I told him that my parents weren't so badâthey weren't hippies who rolled joints with their kids, but they weren't strict drill sergeants, either. If their demands weren't flexible, they were at least reasonable most of the time. “They're just not used to anyone else getting their way,” I explained. “Rachel and I would never stand up to them the way you did.”
“Why not?”
“It's not like they'd hit us or anything,” I said. “But we'd just feel too guilty.”
“Yeah, I've been trying to help Rachel with that,” he said. “She's getting better.”
He made it sound like we had an illness, when I thought we were just being good kids. But maybe after a certain point, there's not much difference.
“Benji, you'll be going off to college next year, right?”
I'd already gotten into Maryland, with a partial scholarship.
“You won't be far from home, but you'll still be on your own,” he said. “You'll need to take care of yourself and think about what you want, not what they want. You can't spend your whole life trying to make them happy. You've got to do what makes you happy and hope that they eventually get behind you. They can't get behind you if you don't get out in front and be your own person.”
There was nothing specific in what Richard was saying, yet I felt like he was talking directly to me, like he knew exactly how I felt, like he saw me when other people looked right through me.
“Once you're out of here, you won't need to worry about what they think,” he said. “You won't need to be their âgood little boy' anymore. You can be who you want to be.”
It was time.
“I'm gay,” I said. No preface. Right to the point.
I'd never told anyone before. But after knowing him for just a few hours, I was comfortable enough to tell Richard. Or maybe he was perfect because I hadn't known him for long; if he rejected me, it wouldn't much matter.
The silence stretched for one second. Two seconds. Three.
“I know,” he said.
I started to sweat.
“How can you know? I've never told anyone. Rachel doesn't even know.”
“She knows, too,” he said. “She figured it out a while ago. She's been waiting for you to tell her yourself.”
My face flushed.
“I don't get it.”
Richard explained that they both had gay friends in Israel, and in Boston, and Rachel had talked to them about her suspicions: Why doesn't Benji ever go out with girls? Why is Benji interested in dancing but not sports? Why does Benji listen to Erasure and watch every film Johnny Depp makes? As their gay friends asked more and more questions in return, they started to piece things together. It was nothing definite, nothing more than a hunch. But Rachel had a feeling they were right.
Richard had set me up, prodding me. But I wasn't angry. I was relieved.
Richard told me that things would be better in college and that moving out of my parents' house would open up a world of possibilities. “Someday you'll come out to them, too,” he said. “And they'll be fine. Eventually.”
“Are you kidding? I'm never telling them. I'm the golden child, now that Rachel's on their shit list.”
“They'll get over that, too,” he said. I wasn't so sure. But he said, “Trust me,” and I did.
Then Richard hugged me. This, too, was something out of the ordinary in my family.
“If they don't get over it by next summer,” I said, “I'll come to your wedding without them.”
Â
The Hanukkah party wasn't a complete disaster.
True, the DJ played crappy pop music that was nearly a year out of date, and the few lights set up in the synagogue social hall were pretty lame, and the table of soggy latkes and chocolate gelt and Manischewitz wineâmeant to be kitcshy, I assumedâwas closer to tragic. But there was one thing that salvaged the night, and his name was David.
I found him fairly quickly: I saw him spitting half a latke into a paper napkin and he smiled when he realized he was being watched. He waved an embarrassed hello and I introduced myself. We were two of the youngest people in the room and two of only perhaps a dozen who had come solo. We soon realized that we'd probably have a better time if we stuck together.
David was from Boston originallyâNewton, to be exactâand had gone to school at Brandeis. He'd moved to Washington for law school, and had been working at a small firm for a few years since he'd passed the bar. His hair was curly and dark brown, his eyes intense and the same dark brown. He had a firm handshake and very straight teeth and he looked like someone who would have been more comfortable in a suit than he was in jeans.
We chatted in the hallway by the water fountain, about the presidential race that was about to kick into gearâspecifically our mixed feelings regarding Hillary Clinton's candidacy, and our first impressions of Barack Obama.
“I like him, at least what I've seen so far,” I said.
He agreed, but wasn't ready to abandon Hillary: “He's still too green,” he said, “but maybe he'll be her running mate.”
“Or vice versa,” I offered.
“I wouldn't count your chickens quite yet,” he said. “The primaries haven't even started.”
A Madonna song came onâsomething from a few albums ago, but it was somethingâso I took him by the hand and led him back inside. We danced for a few minutes between a middle-aged lesbian couple and a gay male couple with matching moustaches, and when the song ended, we sat down on the edge of the dance floor to talk some more.
This time, I told him about the rabbi, and as I got deeper into the story, he gently put his hand on my knee. He listened intently and asked a few prodding questions; he never moved his hand.
And then, when I decided I'd had enough of light blue crepe paper and last summer's FM hits, I asked David if we could go somewhere else.
I suggested a coffeehouse near Dupont Circle and he agreed.
As I drove across town, I could watch him following me in my rearview mirror. Maybe Michelle was right, I thought: It wasn't so hard to meet a Jewish guy. Sure, the dance was pretty much a dud, but I did meet someoneâsomeone with a job and a sense of humor and decent rhythm. Someone who was unlikely to dump me for being Jewish, or keep me around simply
because
I was Jewish. Someone my mother would like. For what that was worth.
We grabbed a table for two at Java the Hut.
“I've never been here before,” he said.
“You're kidding.”
“Seriously,” he said. “I live in Georgetown and work downtown. I don't hang out in Dupont Circle.”
“Yeah, I've never seen you out,” I told him.
“I don't go out much,” he said. “I'm not really into the scene.”
“So of all places, why did you decide to go to this Hanukkah party?” I asked.
“Well, I'm a member.”
“Of what?”
“Of the synagogue,” he said.
“Oh.”
“I've never seen you
there,
” he said.
“I guess I'm not really into
that
scene,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “You came to the Hanukkah dance tonight and you spent half an hour telling me about this rabbi you've befriended.”
“To be honest,” I said, “the dance was sort of my roommate's idea. She thought I should go somewhere to meet a nice Jewish boy.”
“And you did,” he said, smiling and taking a sip of his latte.
“So did you,” I replied.
He tapped his coffee cup against mine.
“First time I've been in a synagogue since the High Holidays,” I said. “And probably the last time until next year's High Holidays.”
Now he frowned. “Oh, you just haven't been to the right synagogue,” he said. “You should really give
my
synagogue a try.”
Someone my mother would like.
He spent the next ten minutes telling about how great the gay synagogue was: same-sex commitment ceremonies, AIDS benefits, a gay rabbi. Parties and mixers where you could meet potential partners outside a bar. And during weekly services, they used a lot of the same tunes I'd recognize from Conservative services growing up, but with better gender politics in the English translations.
I wasn't sold. Shabbat services full of gay people weren't much more appealing to me than Shabbat services full of straight people. He wasn't any more persuasive about synagogue attendance than my mother had been. Or Rabbi Zuckerman.
“I used to feel alienated, too,” he said, “I was really active in Hillel at Brandeis, but after college, I didn't feel any connection to the Jewish community as a single gay man. I tried to find the right synagogue here in Washington, but they were all so family-orientedâyou know, Hebrew school and bar mitzvahs, and if you're not a part of that, then you're kind of invisible. So I stopped doing anything Jewish at all. I felt like I was drifting away.”
I nodded. I'd never even been active in Hillel in college; even if it professed to being “liberal” and “open” to gay people, it always seemed like a dating service to me, aimed at helping Jewish boys and Jewish girls hook up. So I'd felt alienated for even longer than he had.
“But the gay synagogue really pulled me back in,” he continued. “I felt like I found my community again.”
“What about the gay community?” I asked.
“I don't really relate to most of that,” he said. “The bars, the gyms, the whole thing. I mean, don't get me wrongâI'm out and everything. I've been out since I was twenty. But I've been Jewish my whole life.”
As we finished our coffee, David explained how exciting it had been for him to realize that he could be a gay man, but still live the Jewish life he'd always expected. He went to synagogue every Saturday. He lit candles every Friday night. He didn't just observe Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippurâhe celebrated Purim, Sukkot, and a few holidays whose names sounded familiar but whose exact roots and placement on the calendar had long since vanished from my mind. He even kept kosher.
I listened politely until he was finished.
“You grew up doing all of this stuff,” he said. “Don't you miss it?”
I thought about it for a few seconds, trying to imagine sitting next to David in synagogue, lighting candles together, checking the list of ingredients on everything in the grocery store to make sure it was kosher.
“Not really,” I said. “I guess I'm just not that kind of Jew.”
Â
“He was just one guy, Benji,” Michelle said while we waited to be seated for Sunday brunch. “I didn't say
any
Jewish guy would solve your problems.”
“I know,” I said. “I just got my hopes upâI went to that stupid party and met this guy right away. But he wasn't the right one, either.”
“There are other Jews in the sea,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe I'm supposed to be single.”
“Lighten up, will you? It's your birthday. You're seriously ruining it.”
The hostess showed us to our table, a quiet spot in the back; she probably thought we were on a date. We had never been to this restaurantâa trendy bistro on Connecticut Avenue that was out of our normal price rangeâbut Michelle wanted to take me somewhere “special” on my birthday. Just the two of us.
So, in a way, it was a date.
“Nobody is
supposed
to be single,” she said while I studied the menu. “There's someone out there for everyone.”
“Now
you
sound like the rabbi.”
She didn't like that much. “What did he call it?”
“Bashert.”
“Right.”
“But the rabbi wasn't even being honest with himself,” I said. “Who was his
bashert?
Sophie? Or Irene? Who was the one person he was destined to be with?”
“Maybe you can have more than one.”
“No way,” I said. “If one person can have more than one
bashert,
then there's got to be a lot of people who don't have any. Think about it.”
She scrunched up her face dismissively. “I don't have to think about it. There's totally someone out there for you.”