“I’ll send him to Morgan’s, then.”
“Morgan’s,” my father would say, looking up from his evening paper, “doesn’t hire Jews.”
Duddy Kravitz cured me of the department store myth. He was very knowing about how to make babies. “You do it with a seed. You plant it, see.”
“Where, but?”
“Where? Jesus H. Christ!”
Duddy was also a shrewd one for making it with the girls. When we were both twelve, just starting to go out on dates, he asked me, “When you go to a social, what do you do first?”
“Ask the prettiest girl for a dance.”
“Prick.”
Duddy explained that everybody went to the dance with the same notion. The thing to do, he said, was to make a big play for the third prettiest girl while all the others were hovering around number one. To further my education, he sold me a copy of The Art Of Kissing for a dollar. “When you’re through with it,” he said, “and if it’s still in good condition, you bring it back, and for another fifty cents I’ll lend you a copy of How to Make Love. Okay?”
The first chapter I turned to in The Art of Kissing was called HOW TO APPROACH A GIRL.
In kissing a girl whose experience with osculation is limited, it is a good thing to work up to the kissing of the lips. Only an arrant fool seizes hold of such a girl, when they are comfortably seated on the sofa, and suddenly shoves his face into hers and smacks her lips. Naturally, the first thing he should do is arrange it so that the girl is seated against the arm of the sofa while he is seated at her side. In this way, she cannot edge away from him when he becomes serious in his attentions.
“Hey,” my sister yelled, “how long are you going to be in there?”
“Hay is for horses.”
“I’ve got to take a bath. I’m late.”
If she flinches, don’t worry. If she flinches and makes an outcry, don’t worry. If she flinches, makes an outcry and tries to get up from the sofa, don’t worry. Hold her, gently but firmly, and allay her fears with reassuring words.
“When you come out of there I’m going to break your neck.”
“You, and what army?”
… then your next step is to flatter her in some way. All women like to be flattered. They like to be told they are beautiful even when the mirror throws the lie right back in their ugly faces.
Flatter her!
Ahead of you lies that which had been promised in your dreams, the tender, luscious lips of the girl you love. But don’t sit idly by and watch her lips quiver.
Act!
“Why did you stuff the keyhole?”
“Because I’ve heard of snoopers like you before.”
“Oh, now I get it. Now I know what you’re doing in there. Why you filthy little thing, you’ll stop growing.”
… there has been raised quite a fuss in regard to whether one should close one’s eyes while kissing or while being kissed. Personally, I disagree with those who advise closed eyes. To me, there is an additional thrill in seeing, before my eyes, the drama of bliss and pleasure as it is played on the face of my beloved.
“Awright,” I said, opening the door, “it’s all your’n.”
Our parties were usually held at a girl’s house and it was the done thing to bring along the latest hit parade record. Favourites at the time were Besame Mucho, Dance Ballerina, Dance, and Tico-Tico. We would boogie for a while and gradually insist on more and more slow numbers, fox trots, until Duddy would leap up, clear his throat, and say, “Hey, isn’t the light in here hurting your eyes?”
Next, another boy would try a joke for size.
“Hear what happened to Barbara Stanwyck? Robert Taylor.”
“Wha’?”
“Robert Tayl’der, you jerk.”
“Yeah, and what about Helena Rubinstein?”
“So?”
“Max Factor.”
But with the coming of the party-going stage complications set in for me, anyway. Suddenly, my face was encrusted with pimples. I was also small and puny for my age. And, according to the author of The Art of Kissing, it was essential for the man to be taller than the woman.
He must be able to sweep her into his strong arms, and tower over her, and look down into her eyes, and cup her chin in his fingers and then, bend over her face and plant his eager, virile lips on her moist, slightly parted, inviting ones. And, all of these are impossible when the woman is taller than he is. For when the situation is reversed the kiss becomes a ludicrous banality, the physical mastery is gone, everything is gone, but the fact that two lips are touching two other lips. Nothing can be more disappointing.
