Skin Deep, Mountain High

Meg Lawson was an ugly girl. It wasn't a matter of debate. The beholder was irrelevant. She was classically unattractive.

Granted, most 12 year olds are awkward. Aesthetic struggling is an adolescent rite of passage, nature's way of teaching you that life doesn't come on a silver platter. Attractive pre-teens are not to be trusted. They usually turn out to be self-centered, lackluster pricks. The best-looking guy from junior high school currently manages a Radio Shack in my hometown. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've spent many a free Saturday afternoon there myself, contemplating whether the 16-pack of AAA batteries indeed constitutes the best bang for my buck.

But even the gawkiest pre-teen either used to be cute, or would be cute again one day, after their limbs become proportional to their bodies, or they no longer need to stuff their shirts (or pants) with Kleenex. Not Meg. Barring some miracle developments in plastic surgery -- complete body replacement comes to mind -- it was clear that Meg would never be anything but unattractive. There was simply no physically redeeming quality about her -- from bosoms (or lack thereof) to bunions, there was not a comfortable place to rest your eyes on her body. And she was neither mentally challenged nor gifted, so there wasn't even a good reason for her aesthetic unappeal. She was just Meg, plain and short.

Meg's unattractiveness preceded her, just as my nerdishness preceded me. Everyone knew she was the ugliest girl in our class, and everyone knew I was the nerdiest boy. We were the ceiling from which everyone was measured. Or the floor, depending on where you fell in the food chain. Fortunately, though, I was not also the ugliest boy. I wasn't even in the running for that crown, which either went to Duane, the red-headed albino kid from Kentucky, or Martin, who sort of resembled Karl Malden with Down's Syndrome, due to his being dropped on the head as a baby. At least that was the rumor. Though I was surely gawky -- my legs were half the length of my torso until my 14th birthday, when my torso shrunk to half the length of my legs -- I wasn't really an ugly pre-teen. I suppose God thought he had given me enough to contend with, what with my slightly fanatical Bette Midler obsession, and extremely fanatical Antonio Sabato Jr. obsession (thank God for Sears catalogues). So I didn't think much about my physical appearance in those days. Sure, I had a grossly oversized Jewish nose, but I lived on Long Island, where perky noses go to die. I wasn't aware that noses could be proportional to a person's head until college.

But it probably wouldn't have registered with me if I had been the ugliest boy in junior high. Adolescent boys are judged on a different basis than adolescent girls. Girls are made up of sugar, spice, and everything nice. Boys are made up of everything else, including rodent hairs and items that smell vaguely like eggs. In fact, ugliness could be a mark of honor in a boy, especially if it took the form of a large facial scar. There's nothing less girly than an ugly boy.

So I had no idea that some people might judge me on my appearance. Then I came out of the closet, and realized that some people don't judge you on any other basis. Suddenly, I went from being completely unaware of my appearance to being completely obsessed with it. And I wasn't just obsessed with one aspect of my appearance, like my weight or height. In fact, when it came to those major categories, I wasn't too poorly off.  According to the medical establishment, I was about twenty pounds less than my "healthy" weight, which is actually the ideal weight for homosexuals, cancer patients, and people with eating disorders (not mutually exclusive from the first category).

But, despite what Kirstie Alley and Fergie (the royal, not the Pea) would have you believe, physical appearance goes way beyond a person's weight. A truly self-conscious person can dissect, analyze, and criticize, every inch of their body. Almost overnight I went from looking in the mirror once every four days to four times a day. The obsessions traveled from body part to body part, a superhighway of superficiality. I'd start by examining the hair -- is this a grey hair, is that a bald spot -- and work my way down, usually ending at my bony ankles, but sometimes extending to the misshapen pinky toe on my left foot. Sure, I was skinny, but that didn't stop the pathological obsessiveness. Sometimes I even wished I was fat. Maybe not Bill Clinton on donuts fat, but just a little chunky, so people could say "well, he might be cute, if he just lost the weight." Better to be thirty pounds overweight and potentially unattractive than average weight and remove all doubt.

After I came out of the closet, there wasn't much room in my life for other obsessions, so I had to clear out some of the old ones that no longer served their purpose. My stuffed Muppets were the first thing to go -- Fozzie's not a sexy bear, and Kermit hit the garbage can floor since nothing goes with green. (Miss Piggy made the cut, for obvious reasons.) Plus I needed the room in my closet for clothes, accessories, shoes, and any other utterly useless merchandise that assured my future happiness. Just when I'd finally come out of it, I was filling it up again.

But at 12, I was still blissfully unaware that clothing could serve any purpose other than keep you warm, and occasionally declare your undying love for Cher. So it didn't mean much to me that Meg's hair had the consistency of a Brillo pad, or that she wore the same sweater everyday for the entire winter, or that she could be voted worst-looking in a leper colony. All I knew was that Meg was a girl, and I thought girls were just generally icky. Admittedly, my opinion has not altered much in the intervening years, though I have developed an appreciation, and envy, for their naturally hairless quality. I'd endure the pain of childbirth if it meant that I could cancel my monthly chest wax. Of course, this hairless quality did not apply to Meg. She would have put the Ukrainian men's chess team to shame in that regard. Or at least the Ukrainian women's team.

As a result of my blissful ignorance, Meg's appearance didn't send me screaming for the hills. And it didn't bother me that being seen with Meg was akin to social suicide, either. I was two clicks of the gun barrel from there anyway. True, I wasn't a complete loser. I was somewhat popular in my own clique, a group of fellow academically advanced (and socially inept) students who called ourselves the Nerd Herd. Calling ourselves the Nerd Herd was our attempt to reappropriate the word "nerd," like when homosexuals call themselves fags, or women call themselves bitches. Nerds have been subjugated long enough. Even the world's most powerful nerds are still the butt of jokes, or, at a minimum, regarded as substandard in terms of physical attractiveness. I won't rest until I see an Al Gore spread in Playgirl. I probably won't rest much after seeing it either, but we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good.

So I knew that my standing in the Nerd Herd wouldn't be injured much by socializing with Meg. When you're an inch above rock bottom, the actual rock bottom isn't much more of a drop. Even the most attractive ones among the Herd -- and some of us were more attractive than others, with the best-looking virtually indistuinguishable from general society, except for the occasional plaid suspenders or advanced calculus textbook -- wouldn't dare mock anyone else's social choices. People with glass pocket protectors don't throw stones.

So one snowy March day, I decided to take it upon myself to become Meg's only friend. It was a brave decision, perhaps the bravest of my life so far. I wasn't a particularly bold or friendly child. My idea of radical social experimentation was actually making eye contact with another human being. My mother always told me don't talk to strangers, but since everyone's a stranger before you meet them, I didn't talk to anyone until I was six years old. She should have been more specific.

But something about Meg touched a nerve. Perhaps I saw a piece of me in her. I might not have been ugly, but I surely knew what it felt like to be shunned and mocked by general society. And there was still time for me to turn ugly later in life. Maybe befriending Meg would buy me those extra karma points to avoid a potential disaster. I wasn't convinced that the evening I spent caroling at a local nursing home would really get me much in the way of good karma, especially since I spent most of the evening asking the staff why the rooms smelled like urine.


"Haven't you ever heard of air freshener?," I asked one particularly unimpressed attendant while making the P.U. sign with my fingers. I was asked not to return the following year. Although that was fine with me, as my mother had disapproved of the caroling in the first place, which she regarded as a primarily gentile activity.

"Your grandfather is rolling over in his grave," she said. Since my grandfather had died when I was three, I wasn't in a position to argue with her. From what I remembered, though, he had a pretty good sense of humor. I remember that he used to pass gas at the dinner table, and pretend my mother did it. That got quite a laugh from me. I was only three at the time, but I can't say I wouldn't be equally entertained today.


So maybe I thought befriending Meg would win me those much needed karma points. Or maybe I just enjoyed the idea of being friends with someone who was more pathetic than me, and whose friendship could quite possibly injure my social standing even more than the time that I lip synched Oklahoma for the Sping Talent Show. It appealed to the martyr in me. If I was going to be the next Jesus -- as I fully intended to be -- I'd have to start somewhere.


Whatever the motivation, though, I figured the outcome could only be positive. Sure, I wasn't the quarterback of the football team -- I wasn't even a third-string alternate -- but at least I wasn't completely barred from the sidelines. Nerds have their place in a school, just as much as jocks do. Without nerds, how would jocks know they were jocks? And without jocks, how would nerds make it to class without being shoved in a locker? Meg, however, did not have a place in the school. She was floating aimlessly through the vacuum of her adolescence. When she looked back on her junior high school years, all she'd remember would be various taunts, teases, and torments, and the rest would be silence.


But not after today. After today, Meg would have a place at Walter Mondale Junior High. After today, she would be known as Jonah's friend, for better or worse. Mostly better, slightly worse. When her future ugly children would ask her about her junior high school years, she could say, "well, they weren't great, but at least I had Jonah." And they would all know about me, since I'd be Uncle Jonah at that point, their cool gay uncle and the only grown-up they knew who could pronounce Snuffleupagous.

And one day, when Meg was elected President of a blind leper colony, she would thank me in her inaugural address.


"I wouldn't be here today if not for one man," she would say. "One courageous, wonderful man, who taught me the meaning of friendship. It's because of him that I can lead this leper colony into the 21st Century!" She would reward me by making me an honorary leper. Of course, I wouldn't actually attend the inauguration -- just having a pimple makes me curl up in the fetal position -- but I'd be there in spirit.


