April 5, 2002
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| Gumby |
I walk to the subway
station in the late silvery morning.
The air is still too crisp but starting to soften. My muscles, rigid and aching from
having tensed against the brutal winter for so many months, are just beginning
to relax. The annual bone-melting
of summer is just over the horizon; I can feel what I think of as my inner Gumby
beginning to inhabit my skeleton.
My desire for that Gumby feeling borders on sexual.
Entrance to the
subterranean cavern that is the Logan Blvd. station is blocked by a herd of
sullen, young toughs in baggy
pants, their shirt tails hanging below their fleece jackets. They're already in full Gumby mode. They've probably been like that all
winter. I'm envious. I glare at them ‘til they move out of
my way - and then feel what a bitter old bat they must see in me. They're just kids on spring break. They don't know about earning a living
yet. I muster a small smile of
gratitude as they let me pass, but not enough to make up for the scowl.
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| The Logan Blvd. Subway Stop |
Waiting in the
subterranean tunnel is the usual assortment of just-past-normal-commuting-time
riff raff. Nurses, students, moms
with babies, and a few straggling working stiffs who just couldn't quite drag
their sorry asses out of bed at a more appropriate hour this morning. I'm among the latter category. Among the gathering throng is one
youngish guy I've noticed a few times before. He's wearing the same dirty, faded bell-bottom jeans he's
worn before. I know this because
the jeans have a raised seam running down the front of each pant-leg, and who
would own more than one pair of pants of this description? Parenthetically, I can't quite get used
to the reappearance of bell-bottoms, some thirty years after Bell-Bottom Blues
was released by Derek and the Dominoes.
He also wears an artificially distressed leather jacket. I guess he didn't have the patience to
distress it through use. Slight
build, pale freckled skin, square jaw, watery greenish eyes, and a beak of a
nose that gives him an intellectual appearance he may or may not merit. Your basic Ashkenazi Jewish kid.
The train arrives and we
all crowd in. A handful of lucky
souls wedge themselves into the few remaining narrow seats. The young toughs who barred my entrance
to the station earlier have saved a seat for me. I favor them with a dazzling smile, leftover from my days as
a hot young babe and inherited from my mother. One of them winks back.
Mr. Ashkenazi is seated
across from me. He pulls a
hand-held electronic device out of a non-descript backpack and begins doing
whatever it is one does with those things. There's nothing extraordinary in his behavior, his dress or
his expression. What makes him
extraordinary is his ornamentation.
It's both primeval and traditional. The tops of his ears are pierced many times; he appears to
be wearing five or six little silver rings in the top of each ear. It looks excruciating. Then there are the earlobes, pierced
and then stretched so that the hole in each lobe accommodates a hollow cylinder
about an inch in diameter. I can
look right through each cylinder and see the acne on the kid's neck. A young friend recently informed me
that there's a sexual thrill to be gained from the pain of stretching one's
earlobes to this extent. Now I appreciate
a sexual thrill as much as the next person, but I’ll pass on this one, thanks.
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| Hollow Ear-Plugs |
The ears, bizarre as they
seem, are not the feature that rivets my attention. What calls my attention to this man and will not let it wander,
is his hair. It's been my
experience that people who find it necessary to mutilate themselves to the
point of scarring their physical beings for life, generally have also dyed
their hair to some unflattering color not found in nature (and really, when one
has a spider web tattooed around one's neck and arms, "unflattering"
doesn't really come into play.
Picture such a person in a fitting room at Nordstrom's, trying on, say,
a silk blouse, and saying "this color really isn't flattering for
me." Not so much).
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| The Iguana |
 |
| The Iguana-Do |
The ears, bizarre as they
seem, are not the feature that rivets my attention. What calls my attention to this man and will not let it wander,
is his hair. It's been my
experience that people who find it necessary to mutilate themselves to the
point of scarring their physical beings for life generally have also dyed
their hair to some unflattering color not found in nature (and really, when one
has a spider web tattooed around one's neck and arms, "unflattering"
doesn't really come into play.
Picture such a person in a fitting room at Nordstrom's, trying on, say,
a silk blouse, and saying "this color really isn't flattering for
me." Not so much). Anyway - this kid's hair is the same
sandy-red color that he was most likely born with. It matches his freckles and his eyes. It's short and gelled up into a sort of
iguana crest atop his head. Okay,
it's a slightly strange hairstyle, but it could be washed and combed into
something more reasonable if he suddenly had to attend his cousin's Bar
Mitzvah, a funeral or High Holiday services with his parents. And let's face it, the hair is nothing
compared to those - uh - ear cylinders.
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| Payahs. With the Iguana-Do? Very Attractive. |
The thing about his hair that rivets my attention is that, in addition
to the reptilian crest, he's wearing payahs. Yes, payahs: those
side-curls or ear-locks worn by Orthodox and Chasidic Jewish men. These are the men who never leave their
heads uncovered, who always wear at least a yarmulke, if not a fedora or a big
fur hat (though in the present instance, covering his head would mean
flattening the iguana-do, so I imagine that's his reason for eschewing any such
accessory). These are the men who
wear prayer shawls under their shirts and never touch another human being,
except in the privacy of their own bedrooms (where, I might add, they’re
rumored to provide their wives with a thrill that puts those silly
earlobe-stretching cylinders to shame).
But I digress. So here's this youngish guy, looking
like a cross between a young Woody Allen and every parent's worst nightmare of
a date for his daughter (come to think of it, Woody Allen kind of is
every parent's worst nightmare of a date for his daughter, but that's another
discussion entirely). Where was I
-------- oh yes - so here's this guy who's wearing your standard-issue youthful
rebellion uniform, which, while unattractive, isn't particularly offensive
except that it hasn't been washed in a month of Sundays. He has a reptilian hairdo, which is
silly, but not all that unusual, certainly nothing to stare at before one's
even had one's first cup of coffee.
And then, this otherwise unremarkable young man exhibits two absolutely
astounding characteristics, either of which might attract one's notice, but
both of which I have never, in all my years, observed united in the same
person. He has mutilated his ears
to the point at which they will require a surgeon to return them to anything
resembling normal, and at the absolute opposite end of the cultural scale, he's
sporting payahs.
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| Every parent's worst nightmare. |
And I watch him. He sits quietly, minding his own
business. He neither makes eye
contact deliberately nor avoids it.
He doesn't shrink from the accidental touch of a fellow passenger, nor
does he assert his presence obtrusively.
He doesn't invade the space of the person sitting next to him, doesn't
seem to shrink into himself, doesn't listen to loud music, doesn't do anything
that would attract attention. He's
just an average guy, sitting there, fiddling with his little hand-held computer
thingy, while his physical appearance fairly shouts to the heavens some
horrific internal conflict.
The train reaches Clark
and Lake Streets. My stop, and his
also. We both stand, among
others. He steps back to allow me
to go ahead of him. A perfect
little gentleman. We all trudge up
the two flights of wide stairs to the street, where I watch him head south,
before I turn north and walk toward my office. I hope the warring factions in his head will reach detente
before he explodes. I enter the
lobby of my office building, and am standing in line for that sweet nectar of
the gods, a Dunkin' Donuts coffee, when I realize I'm quietly humming Hatikvah.
