Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish

by Shana Liebman

  “I’ll heat up something,” she’d say.

  As soon as she was out of earshot, my brother would mute the TV.

  “We’re getting pizza tonight,” he’d say.

  “But Mom said leftovers,” I’d say.

  “We’ll see about that,” he’d say, confidently marching toward the kitchen.

  Fifteen minutes later, my mother would materialize in front of the TV with a Domino’s menu and ask me what kind of toppings I wanted. She always had an exasperated look on her face, like she had tried to resist my brother’s magic, but had lost the fight again.

  The other incredible thing about my brother is that he wasn’t afraid of anything, not even murderers. By my calculations, it was only a matter of time before a murderer broke into our apartment. America’s Most Wanted profiled five new murderers every night and there were a finite number of houses in the United States. Sooner or later, our number would come up. I explained this all to my brother, repeatedly, but it didn’t seem to impact him in any way.

  Sometimes, when we were watching TV late at night, we’d hear a siren out the window, indicating that a murderer had escaped and was on the loose. It never fazed my brother. He just picked up the remote and turned up the volume on the cable box.

  When my dad was still living with us, I took most of the sirens in stride. I knew that, sooner or later, a murderer was going to break into our apartment. That was a given. But I always felt that my parents could work together to fend him off somehow. There were two of them, after all, and I knew from Law & Order that murderers worked alone.

  Unfortunately, with my dad out of the picture, our numbers weren’t looking so good. My mom was a strong woman. She could carry me all the way to the supermarket and most of the way home before she started to complain about her lower back. But I wasn’t sure she could handle a murderer all by herself.

  One night, my brother got invited to a sleepover party. My mom had to go out to dinner with friends and my dad wasn’t going to be home at his house, so it was just going to be me and a babysitter. She claimed her name was “Tina,” but I recognized her as Crazy Hands Wilma, a murderer who had recently been profiled on Unsolved Mysteries.

  I followed my brother into his room while he packed up his overnight bag.

  “Do you have to go?” I asked.

  “It’s cool,” my brother said. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  I looked out the window. Lights were flipping on in other buildings. It was almost night.

  “You’re not really God,” I said.

  “Sure I am,” he said. “Remember the cars?”

  I hesitated. I did remember the cars.

  “OK,” I said, finally. “But if you’re God… then why can’t you do anything?”

  “What do you mean?” he said. “About what?”

  “About everything. About diseases and murderers…”

  “I’m working on it,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “What about Mom and Dad?”

  He stopped stuffing clothes into his bag.

  “I’m going to have to leave that the way it is for now,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Here’s what I’m going to do about the murderers.”

  He took off his Knicks sweatshirt and handed it to me.

  “This sweatshirt is over four thousand years old,” he said. “It’s from Israel. As long as you’re wearing it, nobody can murder you.”

  I looked at it for a while, suspiciously. Then I lifted up my arms so he could help me put it on.

  “What about the babysitter?” I asked. “She might be a murderer.”

  “I’m going to put a spell on her,” he said. “Watch.”

  He swung his arms around in a circle for a while, in the direction of the kitchen, where Crazy Hands was studying her French.

  “Baruch atah adonai!” he shouted. “Now she’s powerless.”

  “Do a spell on me too,” I said. “So no one can get me.”

  He sat down next to me and put his arm around my shoulder.

  “Baruch atah adonai,” he said firmly. “You are safe, you are safe, you are safe.”

  “OK,” I said, resting my head on his arm. “OK. Amen.”

  We Want Bo Derek

  By Joshua Neuman

  I WAS 7 YEARS OLD in the summer of 1979 and I was attending Camp Scuffy, a day camp in upstate New York. Each weekday morning, a yellow school bus picked me up from my home in Paramus, New Jersey, snaking through suburban developments, pausing in front of driveways and circling cul-de-sacs while the boys on the bus snatched each other’s baseball hats and the girls giggled and preened.

  I didn’t harbor any hostility toward girls at the time, but on the Richter scale of libidinous life they didn’t register much higher than the New York Yankees’ bullpen coach. I recognized the effect that girls had on boys, even boys my own age, but I tended to interpret it as a kind of affectation of manhood—like the way that boys wore gold necklaces or spat in the gutter. The actual desire for the opposite sex was, at best, an unproven hypothesis.