A plan began forming in my mind. I could befriend her during seventh period gym, our only class together, and the only non-advanced class on my schedule, besides lunch and homeroom. Those were the hardest times of day for me, the times I was forced to interact with people who either didn't know I existed, or would rather I didn't. The rest of the day consisted of racing through the halls from class to class as quickly as possible, to avoid being stuffed in lockers or otherwise tormented. Of course, as I got older the race to class became less about avoiding bullies and more about hiding my increasingly unpredictable erections behind a stack of textbooks (especially the year I sat behind Jonathan Hertz, our school's -- or at least my personal -- version of Brad Pitt). By sophomore year, I could make it from Social Studies to Spanish in .34 seconds.

And to top it off, not only did I have to be in the same gym class with my tormentors, but I actually had to play sports with them. Pat Robertson would have less anxiety in a room full of drag queens, and less reason to fear. Even though I only had gym every other day, the off days would be spent worrying about the on days. And the weekends would be spent worrying about the weekdays. And the summers would be spent worrying about the falls. I didn't sleep through the night until my high school graduation, all because of gym class. Only forty-four minutes of my life morphed into the only forty-four minutes of my life.

Over time, I developed certain defense mechanisms to deal with gym class, which ranged from forged notes, to faking illness, to leaving my body for the duration of class when all else would fail. I would hover above myself, watching the other students throw the foot, base, basket, or whatever other kind of ball people play with, then yelling at each other, then hitting each other, and eventually just generally acting like savages. Once the gym shorts came on, the gloves came off. They could beat each other -- and, occasionally, me -- senseless on the field, and it would all be chalked up to boys being boys. But a 12-year-old fist still feels like a fist, especially when you're 12 years old too. And the fist lands all that much harder when you're already beating yourself up on the inside.

The only time of year that I breathed a slight sigh of relief was the beginning of Spring, when we would spend several weeks just running around the track, ultimately building up to a full mile. The activity wasn't physically easier for me than any of the others. Actually, given that no one ever threw/kicked/passed/otherwise transferred to me whatever accoutrement we were playing with at the time, I usually got little to no exercise during gym class. Running, though, I had to do with my own two legs, which all too often both ended up on the same side of my body.

Still, I liked the running weeks, because even if my legs tripped me up, I rose and fell on my own ability. If I failed, I had only myself to blame, and only my own criticism to contend with. Over the years I've learned that I'm often much harsher on myself for failing than others are on me, but at least I don't pummel myself in the gut as a result. And I didn't need teammates to tell me that I had no eye-hand coordination, or that I had the upper body strength of a chicken. Self-criticism is not a team sport, especially when I do it better than anyone else. Farming the task out to third parties is not a particularly efficient use of anyone's time.

Fortunately, my new resolve to become friends with Meg came at the same time as the running weeks, which presented me with the perfect opportunity. Most of the year, gym class was gender-segregated, presumably because the powers that be assumed that 12 year old boys could not play soccer with 12 year old girls without sexually assaulting them. Perhaps they weren't far off the mark. I witnessed 12 year old boys doing things to each other that would offend most 12 year old girls, and indeed, most of humanity. Commonplace conduct included frequent pants-ings, aggressive wedgies, and the occasional mock (but very real) dry humping. Again, boys will be boys. Unless they were actually homosexual, then it would have been unnatural. Only heterosexuals can dry hump each other with impunity.

Frankly, I was perfectly happy with the gender segregation, as I wasn't interested in sexually assaulting, or sexually anything-ing, 12 year old girls. All of my Barbies were fully dressed, and that's how I intended it would stay (Ken's clothes, on the other hand, didn't last more than five minutes). Of course, giving me the opportunity to drool over the boys in mesh shorts was not the intended result of the gender segregation. But the powers that be never considered the possibility that any of the students might actually be homosexuals. It's the same assumption that leads parents to send their children to all-boys or all-girls schools, or guides universities in gender segregating dormitories, or places men and women in separate army barracks. When my friend Sandy told me she was considering sending her 11-year-old son to an all-boys school, I asked her why.

"Girls can be so distracting to a boy," she said.

"So can boys," I replied. Sandy decided to keep her son in a co-ed school, although I'm not sure if that was out of the hope that co-education would keep him straight, or prevent him from turning gay. I didn't have the heart to tell her that his predilection for capri pants and Liza Minnelli memorabilia had sealed that deal already.

But while most gym classes were divided strictly along genital lines, the running classes were co-ed. It is unclear why the powers that be considered running to be a safe co-ed activity. Perhaps they thought that the girls could outrun the boys, in case any boy got fresh. In any event, Meg didn't have much to worry about. No boy was getting fresh with her. Usually she just had to contend with the whispers and subtle backstabbing of the other girls, the kind that leads to lifelong psychological trauma and heavy drinking. But during the running weeks, she also had to put up with the teases of the boys, which are less subtle jabs and more full suckerpunches.

"Hey Meg, what's up with those tits? Don't bend over, you might cave in!"

"Yo, Meg! My buddy here needs a blow job. Take out your teeth and get over here!"

"Meg, where'd you get that fine ass? Oh wait, that's your face!"

Not particularly inventive, but cruelty doesn't have to be original. To her credit, Meg betrayed no sense of hurt or pain in response to their taunts. She just stared straight ahead, waiting for the coach to blow the whistle so we could start running. Perhaps she could leave her body like I could. Maybe that could be our common bond.

I kept a healthy distance from her at first. I didn't want to scare her away, and I didn't want her to think I was setting her up for more teasing, which was the furthest thing from my mind, and which I had learned long ago was not in my nature. When I was 9, the kids in my Hebrew School dared me to tease Johnny, the slightly mentally challenged boy in our class. I can't remember the specific taunt -- something about the shape of his head -- but I do remember that the endeavor ended disastrously, with Johnny locking himself in the closet, and me, guilt-ridden, ashamed, crying for hours after class. This event remains a constant topic at therapy. My therapist assures me that all kids tease other kids at one time or another, but I don't believe it. That one experience must have belied something deep and immeasurably evil in me, I tell her. Like my taste for dark chocolate. Truly good people just don't like dark chocolate.

But I had no plans to tease Meg. I wanted to be her friend. How do you convince someone who has never had a friend that you want to be their first? I imagine it might take similar skills to de-flower a virgin. I wouldn't know about that either, though, having been a very late bloomer. Always the de-flowered, never the de-flowerer.

Then, in a brilliant flash, it came to me. I would ask Meg to the Spring dance, the terribly ritualistic affair each April whose only purpose, it seemed to me, was to flush out the sexually precocious adolescents in my junior high school. True, no one ever found a dead baby in the dumpster behind my school gym, but that doesn't mean Walter Mondale Junior High didn't have its share of budding porn stars and prostitutes, including certain members of the Nerd Herd, one of whom spent the entire morning following the Spring dance trying to wash the cum out of her hair. She later attended Princeton, where I imagine she spent many nights trying to wash the cum out of her hair. Nerdiness and nymphomania are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, an invitation to the dance was the perfect beginning to a beautiful friendship. Of course, I would have to frame the invitation in such a way as to ensure that she did not read any kind of romantic interest into it. I didn't intend to get myself mixed up in any lurid romantic entanglements at this tender age. I knew how a seemingly innocent seventh grade date could lead to a trip to Planned Parenthood. I was neither ready to be a father nor willing to spend my hard-earned allowance on child support. Besides, I had already promised myself to Marky Mark. He didn't know it yet, but it was only a matter of time. And he seemed like the jealous type, so really, I was just trying to protect Meg from an inevitable ass-whooping by the muscular former white rapper turned underwear model turned serious actor turned my husband.

Of course, I recognized that Meg still could misinterpret my invitation as a romantic overture. I was willing to take that chance. It didn't bother me much if she fell in love with me. In fact, it would almost be flattering. It's always nice when someone loves you, even someone ugly. And if one day I went blind, she would move right up to the top of my list of potential mates. As long as she was willing to make some changes, down there. Nothing major, though. I'm not a size queen.

I also recognized that other students at the dance might think we were on a date. That didn't bother me either. At worst, people would think I was covering, and at best, people would think I couldn't do any better. Both interpretations were slightly true and eminently reasonable. Most likely, though, no one would even notice us. Gay nerds and ugly girls have a way of blending into the wall, even in formal wear. Ideally, we would walk into the gym, I'd get her a drink, we'd sit five feet apart for a few minutes making idle chit-chat about the weather, and then I'd excuse myself to use the bathroom, where I'd remain for the rest of the dance, listening to a mix tape on my Walkman and every so often sending out notes to Meg complaining of some type of gastric distress, eventually urging her "not to be a hero" and go home.

It would be a magnificent evening. Homo and the Beast. Maybe I'd even get her a corsage, as a little window dressing.

By the time I'd mentally prepared for what promised to be a monumental event in both of our lives -- hers more than mine, but that's splitting hairs -- the coach blew the whistle, and Meg was off with the rest of the crowd. I set off behind her, watching her pale legs drive into the dirt with a subtle fury. I lost track of her occassionally as we rounded the football field. She wore white shorts and a white long-sleeved top, which made her pasty body almost invisible against the gently falling snow. Meg wasn't the fastest one in the crowd, but she was the most earnest, not running towards anything but away from everything. Unfortunately, life had other plans, and she just ran in circles. Of course, we all ran in circles, but only Meg seemed to notice.

