It was the summer of Studs Levine’s bar-mitzvah. It was the swellest summer of his life. The days were filled with the old gang. What a great bunch of guys! Red Lipschitz and Runt Ruditzky and Weary Blumenkrantz and all the rest of them. Sure, he’d had to give two hours a day to Rabbi O’Toole—who was real strict the way goys always are when they convert— but the rest of the day was all games with the swellest bunch of fellows in the East Bronx. They’d hitch rides on the trolley under the el on White Plains Road; or they’d go to the Paradise Theatre over on Fordham and the Concourse and sit in the first row of the balcony so when the faggot usher came up to shoosh them they could pull his pants off and throw them over the railing into the orchestra; or they’d snitch bagles from the kosher bakery on Allerton Avenue and sneak down the cellar of one of their apartment houses and make bets on who could string more bagles on his you-know-what (Studs set the record with five one day after seeing an unexpurgated version of the movie Ecstasy starring Miss Hedy Lamarr in the buff; even at that early age he showed promise); or they’d go to the poolroom and hustle some rich kid from the West Side; or maybe they’d just sit around gassing with the local pusher, making side bets on how many needle-marks there were on his arm.
Yeah, those were the days. Studs got a lump in his throat just thinking about them. And the nights? Well, that was also the summer that Studs discovered sex. It came about oddly.
“So a few weeks from now you’ll be a man,” Papa Levine observed one night, “so when you grow up, what kind man you going to be?”
“I dunno?” said Studs, a product of his crummy, cruddy, underprivileged environment.
“Maybe a cutter like me?” Papa Levine said hopefully.
“Nah.”
“It’s an honest living, you shouldn’t knock it. But be what you want. Only one word of advice, learn to do something with your hands.”
That very night Studs felt a sudden tumescence in his you-know-what. Experimenting with his hands, he discovered how to relieve it. The sensation was so pleasant that he relieved it five times that very first night. By morning he had learned to do something with his hands. But was his father pleased? He certainly should have been, for it was very rare for Studs to act on his advice so quickly and diligently. Alas, Papa Levine was not pleased. He caught Studs at it in the bathroom one night and rewarded him with a mighty clop on the head and a few words of parental sex instruction.
“Don’t play with your schmuck, schmuck. Meshuginah in the kopf it’ll make you!”
After that Studs was more careful. He wasn’t afraid that beating his meat would drive him nuts. But he was sure that many more clops on the kopf from his old man would. Papa Levine was not one of your over-permissive parents, and he packed a wicked right.
So Studs was very careful. With no lock on the bathroom door, he had to be. What he did was to pretend to take a shower and pull it off behind the closed shower curtains and under cover of the running water. Soon he was taking three and four showers a night and Mama Levine was bragging about him to the neighborhood yentas: “Clean? That boy’s so clean, you wouldn’t believe it!” The other women on the block, who either had locks on their bathroom doors, or perhaps only sons come late to puberty, were indeed envious. However, with him occupying the bathroom so much, there were certain grumblings within the Levine family.
The main kvetch was Lascivia Levine, Studs’ sister, three years older than he. “Mama, make him get out,” she wailed night after night, “I have to do my hair.”
Instead of making such a tsimmes, you should be proud to have such a clean brother.”
“Proud, shmoud! What does he do in there so long?”
“What should he do? He scrubs. Soap and water. Better you should try some instead of that gook you shmear all aver your face. It might maybe get rid of the blackheads. ’
“Never mind my blackheads. Just make him get out. I’m all ready for bed and I have to set my hair.”
“You want him out, so you get him out. Such a hygienic boy, I wouldn’t bother.”
Fuming, Lascivia strode to the door and called to her brother. No answer. She called again, louder. Only the sound of running water. She screamed his name with all her might.
“Sharrup!” came Papa Levine’s voice from the bedroom, “You want they should hear you on Pelham Parkway.
Gritting her teeth, Lascivia went through the bathroom door. She was greeted by the sight of the closed shower curtains. She spoke her brother’s name again. Still no answer. Angry beyond the proscribed modesty of Jewish law which says that no good hamishe girl, single or, married, should look on the private parts of a Jewish man or boy, regardless of the relationship (even applying to husbands and wives), Lascivia threw back the shower curtains to confront her brother.
“You can’t keep hogging the bath—” she began. She stopped as she saw what he was doing.
It was more the sudden cold draft than his sister’s voice that made Studs reluctantly open his eyes. He blinked and looked again. Immediately, Lascivia became inextricably mixed up in the fantasy he’d been having. His hand kept moving as he stared at her with his jaw hanging loose with a new awareness.
His sister was as sexy as a shiksa whore! Why had he never noticed it before? Standing there, with her cheeks blushing and the sharp red tips of her little breasts swelling visibly under her transparent nightgown, she was more exciting by proximity than the celluloid Hedy Lamarr had ever been. Studs allowed his gaze to drop further down. The thick, curly black triangle of her girlhood was thrusting out against the nightie.
Their hands reached out at the same moment. Lascivia’s replaced Studs’ on his erect you-know,-what. His pulled up her nightie. Then his finger tangled in the sporran. Soon it was glistening with lotions of love.
After a while, Studs stepped from the tub and he and his sister sank silently to the bathmat. It was here that Papa Levine, his eyes half-closed with sleep, his reason for getting up dangling out of his pajama fly, almost tripped over them. He stood speechless, but his suddenly rigid rod gave him away before he could give vent to his anger. Lascivia noticed it with interest.
To both children’s surprise, Papa Levine didn’t explode. Perhaps it was his awareness of his own lack of control which made him take a tack that was strangely mild for him. “Go to bed, Lascivia,” he said. “In the morning Mama will talk to you. And you and I,” he told his son, “are gonna have a bissel chat right now."
Studs steeled himself for the knock on the noggin after his sister had gone. But it didn’t come. Instead, Papa Levine put his arm around his son’s shoulder in a way he never had before. “So it looks like you really are a mensch,” he began, “even before the bar-mitzvah.”
“I guess so, Pa.”
“Then it’s time, Mr. Mensch, that I told you about women. Some things you should know. First of all, you don’t just stick it wherever’s handy, you know. Not in your sister, not in Mama. They got a name for that -—insist, I think it is. So you keep hands off the family, I make myself clear?”
“Sure, Pa.” Then, as an afterthought: “What about cousins?”
“No cousins. Absolutely.”
“Okay,’ Pa.” Studs was disappointed. His second cousin Gertie was a real piece and he’d only recently started considering her as the one who might cooperate with him in following Weary Blumenkrantz’s advice to “break you cherry.”