37-So It is Written…
The Rock Springs, Wyoming stage sat between the bar and the patron tables. I set up stage right as usual, my back to the divider wall with its clever slat-opening configuration. It looked spiffy as all get-out until shortly into the first set of the first night, when some bozo grabbed at me from behind. I swatted his hand away, thinking he’d get the message, but apparently that just fed into a boy-girl slap ‘n tickle game, of which I knew nothing and cared even less. Somewhere in the middle of the third set, I spun around. “One more time, buddy, and I’ll shove these drumsticks right up your nose.”
I know, I know—another non-girl reaction. I shoulda giggled, played coy, used my feminine wiles to get the guy to buy me a drink, and then led him on to, well, maybe a smooch or two that might land a hefty tip. Just more instinctive girl stuff I didn’t I know that I didn’t know. It’d be years before Jim Henson’s Kermit the Frog sang, “It’s not easy being green,” but I immediately grokked with his lament. It’s not easy being non-girl inside a head-turning, knock-‘em-dead girl body.
On the upside, our “Tom and Claudia” road act was a glorious way to pretend I was actually a musician, being taken seriously as an actual musician—an easy self-delusion to sink into at that level of the business. I didn’t realize it then, but I was treading in my mother’s footprints, trying to convince myself that I really did have a budding career.
But… was it the same? Mom’s liquor-dependent calling had collapsed after a few one-song performances before a captive wartime audience. My ongoing act required no booze or street-drug support, yet captured a fair-to-middling’, sometimes even sizable amount of applause and laughter. But was any of that really for me… or was I just an adjunct to Tom’s talents? Okay, sure, the laughs were mine, but did I non-remember my jokes due to my lifelong retention problems, or was I purposely self-sabotaging? I mean, honestly—did I even really have lifelong remembery problems?
While every performer has their self-doubts—some throw up before getting on stage, no matter the greasepaint roar, no matter the crowd roar*—I fed at the guilt-fear-confusion buffet after every single performance, no matter all of the above. Still uncomfortable in my own body, still feeling the strings at my mother’s command, I couldn’t/wouldn’t accept myself as an asset to our act or even justification for being onstage. Yet we were as successful and appreciated as any other act on our circuit. Why couldn’t I just relax and enjoy the ride?
Why, indeed. Some might point out I was still healing from twenty-five years of control and degradation. Others—that is, one other—claimed I felt guilty about emasculating my husband. That, at least, was a hard no. Still others (if there were any left) may have recognized the disconnect of playing a man’s instrument as manly as I could, yet forever being addressed, treated, and diminished as inconsequential non-man.
By the time we played that life-pivoting Rock Springs gig, I’d given up trying to feel girl. A person born without a sense of humor will never get the joke, a soul without sight can never see the air-brushed sunset, and nothing I did, read, saw, or thought could whittle me into the statuesque/sensual/feminine round peg my physicality purported I was.
As if to prove the point, I non-considered how Tom felt about how I coped with being ogled and grabbed at on every gig. Did he feel emasculated when I didn’t run to him for protection? Or was he, as I suspected, relieved to not have to deal with that particular aspect of traveling with a woman? Then again, maybe I was lying to myself about lying to myself. Whatever the answer, it bore no weight and less urgency. I just had to suck it up and keep plowing forward, as always. Which I did, right into the noisy crowd down the hall and around the corner.
Scene: late winter, early spring, 1978. A fundraising gambling/gaming event in the venue’s big ballroom put on by the local synagogue representing a 200 young-family community. In Rock Springs, Wyoming, the only place where people didn’t insist, “We’re different ‘round these parts,” yet, in fact, were.
When Tom and I appeared on the giant room’s threshold, you’d athunk we were the messiah him/her/it/themselves walking through the door. “Lonsman!” people cried, rushing to surround and hug us. Obviously, they all knew each other and, just as obviously, we were kinsmen, owing to Tom wearing the map of Israel on his face and me sporting an unmistakably Ashkenazic figure. No, they wouldn’t be stopping in for a drink to see us perform, but they were selling bagels and schmears on the far table. Didn’t we want something to eat? And didn’t we want to join them for the community Seder next week?
Of course we did, whether we/I wanted to or not, because Tom was all about family and family attended Seder. Besides, it would mean we, i.e., I, didn’t have to piece together a sad, little private Seder plate using crackers for matzo like the year before. From the moment we presented ourselves as a living, breathing Jewish couple—what? No children yet? Why not? It’s a mitzvah!—we were swept into their community.
Phone messages reminded us of time and place, along with notes left at the front desk, sent to our room, and passed on to us from the bartender. We’d said “Yes” to be polite, but these Jews were as relentless as every member of Tom’s family. Come the first Passover sunset, we showed up at the designated location and hour, dumbasfuck ready for a swift, easy, fun service.
I’d only been to a full Seder once before, when a maternal uncle invited my mother’s family (of which he considered me a part) to his father’s house. That was the night I learned all four of my grandparents had fled the same Orthodox roots. My father, mother, and I were the only non-Hebrew-fluent attendees. It kinda felt good not being the only outlier but we didn’t go back the second night, of course, or the following year.
The Rock Springs Seder was Conservative, not Orthodox, but other than letting all participants sit beside each other, it went down exactly the same way—which is to say it was endless. My mother’s Seders were all about the food, so Dad jumped to that part quickly and ignored the after-dinner prayers and recitations. I don’t know why Tom and I thought the gathered 200 young families would follow such a truncated ritual, but we’d barely choked down the charosets/horseradish-on-matzo, about a third of the way to the meal, when we had to leave to get on stage.
