Loose Cans

Unfortunately, it concerns none of the three essays I'm supposed to be writing. How very typical. I'm supposed to be concentrating on Donne, Postmodernism and--I finally decided last night--either Utopia for Fables or Sound and the Fury for Faulkner. The topic that just popped into my head, though, is for an essay to be written next term, on the last book we read for America and the U.S., a book which no one will actually read because they don't know from Yiddish, Philip Roth's American Pastoral (I can see it now: "Sam, darling, um...you're Jewish, right? I need a litle help. What's a shiksa?" "Why, darling, it's you!"). I read it at the end of the summer, the only preparatory reading I did. I loved it, and having just finished Portnoy, cannot wait to move on to Goodbye Columbus. I hope Rebecca and Jonah remember reading me The Conversion of the Jews as fondly as I do. They sat me down in Rebecca's room and just read the whole thing out loud. It's one of the few short stories I've ever enjoyed.

So this essay: Philip Roth, Heeb Magazine, The Hebrew Hammer, the NOFX song "The 'Brews" ("Friday night we'll/Be drinkin' Manischevitz/Going out to terrorize goyim/Eatin' latkes/Screwin' shiskes/As long as we're home by Saturday mornin'") and the evolution of Jewish youth in America. I shall title it From Portnoy to Poontang.

Aside from being perfect on the grounds that no tutor will be able to correct it ("I believe you've misused the word "schpilkes?" "No, New York Jew, you're wrong about New York Jews, and I, Paddy MacGentile, am telling you so?" Yeah, right), it's actually something I'm interested in. I realized a while back that my Judaism wasn't very religious or spiritual in nature, but it was only recently that it became clear that it was extremely political. I'm a real live Jew, a fine-lookin' Jew, an in-your-face, check-out-my-horns Yid. It's attachment to the stigma, a fondness for the martyr complex, and a pride that comes from holding stock in a little-traded company with a whole lot of history behind it. It is who I am because it makes me different from everyone else. But I love that.

My friend Roz once told me that she loved going to a girls' school because the girls were never made to feel like marginalized...well, little girls. There was no difficulty in being a girl because everywhere there were girls. She was a girl by default, almost, an unthought thing, as opposed to a girl by virtue of her not being a boy. And this made her comfortable with her identity to the point where that identity became a natural thing, unshakeable as prejudice. So it is with my--and, I think, our--Judaism. Raised in New York, going to Horace Mann, living casually Jewish lives, we were unperturbed. We controlled the media! The Goyim were the Other, the minority. So we became convinced of our own security and comfort. Our place in society wasn't up for argument. Upon arriving in Ireland--or, for some others, arriving in Chicago--suddenly the Goyim were everywhere, engineering discourse, rattling Easter eggs, going to Mass. It was jarring. Where my Yeladim? I went from controlling the media to being a curio, a three-minute bit on the evening news: "And in other news, there are now Jews in Ireland. This young man, Schmoyle ben Ascherstein, is a New York Jew. You can tell from the unusual protuberance of the nose, the thickness of the hair, the sunken, sallow eyes, proof of the toll their endless, accursed wandering has taken on them, and the interjection of age-old Hebrew words of wisdom, passed down from the sages, into everyday conversation (cut to a montage of me waving my arms wildly, spitting out "goyische alte kaker," "schtunk" and "ven der putz shtet, ligt der sechel in drerd, nu?"). If you see them, do not haggle with them; their ancient powers of bargaining are not to be trifled with. Be on your guard, do not do anything that will cause you to feel guilty; the Jew is, in fact, a being of pure radiant guilt, down to his crooked bones, and he goes to great lengths to ensnare others in his net of woe. If you see one, act natural. Act as you would if accosted by a colored gentleman. It is not necessary to ask if he is circumcised, though it is permitted. Do not try to convert them to the light of Jesus Christ our lord; they lost the true path long ago. Try and make them feel welcome--but too much so."

So I got militant. Really. Not like, "Fuck all goyim, straight up," but more like, "if you ain't cut, you got a lot to prove to me. Make me believe you wouldn't sell me out." My mindset, and this is hyperbole, of course, as is most everything I write here, but there's always more than a shred of truth to it, is basically "SHABBAT SHALOM, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!" (I use three !'s because, really, so does Hammer, and who am I to argue with Hammer?)

That's going to be one epigraph for the paper. The other will be the first line of DeLillo's Underworld: "He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful." He speaks in your voice. We have appropriated your voice, America, this voice that was not ours, that is not supposed to be ours, and such things we have done with it! Here we be, Heeb we be, grip your chains, pull on the pillars and the walls come tumbling down. The goy he annoy me. We've moved on from coveting what they have to reveling in what only we have. So I'm a Jew, a damn proud Jew, on Christmas.

Revolver, 9mm Glock, .22 rifle with scope. To-day we have naming of parts. Put on the ear mufflers. Step out into the muffled, rumbling thunder of the firing chamber. Jump at the punctuating shots. Come to your station. Load. Push this forward, push that in, flip out the chamber, slip out the magazine. Stuff in the bullets. Slam it back in. Stand like so, legs apart, shoulders square to the target, the featureless man in silhouette. Lean back. The point of balance. Both hands gripping the weapon. Touch the trigger. Inhale. Line up the sight. Aim for the chest. Squeeze the trigger, exhaling, silent and fragile. The blossoms are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see any of them using their finger. They call it easing the Spring. Keep easing. All of a sudden it fires.

It is like gripping a small angry bomb. Or perhaps not like anything else at all, only gripping and aiming a violent thing in whose machinery there is a fiery explosion expelling forward at terrific speed a slight metal thing, which invisibly makes holes in other things. Daylight explores undiscovered country. It is fierce. There is a burst of flame and a discharge of acrid smoke and another bullet is chambered, how helpful. Fire again. The gun jerks back with the explosion, the explusion, and you try not to. You become accustomed to the recoil quickly enough, maybe cockily cocking the hammer back on the double-action revolver so less squeezing is needed--just touch it and it fires. The black man being fired at ruffles imperceptibly. It is hard to see how the deer have a sporting chance. Or the black man.

No rapid firing, no more than one round per second. No fast draws, and NO hip shooting. Observe proper gun safety procedures. No cowboy accents or hats; this is not the domain of the cowboy. This is colder than that. Here, it is all sound dampening and concrete. The only sun in here comes from the points where the slight metal things went through the ceiling, admitting daylight. Out of ammo. Reel in the paper target of the silhouette to inspect and praise the damage. He flies silently forward on the wire, like a faceless black ghost, unperturbed until he gets closer and you can see the holes you made in him and learn whether you really did make a ghost of him. More often than not you have; this is a very easy thing to do. A child could do it. It's fun. It's not cathartic only because you don't see the holes being blown in the target; shooting a tomato, now, that would be fun. The spectacular, visceral detonation of the heart-shaped fruit, the red sputum, seeds and juice ribboning out, spattering the walls.

Leon's got this new Russian Makarov he just bought. A mean little handgun, the angry elf of handguns. It doesn't even recoil, it's so strong, it just shoots. It spits fire about a foot out of the barrel. We keep the target close for this one; it's less about accuracy here than seeing the bullet rip throught the paper. This is what we're here to do. Not clean, antiseptic holes, perforation, but big violence. Holes in things make us wholes ourselves. And vice versa. This is how we inflict ourselves on situations beyond our grasp. It's a blast.