  Once the bus had picked up the last kid, it left the residential neighborhoods of northern New Jersey and began its long trek upstate. Along the way, bored boys stiffened their thumbs and unlatched the spring-loaded windows to shout at the pedestrians on the street. But unlike kindergarten, when the boys screamed, “Bite-the-weenie!” and its truncated version, “Bite it!,” the boys on the camp bus chanted: We want Bo Derek… We want Bo Derek… We want Bo Derek.… Even some of the male counselors joined in. The only person who I had ever known named Bo was Bo from The Dukes of Hazzard. I was pretty sure they didn’t mean that Bo, but who was this Bo Derek? And what did all of the boys on the bus want with him?

  One summer evening, my mother, father and I were sitting around the dinner table watching Face the Music, a spin-off of Name That Tune, on our Magnavox 19-inch black-and-white television. The male contestant on the show was trouncing his female opponent so I was particularly in high spirits. During a commercial break, I returned to my plate of food, but was interrupted when I heard “… and introducing Bo Derek.” I jerked and turned to the film trailer just in time to see a middle-aged man coughing nervously into his fist. He looked like a Jewish leprechaun. So this was Bo Derek?

  The film was called “10.” I asked my mother if we could see it.

  Though my mother came of age in the ’60s, she was by no means infected with its countercultural spirit. In fact, the closest she came to doing anything rebellious was when she helped a friend of hers get a job teaching with her at P.S. 87 in the Bronx so he could avoid Vietnam. As a psychology student at Hunter College, however, she did not go unaffected by the child-rearing philosophies of Dr. Spock. Throughout my childhood, a tattered copy of his Baby and Child Care rested on the tissue box holder in the downstairs bathroom.

  My father blamed that book for my mother’s tendency to give me whatever I wanted. She let me go to bed whenever I wanted, watch as much television as I wanted and she bought me more G.I. Joes than any kid in the neighborhood. In fact, the only time my mother ever said “no” to me was when I didn’t want to wear a jacket over my Superman costume on Halloween. In protest, my future Halloween costumes were: “Gene Simmons with a jacket,” “a bum with a jacket” and “the Incredible Hulk with a jacket.”

  So, when I wanted to see the movie “10,” even though she told me that she didn’t think it was for children, my mother agreed to take me.

  There were three different movie theaters in Paramus: the “tenplex” next to the Toys “R” Us where all of the popular films were shown, the “black theater” in the parking lot of the Garden State Plaza where films geared toward minority audiences were shown and Cinema 35—also known as the “$2.50 theater” (perhaps it was just my parents who called it that). It was the tiniest theater in Paramus and was just a few blocks from my house.

  My father didn’t come with us to see “10.” He was busy with something or ot
her in his workshop: a Plexiglas ketchup bottle holder or a contraption that would keep the raccoons from tipping over our garbage cans. We bought popcorn and sodas and sat down in the nearly empty theater. Soon the lights dimmed and the film began.

  In the opening scene, “Bo Derek” walks into his surprise birthday party. He’s turning 42, but for some reason, he’s not happy. He has several drinks before making his way to his telescope, which he aims at a neighbor’s house. A couple is playing pool. The lady isn’t wearing a shirt. At that moment, I felt a surge of self-consciousness of being seen—with my mother, that is—in an almost empty cinema on a Saturday afternoon, watching a naked lady play pool. My mother, however, didn’t flinch.

  “Bo Derek’s” lady friend catches him looking through the telescope. She calls him a “peeping tom,” which leads to a talk that includes references to “leg spreading,” “getting [one’s] jollies” and an argument over the difference between “a broad” and “a hooker.” I tried my best to decipher the conversation, but couldn’t. I remembered when the Teen Angel in Grease called Frenchie a “hooker” after she had inadvertently dyed her hair pink, so I reasoned that a hooker was probably someone that looked flashy.

  Apparently tired of looking through his telescope at the naked party, “Bo Derek” then decides to join the party where naked ladies are on floats in a swimming pool. I had never seen a naked lady before. So this is why the boys are screaming about Bo Derek. He had unlocked a universe.

