The week I turned eighteen,I lost my virginity. There were so many complications around that story that it was not half the triumph it was supposed to be, and there was no one to tell it too. Isaac Weaver the Man was remarkably unchanged from Isaac Weaver the virgin.
A week later I met Ef. And that was when I began to change.
Efrem was more than content to run my life for me. He was a drama major at the time, and minored in filling my life with terrors, pushing me onto the stage for the first time, bossing me into choir, daring me to go to McCleiss University and streak South Quad, forcing me to open mike night. He accepted me, and no one but Jinny had ever done that. But unlike Jinny, he did not accept me remaining what I was when I could be more.
That’s a little sentimental, isn’t it? Remind me to never tell him that.
Jinny went away to the Dakotas for the summer with her family, and this was when Efrem told me, “Grow a beard. Don’t ask questions. Just do it.”
I did. I thought it looked distinguished. I told Ef this. He said nothing.
One day after the beard had grown a good deal he came into the bookstore and told me, “I need to talk to Mr. Weaver.” A few minutes later he came out from my father’s office and said, “We’re going to the mall.”
We went to Wal-Mart and Target first, buying up clothes left and right. Ef always holding them up against me and nodding clinically. Then, in the mall, he dared to go inside of Abercrombie. Efrem’s friends, Shawn and Chuck were with us, and the three of them marched me through stores buying up clothes and then I said, “What’s going on? Where’s all this money coming from?”
“Your dad,” Efrem said, smiling sweetly.
In one day we went through the malls, then to the eyeglasses in an hour place.
“Stick these on,” Efrem ordered.
I switched glasses.
“Malcolm X glasses,” Chuck said. “You look distinguished as fuck.”
They drove me up south of Melbourne to a place that was very... Black. Efrem rattled on the door. A guy black as night with an afro and a pick sticking out of his head answered.
“Here he is,” Efrem said.
I was a little terrified. It smelled like chicken and grease in the house. The guy murmured something and offered his fist.
“This is Maxwell,” said Efrem. “What he is telling you to do,” Efrem translated as if we were in another country, “is to also make a fist and hit the bottom of your fist to the top of his. Hitting the rock.”
I felt like I was in another country.
“Niggah what’s up!” a wiry guy hopped out of a seat as Maxwell sat me down in mine.
“This is Gene,” Efrem told me. “Gene, this is Isaac.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“You’re about to look like you should,” Efrem told me.
I watched this Black guy take off all my hair and I did not protest. I had this sort of faith that Black people could make me look good. And I wanted to look good.
“Dude,” Gene said when it was over, “you look like Malcolm X.”
“Only white,” Maxwell said.
“Or Denzel as Malcolm X,” Shawn said. “How you like that? You look like Denzel?”
“Only white,” Maxwell repeated.
I stayed the night at Ef’s. I tried on the clothes by myself and came down the hall from his bathroom to his bedroom, walking awkwardly.
“How do I look?” I asked him.
“Go look at yourself.” Efrem closed his door so I could look into his floor length mirror.
I shook my head.
“It’s you, Isaac,” he said. “It really is you.”
I turned around, running a hand over my scalp, the sides were shaved real low and I liked the way I looked. I actually thought, “This guy is kind of good looking.”
“Can you believe it?” I demanded.
Ef nodded, and spreading himself out across his bed explained, “White people are like Mr. Potato Heads. You just change the hair and the glasses and you get a whole other person.”
“Shit” Isaac grunts at the table.
“Here, give it to me,” Efrem sticks out his hand.
Isaac hands him the knotted Saint Christopher medallion and Efrem’s fingers begin working through it.
“You were always better with knots than I am,” Isaac said. “Jinny got me that.”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d gotten it for yourself,” Efrem frowned over the knot. “This is awful. It’s like it’s got a mind of its own.”
“I think it likes to knot up because I’m Jewish.”
“Could be,” Efrem said, and continued unknotting the chain. “Why did Jinny get it for you?”
“I said I wanted one. I don’t know,” Isaac shrugged. “Dad’s middle name is Christopher. Go fig. A Jewish Christopher. But he had a Saint Christopher medallion. A girlfriend got it for him, and he would talk about Saint Christopher a lot, and I was just thinking I want one too. So I told Jinny, and she got me one, and I knot it up all the time. I wish Jews had saints.”
“Is that why you converted? You could get an Old Testament prophet or something. You all should start making Moses medallions… Ah… Ah!” Efrem looked pleased, and handed back the chain. “There you go.”
Isaac slipped it over his neck, and the medallion fell under his shirt. Now tt was invisible and all you could see was the thick hemp choker he wore all the time with the beads in it.
“I have never been to the cemetery to visit my mother,” Isaac said suddenly. “I didn’t think about that until tonight. You ever go see your dad?”
Efrem shook his head, “I didn’t really want to see him that much when he was alive.”
“Well, I never went to the cemetery to visit my mom.”
“Do you want to?” Efrem added. “I mean, I’ll go with you.”
“I don’t think I want to go,” Isaac said. “She’s dead. She’s not anymore at the cemetery than she is right here. She’s probably more right here in my room, in this house than any place else.”
They were both quiet a while and then Isaac said, “Catholics believe if you kill yourself you go to hell, right?”
Efrem looked at him strangely.
“I mean, don’t they?” said Isaac.
“Catholics don’t know what they believe,” Efrem said. “But yeah, I think that’s what the party line is.”
“Whaddo you believe?”
“Isaac, I’m not dead. I don’t know.”
“But do you think my mom went to hell?... And your dad?”
“What’s hell? Jews don’t even have hell. What does hell mean? What’s the point in talking about going to heaven and hell when no one knows anything about either one? Not much in my view. People in one are sad. People in the other one are happy. God’s in one, and he’s not supposed to be in the other. But I think he’s everywhere and really heaven or hell just depends on how you feel about it.”
Isaac looked up at his friend, as if he were waking up.
“I mean,” Efrem said, warming up, “think about this: Some people love Rhodes. I love that we live right on the beach. We can dip our feet in good old Erie anytime we want to. We can take a boat on the water and look at the stars. I think it’s lovely. Some people say, ‘I hate Rhodes. I hate Saint Anne County. It’s a hell hole.’ It’s the same place but for some people it’s heaven, and for other people it’s hell and if you gave them everything on a silver platter well then they’d still think life was hell, wouldn’t they?”
“I never thought about it like that,” said Isaac.
“Like, there were days when I hated this bookstore. Because I felt alone and cold. And then some days it was my retreat because I was too alone and cold to be anywhere else. But now I’m in it with you, or Jinny or Cile or someone I care about, and it’s happy for me. I like being here.”
“Yeah, I think that’s what I mean,” Efrem said.
