It's custom that on Christmas, before my parents and I sit around our ornamented table to eat, we attend mass at the local Roman Catholic Parish. We spent the daybreak in a shouting match about my refusal to emerge from my *dziura and leave with them to church.
*The Polish word for "hole". The narrator's father uses it to describe his son's room.
By the time I finished masturbating, it was twelve; afternoon mass had just commenced. I contemplated blowing it off completely, but figured it was the least I could do for my father as he never ceases to remind me that nothing would bring him more joy than my company at Sunday night mass.
I dressed in a plaid red flannel, light gray slacks, a light gray peacoat, and a pair of brown suede dress shoes. If I wasn't so pressed on time, I'd have swapped the flannel for something more elegant, for with the addition of my beard, I looked like a lumberjack in the early stages of converting to a gentleman. However, once I shaded my eyes with a pair of dark amber Wayfarers and gazed at my reflection in a tinted car window, I felt like a thin white Rick Ross (the rapper). And so I started toward the end of my block taking long lofty steps. At the end, down by where the community piled their garbage twice a week, a small pup was dragging his nose on the ground. The pup was preceded by a small, fair-skinned girl with dainty features. Two flat antlers protruded from her cherry-red hair. The dog whipped her around and I observed a small red sphere extending from her nose. As I approached, I recognized her to be the young Jewess who moved into my neighborhood about four years ago. Upon her arrival, she was only fifteen, and although her blossoming beauty radiated to a dangerous degree, I always managed to keep myself in check while in her presence. We hit it off pretty fast—she was quick-witted and bookish. It was easy with her, you'd introduce a topic, a recent event for example, even just a headline that you read, and she already had a thought-out opinion of the matter. And even if you played devil's advocate, as I often did, she'd cement through with bold conviction. Back then, I rejected her chutzpah. At the time, the only thing I was confident about was being unsure of everything. That was until she convinced me that confidence, even in the face of uncertainty, is the only way forward. Once I was convinced, I became both jealous of and feverishly attracted to her.
She turned eighteen at the start of one summer and literally parted her legs before me the minute the clock struck eleven forty-three pm, the time recorded on her birth certificate. We had gone out for dinner at The Olive Garden that evening—our parents knew that she and I would talk for long stretches of time outside and didn't think much of it. My parents liked her; they remarked that she was always cordial whenever running into her outside in the neighborhood. My mother would blush whenever she came up during dinner-table conversation, "I heard the neighbor girl got accepted into Princeton," she said one evening. "Yeah, she did. . . but I think she's choosing The Rhode Island School of Design," I replied. My father looked up after forking up some pickled cabbage, "Perhaps she'll convince you to go back to school," he snickered under his breath with grim sarcasm. At the time I was in the midst of a brief hiatus, taking a year or so to master the art of Chinese food delivery.
I once asked her how her parents felt about me as a serious prospect, and she replied, "Have you ever baked a dreidel?" I said nothing in response, understanding the message, but she proceeded to pinch my cheek saying, "Aw, fuck 'em, you're my favorite little gentile." With me at six-two and her at five-four, I towered over her.
At The Olive Garden the night of her eighteen birthday, she took a breadstick and began to wiggle it horizontally as if trying to perform the rubber pencil illusion. She then turned her head and pressed the tip of the breadstick against her rouge lips. She kissed it lightly and turned to me, smiling coyly. Then, without waiting for my initial reaction, she shoved the stick into her mouth and ferociously chomped down on it before chucking it back into the basket while crumbs were still raining down onto the table. Afterward, she fell into a wild hysteria, laughing like a hyena, gripping her stomach with one hand and pointing at my frozen wide-eyed gaze with the other.
That night, I paid seventy dollars in exchange for three unbothered hours with her in a bedroom at a Days Inn down the street from the restaurant. She was ravenous from the get-go, and we nearly skinned each-other when removing clothes, but once bare, I slowed the tempo—her growing more feverish with every graze. It was tight when I inserted. I manipulated my stroking sequence taking feedback from her every micro expression. We commenced the Bang-Mitzvah with missionary and for at least five minutes she vocalized nothing but high-pitched mouse-like squeaks. Then she looked into my eyes, wrapped her hands around my neck, brought me down to a hair's width away from her face and said, "I'm glad it's you. . . ."
As I approached her this Christmas morning, she smiled, the sun glinting off her face as if it were the surface of a lake.
"Hey, how you been? How's school?" I said while bending down to pay my respects to her furry little brown blotched shih tzu.
"Oh, it's fun. . . have my own space now. . . the freedom," she replied, sneaking a wink in at that last part. This caught me off guard. Ever since I took her innocence, we hadn't really been corresponding much. She left for school that summer, and Rhode Island was a ways away from Staten Island. And a week after that fateful night, I was let off from my food delivery position. The owner informed me that the restaurant's old driver was moving back into the area and that she had promised him a position if ever was the case. But after about a week, a 'Driver Wanted' sign hung in the window, and I began to doubt her story. I think she actually caught on to me. At the end of every shift, I was supposed to report my tip earnings and fork over a percentage . . . I always skimmed some off the top though, reporting less than I actually received. She must've been aware of realistic averages from past, honest drivers. After that bombshell, my funds quickly exasperated and as at least one of our parents was always home, I simply couldn't afford to have sex with her.
"Must be nice," I replied, petting the gleeful pup. "I found decent work, but I don't want to pay rent and share a kitchen with some rando."
"What's the job?" she asked while I rose from the ground, "And I get you."
"I'm a. . . like a teachers assistant. . . I work at a school."
"Aw, I'm so happy for you."
I didn't reply to that. Her pitiful tone indicated that she knew, or at least assumed, that I was going through a rough patch. Instead, I switched the topic.
"So. . . what's up with the Rudolph theme? And that's a wig right?"
"Ah, yes. . . . See, I'm a rebel Jew—you should come in and see my house, I've dressed this collapsible Christmas tree that I keep tucked away in the attic, and ABC Family's '25 Days of Christmas' is blaring in the living room."
"Your parents are cool with it?"
