The Bar Mitzvah. The iconic coming of age event for 13-year old Jewish boys in honor of pubic hair, deepening voices and blood engorged penises; a sort of compensatory ritual to balance the indignity and suffering of circumcision--slicing off the tip of your 8-day-old manhood before you are old enough to mount a defense in court.
Almost had one, a Bar Mitzvah. But didn't. I got the Bris but was denied the Bar Mitzvah.
Why should I care? I am, by most standards, a devout anti-religionist. Organized religion makes my foreskin crawl. Oh, wait, I don't have one.
I do very much appreciate and enjoy many of the magnificent expressions of the world's major religions in terms of art, architecture and music. Ganesha is cool. I'm a sucker for a Christmas Mass at Park Avenue's Saint Bartholomew's. I adore egg matzo schmeared with butter and salt. I own Raiders of the Lost Ark. I am proud of my heritage and history as one of the Chosen People. I have three times in my life spent a week wandering the Zen Buddhist temples of Kyoto. I can toss coins and deliver a spooky reading from the I Ching. I was deeply moved and inspired by the writings of Lao Tzu. And I stand in awe of Chartre Bleu, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Sainte Chappelle, and the great Pyramid builders of the Maya.
So I think I would have enjoyed the ceremony of the Bar Mitzvah, the attention, the banquet and the booty. But like heterosexuality, I was denied my Bar Mitzvah. Am I crying over spilt mik? Sure. Why the fuck not?
My aborted Bar Mitzvah remains an unhappy memory of my childhood--of course not for the obvious reasons. Mind you, I do not feel incomplete as a Jew, but I do resent being denied that moment of "normalcy" as I crawled, fought and groaned through my abnormal childhood.
However, in lieu of a Bar Mitzvah, on my 13th birthday, I was the victim of statutory rape--and my father paid for it. My friends' fathers hired Rabbis and Cantors; my father hired a tranny hooker.
Some context is clearly in order.
Back in the Fifties and early Sixties, before LBJ's Great Society produced the civil rights legislation that put an end to legally sanctioned discrimination on the basis of color, race, religion and gender--Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics and women were routinely barred from New York City clubs, restaurants, housing, employment, schools, hotels, etc. And they had no legal recourse.
There is a myth that this kind of thing was more pervasive in the South than in the North. Not true. Yes, in the South everything was made so much more clear. Signs were posted to instruct Coloreds where they could eat, sleep and shit, but even in the most liberal and forward thinking city in America, New York City, segregation was common and discrimination was openly and legally enforced.
The vast majority of the luxury apartment buildings along Fifth and Park simply barred the Hebes and the Coloreds...and even the occasional Catholic. A Jew having a heart attack was fucked if it happened on the steps of the New York Athletic Club and any number of Manhattan hospitals. It was even common, right here in Jew York City, for Jews, rich and poor, to pass. In fact, as a child, my life in and out of the Jewish Closet well-prepared me for the Queer Closet.
My parents were a schizo mess of contradictions on this subject. They were Jews in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, but "Christians" in Jersey and parts of Manhattan including places like the Stork Club, the Copa and El Morocco. My parents were also people who could be proudly Jewish in the morning and then break half of the Ten Commandments before bedtime. When we traveled we would sometimes check into hotels as the Redstones (an English variation of Rothstein.)
It was a very confusing world in which to grow up.
Our Christmas tree was a Hanukkah bush, but it was Santa Putz (don't ask) who delivered the goods, half the inventory of FAO Schwarz; not Hanukkah Harry and his pathetic little spinning tops loaded with awful tasting Kosher chocolates.
Our Christmas Trees were also sized and decorated to out gun any goy who might stop by. They were fabulous. On Christmas morning, discussion of Jesus was forbidden, but we sure did like his Birthday tree.
