy job on the USS Forrestal, then the newest and most formidable aircraft carrier in the fleet. Using a different set of criteria, the Navy dumped me on a rust bucket no bigger than a tugboat.
Sven “Big Swede” Svenson, a gentle giant who’d also recently immigrated to the U.S., and I were the only foreigners -- aliens, as the high born Navy brass referred to us. We would both endure the xenophobic remarks of our bunkmates and the haughty disdain of our commanding officers.
Belying his name, Boatswain’s Mate First class, Mr. Angel, the company commander, was a merciless drill instructor whose inventiveness was overshadowed only by his cruelty. Sven and I were his choice quarries. He lavished upon us special challenges on the obstacle course -- obstructions and pitfalls from which the other recruits were exempt -- and he dispensed diabolical punishments for bogus or petty infractions. Unhappy with the way I’d folded a set of white uniforms (“regulations” demanded that they be pleated and creased a certain way) he instructed Sven to dig a hole behind the barracks, pour water and stir until the hollow thickened with bubbling slush. Mr. Angel then ordered Sven to dunk my uniforms and trample them underfoot. I spent the better part of that night restoring the uniforms to their original Rinso Blue bleached whiteness. Another time, “since the ‘frog’ and the ‘boxhead’ are such good friends,” Mr. Angel decreed with unctuous sarcasm, “and because neither took the trouble to use a razor this morning, they will proceed to the parade grounds and dry-shave each other in full view of the visiting Inspector General and his staff.” For the first time in my life I felt the urge to kill. Sven and I spent days plotting to send Mr. Angel to hell. He may well owe his life to a lack of resolve and opportunity on our part, not qualms.
When I wasn’t slogging in the rain chilled to the bone, holding an M-1 rifle high above my head until my arms ached and my knees felt like cotton, learning the secrets of knot-tying, standing watch in the middle of the night, peeling potatoes, swabbing the “deck,” and performing other essential naval duties, I earned extra cash composing love letters for some of the half-wits of Company 237. Homesick and quasi-illiterate, these boys, most of them from the Deep South, lapped up my syrupy missives as if they were Shakespearean sonnets. Oozing corn, they rarely veered from a standard text that contained all the buzzwords and pushed all the right buttons. Jealously protective of what they believed was tailor-made prose, none of the Romeos suspected that their Juliet was receiving the same inane message as their fellow sailors:
“Dearest [Darlene, Irma, Lullubelle, Gladys, Wilma]:“As I lie in my bunk alone with my thoughts, I can see the moon up above. Its glow, reflected by the whiteness of the paper upon which these words are committed, reminds me of your sparkling [blue, brown, green, hazel] eyes and the gentle breeze wafting through the half-open window feels like the wispy caress of your {blonde, red, black] tresses brushing across my face. My arms cry for your arms, babe, my body aches for yours, my lips thirst for your kisses. I shall hug my pillow tonight and let sleep overtake me before the pain of missing you becomes too much to bear. Until we meet again, with all my love,” [signed] Clem, Dwayne, Elmer, Leroy, Otis, etc.
*
Homesickness and girlfriends notwithstanding, the boys of Company 237 were boys, and none demurred when, halfway through our ten-week training, we were treated to a day of R&R in neighboring Baltimore. Implicit in this sortie was the inference that we were free to seek pleasure wherever we might find it. We were each issued three condoms and reminded that they might protect us from the hideous suppurations and tumors featured in the classic military training film lavished at the time on all military recruits.
To the best of my recollection, Baltimore in 1956 was an urban eyesore, a grimy expanse of tenements, some crumbling under the weight of abuse and neglect, a tangle of garbage-strewn empty lots fronted by dingy bars and fleabag hotels around which orbited clusters of vagrants, junkies and other reprobates.
Sven and I entered one of the popular drinking holes patronized by sailors and merchant seamen. We surveyed the “merchandise,” looked at each other and shook our heads. Accustomed to the appetizing demi-monde that graces the Paris and Stockholm sidewalks, we wisely decided to pass. The women on display can only be described as shopworn whores who reeked of alcohol and tobacco, and whose physique and crude overtures were apt to nauseate all but the most feral of men.
The boys from Company 237 were not quite as picky. Several of the dolts who’d paid four bits to pledge undying love to their sweethearts were now spending ten or fifteen dollars to get laid with loathsome harlots.
“… My arms cry for your arms, my body aches for yours, my lips thirst for your kisses,” I whispered to one of the guys.
He looked at me through a drunken haze and whispered back, “Yeah, but meanwhile, I’ll be gold-durned if I’ll pass up a chance to get me’self a piece of ass.”
*
Back in Bainbridge that night, inebriated and flush with remorse, several of the fellows whose Roxanne I’d dazzled with my latter-day Cyrano poetic intercessions now averted my gaze. Visibly contrite, they also seemed ridden with anxiety. None had heeded the corpsman’s advice to use the condoms they�
��d been issued. This defiance, they feared, would surely invite a bad case of the clap.
“Listen,” I said with all the gravity I could muster, “gather ‘round. It’s too late to cry over spilt milk. A penis is a precious asset. One should be extremely careful of the cavities in which we shove it. There is, however, a safe and foolproof method guaranteed to purge your system of any sex-borne viruses: First, vigorous masturbation. Then, a few drops of after-shave lotion down the urethra. You hear me right. If you value your manhood and your health, you’ll do as I tell you. There’s no time to lose. Go take a shower and beat your meat as hard as you can. When you ejaculate, the semen will dislodge and expel any germs that might have taken residence inside. Trust me. I know.”
One by one, racked by misgivings and unease, and seized by the notion that they had nothing to lose, a dozen or so of the boys retreated to the showers. There, facing the wall, shrouded by clouds of billowing steam, they proceeded to jerk off, first with slow and cadenced strokes (some of them tucked their balls under their buttocks and squeezed their thighs for better traction) then at a frenzied tempo that culminated in a chorus of primal grunts. Pleasure soon turned to scorching pain when they doused their dicks with Canoe or Brut or Aqua Velva. I watched them squirm for a few seconds with all the solemnity I could muster.
“Very good,” I said shaking my head approvingly. I then retreated behind the barracks to stifle the waves of laughter that welled within me.
*
About six weeks into boot camp, members of Company 237 were invited to take an Officer Candidate School exam. I asked to be allowed to take the test.
“No can do. You’re not a two-generation American citizen. You’ve not even been naturalized and … er… you lived in a Communist country, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, when I was seven years old and not responsible for the political follies of the country in which I resided at the time. I’m now nineteen, lawfully admitted to the United States and a legal resident. Won’t you at least let me try? If I pass, I pass. If I fail, I fail. Surely there’s not harm in that.”