Judith and I started going out January 26. Only a week into the relationship, we were talking every day—I called her from a pay phone at Stuy. She’d get mad if the calls were less than ten minutes, so I’d bring extra quarters. During one of these conversations, I told her about Cancún.
“Ned, we have to make plans for your birthday.”
“I’m not going to be around for my birthday. Didn’t you know? I’m in Cancún from April second to April eighth, on the senior trip.”
“Oh.” That was something I’d learned to fear from Judith: the Clipped Oh. It meant trouble.
“Didn’t I tell you about Cancún?”
“No.”
Silence.
“I’m not going to cheat on you or anything,” I lied. If the beach babe came along, I’d cheat on Judith in a flash.
“Oh, sure, you’re not going to cheat on me, but you’re going to get drunk a lot, aren’t you?” Judith was always suspicious and judgmental about that stuff.
“No,” I lied again.
“Oh.”
More silence.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Yeah, bye.” Click. Judith was a fan of the hang-up-and-wait-for-Ned-to-call-back tactic. I ignored this volley, though, and went to class.
My life had become a two-front conflagration: on one side, Judith—fighting with her, comforting her, and gradually falling in love with her; on the other side, playing Jesus.
The Easter Passion was run by Dale, a head honcho in the choir. Dale had some serious ambitions for our church. He wanted lavish costumes and tortured acting. He wanted to reveal the soul of Jesus. And he had written his own eleven-minute song, “I Saw Jesus,” to anchor the show. (It was actually quite good.)
On the first day of rehearsal, I showed up alone so Dale could guide me step by step through the emotions of Jesus. “Ned, you have to understand that Jesus was a normal man. That’s what’s been lost in the centuries since he died. He wasn’t a god, although he had God in him. He was just a man, with a man’s fears and desires and hopes and faults. And you need to capture the difficulty of his decision—his decision to die.”
“Okay.”
“So you need to try this line again: ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem.’ I don’t want it to sound like Hamlet; I want it to sound like a normal man.” I worked on that for a while; finally, after I told Dale that I was exhausted, he sent me home with some flyers.
“You can give these to people at your school.” The flyers were yellow, with a stylish picture of the Son of Man. They read, “Come to the Saint John’s Passion Play, April 2, at 7:30 P.M.”
I’d walked halfway home before it hit me: April second, at seven thirty! April second! That was when I was scheduled to leave for Cancún! I ran home and called Owen.
“Hey, dude, it’s me. I have some questions for you about Cancún.”
“What?”
“When does the plane leave?”
“April second, at eight thirty. Why?”
“Oh, man. I have to be Jesus on April second, at seven thirty!”
“What?”
“I need to play Jesus. In a church play. I’m sort of signed up for it.”
“Dude, I don’t know how, but you have to get out of that. If you don’t make it on this trip, we are all screwed. Me, Josh, and Alex will have to pay more money, and we will all personally kill you.”
“Okay, okay,” I mumbled. “I’ll get out of it.”
I hung up the phone and went to Mom. “Sorry, I can’t be Jesus,” I said.
“Whaaat?” You’d think my mother would get tired of this act, but no. She jumped off the couch and yelled, “You are not getting out of playing Jesus! You are committed to it, and you committed yourself to it, and it’s a very important commitment! You cannot turn your back on your church that way!”
“But I have to be at James’s country house on the day of the play!”
“No, you don’t! That can wait. If you knew about that, you should never have agreed to play Jesus!”
I checked the apartment door; miraculously, it was closed.
“Mom, I didn’t even want to play Jesus, y’know? You kind of made me do it, and now I’m telling you that I have to do something, and I can’t be Jesus on the day I’m supposed to, and, uh, they’ll have to find someone else.” I was wavering, and Mom could tell.
“Absolutely not. You are still living under my roof, in my house, and you committed to something. If you cancel, you will be letting down a lot of very nice people.”
“Well, if I don’t leave April second, I’ll be letting down a lot of nice people, too.”
“Ned,” Mom said, grabbing my cheeks like she used to do when I was six. “You are going to be in this play. That’s it.”
“Okay,” I said.
I walked slowly to my room. The last thing I needed now was to deal with Judith but, for some reason, I called her.
“Hey.”
“Hi!” That was it. Her happy hi; I loved to hear it. “How are you?”
“Not so good. It looks like I can’t go to Cancún.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I have to be Jesus the same day.”
Judith started laughing. She laughed for seconds, probably minutes. A minute of laughter is long on the phone.
“What’s so funny?”
“Ned, you are so silly. You have—hold on.” Laughter. “You have all these fantasies that you try to live out.” More laughter. “You act like James Bond; you act like this rock star; and really, you’re just playing Jesus in your church.”
“Well, thanks,” I smiled. “I’m glad you’re so supportive of my hopes and dreams.”
“Listen, bubbelle.” (That’s what Judith called me when she was feeling happy.) “It’s okay. It’s—my God, it’s bad enough that I’m not going out with a Jewish boy; now I have to tell my parents I’m with someone who’s playing Jesus. Maybe it’s good that you don’t have to worry about that and Cancún at the same time.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“What did your parents think about all this?” she continued.