Also, our family lived somewhat outside the law and our extended family included some odd Italian and Irish Catholics, arranged marriages used to consummate alliances including a couple of conversions of convenience. My grandfather, Benjamin Rothstein had two sisters who actually became nuns after their husbands met with untimely deaths. My godfather was Chinese and ran a combination restaurant and conference room on Doyers Street in Chinatown; so I was also oftentimes treated to a serving of Confucius while my father and his colleagues sipped cold tea (illegally served Scotch.)
Our family restaurant, Wo Kee, stood on the Doyers Street elbow, an almost 90 degree turn equidistant between Pell and Chatham Square which had been the notorious site of Chinatown Tong (or gang) wars some decades earlier. This was regarded with great affection and nostalgia by the adults. As a child, I never quite understood why. I understand that men were killed; I didn't understand why that was funny. Apparently, it was viewed as a business expense.
It was all, all of it, very, very confusing and destabilizing for a kid looking desperately for role models and anchors, for structure and predictability. Nothing in my life was what TV and movies said it was supposed to be. And the adults who governed the world around me rarely made sense.
So when my father proudly and passionately proposed what was to be the most glorious Bar Mitzvah ever, I was simply joyful, and suddenly more hopeful than I could ever remember having been in my short life of 12 tumultuous years. This was the root, the anchor, the normalcy, the grounding that I so desperately craved. I was going to enter a period in my life that was "normal"; we would be doing things like other normal families. My father hired a cantor to provide private Hebrew lessons. I would delight in my Hebrew lessons, with every Aleph, Gimel and Yod, I was slowly but surely working my way to normalcy and stability. I had clarity. I was a Jew. I was going to have a Bar Mitzvah with a Torah and party favors, a theme (I had already decided on Camelot imagining I would be Julie Andrews in the arms of Richard Burton), yarmulkes, gold pens, savings bonds, stocks, crisp $50 and $100 bills, approval and acceptance. In all of my 12 years on earth, I had never felt such excitement.
My 18-year-old cousin, Stuart, had been Bar Mitzvahed and was even talking about performing at my party along with his friends Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon. Yes, they started as a trio, but Stuart's mother, my Great Aunt Lee, convinced my cousin that the group had no future, so Stuart went into window trimming. Art and Paul went into super stardom.
All was good with the world. The nightmare was over. I would become a man and everything would fall into place. I truly believed that this important Jewish ritual would solve everything. I even believed that the ritual would arouse my wayward heterosexuality. I would experience my first kiss at the Bar Mitzvah. I would be Lancelot and she would be Guinevere and like the Frog Prince, a kiss would transform me into a prince of a straight boy.
And to assure me that this life-changing event was to be a reality, my father even showed me the bundles of cash that he had stashed under some floor boards in the attic to finance the event. I was made.
Sure. I should have known better. But at 12 hope still springs eternal. From a very early age, I learned that it was treacherous to believe in anything because everything could be taken away, everything except some profound inner place that resides inside of each of us. I won't give it a name. It would be bad luck.
And boy did my father like to take things away! He would also give, but that was only to provide himself with more opportunities to take away. The giving was always done with sappy sentimentality, the taking away involved Cutty Sark, sarcasm, J&B, contempt, rage, pain and destruction--and that was to be the fate of my Bar Mitzvah.
In August of 1961, just a few weeks before my October Bar Mitzvah was to be, my mother once again caught my father in corpus delicti. On this occasion it was with two men. She actually dragged my 12-year-old ass along so that I could once again witness my father's betrayal when she confronted him in Manny's Den, a gay bar in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I have no idea how she found him, but she seemed to have a network of adultery watchers spread throughout the tri-state area.
It was the usual scene. My mother loved scenes. My mother used to stage fabulous suicide attempts, like driving into gas station pumps or attempting to throw herself down staircases (but not before announcing "I'm going to jump" once or twice so that I could position myself to block and tackle.) She had flair (and strategy.)