This time, you’d athunk we were going to our doom. The folks on either side pleaded for us to stay; the leader stopped the service to offer a prayer for our good fortune. A scribbled note invited us to join the community again for a bris (snipping an eight-day-old’s foreskin) that coming Sunday. Sunday was Easter, a non-performance, non-travel day, so of course we acquiesced. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. So great to meet you all. Gotta go… gotta get onstage.
“When you get tired of traveling,” the leader announced to one and all, “you’ll find you want to come back and settle down in Rock Springs. And we’ll be here for you.”
Oy, such a relief—glad our spiritual future was all mapped out and ready for us. Slinking out of the same ballroom, we zipped down the hall in plenty of time to make the downbeat, one of our featured strengths. “Always on time; vewy entertaining.” Big Pink was waiting for us, elaborately fastened to Tom’s Fender with early-version zip ties. We were both famished, of course, having specifically not eaten before the Seder, not realizing we wouldn’t eat at the Seder. But the big hand struck the hour, so I counted down the first tune.
When we finally got back to our room after going out for a meal we couldn’t afford, a note had been slipped under our door, reminding us of time and place for the bris. I’d never been so wanted before in my life. My husband, not the most even-tempered guy in the world, blamed me for—he didn’t know what, but damn!
Passing over the next few sunrise-sunsets to “the day,” per the stack of notes we’d acquired, we followed the detailed instructions and elaborately drawn maps to drive the five, maybe three miles to the right house. Arriving punctually, we were quite early—we’d been in the hinterlands so long we’d forgotten how Jewish time works. But Mom and Grandma had already laid out an impressive spread and Dad and Grandpa were pouring, so we nibbled and drank and made small talk as people filtered in.
I knew them all, even though I’d never met any of these particular individuals before. That’s the thing about Jews—no matter how disparate we may seem, we’re a bound people far more than a religion, so no one really cares how observant you are so long as you recognize yourself as one of the tribe—in other words, moldable. Enfoldable. More than one person repeated the line about eventually returning to Rock Springs; maybe that’s how they built their community in the first place. Jews with a purpose (“When are you going to start your family?) are relentless, non-unlike almost every other ethnic group I’ve ever encountered. And I did feel welcome, damn near almost part of. Hundreds of miles away from my own suffocating family, maybe this was the alternative I needed, the community that would accept me for who I was… provided they never found out who I actually was.
For the record, we didn’t go settle down in Rock Springs when we eventually came off the road. Not sure if it was the five-year-old that put us off, or the endless wait for the mohel to get his act together.
Realize, this was long, long ago in a development far, far away from the weather-cracked streets of Chicago or Hasid-teeming pavements of Brooklyn. This was wilderness Jewry at its rural best, the first we’d encountered in our travels across Northern, Western, Southern America and Western, Middle Canada. So neither Tom nor I had any idea how to react when the little girl showed up dressed to the spangley nines and her face plastered with makeup. At first glance, she looked like a miniature… how can I put it? Prostitute? Maybe a model? A beauty contestant?
I’d love to say she was adorable, but the best I can come up with is… ghastly. She looked like walking rape bait. I couldn’t even tell if she had a facial expression under all that paint, and talking to her didn’t help. She was a perfectly sculpted little non-person. If’n I’d been girl, maybe I’d have felt sorry for her. Being me, I fought to not outwardly grimace.
“How sick do you have to be to dress your daughter like that?” Tom whispered, trying not to look. “Where’s her father, for God’s sake? I need a drink.”
While he anesthetized himself, I went for another helping of something sweet and gooey, wandering out of earshot so I didn’t have to hear the mother gush on and on about her beautiful daughter. My mother’s disapproval in the back of my head was loud enough.
The minutes slogged on. The over-stuffed living room had no air flow, and the rest of the house was closed off to visitors. No back or front-yard loitering, thank ye kindly. Finally, the infant was brought forth for all to sigh over. The mohel (who performs the circumcision) said a prayer, put a drop of wine in the baby’s mouth to mollify him… and then realized his knife wasn’t sharp enough to do the deed. The grandfather blanched. Wine was passed around.
“Anyone have a scissor?”
The grandfather had to sit down. The mohel lifted the foreskin. The baby screamed. The grandfather was escorted to a bedroom to lie down.
Bless my Swiss-cheese memory, I have no clue how long we all stayed stuffed into the one room, gathered expectantly around the screaming young’un. Somebody called to open a window. Somebody else offered a switchblade. Eventually, another somebody showed up with a sharp-enough blade, the mohel earned his fee, grateful Mazel tovs rang the air, and everybody began to sing and dance, just like in the movies.
But that was our cue. Husband and I smiled and greeted and congratulated our way out the front door and into the fresh air, where we jumped into the van as if it were a lifeboat and sat speechless and shuddering until Tom had the presence of mind to crank over the engine and hit the gas. “When we get done traveling,” he mimicked, “we’re gonna want to stay as far away from Rock Springs as possible.”
Back in our room, we ripped each other’s clothes off and gave in to our biological imperative, Easter church bells ringing in the distance. I swear I felt Jews everywhere breathe a sigh of relief the moment it happened.
I was pregnant.
* The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd (1964, book, music, and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley).