I looked at them longingly, until the one with his back to me turned his head to the side and I saw that it was Christopher. Looking as good as ever. Probably talking to his new future husband about where they’d send their kids to church.
If one observant Jew couldn’t keep me from having a good time at a bar, one observant Christian could. For a moment, I considered tapping him on the shoulder and asking how he reconciled religious teachings with his homosexuality; maybe he’d found a scriptural loophole that I could bring back to the rabbi. But seeing the one guy I’d dated recently who I actually missed, flirting with a new man, I needed to get out of there more than I needed a Bible lesson. There’s only so much a guy can take.
Shit, I thought as I fumbled for my car keys, I really do need to get away—because things here clearly aren’t working out for me.
I was pretty sure the pilgrims didn’t know from matzoh ball soup and I was absolutely positive that the Native Americans didn’t welcome them with gefilte fish. But my mother had but one menu for a holiday meal: Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Thanksgiving. They were all the same.
Not that I ever complained. It was a good meal. And it did involve turkey, so it was still essentially true to the spirit of the day.
Thanksgiving had been a small affair for several years. Rachel had told our parents that she and Richard could only afford to fly east once a year and she’d left it to Mom to decide whether Rosh Hashanah or Thanksgiving was the most important. Mom’s response—“If you leave Richard in Seattle, you can afford to come home twice without him”—was not taken seriously, even though she meant it. At any rate, in the end Mom chose the High Holidays, so we were a cozy little trio, just Mom and Dad and me, for Thanksgiving.
I was thankful that my hangover had started to recede. And thankful that my parents knew I’d been working long hours lately, so I had a valid excuse for looking as haggard as I did. But thankful or not, I wasn’t really in the mood to deal with my mother.
“You need to take better care of yourself,” she said as she brought the food to the table. “You look terrible.”
“I know,” I said gruffly. It was easier than arguing.
“You don’t have to take on all this work,” my father said. “If you’re short on cash, I can help you out. It’s better than making yourself sick.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t need cash.”
“If you say so,” he said, dubious.
“Sid, give him some money,” my mother said.
“I told you I don’t need cash,” I repeated through gritted teeth.
“Just to get you through your vacation,” she offered.
“Mom!” I barked. “Just drop it.”
She sat back, hurt. “Just drop It.”
She sat back, hurt.
“Leave him alone, Judy,” my father said, trying to avoid a fight.
My mother conceded. “Fine,” she said. “But you’d better get some sleep in Miami. I know you need more of that.”
What was it about old people and sleep? Did people really buy plane tickets and take time off work just to sleep?
“I will, Mom,” I said. “Can we just eat now?”
“Fine,” she said. “Pass me your plate.”
Her food brightened my mood a bit. My mother found many ways to aggravate me, but her cooking was never anything but a comfort.
While we ate, she asked about my plans for Miami, and I kept my answers vague. I didn’t bother telling her about the White Party; she’d only have given me some ridiculous lecture about something she saw on the Today show about the “latest” party drug—Ecstasy or cocaine or something equally passé. So I just told her I was looking forward to spending some time on the beach, or by a pool.
“We haven’t been to Miami since before you and Rachel were born,” my father said.
“I don’t remember it being all that great,” my mother added. “A bunch of old people and a bunch of old buildings. And the heat!”
“I think it’s changed a lot since then, Mom.”
“Eh, you can keep it,” she said.
“There was that deli,” my father said. “Wolfie’s, I think. Is that still there?”
“I don’t know, I’ll check,” I said. Leave it to my father to visit the country’s most famous beach and only remember the best place to get corned beef.
“It’s all full of Cubans now,” my mother said. “That deli is probably some kind of a taco stand.”
“Tacos are Mexican, Mom.”
“You know what I mean.”
Yeah, I knew what she meant. And I was thankful that there wasn’t anyone else at the table to witness what she’d said.
“There’s still a big Jewish community down there,” my father offered.
“That’s why the rabbi had a place there,” I said.
“All Orthodox, no doubt,” my mother said.
“Mostly,” I said.
“Great,” she said sarcastically. “I told you he was going to try to convert you.”
“Oh, please,” I said.
“Judy, don’t start with him again,” my father said, putting a hand on her arm. “Benji’s tired and he just wants to eat in peace.”
“No, let me talk,” she said, pushing his hand away and turning to me. “I know you think you’re doing a mitzvah by looking after this old man, but I guarantee he doesn’t think of it that way. He’s going to try to turn you into one of them. That’s what they do.”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that!” I said. “I’m not turning Orthodox. I know that for sure.”
“Still, I think you’ve been spending too much time with him, going to his house all the time,” she said. “And now, staying in his condo. You’re getting too close to this man, Benjamin. I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t have to worry about that anymore,” I said. “He kicked me out of his house today.”
I explained the conversation, briefly, leaving out the parts where I taunted the rabbi and cheapened the memory of his late wife; I was already regretting those remarks. What was left was a back-and-forth where the rabbi basically condemned me for being gay and threw me out the door.
“I told you, they’re all crazy,” said my mother, satisfied.
But it was my father who was genuinely angered. “After all you’ve done for him, he’s got the nerve to say those things to you?” he said. “Where the hell does he get off telling you how to live your life? He actually called you an abomination? He’s living in the dark ages.”
“Dad, remember, that’s where the Conservative movement was until, oh, a few months ago. It’s not like your rabbi is so enlightened.”
“It’s not the same thing at all,” he said.
“Sounds the same to me,” I said.
My mother brought the discussion back to practical matters.
“But wait, doesn’t this mean that you’re canceling the trip?” she asked.
“No, I’ve already bought the ticket.”
“Then you’ll have to get a hotel room,” she said.
“You can’t get a last-minute hotel room in Miami Beach for a holiday weekend,” I said.
“Then what are you going to do?” my father asked.
“He kicked me out of his house,” I said, “but he didn’t say anything about his condo.”
CHAPTER 9
The trip to Florida got off to a good start. The plane left on time. I had an empty seat next to me. And my flight attendant was flirtatious.
“Traveling alone?” he asked, more friendly than pitying, while he poured me a cup of Diet Coke.
I told him I was.
“Not for long, I bet,” he said, handing me the cup and the rest of the can.
He was definitely handsome: somewhere around thirty, with short blond hair neatly parted on one side and a tiny silver stud in his left ear. That’s about as much individuality as most airlines allowed—at least on the parts of the flight attendants that were visible to the public. His uniform was dark blue, some kind
of polyester blend I guessed, but he wore it well.
He leaned over and whispered to me, “White Party?”
I nodded.
“Wish I could go,” he said. “I’m continuing on to Caracas tonight.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.
“There are worse jobs,” he said. “But after a while, you realize that the more time you spend flying around the world, the less you have to come home to.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “For me, Miami seems like a big trip.”
“I’m sure it’s gonna be very big for you,” he said. “I’m Jamie.”
“Benji,” I said.
Someone a few rows back rang the flight attendant buzzer and Jamie had to run. We didn’t get to chat again before we landed, but at least I arrived in Miami with a smile on my face.
I drove from the airport with the windows down, the late afternoon still warm and sunny. Following the map I’d brought, I took a route that was more scenic than direct, over the southernmost bridge into the heart of South Beach. I drove up Ocean Drive, the beach on my right, a row of hotels and restaurants on my left. The sidewalks were crowded with freshly tanned people, still donning sunglasses, ready for the cocktail hour. There were women in short shorts and bikini tops, but they were outnumbered at least five-to-one by the men, nearly all of them shirtless. They ranged from lean and muscled to beefy and muscled—men of all ages in remarkable shape. They rode by on rollerblades, or walked by in twos and threes, or sat in the outdoor cafés watching everyone else go by.
But the crushing intensity of South Beach didn’t go on forever. Within fifteen blocks, I was out of the neighborhood—out of the compact area that gay men think of as the entirety of Miami, the part with the cutest little Deco buildings, and the hottest guys, and the coolest places to hang out. Instead, I was thrust into an area with more high-rises, less foot traffic, fewer guys showing off their muscles. Hardware stores, chain hotels, Cuban restaurants, beachwear shops.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, when I turned onto West Forty-first Street and crossed Indian Creek, I was in yet another neighborhood. North Beach. The shirtless boys in baseball caps had been replaced by fast-walking men in dark suits and fedoras; the babes on rollerblades had been replaced by women pushing strollers, children pulling on their long skirts. Shabbat was just an hour or two away, I realized.
Even if the people had been invisible, it still would have been obvious that this was a Jewish neighborhood. On one block, a kosher Chinese restaurant stood between a kosher pizza place and a kosher deli; all three had neon signs with Hebrew letters in their windows. The Jewish Study Center stood opposite the Torah Time gift shop, and catty-corner from Jeremy’s Judaica, where paper dreidels hung behind the glass door. I passed a tiny Sephardic synagogue, then a Bukharian synagogue, then a synagogue without any English signs at all to help me identify it.
It was like Glenbrook South.
Just two blocks off this main drag sat the rabbi’s complex, a two-story block of condos with small balconies and modest grounds alongside the parking lot. Carrying my bags in from the rental car, I was hit by the smell of Shabbat dinner cooking in a dozen apartments. It smelled like home.
The rabbi’s condo was upstairs, a simple one-bedroom, one-bath affair, with a galley kitchen, all of it covered in wallpaper that was supposed to be tropical—giant bamboo stalks on one wall, bright green palm fronds on another. The air was stale, so I opened the sliding doors and stepped onto the balcony. No ocean view. I went back inside to look around. No cable. No stereo. Just books. And seashells scattered around by the handful.
I was mere blocks from one of the hottest gay spots on the planet at that moment, but I might as well have been on the moon.
I dropped my bag in the hall closet, grabbed a towel, and took a shower, deciding to head back to South Beach as quickly as possible.
Bars in D.C. got crowded on weekends, but I’d never seen anything like this. The sun had barely gone down and there was already a line to get into Rascals, a small dance bar with a big reputation on Collins Avenue. Most of the guys didn’t seem to mind; plenty of them had already had a few cocktails while the sun was still shining and almost all of them were with groups of friends, so they chatted and checked out the other patrons while they waited their turn to enter and cruise.
A group of seven or eight friends stood right in front of me on line. One of them caught my eye for a moment, while he was talking to one of his pals. A few seconds later, he looked again. And a third time.
When I finally got inside, I lost him. I couldn’t find him upstairs by the dance floor or downstairs in the video bar. I did manage, after almost twenty minutes, to get a cocktail, although it was hard to find a place to stand and drink.
I was getting ready to give up and try another bar when he found me again.
“I’ve been looking for you for half an hour!” he said.
“Same here.”
We made the usual small talk: What’s your name? (He was Ed.) Where are you from? (Atlanta, he said.) Is this your first White Party? (Yes, for both of us.) Where are you staying? (“I have an apartment,” I told him.)
His group of friends had their whole weekend all mapped out. Later that evening, dinner and a disco nap, followed by a dance on the beach that cost fifty bucks per person. Saturday, beach and gym in the afternoon, then the White Party, then the after-party, then the after-after-party. Sunday there was some big tea dance after brunch and then they’d all head back to Atlanta. They’d been in town for two days already and showed no signs of slowing down. They were going to have the complete White Party experience. As a group.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I was hoping to have some one-on-one time with you.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “Well, I can’t bag out on them tonight, but I’m free right now.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, I mean, we won’t go out tonight for a few hours and I can skip dinner and just grab a burger somewhere later.”
“Okay,” I said, although I hadn’t actually planned on going home with someone quite so soon. “We can go to your hotel.”
“Oh, that won’t work,” he said. “I’m sharing a room. Can’t we go to your place?”
I thought about it for a moment, while I watched a Robbie Williams video on the television screens, one where cowboys in fringed chaps rode bucking broncos in slow motion.
On the one hand, I knew the rabbi wouldn’t approve. On the other hand, I knew the rabbi wouldn’t approve.
But it wasn’t like he’d find out about it.
As we left the bar, we could hear Robbie Williams singing above the noise of the crowd: “Come on, hold my hand, I want to contact the living . . .”
Ed had locked his bicycle to a parking sign. He unlocked it and walked me to my car.
“It’s a bit of a hike,” I told him.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”
He followed me back to the rabbi’s condo. The streets were quiet already; hardly anyone walking around, no shops open, services finished for the night.
Ed looked around like he’d just been transported to a strange new world—a world where only the buildings had survived, a world where Friday night was the quietest night of the week and, most certainly, no one had heard of Robbie Williams.
Inside the apartment, his expression didn’t change. This strange warren of bamboo and palm fronds didn’t seem to put him at ease at all.
His expression only softened when he spotted the brass menorah on the windowsill.
“So you are Jewish,” he said.
“Um, yeah,” I said.
“Cool,” he said. “I thought you were.”
I was confused. “What difference does it make?” I asked.
“I really go for Jewish guys,” he said. “They turn me on.”
He stepped forward to kiss me, but I pushed him back with one palm. “Why do they turn you on?”
“Well, the
y’re really smart,” he said, “and they have great senses of humor, and they make good boyfriend material.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Plus, they’re really sexy,” he continued, perhaps sensing that this would be a good thing to include if he was trying to get laid. “I love guys with dark hair and hairy chests.”
He leaned in again for a kiss, but I kept my palm on his chest.
“Italian guys have dark hair and hairy chests, too,” I said. “How can you tell the difference? We don’t usually wear yarmulkes when we’re out at bars.”
“I can always tell,” he said. “It’s the eyes. Jewish guys have a look in their eyes that nobody else has. A sort of sadness.”
“Sadness? That’s what turns you on? I’m glad that our five thousand years of suffering have finally paid off.”
I folded my arms over my chest.
“Geez, Benji, I’m trying to say that you turn me on.”
“No, you’re trying to say that all my brethren turn you on.”
“I don’t get what the problem is,” he said. “I think Jewish guys are hot. Isn’t that a compliment?”
I thought about it for a minute. Gay men have stereotypes about lots of people, I knew; so why is it that everyone else had a reputation that was primarily sexual—black guys’ alleged endowments, Asian guys’ purported submissiveness, Mediterranean guys’ supposed libidinousness—while the Jews got stuck being valued for our brains and sensitivity? Then again, if a cute guy was after me, why did it matter exactly what about me turned him on?
“I guess so,” I said.
“I mean, don’t you think Jewish guys are sexy?” he asked, leaning in one more time. This time I didn’t stop him.
As he kissed me, I thought about his question. Truly, my answer was no. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Ed being attracted to Jews wasn’t really much different from me chasing after a string of gentiles.
He pushed me back onto the sofa.
“I think you’re sexy,” he whispered. “I want you to be my little bagel boy.”
I pulled away from him.
“Now what’s wrong?” he asked.
Sweet Like Sugar Page 17