“About Cancún?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I never told them.”
Silence.
“What?”
“What?” I asked.
“You never told your parents you were going to Cancún?!”
“No. I, uh, had a plan. I was going to tell them I was at this guy James’s house, see, and then I hoped they wouldn’t call—”
“Are you out of your mind?! Who am I dating? Are you crazy? Really, Ned, are you a sane person? Can you think what would have happened if you had gotten hurt? If you needed help? Can you even imagine?”
“Uh, I guess so.”
“This is ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. Thank God you’re not going to Cancún; you probably would have died.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Jesus—wait, I’m talking to Jesus, aren’t I?”
“Ha, ha.”
“Ned, don’t go doing crazy things. I care about you very much, and I don’t want you going to Cancún and getting hurt. Okay?”
That’s how it worked with Judith. First, the sucker punch—the “I-can’t-believe-you’re-such-a-jerk” chastising. Then the sweetness. It was a double whammy I could never fight. I’d convinced myself I wasn’t going to Cancún because of playing Jesus, but I suppose I was doing it for her too.
I got off the phone, sat at the computer, and typed:
The next day, I posted copies of the announcement all over school, nearly crying as I stapled them to bulletin boards. There’d be no beach babe for me—no “Fun in the Sun.”
I got three offers. A guy promised eight hundred dollars worth of marijuana; a girl offered enough Delta frequent-flier miles to go anywhere in the world for the next five years, and another guy presented a check for eight hundred fifty bucks. I took the check.
• • •
So I didn’t lose anything. I got my money back, and I pl
ayed Jesus as a normal man (with Mom watching, of course—she said I was inspiring, and she was proud to have me as her son). Then I spent my birthday with Judith—she didn’t hand me a Corona with a wedge of lime, but she did say, “Hey, Ned, you’re eighteen!” And she smiled very nicely.
Still, there’s no rock song in that. I don’t even think there’s a lesson.
*The church never called us teenagers, though, always “youth.” We had “youth groups,” “youth services,” “youth Bible study,” “youth ministry.” St. John’s loved that word.
**I always took my calculator everywhere, because whenever I left it at home, it got lost in my house, and then I couldn’t find it when I needed it for school.
*This was all highly thrilling and unusual. At Stuy, I spent hours trying to dissect whether Girl A or B liked me; with Judith, it was clear from the beginning. All I learned during those high school musings was that if a girl likes you, she’ll look at you a lot. That sounds obvious, but it works; you just have to know who’s looking and who’s daydreaming.
INTERLUDE
I honestly can’t remember the second half of my senior year. I spent it all on Judith. She worked in Manhattan, and every few days I picked her up from work. She lived in far Brooklyn, and almost every day I went there on the subway to hang out in her bedroom. On days we didn’t see each other, we always talked on the phone. Mom (again) thought I was on drugs, especially when I began ignoring her curfews altogether by coming home at midnight on weekdays, 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. on weekends. I guess I was in a bit of a daze; I lost a lot of weight and was tired all the time. But the stories stayed crystal clear.
• • •
I threw up on our first date. I had this great plan, see, to save money by eating at Burger King before we went out; then I would just order food for Judith. I figured that would be chivalrous, like a knight in shining armor getting a meal for his lady.
Well, Judith saw through me as we sat across from each other at King Wok’s Chinese Cuisine. The waiter came by for our order.
“I’ll just have tea,” I said.
“You’re not hungry?” Judith asked.
“Uh, not really,” I told her.
“You’re not hungry on our first date?”
Okay, so not eating was bad. I ordered some lemon chicken. It was way too much for my stomach, which was already dealing with a Whopper and onion rings; a half hour later, I found myself huddled over the King Wok toilet. I got some mints, though, from the cashier, and Judith never knew.
• • •
Our first fight took place in Barnes & Noble. We were hanging out there, and I checked my watch (actually, it was Mom’s watch—she had lent it to me so I could get to a friend’s Super Bowl party on time). Judith got mad because we were sort of in a back corner, and there’d been kissing; she felt it was ungracious of me to check the time. She stormed out of Barnes & Noble and I followed, totally unclear on what to do. I’d never seen a girl really mad before—at first I thought she was joking. We took two hours to settle the situation. I missed the Super Bowl party.
• • •
Another time, one of Judith’s friends threw a birthday party at a blues club in Manhattan; Judith and I went. I bought her an Irish coffee (seven dollars!), but when it arrived, it was too strong for her—more Bailey’s than coffee—so she left it alone. Now, I wasn’t going to waste seven of my dollars; I escaped to the bathroom with the coffee and downed it. Then I started worrying—what if she smelled the liquor on my breath? So I got out of the blues club and ran to a deli across the street for a stick of gum. While there, I noticed some green apples; I bought one of those instead, figuring it would clear up my breath just as well and be good for me. When I came back, Judith was livid. She wanted to know where I’d been for ten minutes, but mostly, she wanted to know what the hell I was doing in a blues club eating an apple.
