Of the rest of them, there was one guy, Darren, who Simon had met before at a gay Yeshiva dance. He was tan like Uri, but his body seemed hairless. It was only later, when Simon was closer, that he realized Darren had shaved it, even his crotch.
The other two guys, Ezra and Joshua, Uri knew from when he lived uptown and went to the gay congregation there. Joshua was a redhead whose arms looked too thin. Not at all Simon’s type, but then he never understood the fascination many men seemed to have for redheads. Ezra, on the other hand, was the kind of boy who might catch his eye on the street, with his dark eyes and goatee and v-shaped torso. It was a surprise to Simon to learn that Ezra was shy and unsure of himself, sort of nerdy, hiding behind his glasses the way Simon felt that he, too, did quite often.
Everyone was in their late twenties or early thirties. And they all seemed nervous or unsure of what they were or should be doing. Everyone except Uri, the mastermind of this little get-together, who walked about with complete comfort, unconcerned about his near nudity and the sex that was on everyone’s mind. He played the host but also seemed completely at ease, chatting with his friends as if this were any ordinary get-together.
Since few people knew each other, no one really knew what to talk about.
“It’s funny,” Howie said. “My mother is always after me, since all my boyfriends are blond and blue-eyed. If you have to have sex with other men, she asks, couldn’t you at least find a nice Jewish boy? And here I am, in a roomful of guys she’d approve of, only not about to do anything she’d approve of! ”
It was the wrong thing to say, really, Simon thought. No one wanted to be reminded of what their parents would think of what they were about to do, for all that everyone there was eager for it all to begin. But what would happen when they ran into these men again in their regular lives? How could Simon ever go back to shul if he saw Stanley, tonight, with a stranger’s fingers up his butt? He would never be able to see these men again without remembering what they looked like naked.
The silence stretched on uncomfortably.
Darren told a joke: “So this kid comes home from school and says, ‘Ma, Ma, I got a part in the school play!’ And the mother says, ‘That’s nice, dear, what part did you get?’ So the kid tells her, ‘I got the part of the Jewish husband.’ The mother stops what she’s doing and looks at her son. ‘What’s the matter,’ she says, ‘you couldn’t get a speaking role?’”
Everyone laughed.
The buzzer rang. All noise stopped suddenly and everyone turned to stare at the door, even though whoever it was had to come all the way upstairs before they got to the door. They were all wondering the same things, Simon knew: would it be someone familiar or a stranger? What if this new guy was ugly? What if he was unbearably cute?
Even though only Uri knew everyone there, it was like they were all tired old regulars at some bar, just waiting for fresh meat to show up. Was that how things would happen: one time someone would come in and catch someone’s eye and make their move, breaking the ice for everyone else to start having sex? Who would be the first to do something?
Uri looked through the peephole of the door, then opened it. Simon could see from where he was that there were two people on the other side of the door frame.
“Aaron,” Uri said, “what a pleasant surprise. You should have told me you were bringing someone.”
“It was sort of a last-minute thing,” Aaron said. “Jorge, meet my friend Uri. Uri, this is Jorge.” He smiled at Jorge, then looked back at Uri and winked. “We met at Escuelita last night.”
This was one of those moments of sex party etiquette. Or perhaps simply party etiquette. What to do if someone brings someone who hasn’t been invited? At a normal party, this sort of behaviour is usually more forgivable.
Uri looked over Aaron’s friend and evidently decided he made the cut. He invited them both in and led them to the kitchen to unclothe.
The whole nature of the party seemed to change with Jorge there. It was the presence of foreskin in a roomful of circumcized gay men. It was the presence of a non-Jew
Simon remembered how his uncle Morty used to always joke, “Shiksas are for practice,” whenever he asked if Simon had a girlfriend yet.
Simon didn’t doubt that this sheggitz would get as much practice as he wanted tonight, since every guy there seemed to be utterly entranced by Jorge’s smooth dark skin as he stood in the doorway of the kitchen — to show off? — and peeled out of his clothes.
Once stripped down to their Calvins and 2(x)ist briefs and holding their cocktails, they came back into the other room. There were ten men now crowded into the small area, sitting or standing around awkwardly.
“Hey, we’ve got a minyan now,” Howie said. You could tell he was happy to be the first one to notice.
“Actually, we don’t,” Ezra said. And technically he was right; Jorge didn’t count.
But that was for prayer. For a sex party, ten bodies — regardless of their religion — was enough critical mass to get things going. Uri circulated, introducing people and drawing them into conversation. Not everyone could fit comfortably in the living room — at least, there weren’t enough places to sit. So some of the guys had drifted into the bedroom, where they’d started to get it on while no one — at least, not everyone — was looking.
Of course, the moment one of the living room group noticed, everyone rushed to the doorway of the bedroom to watch.
Somehow this didn’t seem to be the right sex party etiquette, but it didn’t stop anyone.
Simon watched the back of Joshua’s head bobbing up and down before Stanley’s crotch, as if Josh were davening, and perhaps this was like prayer for Joshua, lost in a trance of cock-sucking.
With all of them crowded there at the door, growing hard from their voyeurism if they weren’t already, it didn’t take long for the rest of the guys to start touching one another as well. A hand on thigh or belly, fingers cold with nervousness. A hand cupping an ass cheek through the fabric of his underwear. Simon didn’t really know who was who but it didn’t matter. His heart beat faster, he felt a tight constriction in his chest from nervousness, then he took a deep breath and relaxed into the sensation of his ass in some man’s palm. He thought for a moment back to that bathhouse in Puerto Rico, where even though he’d wanted to he hadn’t done anything except in the concealing darkness of the back room, as if sex were something too shameful to be seen. Among these ten men, these other gay Jews gathered together for the worship of the body, he no longer felt guilty about his desperate yearnings for sex with other men, as he had on the walk over here and on so many occasions previously. He looked around him, at the men who were so like him, now lost in their pleasure, the giving and the receiving of it, and he smiled. He was not alone, and he was glad to be part of something bigger than himself, this minyan, which for him is what it was even if one of the men was not Jewish. A minyan of desire, men who no longer needed to congregate in clandestine secret to worship, but who could love and pray without shame.
“Amen,” he whispered, and pressed himself back against the man who cupped his ass, no longer holding himself apart.
Glossary
Daven: The ritual bending of the knees during prayer that causes the body to sway back and forth.
Lamed vavnik: The term for the thirty-six people who are so pure of heart that God does not again destroy the world with flood or fire or so forth. Because no one knows who these thirty-six are, Jews are taught to be kind and offer hospitality to all, in case they are one of the lamed vavnik.