Blonde Jews Unite

I just wanted to update you about some lovely stuff that has been going on:

The Collagist published  an excerpt from  Growing  Up Golem about my  arriving at the Village Voice as a 22-year-old newbie. It starts like this:

“I have always understood that I had to use special means to get ahead. I had special deficits, I knew — the very opposite of superpowers.  Don’t ever put me near a flame, because I’d go up like a straw doll soaked in kerosene;  don’t tap me even lightly on a special panel in the middle of my back, because that would turn me off until you chose to turn me on again.  I had to lie as hard as I could so that no one ever found out.

So when I first came down to  try my luck the Village Voice at twenty-two, I took over one of the two “free” computers intended for all freelancers, seized it as my own.  I’d put my files and my coffee cup there, my own guerrilla seizure just like Fidel or Che.   Everything I did felt like a revolutionary appropriation to me then, or some sort of theft.   I was the best freeloader in Brooklyn.  I would sponge $20 from a friend with no intention of paying it back ($20 in Eighties dollars, that is), or bagels and hummus and salad from the buffet of a conference I was not attending.  I used my sister Josie’s credit card, with her permission but no intention of paying her back on time.  Since she made more money than me, I thought it was fine to make her lay it out until I paid her.  If you want to know my mindset, think of my kinsman the Gingerbread Man, running and successfully getting away from all those sets of lips and teeth.”

To read more, click here.

Then Tablet, the Jewish literary magazine,  published a different excerpt that included my mother making me dress up like Haman for Purim and my father  treating me like a variety of sports equipment.  There is a lovely golem-and-child illustration by Emily North.  You can read the excerpt here.

Finally, here is a lovely review in  Gay City News that refers to my “smiling  goy-boy face.”   Well, I am no “goy-boy,”  but I certainly am a blonde.