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| 1. Rabbi Klum chuckled and belched behind his rugged beard. He put down his silver fork without excusing himself and spoke to David in his sweet lisping voice. "Having a wife doesn’t necessarily bind you to practicing monogamy. It's a popular misconception, of a dangerous kind I would say." David, a young man of twenty-five nodded reluctantly: "You may consider me naïve, but I know so little about this matter." The rabbi looked intently at David's father Abel, a generous contributor to the reconstruction of the synagogue, well-known and respected for organizing charities for the various needs of the Syrian-Jewish community. He was sitting quietly, consuming macrobiotic food. Abel caught the Rabbi's penetrating look and held it without blinking, until the rabbi turned back to David. "You must get married, young man. We’re talking about a deadline." Then he added promptly, "You are going to be like King Solomon, given a choice of the most beautiful brides in the community. All virgins. You shall be the first and the last man in one of those girls' lives." The rabbi turned to Abel for paternal affirmation of his sales pitch. Abel was concentrating on the food. David looked at his father and wondered, "If the eyes are really a window to the soul, what is that cryptic, dull message in those black eyes meant to represent?" A middle-aged waitress scurried to their table. Her smile was as broad as it was fake. Seeing her prostitute herself before his father's money only heightened David's annoyance. "What else would you like?" she asked in a heavy Middle-Eastern accent. The rabbi inspected his guests’ plates, "I’ll have another pasta primavera." Father and son were brooding, deep in their private stormy thoughts. "Sure," the waitress exclaimed, "not a problem." David inspected the waitress's body, hipless, large-breasted, chunks of fat dribbling over the bra band on her back, pockmarked face, and greedy eyes. The rabbi anticipated the arrival of another delicious meal. "David," he said, "let me explain your role in this world. "The rabbi's eyes darted towards Abel, but the latter was picking at his food nonchalantly, immersed in a chewing meditation. The rabbi continued in a whisper, "Life is a business enterprise. So is marriage. There are rules that you have to follow, but trust me, this system that has lasted for more than three thousand years was designed specifically for male convenience. As a man, you can only benefit from it." David nodded tentatively. He finished his frittata and began to diddle with a spare fork. The rabbi continued, "After getting married, you will start making money. It won’t be a challenge either. Your father's business is profitable as never before. You will work hard and bring all the money home to your wife and if she says a word you shut her up and the Torah will be on your side. Your wife will do nothing but have children and take care of them. She won’t work, and," the rabbi looked mischievously at David, "never will she be unfaithful to you. She knows that if you catch her once, she will be excommunicated. That has not happened in this community for two generations. Women are smart, when they know what they have to lose, they restrain themselves from rash, emotionally impulsive actions. You on the other hand, can have any woman you want outside the Syrian Jewish community." The pasta primavera was placed in front of the rabbi. Already he was grinning, anticipating its familiar pleasure. With his eyes on the plate the rabbi said, "this system was made by men and caters to men's needs. Don't you forget it." Silence reigned over the table. David was tearing the soft tissue of a napkin with the glittering tines of a fork. The rabbi was shoveling pasta into his yellow-toothed mouth. Abel stared through the window at passing cars. "Look," David began uneasily, "I can’t marry a woman I don't love." "Love?" the rabbi cringed, as if punched in the face. Theatrically he threw a fork down and exclaimed, "an idiotic notion of feudal Christians commodified by post-industrial pop culture." Then he realized that he was not lecturing his yeshiva students, caught himself, changed tactics, retreated back to familiar territory. "If not for Shakespearean fairy tales, Christians wouldn’t even consider getting married. Their priests and politicians had to trick them into marriage by inventing the concept of romantic love. Don't tell me you believe in all that romantic bunk?" "You can’t deny the existence of love between man and woman." David said. The rabbi was good at polemics. He would counter every contradiction with another one of his own. "When you get married you will love your wife, no less than those supposedly-in- love, married Christians do. G-d-" Abel looked at the rabbi in wonder. The rabbi rarely spoke of G-d in casual discussions but when he did it was always in connection to a very important issue, "always wanted man and woman to be together, rather than wandering the world in search of "true love." That's not only ridiculous, it's sinful." "But in the Torah one can find many an example," David began. "You compare your case to the Torah?" "No, but…" Abel raised his hand, silencing the two quarreling men. His rigid body language conveyed that he would accept no compromises. He said calmly, emotionlessly, "for three thousand years this system has worked, David. You will not change the rules of the game on a whim just because you