Sid
“On your left!”
“Hot Jew alert!” Esther says as a very fit man in shorts and a tank top overtakes us on the track.
“Where did he come from?” I ask. “It’s like we’re standing still.”
“He’s fast,” Esther says. “And he’s new! Oh! And look at that tight tuchus!”
“You’re yelling!”
“You’re single!”
“You’re meshuga!”
“Proudly!” Esther says, lifting her tiny arms over her tinier body.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during the winter, I walk exactly two miles on the outdoor track with Esther Himmelbaum
at the Wasserman Senior Center. When it gets too hot come May, we move to the inside track. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Esther
and I do a seated workout class.
Yes, we’re older than Methuselah.
Besides The Golden Gays, Esther is my BFF, my wing woman.
It only makes sense I would befriend a woman who embodies the unbridled honesty and sarcasm of Sophia, the character I play in our show.
I, on the other hand, embody Sophia’s feebleness and inability to edit anything that leaves my mouth, especially when I’m nervous.
“Fresh meat!” Esther says in what she thinks is a whisper but sounds like a garbage truck at five in the morning. “You should
talk to him when he laps us again. Or trip him. That might be the only way you can catch him.”
“Especially when he sees my face.”
“Sha!” Esther scolds me. “You are a handsome man. Regal. Do you want me to fix you up with him?”
I stop on the track and grab my friend’s arm. She is the size of a footstool. She jerks to a halt.
“No!” I say. “Do you hear me? I cannot be humiliated again in this life.”
“And yet you chose to wear that eggplant-colored blouse today,” Esther says, staring at me.
“You told me to buy this!” I say. “And it’s a workout shirt.”
“You’ve been lost style-wise ever since Stein Mart closed,” she says. “And give me a break: I’m eighty-seven. I can have an
off day. Or year.”
Esther fancies herself a shadchanit. She said she came from a long line of Jewish matchmakers in New York City. She didn’t.
Her father owned dry cleaning stores all over Manhattan, and her success rate in fixing me up has always been more Mets than
Yankees.
I met Esther at Temple Isaiah when I retired to Palm Springs. I was depressed and lonely at Passover after moving from Chicago,
mourning a faith and family that would no longer have me, and Esther parked herself next to me at synagogue services and asked,
“Single? Gay? You must come to Seder at my house!”
Passover commemorates the Hebrews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt and the “passing over” of the forces of destruction and
the sparing of the firstborn of the Israelites.
That Passover, I felt as if had been passed over by everyone I loved.
I had not been spared.
Esther stuffed me with gefilte fish, matzo ball soup, brisket, potato kugel and tzimmes. More importantly, she filled me with what I needed most: acceptance.
I came out at the age of sixty after thirty-five years of marriage and three children. It was just as the gay marriage ban
was gaining momentum across the United States. My sexuality was categorically forbidden by the Torah.
I divorced my wife, Rebecca, who promptly played the victim in our community and temple, though she was not without sin herself.
My kids hated me for hurting her and ruining our happy family.
But we weren’t ever happy. We only played happy on TV.
We were “don’t ask, don’t tell” before Bill Clinton ever uttered the words.
Rebecca knew the truth and kept her mouth shut just as much as I did.
She found the phone numbers from Tim R. and Steve J. in my suit pockets before cell phones existed.
I found all the hotel receipts on her credit card for her girls’ weekends without the girls.
We lay in silence beside each other in bed without ever uttering our truths.
Yes, I was a coward. Yes, I was to blame for fooling her when I knew I was gay even as I was courting her. Yes, I robbed her
of having a man who wanted her. But I also gave her everything she wanted: a beautiful home. A beautiful family. A beautiful
life.
And I was not solely to blame.
Rebecca cheated before I did. Sadly, my discovery of that emboldened me.
From the outside, we seemed the perfect family, but there is no perfect family. There is only a photo of smiling faces perched
on a mantel or office desk that people see, never the imperfect outtakes that came before that solitary image.
The law firm I had been with since the start of my career, the one in which I had become a partner, offered to buy me out. I was suddenly bad for business.
So I ran to the only place I knew where old gay men retired: Palm Springs, California.
Heaven’s Waiting Room.
At Esther’s Seder, I met Teddy, Ron and Barry, none of whom was Jewish but all of whom were as kooky as Esther. But welcome
to Palm Springs where, I quickly learned, any event—religious or otherwise—is viewed as one of three things: a party, a business
meeting or a pickup joint.