After four laps and several near misses with my two right feet and a particularly pesky pine bush, I crossed the finish line. Directly in front of me sat Meg on the bleachers, looking distant and uninvested as always. While the rest of the class was gasping for breath, Meg remained silent, neither participating nor observing what was happening around her. I began scraping the mud off of my shoes -- believing then, as I do now, that a man should be judged by the cleanliness of his footwear -- and noticed there was no mud on Meg's sneakers. She passed through life without leaving a footprint.

Not anymore.

I screwed up whatever courage I had in my decidedly uncourageous body, and approached her. Fortunately, one of the jocks had made the mistake of holding his gaze with another jock for a millisecond too long, so they were too busy beating each other senseless to notice me. The coach pretended to be concerned, but was clearly amused by the violent scene, chastising the burgeoning sociopaths with a wink and a nod.

"Hi Meg," I said, meekly, my voice quivering, the words barely audible. Meg may have been an ugly girl, but she was still a girl. And she was a stranger. And she was a strange girl. I had already gone way beyond my comfort zone, just talking to her at all. She stared straight ahead, though, apparently unaware that a miracle was happening right before her lazy eyes.

"I'm Jonah," I continued while she sat there, still motionless. What was wrong with this girl? Didn't she recognize that this was her one chance at happiness? Suddenly I had a terrible thought. What if Meg Lawson was actually deaf? It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. I wasn't a very observant child. When a particularly sexually active girl in my Spanish class disappeared for nine months during tenth grade, I just figured she had come down with a bad case of mono. When she came back her breasts were twice their original size and appeared to be leaking, but I thought that was just another disgusting side effect of being a woman.

"Hi," Meg finally replied. Well, that's something, I thought. She's not deaf, and she knows I'm alive. The first step towards friendship is acknowledging the other person's existence. Then again, so is the first step towards animosity.

I had two choices now. Either I could try to establish a common bond, or I could just come right out and invite her to the dance. Establishing a common bond would be difficult. Except for the apparent ability to mentally detach from her body, it didn't seem like we would have many common interests. Which was ok with me. Variety is the spice of life. I could teach her about pop music and novelty t-shirts, and she could teach me how to keep my sneakers in mint condition.

So I went straight for the jugular.

"Want to go to the dance?" I specifically chose not to say "with me." "With me" would imply a date. "With me" could end in a sonogram and a crib.



Meg thought for a moment, which in and of itself was a surprise. I didn't expect a big reaction, but I did expect a quick acceptance. Come on, Meg! This is what you've been waiting for! Every night you pray, maybe tomorrow someone will talk to me, maybe tomorrow someone will acknowledge my existence, maybe tomorrow someone will save me. Today is your day, Meg Lawson. I thought maybe she was just trying to savor the moment. The turning point in her otherwise pointless life.

Without even looking up at me, she replied.

"No," she said, flatly. And then she walked away, leaving me standing in the snow, bleeding on the inside.

I had been rejected. Not by Marky Mark. Not by Jonathan Hertz. Not even by Johnny, the mentally challenged by in my Hebrew School. I had been rejected by a girl. An ugly girl. An ugly girl with no friends. What did this mean for my romantic future, I wondered. Would anyone really want me now, after this? I was used goods. Meg's rejection was the first carry-on bag in my relationship luggage.

But I was too preoccupied with trying to make sense of what had happened to worry much about my future. I watched Meg walk slowly back towards the school, not triumphantly, like she had gotten revenge for her years of rejection by rejecting someone else, but resignedly, like my invitation had only reminded her, yet again, of her permanent isolation. I hadn't saved Meg. I had pitied her, and she didn't want that. Now, I was pitying myself, too.

Meg and I went to different high schools, and I only saw her occasionally after graduation. The last time I saw her was at the local super K-Mart (which I consider a redundant title, as all K-Mart's are super in my estimation). It was my senior year in college, and I was home for Christmas vacation, stocking up on necessary items -- Cheerios, antiseptic wipes, Vaseline, the usual. I was comparing the generic petroleum jelly to the brand-name stuff -- I don't care what the commercials say, I can tell the difference -- when Meg came around the corner, searching the diaper shelves. I pretended not to see her, and she probably didn't recognize me anyway. I was in my goatee and dyed blonde hair phase, a look I do not recommend unless you want people to be able to tell your sexuality from space. She, however, was completely recognizable. Except for a smattering of poorly applied makeup and a few extra pounds, she looked exactly the same as she did in junior high. In fact, I think she was even wearing the same sweater.

An unattractive man approached her, pushing an unattractive baby in a cart filled with baby food, pacifiers, and other various products that people only need when they have a newborn, or a disturbing fetish. I didn't look directly at them, as I was trying to blend into the prophylactic shelves in front of me, but I could tell that they were all about the same level on the beauty scale, which is to say, quite un-beautiful. The unattractive man put his unattractive arms around Meg's unattractive waist and kissed her unattractive neck. Normally, public displays of affection rank just above Greenpeace rallies in the list of unpleasant events I try to avoid, to say nothing of public displays of affection between unattractive heterosexuals. But, although the kiss did conjure up images in my head of their coital bed which made me glad that I had already picked up the Pepto-Bismol, it was surprisingly sweet. The unattractive husband whispered something to his unattractive wife, and she giggled. Then the unattractive baby giggled. There's nothing more American than a fun family outing to the local K-Mart. It might have inspired a Norman Rockwell painting, if they weren't all so ugly.

I watched Meg and her unattractive family move to the next aisle, leaving me alone once again to ponder the subtle differences between generic and brandname petroleum jelly. I thought back to that snowy March day. Apparently Meg didn't need me to save her. Or perhaps she just wasn't ready to be saved yet. Either way, she was happy now. An ugly family is still a family, and happiness doesn't discriminate.

I paid for the petroleum jelly, and hurried home to get ready for my latest internet date. Meg might have found her Mr. Right, but I was still searching. Marky Mark having married earlier that year.

I've Got My Eye On You...

(but just one. The other one is still watching the Count video. I watch it at least once a day. Right before I f@#& myself.)

My favorite pasttime lately is tracking hits to this blog on Sitemeter, the gift that keeps on taking. About fifty percent are courtesy of myself, once again proving that I am, indeed, obsessed with all things Jonah. Another thirty percent are my friends, acquaintances, and general well-wishers who either have nothing better to do, or figure that visiting the blog is cheaper than regular trips to the looney bin that they will probably need to confine me in if no one reads it. Perhaps one or two actually find the site humorous, though judging from my circle of friends, that's probably just a side-effect of the narcotics.

The remaining twenty percent of visitors to my blog are random Google searches. Over the past month, a significant number of hits on my blog have come from people (all over the world) looking for websites on, inter alia, "gefilte fish movie reference," "jonah's choices," "bugle boy scrubber," and "male prostitute vacation" (actually, now that I think of it, that last one was me also).

But my favorite hit so far comes courtesy of a web surfer from Greenville, Texas, searching for "Japanese enemas." If you're out there, Mr. (or Ms.) Greenville, Texas, I'd like to meet you. All I know about you right now is your IP address and your geographic coordinates (Lat:33.1182, Long:-96.0986), which, granted, is more than I know about some of my tricks. But I want to know more! Who are you? What are your hopes, your dreams, your favorite I Love Lucy episodes? Do you love/hate Miss Piggy as much as I do?

And, most importantly, Mr. or Ms. Greenville, Texas, why are you searching for Japanese enemas? Is it just a fetish (no judgment here -- happiness is just a BM away), or do you have a practical need for them? Fortunately, due to my mother's obsession with bowel movements and my own taste for branflakes, I've never needed one personally. Good thing too, since there's not much room up there to begin with. But if you do need an enema, Mr. or Ms. Greenville, Texas, why does it have to be Japanese? Is it because you're petite? Are Japanese enemas built specifically for smaller anuses? Or are you simply guided by the preconception that Japanese products are generally better than American ones? Because that's a false notion in this case. I wouldn't be caught dead in American-made clothing (how else will Taiwanese children support themselves?), but when it comes to enemas, I'd rank the American version at the very top of the food chain. If anyone knows how to stuff crap up their butts, it's Americans. When you see that "Made In America" label, you know you're getting a quality enema. I'm disappointed in you, Mr. or Ms. Greenville, Texas. And here I thought Texans were supremely patriotic people -- someone check W's medicine cabinet, stat!

Three other thoughts today, that you have little or no interest in:

1. My mother wants to come visit me in DC. Apparently she recently discovered the Chinatown bus, which she thinks is a miraculous invention -- roundtrip from New York City to DC for 35 bucks? It's the American-Jewish Dream! Can anyone think of a good excuse to get out of this? You know, besides the old standards "I have to work this weekend," and "sorry, Mom, it's my turn to host the monthly orgy." Please help, I'm running out of ideas. She doesn't buy the orgy excuse anymore. She knows I'm too self-centered to enjoy one.

2. Since I assume David Sedaris is equally as self-obssesed as yours truly, he must do Google searches for himself regularly. And thanks to Sitemeter, I now know that random Google searches are a significant source of readership. So, I figure if I type "David Sedaris" enough times, eventually he will find my blog (how's that for Ivy League-trained reasoning? Vote Obama!). With that in mind,

David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris Find815 David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris Callme,JakeGylenhall David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris OrDavidBeckham David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris Ishouldbedisbarred David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris Don'tyouhaveanythingbettertodo? David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris David Sedaris

3. There is no three. Aren't you pissed that I made you scroll all the way down for nothing?

A Fond Farewell

Good morning, thank you for coming to Bernie Goldfarb’s funeral. I am your host, Bernie Goldfarb.


And before all of you rush the dais to check the coffin, I am actually dead. That’s me in there, all two hundred eighty pounds of me. You're not going to find a picture of me standing next to Elvis on the front page of the Enquirer, caught on line at the Tuscaloosa 7-11. Seriously, what kind of person fakes his own death only to be discovered buying an orange slurpee? If I was going to fake my own death, trust me, you'd never find me. I'd be vacuum-sucked and stapled to within an inch of my life. Sadly, I am not on the receiving end of a Hoover right now. I'm lying in that box, probably wearing some god-awful suit Sylvia picked out for me as her final revenge.


Still, since there are several lawyers in the audience, I realize you might need proof. So go ahead and check. I’ll wait. I've got time.


[Pause for mourners to check the coffin.]


Satisfied? Good. How did I look? Bloated, I’m sure, but then again, is that any different from how I looked before? Let’s not kid ourselves people, I was a tub. And it wasn’t like John Goodman-fat, where the weight is in all the right places. No one voted me sexiest fat man alive. Hell, even if I wasn't fat I'd still be pretty ugly. Not that Syl was Miss America. She wasn't even Miss Fat Jewess Harpy America. Our relationship was based on mutual unattraction. Oh, Syl. I kid because I detest. But we’ll get back to that in a moment.


I’ve asked my business partner Ira to read this, because I know that no matter what it says, he’ll say it. Ira has no qualms about hurting people’s feelings, and might be slightly sociopathic. When we represented that corporation accused of killing hundreds of people with laced aspirin (and by the way, contrary to what I said in open court, they did do it -- trust me, I shredded the documents myself), he didn’t lose a night’s sleep. Even when we cross-examined that six-year-old girl who testified that she watched her mother’s skin peel off and her eyeballs pop out of her head. Ira grilled that kid to death. In fact, I think I saw him crack a smile during her testimony. Though that might have been gas.


And no matter what I say here, Ira, you have my deepest gratitude for reading my eulogy. Because frankly, I don’t trust the rest of you jokers to deliver a proper memorial. Most of my family members are dumb as bricks -- I swear my grandparents must have been first cousins -- and those of you who are not dumb as bricks are smart enough to realize that I didn’t like you. As for my friends, our friendship was mostly based on silent disrespect and implied animosity. You were just waiting for me to kick off, so you could pretend that you actually liked me. "Oh Bernie, what a terrific guy," you’d say to each other, knowing full well that I was terrific at nothing, except maybe making money and collecting Civil War memorabilia (which, according to my will, should be buried with me). But, after I’m dead, you get to be all pompous and self-serving, and I won’t be around to call you out on it, nor would anyone else. Improper to speak ill of the dead, they’d say. That really burns my biscuits. Why should my legacy as a bastard be ruined by pointless etiquette?


So I’ve written my own eulogy to ensure that you don’t memorialize me through empty and misleading cliches like, I hope he knew what meant to all of us. I knew exactly what I meant to all of you, which is how I ended up in this box.


And before any of you run for the door, or Ira throws this speech in the incinerator along with all the heathen corpses (atheists, Catholics, etc.), be warned. Anyone who does not sit through this eulogy will not receive a red penny of my estate, which you all know was relatively sizeable, thanks to years of profiting off of other people's misery. Of course, you have no idea whether I actually left you anything. Judging from my miserly personality, you probably expect that I tried to take it with me. Frankly, the Egyptians had the right idea in that regard. I considered requiring that my secretary be buried along with me, just in case I need a cup of coffee or a foot rub on the way to hell. Of course, in thirty years she never got my coffee right, but I would so enjoy berating her for eternity. I also considered demolishing my home and turning it into a nuclear waste facility, just for kicks. So it is highly unlikely that any of you will walk out of here with anything. Actually, considering the rising costs of gasoline, in all likelihood today is actually a net loss for you. And I specifically chose a funeral home that does not validate parking.


But are you really willing to take that chance? What if I had a moment of generosity in the end, and left everything to my one-testicled nephew Leon? How about my mother’s miniature unicorn collection that you’ve had your eyes on for the past twenty years, Millie? Maybe I decided to finally rid my family of that hideous legacy and pass it on to you. And Fred, you could definitely use my Hooters frequent customer reward points. If you leave now, you’ll get zippo. Not even enough to get you a free basket of nachos and a lap dance. He who dies first laughs last.


In all honesty, though, most of you really have nothing to worry about today. Two of the major sources for my life's constant disappointments -- my parents -- died at a relatively young age in that terrible fertilizer explosion, which was a major disappointment in and of itself, seeing as I never got the opportunity to put them in a moderately sub-par nursing home. The quality of nursing homes should be based on the quality of the parenting. The Cleavers would be fed daily and taken for regular walks around a lush garden filled with roses and pomegranate petals. Hitler’s parents would be strapped to crucifixes and subjected to repeating loops of Celine Dion’s world tour. My parents would have fallen somewhere in the middle; they’d be fed daily, but never brand-name products, and they’d only get enough exercise to prevent their muscles from atrophying. Though the quality of their nursing home would have been a sliding scale. The longer they lived, the lower the standard of the home. If they had lived till 90, they probably would have ended up in one of the homes featured on 60 Minutes (which I considered more as advertisements than cautionary tales). That’s not as cruel as it sounds, since by then they wouldn’t have known the difference between a whirlpool and a bed pan. It wouldn't have come to that, though. Eating generic oatmeal would have killed my mother long before.

And I’m not going to waste my time listing all of the ways in which each of you has disappointed me through the years. We’d be here way too long for that -- I could spend four hours on my plumber alone -- and the room is only reserved until 11. I may be selfish, but I’m not a monster. Other people need to be buried today too, and as nice as the mortician may seem, he’d sell his mother down the river for another corpse. Business is business.

Besides, I don’t even remember most of the little disappointments. One or two stick out in my memory, more for their anecdotal quality than for any particular impact they had on my life. Like when Syl’s brother Curtis mispronounced my name as "Goldfart" during his wedding toast. "I’m sorry, it was just an accident," he said, with a slight chuckle. Sure, Curtis. So was the malfunctioning diaphragm that led to your existence. It's like I said during dinner last Thanksgiving -- Syl's whole side of the family should be sterilized. I'm no fan of the Nazis, but they were on to something with the eugenics idea. Maybe we could get a forced sterilization law passed in this country. Yet another reason to vote Republican.

Then when my daughter April got married -- her name another disappointment, but a necessary compromise to my harpy of a wife, who wanted to name her "Harmony" -- her brilliant ex-husband Mark actually did something intelligent, and persuaded her to sign a pre-nup, thereby forcing me to support her if she cheated on him, which, being her mother's daughter, she inevitably did. He probably took one look at Syl and figured whorishness might run in the family. Not that I really blame her for cheating on Mark. She was blessed with big tits and a small IQ. We had to special order her first brassiere from Sweden. When she was 15 she asked for a breast reduction, but I refused, being of the firm belief that IQ is inversely proportional to breast size. I liked having a stupid daughter with big breasts; it -- or more precisely, they -- provided me with a much-needed source of pride. They made up for my son's uncomfortably small penis, which was an extreme letdown, and I contend to this day, the number one reason for his violent felony record. Guys with big dicks just don't hold up Dairy Queens. Plus, I thought April would get me a discount to whatever strip club she worked at. Although I only would have gone on her nights off. I didn’t want to see my daughter taking it off for a bunch of horny Asian businessmen. That’s just gross.

But really, I didn't bring you all here to disparage you. Nothing I could say today would change the fact that my wife was a shrew, or that my son couldn't satisfy a fruit fly. The real reason I'm talking to you today is to answer the one question that is on all of your minds. The pink elephant in the room. Something you all wanted to know, but never dared to ask, probably because I would have sued you for slander if you had.

Why in the world was Bernie such an asshole?

I wish I had a complex psychological explanation for you, something stemming from an emotionally or physically abusive childhood, perhaps. Maybe my parents sold me into African slavery at a tender age -- a sort of reverse affirmative action for the politically correct age -- or maybe they gave my favorite teddy bear to a poor and undeserving homeless child. But despite their shitty death, my parents weren't all that bad. Sure, they weren't the sharpest tacks in the bunch, but stupidity is not a crime (not yet, anyway -- vote Republican!). In fact, I probably caused more psychological damage to them than vice versa. And contrary to the e-mail chain that went around the firm last summer, I am not the spawn of Satan. If I was, none of you would still be here, having each met a painful and terrible demise. I'm particularly partial to flaying myself.

No, there was nothing in my past that led to my esteemed position as town prick. Sure, I was a lawyer, but being a lawyer was an effect, not a cause. So why did associates vomit at the sight of my number on their caller ID? Why did I consistently tip 2% or less? Why did I repeatedly bring home dying puppies for my children? Well, here's the long-awaited answer.

Because I enjoyed it.

Yes, that's it, it's that simple. After all those years of psychoanalysis you've invested in to determine why I treated you the way I did, that is what it comes down to -- treating you like crap gave me the jollies. The Philadelphia psychiatric community owes me big time. I put half of their kids through college with the agony I caused. Not to mention the pharmaceutical industry. The year of my first divorce, sales of Prozac exceeded the GDP of Liberia. Now that I'm dead, any of you with stock in the pharmaceutical industry should sell. Those companies are in for a major hit. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Of course, there is still the question of why I enjoyed torturing you all. Since it wasn't environmental, it must have been genetic. There must be an asshole gene. And why shouldn't there be? There's a homosexual gene, at least according to those bleeding heart liberals. Why shouldn't there be an asshole gene too? There's an easy way to tell. Someone run out and get a vial of Dick Cheney's blood. I think W. wears one around his neck.

This could be a monumental discovery, too. If there is an asshole gene, that means assholes might be eradicated. Or at least banished. That's what I always said they should do with the homosexuals. Put all of them on some faraway island together, so they can screw each other in peace. It can be a nice island, I don't care, as long as they don't have oil, or any other precious resource. The United States doesn't negotiate with homosexuals.

No one ever bought into my homosexual exile idea -- more evidence for my theory that all of you are actually queers, with the exception of my small-dicked son, who couldn't make it as a gay -- but I have a feeling that my asshole exile idea would get more support. Think of it. A world without assholes. A world of polite people, politely giving up their seats for the elderly on the subway, politely overtipping, politely voting Democrat. Sounds like my own personal hell. I suppose I'll find that out soon enough.

Maybe it'll happen. Of course, if it does, the banished assholes would probably form an army and conquer the wusses who banished them in the first place, thereby mixing assholes and wusses and starting all over again. It will be one long, unending cycle of peace and violence, until someone presses the wrong button and the only assholes or wusses left are radioactive. Until that day though, at least you can comfort yourselves knowing that I'm in this box, and not roaming the streets looking for kittens to hang and liberals to punch. This is one less asshole you'll have to kick around.

So I was born an asshole, and I died an asshole. That's it. Don't look for deeper meaning, because there is none. There's no disintegrating sled in my fireplace.

If that was all I had to tell you, though, you'd be entitled to kick my coffin for making you come today. Nothing I've said so far was truly a surprise. I've just confirmed what you already suspected. And personally, I've enjoyed kicking you while I'm down. But I want to give you your money's worth. (Ira, you did collect admission from everyone, right? Make sure my grandmother paid her share. 108 year olds are notoriously shifty.)


So here comes the big finish.


Everyone here assumes I died of natural causes. Makes sense. As previously established, I was a tub. The only reason I never hired a prostitute is that I'd rather spend my money on food. Even the best fucks only last a few minutes, but a side of bacon can last a whole week. If Miss Piggy turned tricks, that would have been the best of both worlds.


But you're wrong about my so-called "natural" death. It wasn't my time to go, even if you all wished it was. In fact, I probably could have lasted several more decades, at least. It's amazing how many years one can survive purely on bitterness and recrimination (and a five pound sirloin daily).


Which brings me back to Syl. How are you doing, Syl? Enjoying the merry widow routine? You must look fabulous today. You're probably beaming. Not that I blame you. I'd be the same way if our roles were reversed. In fact, I'd probably be drunk, and not the depressed, my life is over kind of drunk. More like the celebrate good times, KC and the Sunshine Band, kind of drunk. You were never much of a drinker, though. You stuck to the pills; as you always said, pills are "much less messy, and don't leave any morning-after breath." You were such a sucker for appearances, which begs the question of your fashion sense. But I'm not going to get into that can of track pants. This is my eulogy, not yours.


And I suppose Leon is sitting next to you, consoling you as we speak. How's that one testicle, Leon? Leon lost the other one in a tragic boating accident when he was six. Tragic for him, hilarious for me. Though I think the impact on his life has been relatively minimal. I doubt most women notice. They're probably paying much more attention to his snaggle-tooth. Or his humongous nostrils. He is still far more attractive than his father, though, who met an untimely death at the receiving end of a pitchfork and an army of angry villagers.


Syl and Leon -- such a lovely pair. They rank up there with Adolph and Eva, Sid and Nancy, and Bill and Hillary as people I'd most like to meet pushing boulders up a hill in hell. Which will happen soon enough. Because, you see, they murdered me.


Oh, don't look so shocked. Is this really another surprise? Someone was bound to do it eventually. If it hadn't been them, it would have been someone else I pissed off in my daily rampage. I recently caught the paperboy shooting an unloaded BB gun at my car. My secretary bought herself an extra sharp letter opener for Christmas. And just last week I found the mail room staff constructing a crude mannequin out of UPS boxes with my face stapled to the head, which they promptly hung from a rafter on the ceiling. It's only a small step from effigy to actual corpse.


So really you should all be thanking Syl and Leon for taking the fall here, because another week and it might have been you. Still, murder is murder. However unfair it might seem, killing an asshole is still illegal. Unless Syl could prove that I beat her, but no one would believe that. I was way too fat and lazy, and she is too mean herself. A jury would never buy that Syl suffered from Battered Woman's Syndrome, unless that term referred to pancake batter.



And there's no need to deny it, guys. It's all caught on video, which my lawyer delivered directly to the authorities, and which is probably circulating around YouTube as we speak. About a month ago I overheard you talking about it in the living room and decided to install miniature cameras in every room of the house. Here's a tip: when you're planning to murder someone, don't plan it with them in the house. I was watching Rachel Ray at the time, so you probably thought I was too busy masturbating to overhear anything. You were wrong. Lucky for me, she had a guest host on that day. The Naked Chef. I had no interest in him, culinary or otherwise.



Of course, you're wondering why I didn't try to stop them. Well, first of all, I never thought Leon would have the ball to go through with it. All he had to do was buy the strychnine, but that seemed like too much of a responsibility for a person who always carries around an extra pair of underwear, just in case. And anyway, like I said, I figured one of you would kill me eventually, and poisoning seemed like the cleanest way to go. I sure as hell didn't want to be on the receiving end of that letter opener. If my secretary was as inept at killing people at she was at everything else, I would have been hacked more times than a sturgeon by the time she nicked a major artery.



Plus, I thought this situation held a certain poetic justice. I sure didn't want to go before Syl, but I knew that it was a strong possibility, given her iron-clad living will. I tried to build loopholes into it (do not resuscitate in case of brain damage, coma, or involuntary smothering), but she was too quick for that. This way, I might be gone, but Syl's on her way out as well. And her remaining days will be spent in some filthy lesbo lockdown. Of course, she probably won't be that popular. Lesbians have their standards too.



My only regret is that you didn't murder me in Texas. The average lag time between conviction and execution there is four days, and I hear the current governor is trying to get that reduced as well. Eventually he intends to turn the defendant's seat into an electric chair, so that the moment the jury reads the verdict, the judge can just press a button and be done with it. That's my kind of state. Speaking of which, I do hope the electric chair is still around by the time they get around to frying you, Syl. I can't think of a better final punishment for you than an involuntary perm.



Whew. I feel so much better having gotten all of that off my plus-sized chest. Police are posted at every exit, so don’t try to run, Syl. Not that you could run if you tried, given that you haven't seen your own feet since the Carter Administration. It doesn't matter much to me whether you try to run, Leon. Hopefully someone on the brigade is a crack shot, but it would be no great disappointment if you got away. In fact, I always kind of felt bad for you. Life is tough enough with two balls.



And Syl, I’m sure I’ll see you soon, thanks to the Supreme Court’s disregard of international norms of decency. But until then, I’ll be resting in peace, probably tormented by dozens of little red men with pitchforks. No matter. It’s still better than sleeping with you.



As for the rest of you, your initial inclination was correct. You're not getting squat. I'm leaving it all to Leona Helmsley's dog -- that bitch deserves it. Except I'm leaving twenty thousand dollars for my daughter's breast reduction, or my son's penis enlargement. You guys can fight over it. I'd try to strike a deal if I were you, half a breast for three inches. That way, everyone's a winner. Especially that new Dairy Queen by the truck stop.



Fond farewell,
Bernard S. Goldfarb

Thank God For Deceased Presidents...

otherwise I'd be asleep right now, probably dreaming about Lincoln wearing a top hat, a monocle, and nothing else.  I know Lincoln didn't wear a monocle, but that particular dream combines my sexual preference for powerful men and Mr. Peanut.

New story is about halfway completed, and maximally offensive.  For now, please enjoy the following Muppet-themed videos:

This one comes with the thanks of the Offended Blogger, who is apparently as wonderfully irreverent as myself.

These two (must be watched in order to receive the full benefit) come with the thanks of my British ex-boyfriend, who had a curious obsession with the Cookie Monster.

Will be back soon.  Until then, you can go f@#* yourselves.

Coffee Break

Although, personally, I think there have been far more provocative depictions of nuns than the previously posted story (Julie Andrews in Sound of Music -- saintly homemaker, or slutty homewrecker? -- discuss), I feel it appropro to lighten the mood with two pictures recently shared with me by an elderly acquaintance. (That's a test to see if she's actually reading this.)

I'm a sentimental fool...

I think I dated the one on the right...I recognize the bulge.

PS A new story is in the works, which will bring back the good ol' purely sarcastic Jonah we all know and love, or simply tolerate. And this one will be nun-less!

Just in case..

anyone thinks the following story is meant to "proselytize," and I'm actually a closeted Catholic, fear not, little ones.  It's just an exercise in character development.  You know, like Emma Bovary, or SpongeBob.  Suspend a little disbelief, por favor :)

A Nun's Tale

The following entry is my attempt at fiction. Though I probably didn't have to tell you that. It's quite obvious by now that, whatever else I may be, I ain't no nun. Although it's a possibility. Does the vow of celibacy include oral sex?

Hope you enjoy!

*******************************


Sister Mary Ignatius and her boyfriend were parked in his '67 cherry red Corvette, for the 194th time since they met. That was her official count. It might have been off by one or two, or by several dozen. She blacked out every so often, and it was anyone’s guess he did during those times.