I had difficulty getting a second date with the same girl and usually the boys had to provide for me. Duddy would get on the phone, hustling some unsuspecting girl, saying, “There’s this friend of mine in from Detroit. Would you like to go to a dance with him on Saturday night?”
Grudgingly, the girl would acquiesce, but afterwards she would complain “Why didn’t you tell me he was such a runt?”
So Duddy took me aside. “Why don’t you try bodybuilding or something?”
I wrote to Joe Weider, the Trainer of Champions, and he promptly sent me a magazine called How To Build A STRONG MUSCULAR BODY with WEIDER as Your Leader.
“Be MASCULINE!
Be DESIRED!
Look in the mirror – ARE YOU
really attractive to LOVE?
What does the mirror reveal? A sickly, pimply string-bean of a fellow – OR – a VIBRANT, masculine looking, romance attracting WEIDER MAN? If YOU were a vivacious, lovely, young woman, which would YOU choose? the tired, listless, drab chap, or the strong, energetic, forceful MAN – able to protect his sweetheart and give her the best things in life?”
Alas, I couldn’t afford the price of making Weider my leader. I tried boxing at the “Y” instead and was knocked out my second time in the gym ring. I would have persevered, however, if not for the fact that my usual sparring partner, one Herkey Samuels, had a nasty trick of blowing his nose on his glove immediately before he punched me. Besides, I wasn’t getting any taller. I wasn’t exactly stunted, but a number of the other boys had already begun to shave. The girls had started to use lipstick and high heels, not to mention brassieres.
Arty, Stan, Hershey, Gas, and I were drifting through high school at the time, and there we got a jolt. All at once the neighbourhood girls, whom we had been pursuing loyally for years, dropped us for older boys. Boys with jobs, McGill boys -anybody – so long as he was eighteen and had the use of a car.
“They think it’s such a big deal,” Arty said, “because suddenly they’ve begun to sprout tits.”
“Did you see the guy who came to pick up Helen? The world’s number one shmock.”
“What about Libby’s date?”
Disconsolate, we would squat on the outside steps on Saturday nights and watch the girls come tripping out in their party dresses, always to settle into a stranger’s car, and swim off into the night without even a wave for us. Obviously, a double-feature at the Rialto, a toasted tomato sandwich and a Coke afterwards, no longer constituted a bona fide date. That, one of the girls scathingly allowed, was okay “for children” like us, but nowadays they went to fraternity dances or nightclubs and, to hear them tell it, sipped Singapore Slings endlessly.
“Let them have their lousy little fling,” Arty advised. “Soon they’ll come back crawling for a date. You wait.”
We waited and waited until, disheartened, we shunned girls altogether for a period. Instead, we took to playing blackjack on Saturday nights.
“Boy, when I think of all the mezuma I blew on Gitel.”
“Skip it. I’d rather lose money to a friend, a real friend,” Duddy said, scooping up another pot, “than spend it on a girl any time.”
“They’re getting lousy reps, those whores, running around with strange guys in cars. You know what they do? They park in country lanes …”
“I beg your hard-on?”
“
I’d just hate to see a sweet kid like Libby getting into trouble. If you know what I mean?”
Duddy told us about Japanese girls and how they jiggled themselves in swinging hammocks. Nobody believed him.
“I’ve got the book it’s written in,” he insisted, “and I’m willing to rent it out.”
“Hey,” Stan said, “you know why Jewish girls have to wear two-piece bathing suits?”
Nobody knew.
“Mustn’t mix the milk with the meat.”
“Very funny,” Duddy said. “Now deal the cards.”
“I’ll tell you something that’s a fact,” Arty said. “Monks never go out with dames. For all their lives –”
“Monks are Catholics, you jerk.”
Once poker palled on us, we began to frequent St. Catherine Street on Saturday nights, strutting up and down the neon-lit street in gangs, stopping here for a hot dog and there to play the pinball machines, but never forgetting our primary purpose, which was to taunt the girls as they came strolling past. We tried the Palais d’Or a couple of times, just to see what we could pick up. “Whatever you do,” Duddy warned us beforehand, “never give them your right name.” But most of the girls shrugged us off. “Send round your older brother, sonny.” So we began to go to Belmont Park, hoping to root out younger, more available girls. We danced to the music of Mark Kenny and His Western Gentlemen and at least had some fun in the horror houses and on the rides. We took to playing snooker a good deal.