  The film’s setting soon shifts to a resort somewhere in Mexico, where (the real) Bo Derek is on her honeymoon. Meanwhile, the impish Brit (who I believed to be Bo Derek) telephones his girlfriend back in Malibu. Her son, Josh, picks up the phone. Paramus wasn’t a particularly Jewish town so nobody in my class was named Josh. None of the Yankees were named Josh. I could only remember one time when Miss Mary Ann had looked into her magic mirror and seen a Josh on Romper Room and that was because my mom had sent her a letter in honor of my birthday.

  It is at the Mexican resort where the now iconic beach scene takes place. Wearing beaded/feathered cornrows and a see-through one-piece bathing suit (the real) Bo Derek rubs oil on her body. Meanwhile, the man who I think is Bo Derek is staring at her—at the gold ring on her hand and her golden skin. The ocean’s waves are drowned by the sound of the beads in her hair rolling off her shoulder. She lies down. Arches her back. Lowers her legs. Closes her eyes. She never speaks. The only sound she makes is when her beads move, announcing her with the power that John Williams’ score announced the killer great white in Jaws. She closes her eyes again. And then… his fantasy: They’re jogging toward each other Bionic Man–style and embrace as the waves cover them with cool ocean froth.

  I should’ve seen it coming. After all, it had felt like a taboo when the boys on the bus chanted Bo Derek’s name out the windows. Why else would it feel that way unless this film wasn’t for children?

  Awakened from his beach fantasy, “Bo Derek” decides to go for a sailboat ride. On it, he spots (the real) Bo Derek’s husband, asleep on his surfboard, burning under the Mexican sun. (The man I think is) Bo Derek courageously rescues his would-be adversary from his nap. During the rescue, the dorsal fin of a shark appears. The whole interaction with the shark lasts only about five seconds. “What a rip-off!” I whispered to my mother, who nodded in agreement.

  As we walked home from the theater, we didn’t speak.

  “I thought it was pretty good, but not as good as Jaws or anything,” I finally said.

  I also told her that I didn’t see what the big deal was about Bo Derek.

  “A lot of men find her sexy,” she replied.

  Right. Her.

  My mother and I never discussed the film again and the experience drifted to the same faraway region of my mind that stored the memories of lackluster films like The Black Hole, Popeye or Meatballs 2. As a matter of fact, nothing really changed after that day. I continued to go to bed whenever I felt like it, watch as much television as I pleased and go to whatever movie I wanted to see.

  At camp the next day, I still didn’t know what getting your jollies or being good in the sack meant. But I did now know who Bo Derek was, and particularly, that she was a lady. So, when the boys on the bus stuck their heads out the windows and chanted, “We want Bo Derek,” I joined in.

  Gershon

  By Rebecca Addelman

  I TURNED 20 ON A NEAR-BANKRUPT KIBBUTZ just south of Tel Aviv. During that summer, I discovered my Jewish roots, I discovered myself and I discovered my sexuality—and I did it all naked with a 55-year-old man named Gershon.

  It was the summer of 2000, just before the Second Intifada disrupted the Middle East. It was my first time in Israel, and I was there volunteering on Kibbutz Palmachim, where I knew no one except my cousin Sherry, who’d been shipped off to Israel when she was 17 after getting busted with drugs, and her six fully Hebraic kibbutznik kids whose idea of a good time was to take their action figures and stick them in electrical sockets. We didn’t have a lot in common.

  But then I met another volunteer, Erin, a nice Jewish girl from the suburbs of Buffalo who’d morphed into a dirty, earthy hippie while studying in New Orleans. Erin had ass-length, fire-red hair, and for her, shoes and bras weren’t just optional, they were frowned upon. She was the kind of girl who would happily strip off her clothes to demonstrate yoga moves, “so that you can see the proper alignment.” I was the complete opposite. I was still a virgin and pretty prudish when it came to any kind of nudity. I’d been naked with men before, but it had always ended badly, generally in tears or dry hand jobs.

  After a week of hanging out with Erin—which included a lot of time averting my eyes as her nipples flopped in and out of her muumuu—she told me about Gershon. “My cousin Gershon lives nearby,” she said, “and he knows the country really well. Today we’re going to the desert. You wanna come?” It sounded fun and safe—this was Erin’s cousin, after all. Plus, I still hadn’t been to the desert.