have some idiotic secular notions. You will be married by the end of the year. You have seven months to find a bride. Rabbi Klum will help you. Otherwise you will be stripped of your inheritance and be free to wander the world in search of your true love." David jumped to his feet, "I’ll do whatever suits me without following your outdated codes of behavior," he exclaimed, bolting for the door. His father stared after him as he departed. "Oh America, what do you do to our sons?" the rabbi asked piously of the electric lights on the ceiling. David was seated in the barber's chair, examining his looks in the mirror. At times he thought those good looks were all that he had. Izzy Michel, the hair-designer and proprietor, spoke to him from behind, trimming his wavy hair, carving an even crater on the top of the head to accommodate his black yarmulke. "Have you found a bride yet?" Izzy was a good guy, but all the complimentary rumor-spreading services he provided deserved vindication. David thought, "Whatever I tell him now will spread throughout the two thousand plus members of the Syrian Jewish community of Brooklyn, New York. But what the hell, let 'em all know. " "I’m not going to get married." "What?" Izzy Michel gasped and then he burst out in shameless laughter, "And what do you think you are going to do?" David looked at Izzy gaunt but trendy figure in the wall mirror. "Nothing." "What do you mean 'nothing'? How are you going to make a living after your dad kicks you out of his three story villa on Ocean Parkway?" "Don’t know." "You got no education, no profession. What can you do? Work for minimum wage and live in a basement?" "I really don’t know, Izzy." "Why not do what they want you to do? You can't lose." "The rabbi and my dad keep telling me that. Unfortunately, I see things differently." "Whatever light you see marriage in, staying a bachelor you’ll have to face a grim reality that has no future for you. Unless-" "I know what you are going to say." Izzy Michel finished trimming the top of David's head. There was a good-looking woman sitting in the barber chair next to David's. She was in her early thirties, but mooning into the mirror like a teenager. David knew her vaguely–she was the wife of one of his father's many friends. She fidgeted on the chair, clad in a long skin-tight skirt and top that overexposed her breasts in an unorthodox fashion. David remembered Rabbi Klum's words about Syrian wives' total fidelity. She caught David's glance and rewarded him with a big iridescent smile full of whitened teeth and glossed lips, preparing to speak to a promising bachelor. "Dave, have you met my daughter Julia? She's sixteen." Julia? Oh yes, a silly little girl with Dumbo ears, she had flirted shamelessly with David at the opening of his father's new pickle factory. This marriage could easily be brokered without the rabbi's help. His father's money would pave the way. "Yes." "She's a good girl, Dave. She adores children." The mother's attention span was a second long. Not waiting for an answer, she turned to her cell phone and spoke quickly to someone or another, "I’m going to order a salmon wrap next. Then I take the kids to the movies. My schedule is packed. Can you imagine, I have absolutely no free time? Tomorrow? Appointments with two doctors, working out, Julia's birthday preparations, my facial." Izzy Michel whispered in David's ear, "These J.A.Ps only pretend to be busy to hide the fact that they don’t have anything to do all day long." It was then that David had the revelation. He was thrilled by the sheer chutzpah of it. One moment he was looking at his image in the mirror, the next he disappeared into it. He was on threshold of overthrowing a three-thousand-year-old system, which the rabbis claimed to be the greatest in the history of the human race. "How many Syrian women pass through your business each day?" David asked. "Well, all of them come here sooner or later. I’m damn lucky to have their lucrative business." "But you wouldn’t mind making even more money, would you?" David winked slyly at Izzy's reflection. Izzy Michel placed the scissors on the counter and began to brush off David's shoulders, sweeping cut hair onto the floor. A Mexican woman with a broom was approaching from the far corner. "Look, nothing illegal, David. I’m not taking part in anything that's not kosher." "What about being a go-between?" "Maybe." Turning to the matchmaking mother on the right, David said, "I would really love to meet your daughter Julia. I haven’t stopped thinking about her since the last time I saw her." She raised her heavily made up eyes, "What did you just say David?" "I said I want to meet your daughter, Julia." Syrian Jewish houses occupy thirty square blocks, stretching from West 1st to East 19th Street, and from Avenue M to Avenue X. They are some of the most expensive prices in Brooklyn, created by a low-key community of very rich people. Just two blocks away, across McDonald Avenue you enter a different neighborhood where Russian, Arab, and Chinese immigrants live side by side in the mutual harmony of complete ignorance of each other's ways but with the common goal of the American Dream, where house prices drop by roughly a half. David crossed McDonald Avenue with the rampaging silver train above and rented a one-bedroom apartment with a queen-sized bed. The success of his future enterprise relied heavily on Izzy Michel's oratorical skills, which Izzy honed to perfection talking