In the beginning, he insisted on parking in front of her house.


"I don't wanna drive, babe," he said to her, unzipping his skin-tight jeans for the first time. Mary Ignatius wondered why he wore skin-tight jeans. Nothing inside them warranted such attention. "I'm tired, and your mouth's the same everywhere."


He changed his tune when her grandfather almost caught them in the act, on his way to his monthly Shriners meeting. Luckily, you can't see much from those miniature convertibles.

Still, her boyfriend didn't find the near-miss to be a cause for alarm.


"He's an old fart," he said, dismissing her concern outright. "I could take that geezer."


But after Mary Ignatius told him about her grandfather's extensive shotgun collection, he decided that her mouth was actually more appealing elsewhere.


So he started meeting her at work. Usually he would wait until her shift ended, but occasionally he showed up during her coffee break. Mary Ignatius was never sure when she would get a break, so he would just lurk outside the building waiting for her to come out. Sometimes she wouldn’t get a break for an entire shift, and he would wander outside the store for the entire day, but that was still a more productive use of his time than his usual daily activities, which usually ranged from bowling to betting on bowling. Plus, by the time she finally got out of work, he had been sporting wood for so long he found himself actually excited to see her. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.


They would find a quiet corner of the parking lot, as far from the hustle and bustle as possible. Finding a quiet spot in the parking lot was not an easy task. The Wal-Mart was not simply a popular hang-out for teenagers and the underemployed; it was the town centerpiece. When news first broke out that the great chain had decided to place its 3,985th store smack between the Chuck E’ Cheese and the bottomless strip club (but not topless – for that you had to go across town), the locals had high hopes for the future of their town. Even the mayor took the day off from his job and came out for the grand opening.


“The cesspools can empty themselves today – I’m not going to miss this!,” he declared to an eager crowd, while cutting a large red ribbon with oversized novelty scissors.


Indeed, the store succeeded in placing them on the map, putting them in direct competition with such rising hot spots as Tuscaloosa, and Sheboygan. But three years, and two hundred mentally disabled employees later, the town had not changed much. It did not attract the wide clientele the citizens had hoped for. Most of the time the store was filled with customers on their way to or from the Chuck E’ Cheese or the strip club, each shopping in different sections of the store but meeting at the cash registers, where they would exchange sly but knowing glances.


Still, the residents of the small town were happy to have the store, which brought them necessary and exotic items from all over the world. No matter what the politicians say, Japanese enemas are far superior to anything domestically made. And in return, the town looked the other way at the store’s slight code violations, like recycling ordinances, or child labor laws. Most eight-year-old boys have the same upper body strength as a seventy-year-old woman, but they’re not allowed to profit from it. Where’s the justice in that?


Mary Ignatius was especially happy when the Wal-Mart moved in. She had grown intensely bored at her previous job. At first she had enjoyed learning about the intricacies of synthetic ice cream production, but she quickly learned that too much knowledge about the product was not conducive to actually selling it. Plus, there was little room for advancement for women in the chain. Despite its royal title, the Dairy Queen actually has a glass ceiling.


So when the Wal-Mart opened, Mary Ignatius was one of the first applicants. Hoping to land a management position, she showed up for her interview dressed in her best suit, and had even prepared a resume. The resume was padded, sure, but it was printed on nice paper, and it was true enough. Her big city interviewer took a shine to her right away, and praised her for her professionalism in this “one horse town.”


“Though the suit is a bit much,” he said, gesturing at her with a lit cigarette. “Customers like a free gift with their purchase, if you get my drift,” he continued, blowing a cigarette ring towards her breasts. Mary Ignatius knew how to play the game. Nothing below the waist line, just like her mother had taught her. He settled for a little under the shirt action, and the next day, Mary Ignatius became head cashier.


Besides the occasional 28 hour shift and Mexican HMO medical insurance (try finding a proctologist in Guadalajara at midnight), the work itself wasn’t bad. It was certainly much more exciting than anything that ever happened at the Dairy Queen, with the exception of the night she was held up by a masked gunman. Mary Ignatius was slightly concerned when the man pointed a semi-automatic at her head, but then she realized the robber was her ex-boyfriend, and the two of them had a good laugh. She gave him all the money from the safe, and even threw in an extra twenty from her own purse, just because he seemed to be down on his luck, and he was always nice to her.


So far, she hadn’t been held up at the Wal-Mart. It was too big and well-guarded; with 48 aisles and snipers posed at every display, the store lended itself more to shoplifting than full-blown robbery. Mary Ignatius witnessed a good deal of shoplifting during her shifts, but she never said anything, even when someone’s shirt was clearly hiding some ill-gotten item, like an electric hammer, or an automatic salad shooter. More people just down on their luck, she thought. There but for the grace of God.


And Mary Ignatius enjoyed her supervisory role as head cashier. For the first time in her life, she was calling the shots. She carried the master register key, which was needed every time a customer wanted to make a return. It was unclear to Mary Ignatius why she needed to approve every return. It’s not as if she gave each customer the third degree, even when it was warranted.


“Excuse me, sir, did you actually buy these eighteen pairs of pantyhose, or are you trying to pull one over on me?”


Still, just possessing the key itself gave Mary Ignatius an uneasy satisfaction. It represented a great trust between herself and her employer. It weighed around her neck like an anvil. So when their more than occasional trysts moved to the Wal-Mart parking lot, Mary Ignatius worried about being caught. She liked the anvil around her neck. It was certainly better than a cow apron.


"What if my boss sees us?," she asked, glancing nervously around the lot. A few teenagers were skateboarding near the sidewalk, coming perilously close to oncoming traffic. She didn't really mind if they noticed. They had to learn sometime, better here than on the streets. But she didn't want her boss to catch them. The father of four, husband of two, and part-time televangelist -- he had his own show on a popular public access channel, scheduled between The 700 Club and Twin Peaks repeats -- wouldn't understand such things. The rumor was that he was recently acquitted on child molestation charges, but no one had been able to substantiate it. Besides, he was an evangelical, and therefore incapable of such transgressions.


"Mary Ignatius, have you given any more thought to joining the church?," her boss asked her at least once a day. "We really could use some nice, firm youth like you."


"So what? Maybe he'll want to join in," her boyfriend replied with a smirk. Mary Ignatius doubted that – he was an evangelical, after all -- though she had once found him undressing the Barbie dolls in the storeroom. He claimed that he was just making sure that the Mattel people didn't slip any satanic influences into the toy, but he hunched over while he said it.


Eventually, Mary Ignatius relented – it was either that or find another boyfriend, and she didn’t have time or patience to search for a lesser evil -- so they started doing it in the parking lot. And he'd usually drive her home after they were done, if he wasn’t too tired. It was easier than the bus, and a few tissues and the occasional antibiotic are still cheaper than a monthly bus pass.


But since summer began, Mary Ignatius had become less comfortable with the arrangement. He refused to run the air conditioner while they were parked – bad for the engine, he said, plus he enjoyed the smell of her sweat -- and she didn’t like opening the windows for fear of the escaping sound. Even though their dalliances rarely lasted longer than a few minutes, in that short period of time, the combination of the heat, her perpetual exhaustion, and the constant movement of her head started making her faint. Eventually she convinced him to leave the air conditioning on at least partly, but only after she passed out for the third time. He didn’t really care whether she was conscious, but he hated having to do any of the work.


“I might as well use a vacuum hose and some Vaseline,” he told her. She doubted a full-sized vacuum hose was necessary, just like she doubted that skin-tight jeans were invented for men like him. She thought about buying him a dustbuster for Christmas, but he didn’t have much of a sense of humor.


Usually she just went along with it, though, mostly because it was over so quickly, and it wasn’t worth the hassle. It takes much longer to eat a bad meal, and people do that everyday. Mary Ignatius didn’t see much difference. Lots of things in life can make you gag.


Today, though, Mary Ignatius was feeling especially frustrated. An elderly woman had tried to return fourteen pounds of cabbage that morning, and even that was too much for Mary Ignatius to look the other way. Security found several stolen items stuffed into various crevices on her body, some of which lost all resale value as a result. As always, Mary Ignatius tried to give the woman the benefit of the doubt, although she wondered what an elderly woman would do with twelve boxes of condoms. She left it to the authorities to find that out.


"Why does it always have to be the car?," Mary Ignatius asked her boyfriend, watching him unzip for the 194th time. She immediately regretted asking the question. He didn't like when she talked too much. She wasn’t afraid that he would hit her or yell at her or do anything that required the exertion of physical energy; he wasn't that type. He’d just dump her, and find someone who didn’t ask so many questions. Someone whose grandfather didn’t own a shotgun.


"Babe, you know why," he said, showing the dashboard more love and care than he showed her head. ““Smell that? That’s raw power, man.”


Mary Ignatius couldn’t smell the power. All she smelled was the raw, musty stench of his crotch, the rotting pleather seats, and the faint odor of the town landfill that served as the store’s backyard. It was a toxic combination to anyone with functioning nostrils, though he never seemed to notice. People will suffer all sorts of physical torment when they have a sense of purpose.


In the beginning she tried breathing through her mouth, which she quickly found to be an impractical solution. But necessity is the mother of invention, and by their hundredth encounter she could hold her breath for a full sixty seconds. Fortunately, her boyfriend rarely needed more than sixty seconds. If he did, it was usually because he was drunk, and in that case she would just stop in the middle and lie about it when he finally woke up.