  When Gershon arrived, he was older than I’d expected, about 55, and leathery and yellowed from years of caffeine, tobacco and invading Lebanon. He also seemed a little creepy, with his gaping smoker’s smile and his raspy voice urging me to “come, come.” But I couldn’t not travel with someone just because they were old and a little worse for the wear, right? So we piled into his car and drove off in pursuit of the Holy Land.

  On this particular afternoon, Gershon took us to the Tzin Desert. Equipped with his own ATV, we zoomed into the emptiness as the sun was just starting to dip. It was my first time encountering this kind of landscape, and I was moved by the beauty and ancientness. I felt sad, lonely and content all at the same time as the wind whipped up and off to nowhere, swallowed by the earth and the sky. It was already one of the best moments of my life before Gershon one-upped himself by leading our little party to the edge of a desert lagoon. He’d found a pool of pristine water in the cracked, hardened earth of the Holy Land. It was perfect—until we reached the water’s edge where Gershon and Erin stripped off their clothes—all of their clothes—and jumped in.

  I was shocked—not so much by the nudity but by the fact that these two were related. Related!? Picture one of your oldest relatives of the opposite sex—would you ever get naked with that person willingly? No, right? Because I’m pretty sure that’s a form of incest. A minor form, but still.

  “Join us!” they called as they splashed around. “Rifka, you must come in the water. It’s part of the experience,” said Gershon, implying—by using my Hebrew name—that if I rejected the skinny dip, I rejected Israel.

  So I did join them. In my underwear, bra and T-shirt, I lowered myself in the water. I pretended to have a good time, floating and treading water with my naked companions, but the whole thing was a bit distracting. Gershon’s pale, flaccid penis kept catching the moonlight, and Erin’s bright-red pubic hair would brush against my leg. I kept my eyes on the desert stars and told myself to just be cool.

  Over the next few we
eks, Erin and I would work at the kibbutz’s concrete factory—Spancrete—until 2 p.m. When we were done, Gershon would be waiting with his car stocked with supplies—coffee, nuts, dried fruit, blankets and flashlights—and we’d drive off into the Israeli countryside in search of adventure.

  Gershon zigzagged us across the tiny country, showing us wonderful sights and telling us ancient stories, and I started to fall in love with that part of the world—the food, the deserts, the holy buildings. I was spellbound by Gershon’s tales of his military days and his parents’ trials in Palestine in the ’30s and ’40s. But inevitably, by the close of every trip, Gershon would steer us to: (a) a body of water that was in (b) a remote location where there were (c) no witnesses. And inevitably, Gershon and Erin would take off their clothes and jump in.

  At first I kept on just my bra and underwear, then just my underwear, and finally, nothing. With my clothes went my reserve. I soon found the whole thing beautiful and strangely fitting. It made sense to me to be naked in Israel. This was the homeland. This was the cradle of life. We’re in the aqueducts underneath Jerusalem? Of course we should strip! This is the valley where David fought Goliath? Let’s fully appreciate it by getting naked in that stream over there. If it really is “more Israeli” to come to the Dead Sea at night when no one else is around, as Gershon says it is, then let’s do it nude!

  Some might say that Gershon had cult leader qualities, but at the time I didn’t see it. “Gershon isn’t bad,” I’d tell myself. “He’s real. He’s in touch with the earth. He’s Sabra.” It helped that things never got sexual. While I wasn’t well-versed in the world of erect penises, I’m 85 percent positive that Gershon’s was never hard. It never touched me at least.

  As the summer came to a close and Erin and I had only a few days left on the kibbutz, Gershon planned something special. He picked us up at the usual time and drove us into empty farmland. We got out of the car and had started bushwhacking through a watermelon patch when Gershon stopped and pushed aside an unmarked boulder. Underneath was the mouth of a tunnel. “Get in,” he said. On our bellies, wearing miner’s headlamps, we shimmied single file into the earth. He told us this tunnel was part of a network built by the Jews when they hid from the Romans. It sounded plausible, and besides, at this point in the summer, Gershon knew best—whatever he was selling, I was buying. Soon, the tunnel opened up into a huge, perfectly formed underground cave. “This is it,” Gershon said. “We’re here.”