So there we were in Manny's Den; my mother screaming, Sandy and Bill (my "uncles du jour") cowering in the dark, my father trying to pretend that he didn't know us. And no one calling the police, even thought guns were waved about, because we were, after all in an illegal gay bar.
Within minutes after the floor show had begun, I escaped into the men's room and vomited--not because of the scene (I was accustomed to these scenes) and not because of the guns (I was accustomed to guns) but because I instantly knew that my brief foray into normalcy had just hit a brick wall at something approaching Mach 3.
Vomiting was and remains one of my favorite means to alleviate anxiety. My mother ate Valium like Pez; I vomited.
Dad didn't come home for a few weeks. Not a word was said about the Bar Mitzvah. Then everything changed, again. On some morning in late September, I awoke to the sound of my parents arguing. He was back. The arguing ended quickly and I could hear my mother's squeals of joy. As always happened after their "separations" my father bought my mother a gift. Usually it was a fur, some jewels, a new car, a new addition to her growing collection of Biedermeier furniture; but this time he had gone all out. After all, this time he had been in a menage a trois with two men. That called for some big bucks. Affairs with women were erased by mink and emeralds, affairs with men required much much more. Much.
So my father had bought my mother a new house in the suburbs with more bedrooms so that they could make another baby, expand the family, plant roses and tomatoes, smell fresh air, and start yet another new life. As always, amply compensated for the hell on earth that was her life, she forgave the love of her life.
Clinging to flimsy remnants of hope, I excused myself from the breakfast table and dashed to the attic. The money was gone. My Bar Mitzvah money was now a new house. (And, a little over a year later, my twin sisters, Beth and Deborah would come into the world to fill the extra bedroom.)
Back downstairs, employing my most obsequious and diplomatic whisper and poised to run for my life--knowing full well that the question I was about to ask would likely be answered with a backhand slap across the face, a dislocated shoulder and a bounce off a wall, I mustered the courage and asked the self-destructive question: "What about my Bar Mitzvah?"
So pleased with his marital wars triumph, Daddy was not inclined to violence and he was also in the affectionate phase of his daily drinking cycle. The planets were well aligned. And so he answered: "A Bar Mitzvah is just a stupid party that lasts a few hours, a new house lasts forever. You're a man now and can understand these things."
And the subject was officially closed.
My heart ached. My guts twisted. I almost vomited. But my father's approval was still the most important thing in my life, so I stood up straight, laughed my practiced laugh and agreed.
However all was not lost. My father was a generous to a fault and had plans to compensate me for what he had taken away.
On October 22, 1961, the night of my 13th birthday, my parents took me out to celebrate my "Bar Mitzvah". It was not quite the Bar Mitzvah I was anticipating and there was no Torah, no Hebrew, no Yarmulkes, no Rabbis (not that I could tell), but there were female impersonators. An entire stage of them. Ethel Merman, Carmen Miranda, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe to name but a few.
We celebrated my Bar Mitzvah at The 82 Club, an underground but nationally famous drag club on the corner of East 4th Street and Second Avenue. This was a club that was frequented by the likes of Frank, Marilyn, Ava, the Gabor sisters, Judy, Kirk and Liz. I even met a couple of movie stars that night who wished me a happy birthday, Brian Aherne ( no idea who he was but my mother was gushing) and Hugh O'Brien (who I knew all too well because he had already played a starring role in several of my wet dreams). And meeting Hugh and his very hairy chest reminded me that turning 13 without the magic ritual of the Bar Mitzvah would deny me that sexual orientation transformation.
In fact, there was some degree of transformation that night, but nothing that had ever been anticipated in the Torah.
I remember thinking the performers were all women until the end of the first act. At the conclusion of each performance, the entertainers would suddenly remove their tops to expose a male chest. And then the house would go black. It was the "style", the "trademark" dramatic moment of the impersonation, as if to suggest that you had no idea! Of course, at 13, I actually did have no idea.
I remember my mother leaving early so that the "men" could enjoy themselves and hang out for the late show. Did she know what was about to happen? She went to her death denying that she did, but I’ve never forgiven her for allowing it to happen.
