Sexual Abuse. The Unspoken Parts. On xoJane.com

LIKE IN THE WEBERMAN TRIAL, I WAS A VICTIM OF SEXUAL ABUSE WITHIN MY HASIDIC COMMUNITY, AND HERE'S THE TRUTH OF MODESTY COMMITEES

Seedy Business (fiction)

 I was on the way to meet face-to-face with my victim in McKinleyville, California. I was expecting a comfortable flight to a very uncomfortable meeting with the person whose imminent death I had caused, when some sweaty, white guy sat down next to me while yelling at his BlackBerry. “Seriously, I have to fly economy because you jackasses fucked up!” He was trim and clean cut but on the heavy side, beads of perspiration rolling down his forehead, reminding me of Chris Christie.

“Sometimes we end up in places we didn't plan, eh?” I said.

He didn’t even glance at me. “Fuckin’ A!” he mumbled. He turned to the flight attendant’s cleavage. “I’ll have a scotch. Neat.”

“Fuckin’ A!” she said under her breath. Karma is a bitch, and I love her.

*

One day earlier I was sitting at the rebbe’s tish. It was during shovavim, that time of year when our private parts take center stage in all sermons.

“The sperm is the energy of the body and the light of the eyes,” the rebbe was saying. “When too much is ejected, the body is destroyed and life is lost. Those who spill their seed often, old age comes upon them; their power fades, their eyes darken, and a bad odor is emitted from their mouths. The hair on their heads and eyebrows fall out. The hair of their beards, armpits, and legs grows thicker and their teeth fall out. And many other troubles apart from these come upon him.”

I was trying to feel the thickness of my eyebrows in the dark as the rebbe’s voice hammered away inside my head.

“We now know from experts that this sin is a leading cause of death.” With only a few hours between my last incident and my next one, my time on this world seemed limited. “And not only is it a sin and a danger to yourself; it’s a danger to the world,” the rebbe wailed, while his five hundred congregants sobbed along with him. “Right now, at this moment, there is someone dying from cancer because of your lack of self-control. As we have seen during the Holocaust, when God strikes with anger, he strikes the guilty and the innocent alike.”

The thought of someone dying of cancer because of my masturbatory habits made me uneasy. Whoever it was, that poor person had no idea what hit him. I wasn’t going to masturbate ever again, that was for sure, but my conscience was eating at me. I owed the cancer-stricken victim an apology. And their family too. For spilling the seed that wasted their loved one. I wanted to explain that I had no malicious intentions. I had just wanted to, you know, relieve stress. I really had no idea.

The rebbe finished the sermon and the lights came on. All around me, people were wiping their tears, looking cleansed and sin-free. Cancer was soon to be a thing of the past.

*

I took another shot at making conversation with sweaty-guy. “What are you going to McKinleyville for?”

“Ugh, some bullshit thing,” he said.

I wondered if he too was going to visit his victim. I looked at his eyebrows. They were thick. I leaned in closer to smell his breath, but I wasn’t close enough. I leaned in closer. “Get offa me, ya faggot!” he yelled. He tried to move as far away from me as his armrests allowed, but it was too late. I smelled his breath, and it reeked. This man has a lot of blood on his hands, I thought. I shouldn’t be talking to him.

*

I knew my victim was from McKinleyville, California, because God told me so. I contacted God through his preferred method. I called upon him by the words of King David in Psalms, and he replied, as usual, in Sign Language. First it became cloudy, which was a clear sign. It is how all godly communications begin. The first letters of certain verses started glowing, which signified the name of the town and the name of my victim. “Lynn Mirocol” I clearly read out from Psalms, Chapter Two. I have always been skeptical of people who claimed that God has spoken to them, until the day I found myself on a plane to McKinleyville sitting next to a rude and sweaty mass-manslaughterer.

*

Just as I expected, Lynn lived in a modest house with a white picket fence, and as I expected, she was sitting in a gazebo chair reading Dying With The Lord: A Christian Guide For The Terminally Ill.

“It’s OK, sir,” she said softly. “There’s no need to apologize. It’s God’s will.” I tried to respond, “Yeah, but…” She was having none of it. “Come on, you were just a kid.” Her son Pat, in a ponytail and camouflage shorts, sat shirtless at the other end of the white porch smoking Capris and pretending to read Truckers Digest. He was clearly eavesdropping on our very private conversation.

“You know, son,” Lynn said softly, “Jesus died for our sins as well. God chose him. God wanted him near him. He chooses the really special ones to spill his fury at for the sins of people.” It might have been the painkillers talking, but it made perfect sense. She was one of the innocents from the rebbe’s sermon. I should ask the rebbe about Jesus.

As I left her home, her son followed me to my rented Toyota Yaris. “Listen, you jackoff,” he called to me. “If you ever lay your hand below your belt ever again, I’ll fucking hunt you down and cut your sorryass prick off for good.” He was a foot taller than me, his piercing, bloodshot eyes told me he was dead serious. “That’s my mother right there, and she’s dying because you couldn’t keep your hands off your cock. Now get the fuck outta here.”

All I wanted was to go home and masturbate again. Maybe Pat would get cancer and die.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Thanks to Shulem Deen of Unpious.com for editing this story. Thanks to Meagan Dwyer, Pearl Gluck and all those who listened to and read all the earlier versions and offer their constructive criticism.

