rest of the country: a citizenry so raised may or may not be undereducated, but at least it will be less likely to swindle you when you are desperate.
Of course, many Charlestonians would have found my civil-rights-worker parents untrustworthy even without the benefit of education. One afternoon when I was five I came home from playing with my across-the-street neighbor Betsy and asked my father, “Daddy, what’s a nigger-loving kike?” When he recovered from the apoplectic fit into which this had sent him and asked me why I wanted to know, I said, “Because Betsy says that her daddy says that you are one.”
Betsy’s daddy also published a white-supremacist newsletter, though I didn’t know that at the time. But I did know I was unlikely to join the ranks of the Good Ol’ Boys. My mother’s ancestors had settled the city and we were white, so most of our neighbors welcomed us heartily enough, but something in me still felt out of place bobbing for apples at the block Hallowe’en parties.
The one part of Charleston in which education found an enthusiastic home was the Jewish community, which is large, Charleston having been home to the first Reform congregation in America. But here too there was a problem; to wit, my mother was Christian. According to Jewish law, therefore, even though I was being raised Jewish, I was not considered a Jew by birth. I rectified this state of affairs at the age of seven by converting to Judaism. Nevertheless I lacked the strong points of reference that the other synagogue kids took for granted in their culturally Jewish homes.
Oh, my mother tried, but she exposed herself time and again, like when her mother-in-law tasted her matzo-ball soup and said, her Polish accent unsoftened by forty years in America, “This is good, Mary Frances, but you need to work on your matzo balls. They’re too fluffy. They should be heavy, like a rock.” I felt certain no one had ever had to say this to Randy Kurtz’s mother. How could I feel at home among people whose uncles were named Irving and Sol when mine was named Bubba?
And so, ill at ease with both the Southerners and the Jews, I found a group of like-minded people in a chocolate store; with the onset of puberty, as my sexual impulses blossomed, I realized just how like-minded we were. Finally one day in the preparation room a couple of Mark’s friends kissed each other on the mouth, something I had never seen two men do before. I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. Three days later I stopped by the store after school, as usual, and hung out while Mark enrobed things and unmolded other things and was jolly. And I waited and waited and waited to get up the courage to say what I wanted to say and I finally did but I was so scared I couldn’t do it in English so I used French.
“J’ai peur que je suis gay,”
I said, failing in my nervousness to use the subjunctive.
I’m scared that I’m gay.
Mark cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Let’s sit down,” he said, and we did. “If you made love to a man, what would be the best part?”
“Um…lying together afterward.”
“And when you saw those two kissing the other day, what did you think?”
I wasn’t brave enough to tell him I wished it had been me, so I just said, “I liked it.”
We talked a little more, and he said, “Yes, you’re gay,” and I was flooded with a sense of homecoming. It is obvious to me in retrospect that he had understood this about me from the moment we met, but I appreciate his pretense of open-minded investigation. And thank
God
he didn’t feed me any claptrap about how being attracted to boys didn’t necessarily mean anything one way or another and as I grew older I would feel a lot of different things and I didn’t need to make any decisions about who I was right away and blah blah blah because if he had said those things I would have felt more estranged from the world than ever and God knows what would have become of me by now.
As I
Of course, many Charlestonians would have found my civil-rights-worker parents untrustworthy even without the benefit of education. One afternoon when I was five I came home from playing with my across-the-street neighbor Betsy and asked my father, “Daddy, what’s a nigger-loving kike?” When he recovered from the apoplectic fit into which this had sent him and asked me why I wanted to know, I said, “Because Betsy says that her daddy says that you are one.”
Betsy’s daddy also published a white-supremacist newsletter, though I didn’t know that at the time. But I did know I was unlikely to join the ranks of the Good Ol’ Boys. My mother’s ancestors had settled the city and we were white, so most of our neighbors welcomed us heartily enough, but something in me still felt out of place bobbing for apples at the block Hallowe’en parties.
The one part of Charleston in which education found an enthusiastic home was the Jewish community, which is large, Charleston having been home to the first Reform congregation in America. But here too there was a problem; to wit, my mother was Christian. According to Jewish law, therefore, even though I was being raised Jewish, I was not considered a Jew by birth. I rectified this state of affairs at the age of seven by converting to Judaism. Nevertheless I lacked the strong points of reference that the other synagogue kids took for granted in their culturally Jewish homes.
Oh, my mother tried, but she exposed herself time and again, like when her mother-in-law tasted her matzo-ball soup and said, her Polish accent unsoftened by forty years in America, “This is good, Mary Frances, but you need to work on your matzo balls. They’re too fluffy. They should be heavy, like a rock.” I felt certain no one had ever had to say this to Randy Kurtz’s mother. How could I feel at home among people whose uncles were named Irving and Sol when mine was named Bubba?
And so, ill at ease with both the Southerners and the Jews, I found a group of like-minded people in a chocolate store; with the onset of puberty, as my sexual impulses blossomed, I realized just how like-minded we were. Finally one day in the preparation room a couple of Mark’s friends kissed each other on the mouth, something I had never seen two men do before. I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. Three days later I stopped by the store after school, as usual, and hung out while Mark enrobed things and unmolded other things and was jolly. And I waited and waited and waited to get up the courage to say what I wanted to say and I finally did but I was so scared I couldn’t do it in English so I used French.
“J’ai peur que je suis gay,”
I said, failing in my nervousness to use the subjunctive.
I’m scared that I’m gay.
Mark cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Let’s sit down,” he said, and we did. “If you made love to a man, what would be the best part?”
“Um…lying together afterward.”
“And when you saw those two kissing the other day, what did you think?”
I wasn’t brave enough to tell him I wished it had been me, so I just said, “I liked it.”
We talked a little more, and he said, “Yes, you’re gay,” and I was flooded with a sense of homecoming. It is obvious to me in retrospect that he had understood this about me from the moment we met, but I appreciate his pretense of open-minded investigation. And thank
God
he didn’t feed me any claptrap about how being attracted to boys didn’t necessarily mean anything one way or another and as I grew older I would feel a lot of different things and I didn’t need to make any decisions about who I was right away and blah blah blah because if he had said those things I would have felt more estranged from the world than ever and God knows what would have become of me by now.
As I
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