to women round the clock on the job. His staff would help to provide alibis for missing wives. The first problem was to escape the persistent eyes of curious friends. Syrian women formed a spy circle. Everyone spied on someone else and then spread her accumulated data to the others. At times there would be up to a dozen women spying on the suspicious activities of one wayward wife. Rabbi Klum endorsed these clandestine activities, striking fear into the hearts and souls of those who yearned to transgress, coercing them to abandon their sinful thoughts and sublimate their desires through jogging, shopping, or gossiping. Of course it was a matter of Judaic law that prohibited a husband from having sex with his wife a week before menstruation, a week after, while she was pregnant, during holidays, while he was on a work assignment or after having visited his mistress. 2. David's customers would park in front of an old brick building, walk through Izzy's place, head towards the manicurist, vanish through the back door into a prearranged taxi. David would be waiting just a few blocks away in his new apartment. The door stood ajar and Bat Sheba lightly shoved it open. She timidly walked into the candle-lit room. David, clad only in Calvin Klein boxers was seated on the armchair, looking at her intently. She stood still for a second and then automatically began to turn to exit the twilit room as quickly as possible. David raised his hand and said, "The dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual doesn't exist. Judaic law was originally designed to curb human excess, until finally it has curbed human nature. I am here to set you free." Bat Sheba stood still. Slowly she lowered her eyes and stared at the appetizing bulk between David's legs. "To resolve the crisis of denied pleasure within the religious community of Syrian women, this house was opened. For the first time in three thousand years you will get the kind of sex that you have been lacking. Not for the purpose of procreation, but for the sheer pleasure of it. You will not be betraying your husband, but rather the system that enslaves you both." Bat Sheba came closer, David's words and a growing bulge beckoned to her, life-long restraint abandoned. "Come undone, Bat Sheba." "What if Schwaki finds out?" "He never will. It will be our secret, Bat Sheba. Izzy Michel who sent you here has no idea what this is all about. There are only two people in the whole world who know. You and me." Her eyes were shining. She touched her breasts and slid her arms down. She came closer and embraced David. She had entirely lost control over her decision-making. Sublimation knows many tactics and techniques. Linda's was a mainstream, widely acclaimed, obsessive profusion of diets. She tried them all, she went from "plump" to "super-skinny," and eventually cut her daily ration to five pieces of grilled tofu and two glasses of filtered water. Her limbs shook from malnutrition, her skin was ashen, her hipbones protruded far beyond normal, and her mind raged with vivid hallucinations. In order to choke her sexual hunger, she suppressed it with hunger for food. She would pick up her tofu from a kosher vegetarian café on the way to David's bed, where her activities required some extra nourishment. Once when her order was delayed, David called her cell phone to ask why she was late. "Either come right now or not until tomorrow." He knew Syrian women tended to always come late, and he wanted to train all of them to keep to his schedule. Linda steered madly through the neurotic traffic of New York. When she arrived, she began to see monsters in David's little bedroom. They were naked men dancing around a hellish pyre, fallen angels eating fire and disgorging yellow flames upon the heads of female apparitions. Anti-rabbis blessed the copulating bodies, packing their souls into crocodile-skin bags and sending them to purgatory via UPS. Corporate backers were advertising and selling contraception. Unlicensed doctors treated venereal diseases. "Are you OK, Linda?" David asked from the bed. Linda was shivering violently. "I’m hungry, Dave. My husband and I are going to Hawaii this week." "Where's your husband now?" "Probably with some Gentile hooker." Making love like it was the last time in her life, she screamed so loudly, bottles of beer were exploding in the apartment below. She was insatiable. In her taste for loving she was gluttonous. Three thousand years of tradition was being shattered one thrust at a time. The next day she sent her friend, Vivian. Vivian was a dragon woman. She didn’t have to carry a gun, it was in-built into her retina. She took it for granted that she would be the ruler in David's kingdom. "I've seen you before. You are Syrian, aren’t you? Why aren't you wearing a yarmulke?" David patted the mattress, "Sit down and count out your money. It's $300 for the first time. I’m sure your friend has already told you." Her eyes exuded acid, it dripped on the carpet and burned dime-size holes in it. "What will your mother say when she finds out?" David spoke gravely, imitating his father's intonation, "Remember, there is no way back once you've started. You will notice changes occurring in your perception of the world on a daily basis. You will see things that you have been taking for granted in a totally different light." "What do you mean?" "You have four children, right? You have to remember that you will be excommunicated if you are found out." Vivian