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We don’t do takeout either. It just seems like an invitation to overeat, which is something I worry about constantly. I haven’t had a pancake, waffle, or piece of French toast in decades — afraid I’d instantly become addicted the same way I know if I took one puff of a cigarette, I’d start smoking again. I did this once in 1986, a month after Roberta and I met. I wanted to show her how cool I looked with a butt in my mouth.
Except for my closest friends, it will shock most to know that I am unimaginably bashful. Going out in public in anything but a crowd costs me emotionally. Sometimes I get antsy for days before a nothing event. I never pick up the phone when it rings. As soon as quarantine began, I started to dread someday having to go back into the world. This exile has been one of heaven for me — a version of life that I’ve dreamed of many times.
During the day, he and his four brothers owned a woman’s lingerie company in Chicago called American Maid. I loved going to the office with curved desks and wet bars, watching the masterful old Jewish fabric cutters working with big scissors at enormous tables of satin and glimpsing models. It was an American Dream to me. With the money he made from the invention, our family of five moved to a Jewish suburb north of Chicago. There were brand-new homes and construction sites everywhere.
My life had changed in an instant, but I didn’t know how, or why, let alone what happened. In my early 20s, when a friend of the family gravely talked about “the way your mother died,” I said, “What do you mean? How did she die?” All I knew at that point was what I’d been told, accidentally, at a birthday party as a kid. As I was drinking something out of a glass, someone mentioned something about “Jerry’s mother,” and out of nowhere I bit the glass and it broke.
The next morning, my father walked past our room and saw the sign sticking out from Paul’s mattress. He asked, “Where did that come from?” My heart pounded. And then a new paradigm formed. After a silence, Paul said, “I don’t know,” and stared at my father. I stared at Paul staring. My father stood still staring at us both, blinked, then glowered at us with a look I’d never seen before. He turned and left. This wasn’t in the Jewish-suburban playbook, but that’s the way it was from then on.
jerrysaltz Beautiful piece, once again
jerrysaltz
jerrysaltz This was an inspiring story. It’s nice to know his story of what compels him to write. Bravo, and much respect.
jerrysaltz My wife and I just randomly read this to each other, something we *never* do, and it couldn’t have been more appropriate. Beautiful essay.
jerrysaltz Definitely a very interesting diet and lifestyle mine here in Hong Kong is pasta with tomatoes and fish
jerrysaltz So powerful
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