So there we were, the men. I was a man now, it was my Bar Mitzvah.
This was my first encounter with drag and it would resonate with me for the rest of my life. And while this wasn’t the first time I'd met one of my father's misters or mistresses, this was a very different kettle of fish. Dad had found a two-for-one deal in one of the club’s performers.
This was also my first encounter with beverages that had proof on the label other than the stink of my father's daily breath. I suppose serving liquor to a 13-year-old was the least of the club's vices. In any case, by the time the show began, Ricky was drifting in and out—pun intended—of straight boy. So when the ultimate 82 Club moment arrived, I was profoundly bushwhacked. In fact, my fantasy that a Bar Mitzvah would turn me straight was being gay bashed to death by a very hard 13-year old erection. By 3 a.m., every man was a man in this place and so was every woman.
I don’t remember her/his name, but for the sake of story telling we’ll call her/him Luisa/Luis. I mix my pronouns not to be glib but because at 13 and up until that point, I had no idea. As a 13-year-old boy, I was, as I said initially, watching women on the stage.
But at the conclusion of her song, Luisa removed her bodice and revealed a man's chest. I was awestruck. Somehow this delicate and flirtatious woman had concealed a man underneath her gown and glamor. As I gaped in silent wide-eyed adolescent wonder, the rest of the nightclub audience shrieked, laughed, applauded and shouted "Brava! Brava!" Their collective celebration of what had just occurred allowed me to revel in my own excitement and mysterious sense of revelation without fear of recrimination or exposure. In the darkened room and under cover of the tablecloth I touched myself.
As I reveled in the stirring and confusing vision of Luis' defined pecs, perfect nipples and mascara, the room suddenly went totally dark, rudely shutting down my moment before whatever my body felt was about to happen could actually happen. The loud accolades from the audience continued but I was lost in this disturbing and arousing moment. Something profound, instinctive and primeval had just occurred. I was trembling in a radical new way. Oh, I had experienced orgasms before--in fact since the age of 11--but this was something much more intense. Furthermore, I was also in awe of my father and his world. It made no sense, it was wonderful, it was terrifying. It was wrong. It was right. And now I'll say the forbidden words. In that moment, I conciously wanted my father for the first time. Read into that what you will.
The room once again glowing in the bright club lights, Luis/Luisa came to our table after the show and we toasted my rite of passage. Surely no other Jewish boy since Solomon's Temple had experienced a Bar Mitzvah such as this.
After that I have awkward and murky memories of being with him/her and my Dad in his/her dressing room. It was in the dressing room that I observed that Luis/Luisa was my new "uncle/aunt du jour". And it was in some dark place in the inner recesses of 82 that Dad arranged for my "real" Bar Mitzvah present. My first Lewinsky and it was from a drag queen. (Do yourselves a favor and don't try to count the number of levels of inappropriateness in this story. Can't be done.)
As you can imagine, drag took on a very special significance for me. At the heart of it, Luis/Luisa was my first exposure to gender confusion beyond my own. Yes, my father was bisexual but this meant nothing to me. I understood that my father had many male friends and I understood that he cheated on my mother with his many girlfriends, but I didn't understand until many years later that he was actually having sex with these men. At that point in my life I understood that sex was something you did alone with an artistically altered Superman comic—I was very good with pencils and erasers—National Geographics or Sears Catalog underwear pages. My all drag Bar Mitzvah taught me otherwise.
For some reason, as confusing and as vague as my memories are of the night, I very clearly remember my father handing me a fat wad of bills and instructing me to place it on Luis/Luisa's dressing table. "Now your lesson is complete," he said. I'm still uncertain as to his meaning, but I had just paid for my first whore. If he had given me the choice, I would have spent the money on a Broadway show and some comic books. But this wasn't about choice. In fact, I will likely go to my grave never really knowing what any of this was about.
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