In Case You Weren't Wondering

Hey Fellas,

It's been a while.

For those of you who worry about me, don't. Because...just don't. I'm fine. Really, I'm great.

Now that I got that out of the way. Some of you have been asking me in person and via email why I haven't written in a while. First of all, thank you, it feels great to be wanted and appreciated. Second, I've been very busy and my life has taken a dramatic turn for the good which keeps me busy with work and other projects. The time spent away from here has also given me a new appreciation for the written word and has also made me realize my poor writing skills. But before you start with all the "oh c'mon! you're a great writer, blah blah blah, let me give you a hug..." I'd like to tell you that it hasn't stopped me from writing, instead it just made me work harder to improve my writing as you can plainly see here. My vocabulary has improved, and my writing process more thought out and deliberate. I blame it on consuming mass amounts of works by Etgar Keret, David Sedaris, Shalom Auslander, and Joel Stein.

What I'd like to say is....

Hold on! I don't like to say "what I'd like to say." That phrase annoys me, the people who use it annoy me. If you'd like to say something, say it. There is absolutely no need to inform me before saying what you'd like to say, that you'd like to say it. Once you have said what you'd like to say, I automatically assume that that is what you liked to say.

Now here's what I'd like to say...

Ugh! Fuck it!

Alright. Alright. I have been working on some pieces for a while. I have a real full-time job which doesn't leave me much time to write the way I want to. But I promise I will finish them and post them soon.

Until then, take care of yourselves, take care of those in your families who love you unconditionally, do something sexy, and dress like you have something to say.

P.S. Nah, forget it. It's fine the way it is. I can always edit it later.

GOD NO! Penn Jillette, YES!

I just finished listening to the audio version of Penn Jillette's new book God No! Signs You may Already Be an Atheist, And Other Magical Tales. OK, I didn't really finish it, but I finished the chapter where he writes about our little dinner we had at Traif last year. He tells the story better than me, and I laughed harder hearing the story from him than the laughs I get when I tell the story. But it also made me emotional and teary eyed.

Penn shares my  - and my friends' - stories with his readers, what that experience has taught him, and what he took away from it. Now I feel it is my chance to share what that night meant for me.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. First of all, I had dinner with a celebrity. Not just any celebrity, but one I greatly admire. So that is pretty cool in itself. What's even cooler, is that I am in his book, and that he cleverly placed a classified ad for my services in it.

But being able to name-drop "I had dinner with Penn Jillette" and the fact that his honorable mention might make me a few bucks one day, are nothing compared to the lifelong impact Penn has had on me before, after, and during that dinner.

Long before I had the honor and pleasure of being in his presence, his words of wisdom entering my psyche through my iPod, computer screen, and television have had a deep impact on me. George Carlin taught me that it is OK to poke fun at the crazy shit people you love believe in, and that if something is sacred it's probably bullshit. Richard Dawkins taught me what is real and what is not, and Hitchens taught me how to talk to religious people and have fun doing it.

But Penn Fraser Jilltette taught me how to be a good human being. When I worried "who will take care of me if there is no God?" I wasn't only worrying about my health and general well-being, what worried me most was how I will be able to retain my morality and humanity, I was afraid that without God I will become a thief a rapist and a murderer. Yes, reading Dawkins' take on morality in The God Delusion was somewhat comforting, but nowhere near as comforting as knowing an Atheist who's moral values will help me sleep better at night knowing I'm not going to wake up a psychopath. That fear vanished when I became acquainted with Penn Jillette.

Throughout my journey out of the Hasidic world I found myself searching for good goyim. Having been told my entire life that all - even religious and especially Atheist - goyim are nothing but evil and filthy murderers, thieves, and idol-worshiping adulterers, I needed to prove to myself upon accepting the goyishe lifestyle that I was wrong. It didn't take long for me to find out that I had been lied to, for I became friends with many wonderful goyim and found the love of my life in a drop-dead-gorgeous Irish-Catholic shiksa from Arkansas.

But what about those evil Atheists who believe in nothing?

Well, the stripper helped. But for all I know, she could have been an abusive crack-whore mother who went from the club to shoplift from Walmart and whatnot. But my solace came packaged in a loud 6' 10' Atheist goy from Massachusetts.

Penn Jillette is one of the nicest, sweetest, most compassionate and empathetic person I have come to known. His sense of right and wrong is clear, and his morals are sound. During the three hours I spent with him over dinner, I learned lessons on how to treat another human being. As surprising as it might seem to some, I learned how to treat women. His unsurprisingly loud argument with a fellow diner over using condoms showed me a person who is incapable of harming another human being no matter what. Known to everyone as the loudmouth and foulmouthed talker, he became known to me as a listener, a listener to other people and their feelings. His presence is one of love and warmth. Writing this I find it difficult to articulate specifically what it was he said that had such a deep impact on me. Maybe it was my expectations of him versus the reality of who he is. Maybe I was - and still am - star-struck. But I like to believe it was because I have just met the "nice atheist" I have been looking for for so long.

Penn might be an Atheist, but he believes in being good. God might not exist, but who needs him when there's Penn Jillette?

Me and Penn