was a big woman. Like her skinny friend, she had tried many diets with no success, however her plumpness was healthy and natural. To protect her self-esteem from the Syrian women's smirking ridicule, she built up a virtual combat wall. She made her husband buy her a SUV the size of a tank. She drove it around her twenty-block perimeter with the spite of an adder, the spirit of a tiger. Vivian exercised totalitarian control over her family, as she did with all who served her, from waiters to nannies. She was in this world to command and to be obeyed. That was her line of defense against derisive attacks about her weight. This tactic seemed to work everywhere except in David's kingdom. "Get undressed, unless you want to have sex in your clothes," David said. Vivian fidgeted on the bed uneasily looking at the unorthodox gigolo. "Get undressed," David repeated listlessly. "You know what, forget it, I’m going home," Vivian bluffed arrogantly and jumped to her feet. "Too late," David said with a gentle smile. Vivian blushed. Her eyes downcast, acid-free, softened up. She was a boss no more. David stood up shedding his clothes on the move and approached. Rent-A-Romeo's customized Juliet was sitting at the family table congratulating herself on her community-acclaimed success at dancing and singing. David pretended to listen carefully and squeezed out smiles here and there, praising his chosen bride. His Father couldn’t help but be content, despite David's conviction that his father had never been content about anything in his entire life. Of course the patriarch had to mask his true character at moments of common celebration. Thinking about his clandestine business activities, David concluded that the capitalist acorn never manages to fall far from the tree. Suddenly Juliet spoke with ambition, as if mimicking some pop song, "Dave, I’m not like those girls [yeah, right, but then who ARE you like], not vulgarized, digitized, cashed in. I have a heart and soul and I treasure them above all else. I’m not just another plaything to use, abuse, and discard. I believe in G-d. I adore children [wasn’t that what her mom said? How touching!] and I will always adore my husband and be faithful to him. I will look at no other man and will desire no other man [how can she be so sure?]. I’ll be your only one. I’ll be everything to you, lover, housewife, partner, friend, mother of your children. I want you to love me for who I am, and in return I will be everything to you, your whole world." Julia finished her speech and turned back to her food. Silence reigned over the table occupied by David, his parents, and Julia, the center of all attention. Abel hmmed theatrically. No one budged, mulling over Julia's outspokenness. Abel had to take this awkward situation into his own hands armed with the commonest of platitudes, "David is so lucky to have you as a bride (at which Julia blushed and nodded) and you will be the best wife this community has ever known." David rose to leave. Abel spoke to him, "Where are you going?" "I have some urgent business to attend to." David's mother complained, "This is so impolite." "I know," David said bluntly and promptly excused himself in order not to complicate matters further. As he was opening the door he heard Julia say, "I love you David." For the first time in many days, David couldn't find words to give a sensible reply. Ruth was hyperactive. She caught that special New York insanity from her peers. She had to be in many places at the same time to manage all her commitments. She tried hard to stretch space and time, believing them to be of elastic nature, using white and black magic, a Ferrari twelve-valve engine, her long legs, and a cell phone. She could afford to spend no more than ten minutes at a time in David's secret apartment. Ruth was constantly on the move. The only problem was that she never had a purpose, she jetted chaotically, screaming, gesticulating, rushing the servers to be quick with her orders so that she could keep moving. She was quicker and lighter than a proton of helium circling around its nucleus, only Ruth didn’t recognize what rules she obeyed nor the center she gravitated around. Even her household was a mere way station in her hectic agenda. She wrote down schedule for the day, but as time progressed, she invented more tasks than she could possibly fit in. She was the busiest woman in North America. She was always behind schedule, always late. Her mind raced ahead of her legs, trapping her in cycle of useless motion. Frustration was her perpetual condition, her permanent state of being. She would storm into the second-story apartment, get undressed and jump on David. While making love she would look at her watch, planning her next step, or rather figuring out how to balance several errands, striving to squeeze them into narrow frames of limited time. So now even her orgasm became one of many tasks of the day. She even managed to calculate the time required to reach her climax. Ten minutes sufficed. She would throw her money on the bed and run away, without saying goodbye, already late to her next arbitrary destination. Rene wanted to fuck. Immediately upon entering David's enterprise, she began to vaporize her husband's hard-earned money, like David liked to say, "one thrust at a time." It felt damn good to her but she never had an orgasm. David had a big-time customer in Rene. Whenever she had a chance, she snuck out of the house on East 4th and Avenue U and headed her silver Mercedes straight towards David. Rene, like an adolescent, experienced every act of intercourse as a brand-new adventure. She liked to try out new things, new positions. She had seemed to know of only one or two prior to her magical discovery of love outside her husband's three-story palace. She would have done it all day and all night if not for her responsibilities at home. Once, she begged David to come along on her family's vacation in Florida. She asked him for many other perilous favors and she always paid with new hundred-dollar bills. 