“A poolroom bum,” my father said. “Is that why I’m educating you?”
Then I fell in love.
Zelda was an Outremont girl with a lovely golden head and long dark eyelashes. The night before our first date I consulted The Art of Kissing on HOW TO KISS GIRLS WITH DIFFERENT SIZES OF MOUTHS.
Another question which must be settled at this time concerns the size of the kissee’s mouth. Where the girl’s mouth is of the tiny rosebud type, then one need not worry about what to do. However, there are many girls whose lips are broad and generous, whose lips are on the order of Joan Crawford’s, for instance. The technique in kissing such lips is different. For, were one to allow his lips to remain centered, there would be wide expanses of lips untouched and, therefore, wasted. In such cases, instead of remaining adhered to the centre of the lips, the young man should lift up his lips a trifle and begin to travel around the girl’s lips, stopping a number of times to drop a firm kiss in passing. When you have made a complete round of the lips, return immediately to the center bud and feast there. Sip the kissee’s honey.
I took Zelda to a “Y” dance and afterwards, outside her house, I attempted to kiss her broad and generous lips.
“I thought,” Zelda said, withdrawing stiffly, “you were a more serious type.”
And so once more Duddy had to find me dates. One or another of his endless spill of girls always had a cousin with thick glasses – “She’s really lots of fun, you know,” – or a kid sister – “Honestly, with high heels she looks sixteen.”
NINE
Some Grist for Mervyn’s Mill
MERVYN KAPLANSKY stepped out of the rain on a dreary Saturday afternoon in August to inquire about our back bedroom.
“It’s twelve dollars a week,” my father said, “payable in advance.”
Mervyn set down forty-eight dollars on the table. Astonished, my father retreated a step. “What’s the rush-rush? Look around first. Maybe you won’t like it here.”
“You believe in electricity?”
There were no lights on in the house. “We’re not the kind to skimp,” my father said. “But we’re orthodox here. Today is shabus.”
“No, no, no. Between people.”
“What are you? A wise-guy.”
“I do. And as soon as I came in here I felt the right vibrations. Hi, kid.” Mervyn grinned breezily at me, but the hand he mussed my hair with was shaking. “I’m going to love it here.”
My father watched, disconcerted but too intimidated to protest, as Mervyn sat down on the bed, bouncing a little to try the mattress. “Go get your mother right away,” he said to me.
Fortunately, she had just entered the room. I didn’t want to miss anything.
“Meet your new roomer,” Mervyn said, jumping up.
“Hold your horses.” My father hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. “What do you do for a living?” he asked.
“I’m a writer.”
“With what firm?”
“No, no, no. For myself. I’m a creative artist.”
My father could see at once that my mother was enraptured and so, reconciled to yet another defeat, he said, “Haven’t you any … things?”
“When Oscar Wilde entered the United States and they asked him if he had anything to declare, he said, ‘Only my genius.’ “
My father made a sour face.
“My things are at the station,” Mervyn said, swallowing hard. “May I bring them over?”
“Bring.”
Mervyn returned an hour or so later with his trunk, several suitcases, and an assortment of oddities that included a piece of driftwood, a wine bottle that had been made into a lamp base, a collection of pebbles, a twelve-inch-high replica of Rodin’s The Thinker, a bull-fight poster, a Karsh portrait of G.B.S., innumerable notebooks, a ball-point pen with a built-in flashlight, and a framed cheque for fourteen dollars and eighty-five cents from the Family Herald & Weekly Star.
“Feel free to borrow any of our books,” my mother said.
“Well, thanks. But I try not to read too much now that I’m a wordsmith myself. I’m afraid of being influenced, you see.”
Mervyn was a short, fat boy with curly black hair, warm wet eyes, and an engaging smile. I could see his underwear through the triangles of tension that ran from button to button down his shirt. The last button had probably burst off. It was gone. Mervyn, I figured, must have been at least twenty-three years old, but he looked much younger.