Mary Ignatius felt his hand on the back of her head, guiding her up and down. This was about as active and reaffirming as he got, so she didn't protest. Though the guidance hardly seemed necessary. It was a relatively self-explanatory procedure, anyone with a fourth-grade education could do it. There was only one way for her head to go. She had read about ones that grow crooked, but he didn't have one of those. Something to be thankful for, at least.


At first, she hated the taste too.  She read somewhere that it could be affected by diet, so she tried to feed him lots of sweets. He refused most of them, claiming to be watching his weight -- too little, too late, she thought -- so instead Mary Ignatius tried chewing gum during it, but the gum kept falling out of her mouth. Once it landed in his pubic hair, which he didn’t appreciate. It took thirty minutes and a pair of cuticle scissors to extract it from his testicles, after holding them over a freezer chest for thirty minutes. He forbade her from chewing gum anymore after that.


But after a while, Mary Ignatius came to tolerate, and then even enjoy, the taste. It reminded her of those summers at the Cape she spent with her family, before the accident, before she knew the kind of choices she would have to make, which weren't really choices at all.


“C’mon, Banana,” her father would call to her from the shore. “Let’s go swimming!”


Hoisting her on his shoulders and carrying her down to the crashing waves below, Mary Ignatius always shuddered as they approached; no matter how many times she experienced the shock, she always found herself bracing for the impact. But Mary Ignatius had been coming to the Cape since she was born, and she didn’t know that an ocean could be anything but frigid and unforgiving.


The waves would hit her father first, and Mary Ignatius could feel his skin bristle from the touch. The ocean did not want them. It frothed at their intrusion, at the boldness of their assumption that, yes, indeed they were welcome here. But instead of retreat, her father would venture out further into the water, taking Mary Ignatius with him further from shore. She marveled at his fearlessness, even as it frightened her.


Sometimes a large wave would approach in front of them, and Mary Ignatius would scream at her father to turn back.


"Go back? But why?," he asked her, bracing for the impact. "This is what we came for, isn't it?"

Mary Ignatius clung to the hair on her father's shoulders and back. It was soft and warm, not like the needles on her boyfriend that dug into her face with every thrust. It kept her safe from the violent tide, a tender wall, a shield of time. They could swim together, laugh together, drown together, all at once, a glorious unity.


It always seemed like an eternity, waiting for the wave to envelop them. Mary Ignatius shook with anticipation at the sight of it, churning towards them with greater and greater speed, with no care for anything in its wake. Time was, her sister would have been by her side, egging her on, teasing her for being afraid, while her mother shouted from the beach not to venture any further. Now it was just them, just her and her father. Just another wave in the ocean.

When the wave finally crashed, Mary Ignatius couldn't see anything under her, except the top of her father's head, and his hands laced around her hips. But no matter how high the wave, or how great the impact, he never let her go. He couldn't let her go any more than he could let go a finger, or a foot.


Inevitably Mary Ignatius would swallow some of the cold Atlantic water. She felt it inside her, filling her stomach, weighing her down and then coming back up. It refused to be contained.


“What are you doing?” her father asked, when he saw her spit it out.


“It’s gross,” she replied, wiping her mouth with her hand. "It makes me gag."


“That’s the ocean, Banana,” he said, taking a handful, holding it up to his mouth and drinking it. “That’s life.”


Mary Ignatius hadn't been back to the Cape since the accident. It reminded her of times better forgotten, as better times often are. Besides, there was no one left to share it with. Just her and the cold, unforgiving sea. She hadn’t tasted the real ocean in years.

And now, in the backseat of her boyfriend’s ’67 Corvette, Mary Ignatius was drinking life again.

But Mary Ignatius was not angry, not at all. This is how it is, she figured. There is no best of times, no worst of times. There's just time, and the march. She had been fooled into thinking there could be more, once. People she trusted had fooled her, and then they let her down. The accident wasn't their fault, of course. Thirteen beers and a rental car. Maybe twelve, and he could have swerved. Maybe fourteen, and he would have passed out. But then eventually someone else would have had thirteen, and he would have gotten them just the same. There's no escape, only delay.

The only anger she held, the only anger she allowed, was towards herself, towards the girl she had been, towards those times that she fooled herself into thinking they were not just fooling her. Just the naive visions of a silly child, she thought, before the thirteenth beer. The most she could hope for now were moments like this. Moments of solitude. Nothing else could get inside; nothing else ever wanted to stay. She wouldn't let it.

Today, though, the rocks weighed her down more than usual, and the branches snapped easier than ever. Thirteen years. Thirteen years, thirteen beers. Maybe there was something to that, she wondered, as tears mixed in her mouth, with the saliva and pre-cum.

Cabbage. Semi-automatics. Panty-hose. Barbie dolls. Pubic hair. Needles. 1967. Thirteen beers. Thirteen years. No, there was nothing to it. It was all random, and it was all solitary.

She floated above herself, unconnected. She watched her head move, up and down, for now and forever; his hand move, up and down, for now and forever; her life move, nowhere, for now and forever. The branches vanished, and the rocks found their home. The water was above her head, and she didn't care. There was quiet there. There was solitude.

That's when He found her.

It was subtle, at first. Just a thought. A possibility. Then it became stronger, clearer, like a camera coming into focus. He didn't impose Himself on her; He simply watched, without judging. The way He did. The way He is supposed to. Mary Ignatius, you're not doing anything wrong, He said. You're just not doing anything right.

And behind Him, she could see hear her sister teasing her, and her mother shouting from the shore. She could feel her father's skin underneath her hips, his hands against her thighs as he lifted her towards the sky. The sun was masked by the clouds, but she felt its light on her face. She knew it was there, even if she couldn't see it. She knew they were there, even if she couldn't hear them. She knew he was there, even if she couldn't feel him.

The rocks floated away. The branches became trees. And Mary Ignatius could taste the ocean again.  It came into her mouth, quickly and passionately, flowing down her throat in sharp waves that filled her stomach.  She swallowed all of it, hungrily, willingly, and for the first time, happily.

"Babe, that was the best time yet!," her boyfriend shouted, with more enthusiasm than he'd ever shown before. Of course, it wasn't much of a horse race. "We're going to have to do that again!"

Mary Ignatius smiled, wiped the ejaculate off her chin, and got out of the car.

Erase Rewind

I am not perfect, nor do I pretend to be.  Brilliant, maybe.  Beautiful, perhaps.  But perfect, never.

With that in mind, I'd like to extend my sincerest apologies to all the gentiles I may have offended in my previous post.  To wit, "Santa Clause" is actually spelled without an "e."  According to my friend Mark, the erroneous spelling can be traced back to the eponymous Tim Allen movie, which was so-named as a reference to the contract between the Tim Allen character and Santa Claus.  I never actually saw that movie -- although if I had, I probably wouldn't admit it -- but it seems to me that its target audience probably did not grasp such a surprisingly subtle nod to the wonders of the English language.  An elitist opinion, maybe, but just because an opinion is elitist does not mean it's wrong.

In any event, Jews try very hard to be sensitive to the beliefs of our gentile friends, both because we don't like to hurt anyone's feelings, and because there are lots more of you than there are of us.  We've learned the latter point the hard way, several times.  Plus, I'd like Mark to have my back if we ever got into a bar fight.  He's taller than me, and he has a boyfriend who could be a linebacker, if only he wasn't a homosexual.

So please, forgive me, my Christian friends.  It's what Jesus would have wanted.

Comments are like applause...

You can never get too much of them.

I'm an approval junkie. If you're enjoying these random musings of my borderline psychotic brain, please tell me. And if you're not, please lie.

Also, has David Sedaris stopped by yet? I'm getting impatient. You don't want to see me impatient. It's not pretty. Think Oprah at a Hillary Clinton rally.

Santa Clausowitz

As a general matter, my parents fully supported the "us versus them" tenet of Judaism. Paranoia, perhaps, but not altogether irrational paranoia. As many marginalized populations can attest -- gays, African-Americans, fans of David Hasselhoff -- centuries of persecution can be frustrating. Personally, I think people were more likely to persecute my parents for their fashion taste than for their religion (mirrors belong on walls, not on clothing), but who am I to begrudge anyone their bitterness?

In homogenous communities, this isolationist mentality often does not pose an obstacle to a child's social development; a Martian is only weird to non-Martians. I spent the better part of my adolescence in Long Island, where Jews rule with an iron fist. Of course, more of them spend their Friday nights in the Roosevelt Field mall than in temple, but a Jew at the Gap is still a Jew.

But until I was six, we lived in Kinderhook, New York, a small upstate hamlet of about 20,000 people, 19,996 of whom were gentiles. We might as well have been Martians.

"Mom, where are my horns?" I asked my mother upon returning home from my first day of kindergarten.

"Horns? What are you talking about?"

"I told the other kids that I'm Jewish, and they asked me why I didn't have horns," I said, despondently. It didn't bother me that the other kids thought I had horns. It bothered me that after just one day in school I was already a disappointment. When my mother told me Jews don't actually have horns, I was even more distraught. What if the teacher expected me to have horns also? It's one thing to disappoint your colleagues; it's a whole other thing to disappoint authority figures. I tried pasting carrots to the top of my head, but they kept falling off. Besides, it's difficult to play hide-and-go-seek with vegetables stuck to your hair.