3. In his study, Rabbi Klum offered a chair to a yarmulked David. All around him was the graveyard of ancient Jewish knowledge. The past buried itself in written history prescribing codes of moral behavior. Rabbi Klum held a Torah in his hands, an amulet against worldly evils. David envied him his naivete. How easily this religious man could twist reality, automatically adopt the system of his parents, take it for granted, believe in it to the depth of his soul. David thought, "Rebels will always be rebels. It's in our blood." Torah has answers for absolutely everything. All pain is explained and justified, taken out of context, put under the sanctified prism of the Divine. A simple application of twenty-two letters, can vanquish existential doubts, reanimate the spirit, make everything right. Like a bottomless well, the Holy Scripture provides assistance in times of trouble, explanations to the most complex personal paradoxes, promises of never-ending life. Torah is the world's greatest psychologist; it has cures for every neurosis to afflict humankind. Dismissing rabbis’ assurances that it was written by G-d, David pondered the idea that the authors might have been a band of talented and very bright human beings. They never asked to enter this world and wandered around in a blind attempt to figure out their place in it. They were as lost and bewildered as David. Frustrated, they tried to grasp and throw their arms around a Higher Being. Their ultimate failure can be traced throughout the Torah–something rabbis choose not to address. A primary mission of Torah was to protect man from man. That was what the Ten Commandments were all about. But now, generations later, the Chosen People have gotten themselves lost in linguistic interpretations encumbered by outdated laws that strictly prohibit almost all expressions of man's nature. David was born into an over-civilized community of fear-stricken, super-isolated people of G*d's choice. Rabbi Klum interrupted David's internal philosophizing, "You made the right choice. Julia is a good girl. She will make you a good wife." David nodded thoughtfully. Rabbi Klum continued uneasily, "I heard about…that woman business of yours." David stared at the rabbi, stunned, "How did you know about my business?" Rabbi Klum shrugged his wide shoulders, "Women talk; that's their nature. Women never stop talking. You must know that." David looked away at the shelf full of Hebrew and Aramaic tomes. "Your secret will rest with me, David. I have just one thing to ask of you, to repay me for the favor I’m doing you." "Why do you think I owe you a favor?" Now it was the rabbi's turn to look at David in amazement, "Because if it gets out you will be excommunicated." "And who says that's not the reason I’ve been doing it in the first place?" The rabbi smirked, thought for a second and said calmly, "Look, David, you are not a threat to the integrity of our community. Even if you were discovered, it wouldn't change our traditions. Our community is like a dynamic swamp. If you try to move too much you'll get submerged. You have to move carefully, according to the rules. If you go public, we’ll drown you. Eventually no one will be on your side–not your father, nor Julia, nor your lady friends. In the end, you'll have to go live with the Gentiles, but even they won't be interested in your story. It will die with you and your rebellion will perish unnoticed." "How can you be so sure?" "Because it has happened before to no avail. We are bigger than life. We are untouchable. Our actions are justified by G-d Himself. And that's why I can be so sure." Rabbi Klum took David by the hand, "I want to be your friend, David. It's politics. It's money. I want you to understand the truth of your situation. Either you do it our way, or you're out. You want your freedom? Here's your free choice. The favor I need you to do is to terminate your illicit enterprise immediately. Excuse me David, but I have to go to pray now. Hope to see you soon. Shalom." The rabbi hurried into the sanctuary to don his talith and enter a directive trance to inch closer to the Divine Being. David tossed his yarmulke away and headed for the street. |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
on an extended hiatus. The web has changed, we've changed, and
we're trying to figure out how we both fit together now, which isn't a process we want to rush. If you're looking for more current SL-related content, you can
have check out upcoming books from editor Heather Corinna and previous co-editor Hanne Blank, check out Heather's current sexuality sites, or explore sites through the femmerotic network. We hope to be back with you soon, as fresh, challenging and
unexpected as ever.
In the meantime, by all means, enjoy our years of past content,
all of which still remain in the public and subscription areas.
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