“Where did you say you were from?” my father asked.
“I didn’t.”
Thumbs hooked in his suspenders, rocking on his heels, my father waited.
“Toronto,” Mervyn said bitterly. “Toronto the Good. My father’s a bigtime insurance agent and my brothers are in ladies’ wear. They’re in the rat-race. All of them.”
“You’ll find that in this house,” my mother said, “we are not materialists.”
Mervyn slept in – or, as he put it, stocked the unconscious – until noon every day. He typed through the afternoon and then, depleted, slept some more, and usually typed again deep into the night. He was the first writer I had ever met and I worshipped him. So did my mother.
“Have you ever noticed his hands,” she said, and I thought she was going to lecture me about his chewed-up fingernails, but what she said was, “They’re artist’s hands. Your grandfather had hands like that.” If a neighbour dropped in for tea, my mother would whisper, “We’ll have to speak quietly,” and, indicating the tap-tap of the typewriter from the back bedroom, she’d add, “in there, Mervyn is creating.” My mother prepared special dishes for Mervyn. Soup, she felt, was especially nourishing. Fish was the best brain food. She discouraged chocolates and nuts because of Mervyn’s complexion, but she brought him coffee at all hours, and if a day passed with no sound coming from the back room my mother would be extremely upset. Eventually, she’d knock softly on Mervyn’s door. “Anything I can get you?” she’d ask.
“It’s no use. It just isn’t coming today. I go through periods like that, you know.”
Mervyn was writing a novel, his first, and it was about the struggles of our people in a hostile society. The novel’s title was, to begin with, a secret between Mervyn and my mother. Occasionally, he read excerpts to her. She made only one correction. “I wouldn’t say ‘whore’,” she said. “It isn’t nice, is it? Say ‘lady of easy virtue.’ ” The two of them began to go in for literary discussions. “Shakespeare,” my mother would say, “Shakespeare knew everything.” And Mervyn, nodding, wou
ld reply, “But he stole all his plots. He was a plagiarist.” My mother told Mervyn about her father, the rabbi, and the books he had written in Yiddish. “At his funeral,” she told him, “they had to have six motorcycle policemen to control the crowds.” More than once my father came home from work to find the two of them still seated at the kitchen table, and his supper wasn’t ready or he had to eat a cold plate. Flushing, stammering apologies, Mervyn would flee to his room. He was, I think, the only man who was ever afraid of my father, and this my father found very heady stuff. He spoke gruffly, even profanely in Mervyn’s presence, and called him Moitle behind his back. But, when you come down to it, all my father had against Mervyn was the fact that my mother no longer baked potato kugel. (Starch was bad for Mervyn.) My father began to spend more of his time playing cards at Tansky’s Cigar & Soda, and when Mervyn fell behind with the rent, he threatened to take action.
“But you can’t trouble him now,” my mother said, “when he’s in the middle of his novel. He works so hard. He’s a genius maybe.”
“He’s peanuts, or what’s he doing here?”
I used to fetch Mervyn cigarettes and headache tablets from the drugstore round the corner. On some days when it wasn’t coming, the two of us would play casino and Mervyn, at his breezy best, used to wisecrack a lot. “What would you say,” he said, “if I told you I aim to out-Emile Zola?” Once he let me read one of his stories, Was The Champ A Chump?, that had been printed in magazines in Australia and South Africa. I told him that I wanted to be a writer too. “Kid,” he said, “a word from the wise. Never become a wordsmith. Digging ditches would be easier.”
From the day of his arrival Mervyn had always worked hard, but what with his money running low he was now so determined to get his novel done, that he seldom went out any more. Not even for a stroll. My mother felt this was bad for his digestion. So she arranged a date with Molly Rosen. Molly, who lived only three doors down the street, was the best looker on St. Urbain, and my mother noticed that for weeks now Mervyn always happened to be standing by the window when it was time for Molly to pass on the way home from work. “Now you go out,” my mother said, “and enjoy. You’re still a youngster. The novel can wait for a day.”
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