Thanks to my tactless classmates -- and yes, even toddlers can have tact, if trained properly -- I learned much about what a Jewish person is supposed to be during that fateful year. In between pick-up sticks and naptime, I discovered that Jewish people are cheap, greedy, overly ambitious, and have big noses. My parents had great difficulty dissuaging me from these stereotypes, primarily because, by the age of four, I already fit most of them. When my kindergarten teacher asked us to write about our hero, I was torn between Miss Piggy and Gordon Gekko. My piggy bank had a pad lock on it. And when my grandmother showed up empty handed at my sixth birthday party, I kicked her out of the house and demanded she return "with check, plus interest."

By far, the most difficult time of year was Christmas. The rest of the year, I skillfully managed to hide my religion, mostly through selective silence and vigorous head-nodding during religious conversations, of which there were more than a few. There's a stray loop of the Bible Belt lurking in upstate New York. But when Christmas came around, silence and head-nodding were insufficient covers.

"So where is everyone going for Christmas?," the teacher asked, never questioning whether everyone in the room celebrated Christmas. Although she couldn't really be blamed for that. The odds were on her side. Indeed, with all the Christmas-themed television shows, songs, and movies, along with the extensive and somewhat over-the-top decorations on all of our neighbors homes -- I maintain to this day that singing plastic reindeer are not the most appropriate way to commemorate the birth of the Lord -- I wondered whether my parents had lied to me, and we were actually the only Jews on the planet. Perhaps it was just a cult of four.

As she went around the room, every student's answer seemed to be followed by an exclamation point, to accentuate their excitement.

"I'm going to my grandma's house! She makes the best egg nog!"

"I'm going to my uncle's! We sing carols by the fire and eat candy canes!"

"I'm going to my godparents' home! They don't have any of their own kids, so they give the best gifts!"

But as it got closer to my turn, I realized my answer -- "I'm going to the closest Chinese restaurant" -- neither called for nor deserved an exclamation point. Instead, that answer would probably get the same response as the stunning confession that I did not eat bacon.

"Excuse me, can I go to the bathroom?," I asked. This was not an uncommon request coming from me. The bathroom was -- still is -- my refuge. It's the only place I feel I can truly be myself.

Huddled in the bathroom stall, I realized that if I was going to survive this Christmas, I needed to actually experience the holiday first-hand. The problem was, I didn't know how to do that. I still wasn't quite sure who this Jesus guy was. All I could gather from the bits and pieces I overheard in class was that he was a good swimmer. There was a church down the block, and I could try to sneak away and take in a show or two, but I still didn't fully trust the gentiles. I didn't trust anyone who could make a meal out of Miss Piggy.

Then it hit me. Of course! I'd go directly to the source. The reason that the holiday existed. The object of everyone's worship. The focal point for Christmas, and indeed, for Christians themselves.

Santa Clause. I had to meet Santa Clause.

The following Saturday, my mother took me to her nail salon for her weekly manicure. (Note to parents: if you really want to prevent your son from being a homosexual, don't expose him to nail polish remover at a young age. The smell of acetone still gives me a tingle.) Fortunately, the salon was in the mall, which also housed a makeshift "Christmas Village." The entire presentation consisted of a large inflatable candy cane, some fake snow, and a folding chair for Santa, painted red. Although I didn't have much experience with Christmas, I suspected that this was a pretty lame attempt at Christmas spirit. Still, beggars can't be choosers.

"Mom, can I sit on Santa's lap?," I asked her as we left the salon, fully expecting an outright rejection. I was prepared for a prolonged debate, for which I had mentally compiled several reasons for allowing me to converse with Santa.

"I was thinking of getting you something velvet for your birthday."

"I want to ask him if his beard is naturally curly or perm'ed."

"It's a secret mission to spy on the gentiles. I think they're up to something, and Santa is their leader."

But my mother must have been feeling generous that day, because she didn't put up a fight. Either that, or she had to wait a few minutes for her nails to dry before driving home.

"Ok. But only for a minute." Apparently limiting my exposure to Santa to a minute would prevent my foreskin from growing back.

We waited on line for what felt like an interminable amount of time. I was intensely afraid that someone would realize I was not Christian and rat me out. There was a two-year-old in a baby carriage behind us who looked awfully shifty. What was the punishment for a Jewish child sitting on Santa's lap? Surely I'd be required to at least reimburse him for his time. Even though I saved every penny I found in the couch cushions, I wasn't sure it would be enough.

Finally, we made it to the front of the line. It was my turn, the moment I'd been waiting for, but I hesitated. He was quite imposing, sitting on what appeared from afar to be a red folding chair but now seemed more like a throne, with his enormous stuffed belly jutting out from an understuffed chest. I felt his eyes bore into my soul -- I know you're not a gentile, Jonah, and I'm going to expose you as the fraud you are! He was my judge, jury, and, in the worst case scenario, executioner.

But I was not giving up without a fight. Thanks to repeated viewings of Bambi, I had already learned at a young age that authority figures thrive on fear. I let go of my mother's hand, shuffled up to him, and gently placed myself on his lap. His legs were much thinner than the thick velvet pants let on. They shifted under the weight. I wondered briefly whether Santa was on a diet, but decided against asking him. I was already skating on thin ice.

"What's your name, young man?" Despite my anxiety, I liked him already. He didn't call me "little boy." Children should be treated like adults at all possible times. Except when it comes to politicians. Then adults should be treated like children.

"Jonah," I said, meekly. I lightly felt his coat with my fingers. I liked the texture. It was soft, like our dog's fur, but it didn't make me sneeze. I wondered whether we could shave the dog and replace his fur with the Santa suit. That would at least make him easier to find if he ever ran away. Then again, it was probably better to keep the dog the way he was, before red dogs were added to the list of Jewish stereotypes.

"Nice to meet you, Jonah," he said. At this point in the encounter, most children are bouncing on Santa's knee, rattling off a list of undeserved gifts they wanted in return for not smothering their baby sisters in their sleep the previous year. But I didn't say anything. I felt every word could be used against me later. Better to keep silent and be thought a fraud than to speak and remove all doubt.

Santa must have suspected something was amiss, though.

"What's wrong, Jonah?"

I considered lying, and telling him that I had some bad clams for dinner, or that English was my second language. I knew a few words of Yiddish, and could probably wing it well enough. But I have no patience, either now or then, for insincerity. A virtue for most people, although a vice for attorneys.

"I'm not supposed to believe in you," I replied, never looking him in the eye, afraid he could read my mind. I wasn't sure what Santa's powers actually were, but I knew he could tell good children from bad children, which made me suspect that he had some kind of telepathic abilities. Which was much cooler than anything I thought Jesus could do.

"Oh? Why not?," he asked.

"Because I'm Jewish," I replied. His forehead crinkled, and his eyes lost their trademark twinkle. I realized then that Santa was not going to expose me, or hand me over to the authorities. No, Santa wasn't angry at me. Instead, he felt sorry for me. And his pity was worse than his condemnation.

I stifled a tear, and started to remove my distasteful self from his glorious presence. But before I could go, he stopped me, and pulled me closer to him.

"Can I tell you a secret?"

"Ok," I said, curious about where this was going. Ordinarily, when a grown man asks a five-year-old child sitting on his lap if he can tell him a secret, there is cause for concern. But different rules apply to Santa. He leaned in and cupped his hand over my ear. His breath smelled vaguely like sour cream and onion potato chips -- my favorite kind -- which made me like him even more.

"I'm Jewish," he whispered in my ear, with a smile.

I was astounded. Santa was Jewish? Could this be? I was convinced he was pulling my leg. It was a trick. Maybe playing practical jokes on Jews was just another Christmas tradition.

"What, you don't believe me?," he asked. "Ok, take a look at this."

Santa tilted his head down and lifted up his hat. There, under his pointed Santa cap with a pom pom on the end of it, stood a yamulka.

It was true. Santa was Jewish. Beard, velvet suit, ho ho ho and all.

Driving home, I pondered what Santa's confession meant, both for me and for the world. Suddenly, the house of cards that my classmates -- indeed, that every gentile -- had created folded in on itself. Now I pitied them, not vice versa. The man they all worshipped, who exercised ultimate control over their fate each Christmas, was one of us. He was a kindred spirit. He was Bar Mitzvah'ed, just like I would be. He had a taste for ketchup on pasta, just like me. And growing up with a Jewish mother like mine, it's no wonder he was so empathetic.

I briefly considered outing Santa to the world. I would reveal the truth to everyone, and be an international celebrity, or villain, as the case may be. There would be a big investigation, with teams of FBI agents storming the North Pole and searching for evidence of Santa's religion. The toy factory would be shut down in the interim, forcing the elves out of work and creating mass hysteria in the Arctic. Then, when nothing else could be found, Mrs. Clause would be questioned on Santa's nether-regions. Eventually, Santa would be forced to de-pants on national television.

But I decided against it. I didn't want Santa humiliated like that, and I didn't think I could handle the paparazzi and first grade at the same time. So I never shared Santa's true religion with my classmates, my family, or anyone else. It was just our secret, our shared bond. And even though he never brought me a Christmas gift, I didn't mind. He had already given me more than he knew.

Of course, I don't believe in Santa Clause anymore. I'm far too jaded to think that there's an omniscient man living in the North Pole who spends 364 days a year overseeing an elf toy factory, and one day a year hauled through the sky by a group of flying reindeer. Besides the fact that he would have a serious union problem on his hands with those elves, reindeer are notoriously stupid animals. I doubt they could find their way from Newark to Hoboken with a map and a flashlight.

Still, every Christmas eve I leave a plate of rugaleh and a glass of borscht by the fireplace. Just in case Santa ever stops by, and needs a nosh.