Teddy was there with his sweet husband, John, who looked like a human version of a basset hound, big ears, brown hair and
eyes that could melt you with their puppy dog cuteness. They owned a vintage clothing shop together. Teddy saw Seder as a
party and was holding court in the living room of Esther’s stunning home in The Movie Colony, spilling tea (and occasionally
his cocktail), a huge throng of people gathered around him laughing at his stories and cutting wit.
Ron was a designer who had done work on Esther’s 1930s home. He had studied under the disciples of Palm Springs legends like
Arthur Elrod, Hal Broderick and William Raiser—a trio he would teach me was responsible for designing the interiors of most
of the iconic mid-century homes in the desert built by famed architects like Albert Frey, Donald Wexler and Hugh Kaptur.
“Esther originally wanted an iconic mid-century home,” Ron told me, “but when she showed me this, I saw its beauty, the nod
to mid-century design and to Spanish architecture. I told her the same thing my grandma used to tell my mama: ‘A little powder,
a little paint, makes a lady what she ain’t.’ All this grande dame needed was a touch-up, not a facelift.”
Ron was smart, talented and goofily sweet, and he sparked my love of design that day discussing Spanish Revival and mid-century
architecture, slump stone, clerestory windows, breeze block, and post and beam.
Ron loved an open house, it turns out, because he considered it a business meeting. He could charm guests with his knowledge of all things Palm Springs, which might lead to a new client.
“Turns out Esther’s storied neighborhood is filled with Hollywood ghosts,” he told a group of potential clients, “including
Jack Benny, Cary Grant and Dinah Shore, many of whom left openings in their garden walls so they could carry their cocktails
to the next house during parties and occasionally, you know, have a little fun.”
“Have we met?”
Which is why Barry was there.
Before I could turn, a muscled arm had slipped around my back, and a hand holding a mid-century coupe filled with amber liquid
appeared before my face.
“I’m Barry. And you are?”
When I turned, Barry recoiled.
“You’re . . .”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Barry might as well have just screamed “OLD!” and tossed the drink in my face.
“Barry,” Ron said, his tone a warning. “This is Sid. He’s new in town.”
Barry, I quickly learned, was a “chicken hawk”: a gay man of a certain age who liked (much) younger men. Barry wasn’t old
by any means at that time, but he saw himself twenty years younger and preferred men twenty years younger than that. He was
at Esther’s Seder to feed on new meat at the buffet table. He was, of course, an actor.
It seemed every other person I met—waiter, bartender, roofer—was a wannabe actor who had come to LA seeking fame but just
wasn’t quite as pretty or talented as the next guy. So they disappeared to the desert seeking a second chance and maybe a
man with money.
The fact that so many had purposely chosen Palm Springs as their home made me feel at home. People were here for a reason.
That made this town special.
There was no Google at the time, so I couldn’t dash into the kitchen to search for Barry on IMDb, but I did hear from others at that surreptitious Seder about Barry’s infamous career.
As I watched Barry stalk the room, I recalled a short story I had just read, a piece by F. Scott Fitzgerald called “The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button” about a man who ages in reverse. Should there ever be a movie made from this, I thought, Barry would
be perfectly cast.
I actually walked out of that Seder not thinking I would ever be friends with Barry, Ron and Teddy. They were outspoken, confident
and wholly comfortable being gay. They had experienced the thrill of kissing a guy they liked under a starry sky. They had
gotten butterflies before going out on a date. They had lived their lives on their own terms.
I thought they had the perfect lives until I actually got to know them.
No one does, I realized. We are all passed over in some way. We must face a lifetime of plagues until we are freed.
The only thing I had done was hide, like I used to do with the afikomen at Passover Seder.
Who knew I would be the missing rya rug needed to pull their mid-century room together?
The man with the tight tuchus begins to lap us again, and Esther sticks out her leg.
“Damn it,” Esther says. “I missed him.”
“Your leg is shorter than a ruler,” I say. “Look at him go. I feel like we aren’t even moving.”
“We’re moving as best we can for two old Jews with three new hips between us,” she says. Esther slaps me on my behind. “And
we need to keep moving if you don’t want him to lap us again. That would be so embarrassing for you.”
We finish, out of breath, and take a seat on the stands that ring the track.
Esther and I pretend not to ogle the man as he exercises, but her decibel level is the equivalent of blowing an air horn.