I'm looking at the (wo)man in the mirror

I'm really not trying to create beautiful synchronicity.  For some reason, however, all of the memoirs I've been reading lately seem interconnected.  At the end of The Kid, Dan Savage worries over the age old question: to circumcise or not to circumcise.  Shalom Auslander fretted over the same decision at the end of Foreskin's Lament.  Savage calls God out on his sadism in the following passage from The Commitment:

" . . . the moment you begin to believe you're worthy of the good things in your life - God gets all Old Testament on your ass and does something vicious, something insane, something totally uncalled for.  He give you lupus or He allows Satan to slaughter your children and cattle or He deliver Ohio to George w. Bush." (p. 50)

Sound like Auslander?  In the early passages of The Commitment, where I loll, Savage and his partner Terry are interrogated on family vacation by Savage's mom, step-dad, and siblings about why they don't get married.  His own aversion to marriage is reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert's feelings.  Both authors even do a little sociological investigation.  Her book is Committed.  His is The Commitment.

All of these authors are funny.

To recap:  I am reading funny, irreverent, smart writers who question societal norms and customs while surrendering to them, all the while worrying.  Forever worrying.  Gay, straight, male, female, Orthodox Jew, Buddhist, Recovering Catholic.  They're all me.

And now I'm feeling narcissistic.  Time to read about a Zen athlete, a cocky stockbroker or a roller derby queen.

And Many More

Some things I've learned about Shalom Auslander:

- He believes in God.  This is a problem.
- He thinks God has a mean sense of humor and that he is often the punchline.
- He enjoys calling God a dick.
- He fears that God will smite him, his wife, his child, his parents, and his siblings.
- He also thinks Moses was the butt of a seriously wicked prank. (Look Moses it's the Promised Land. Psyche, you're dead.)
- He had a very messed up family, but no more messed up than most religiously, fundamentalist families.
- He paid $350/hour for a psychiatrist.
- He needed it.
- He tried very hard to be a devout Jew when he wasn't shoplifting, hoarding pornography, and smoking pot.
- He is the poster child of Jewish guilt.
- He finally found a woman who could laugh with him and love him despite his debilitating neuroses.
- And they lived happily ever after but were shunned by his crazy family.

Perhaps my most favorite part of the book is what Auslander had written on his son, Paix's first birthday cake.  It reads:

Happy birthday, Paix, from Mommy, Daddy, Harley, Duke, and no one else in our families because they are bitter miseries who'd rather drag us into the morass of their bleak, tragic lives than share for a moment in our joy.  And many more. (p. 306)

Sexy synchronicity

Don't you just love when life and art seamlessly collide? Having just finished reading Lit, I made my way back into Shalom Auslander's memoir, Foreskin's Lament; I went from Karr's sin-to-redemption story to Auslander's depraved Orthodox Jew spectacle all on the same day that I attended my very first Passion Party. Don't see the connection? Let me explain.


Karr's newfound spirituality is quaint compared to Auslander's childhood Orthodoxy.  He is probably about my age  - a child of the 70s and 80s - who grew up in the repressive world of East Coast Orthodox Judaism.  He sees the modern world around him, even visits it with his mom in weekly trips to the mall (where he wants to live), but his routine is strictly Eighteenth Century.  He dons the knitted yarmulke, tallis, dark suits and ties.  He sits hours on end repeating Hebrew prayers in shul.  He waits bored at the dining room table waiting for Shabbos to end.  But, because he is a child of the modern world, he is tempted by modern seductions: porn magazines (found hidden in the woods behind his house), beef jerky, hair styling mousse.  Like any good Jew, modern or ancient, Auslander succumbs to each temptation with the nagging anxiety that God will smite him.  In order to win favor with God, 10 year-old Auslander finds every smutty magazine his hypocritical family hides under mattresses and washing machines, even unearthing his devout mother's box of sex aides from between the mattresses of her bed, and . . . sets all of them ablaze.  And so I found it wildly amusing that I finished reading this Philip Rothian passage on my way to taste "Nipple Nibblers" and compare vibrator frequencies.

Ah, kismet.