• • •
I wanted a girlfriend all through high school, and when I finally got one, it was confusing and weird and stressful. But it also lived up to the hype, and that’s rare. Pot didn’t live up to its hype. Cigarettes didn’t. Drinking didn’t. The girl did.
PROM, PROM, PROMISES
Judith got me locked up for her prom early on. In fact, now that I think about it, that was one of the first things she did in our relationship. It happened in February. We were having our daily conversation, me at a pay phone at Stuy, her at home (she got out of school early).
“Ned, do you think we’ll go to my prom together?” she asked innocently. Judith was so good at being innocent and sexy at the same time. She should’ve been outlawed.
“Uh, um, well, isn’t your prom kind of in four months?”
Silence. “You don’t think we’ll still be boyfriend-and-girlfriend in four months?”
“Well, I don’t know, I guess I, ah, I hope so.” And I did. Judith was sweet; she was smart; I was getting attached to her, and this was a couple of days after my first half-fledged sexual encounter with anybody ever. I was kind of malleable.
“Well, haven’t you thought about the prom?”
“Nope.” I had never thought about the prom—not since junior high, when I vowed to spend it alone watching football. I don’t know why I vowed that; football season and prom season don’t even coincide. But I had it in my mind from an early age that proms were not for me; proms were for other people, Cool People, and although I secretly wanted to attend, I’d never admit it.
“Well, Ned, you have to understand. Girls think about proms all the time. When a girl has a guy senior year, she always checks about the prom. You have to find someone. You don’t want to be stuck at the last minute. Most girls have backups.”
“Really?” I loved it when Judith gave the lowdown on how girls thought.* I had always been confused about how they thought, and she was so forthright. It shocked me.
“Oh sure, everyone I know has two or three people lined up for the prom. But I just want to go with you.”
I could hear her smiling. She had me.
“What do I have to do?” I asked.
“Get a tux and a corsage.”
“What’s a corsage?”
“It’s, like, a flower that goes around my wrist.”
“Okay. No problem.”
“And I have to get you a boutonniere. Which is a flower that goes in your tux.”
“Okay. That sounds easy.”
“Yeah, great, Ned. Why don’t you try not to forget?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I smiled. I don’t know why she had me, but she did.
From then on, Judith’s prom was a sacred pact between us. Basically, no matter how often we fought, how badly we fought, or what we fought about, we were committed to go to prom with each other.
Example: our first big fight took place in a department store on Judith’s birthday. She wanted me to get some “nice clothes” so we could go dancing at “nice clubs.” I was still viewing the relationship partly as an anthropology course; I’d never been to a dance club and I never thought I’d have the chance to go, so I was up for it. We went to Macy’s and picked out a stylish shirt.
“That’s gonna look really nice! Go try it on,” Judith told me. I went to the changing room. There was a huge line.
“What’s the deal?” I asked a guy in line. He was with his girlfriend as well. You can always spot the guys shopping with girlfriends: they have hangdog, embarrassed faces, and when they see each other, they give little smiles. You know, to help their brothers through their time of trial.
“I don’t know,” the guy said. “Someone’s been in the room for like twenty minutes.”
“Damn.” I returned to Judith. “The changing room’s occupied. I’m just gonna try this on right here.” I began taking off my shirt to put on the new one.
“No!”
“What?”
“No! Don’t do that!”
“What?”
“You can’t just try on a shirt in the middle of a store. It’s embarrassing. It’s against t
he rules.”
“It’ll take a second. It doesn’t make a difference.”
“If you put that shirt on in here, I’m leaving.”
Oh, boy. I put the shirt on. Judith stormed off. I followed her to the elevator, and we walked out of the store muttering at each other.
“You know what,” I said as we stepped into the February night. “This is ridiculous. Why don’t you just find somebody else to go to your prom, okay?”
Silence. We were silent for most of the walk to the subway, and most of the subway ride home, except for under-the-breath insults.
“There’s plenty of girls who wouldn’t care if I tried on a shirt in the middle of a store.”
“Well, why don’t you just go try and find them.”
“Yeah, maybe I will, huh.”
When the subway pulled into my stop, I decided things were over; Judith and I were clearly incompatible. I said bye, got up, and hustled out the train doors, leaving her by herself. I walked home thinking how nice the relationship had been, but how it was probably good that it was over.
As I entered the apartment, the phone rang.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You leave me like that on the subway? It’s late at night and I’m wearing a skirt, and you leave me on the subway? Even if you don’t like me anymore, you don’t care about my safety? To leave me on the subway?”
“I’m sorry. I thought you wanted me to leave. I thought you said ‘go.’ ”
“I didn’t say ‘go’! My god, I don’t even know where I am now, I’m walking toward your house; why don’t you come out and meet me and give me money to take a car service home, if that’s all you want to do. And then I’ll leave you alone. You realize all this is happening on my birthday!”
“Okay, fine!” I went downstairs to give her money for a ride home, but that’s not what ended up happening. What ended up happening was we started talking. She told me she had had such a nice time in the three weeks we were going out and that it was nicer than with any other guy before.