In Search of the Golden Shiksa

By Roger Levine

Call me Weinstein. I have lived my life of quiet desperation dominated by women. Well, not really dominated by them. More like dominated by the need for them. Controlled by the lack thereof and the pursuit therein.
I have done it all. Singles dances, volleyball games, bike rides, video dating, even (God Forbid), folk dancing. I have done it all. Done it all in search of the Golden Shiksa.
Welcome to interfaith dating hell. If you are a woman, look into the mind of a brutally honest (yet charmingly neurotic) archetypal male as he lurches through the dating scene. If you’re a man, well you already know. In Search of the Golden Shiksa is the adventure filled seven year quest our tormented ethnic protagonist journeys on in pursuit of the non-Jewish women he so desperately craves.
Along the way we meet an eclectic cast of characters: The Vibe Sucker, who wants to become more religious but doesn’t have the money for it yet; the Teutonic Chunkette, who rides low and steady to the ground but is, nonetheless, pleasing to the eye; the Commission Pimp, who gracefully fleeces customers throughout greater Boston; and finally, Folk Dictator, a matronly beast of indeterminate age, who initiates the unsuspecting Weinstein into the subtleties of folk dancing, via sumo wrestling.
And concepts? The anxiety filled hero is nothing, if not creative. He introduces us to telebation where DVD and the single life collide; and to the masturbatorium, the usual venue for the above. The shik-sa-meter, sort of a Geiger counter of ethnicity, is hooked like an I.V. to Weinstein’s tortured psyche, as he longs for the old fun. The new fun? Hard little pellets of political correctness forced on our bumbling Lothario by his new-age, soon to be, ex-wife (who nevertheless abandons him for Mr. Old Souls, spiritual heir to a Fortune 500 company). You’ve heard of elevator shoes? Our scheming landsman evolves elevator underwear, a palliative for the short-waisted, world-wide.
Does Weinstein find the Golden Shiksa? For that, you’ll need to read the book. Suffice it to say that the joy is in the journey, as we find ourselves floating in Boston Harbor (an interminable singles cruise), locked in a half Nelson with Folk Dictator (an incorrect dance step), and wondering whether to “link or go limp” while confronting police in an effort to save the whales (an ill-advised foray into the realm of leftist politics). Weinstein would rather save the shiksas, but sure doesn’t want to go limp to do it.
It is the universality of prolonged, involuntary singlehood, that the people, places and things of Shiksa articulates and brings to the fore. Weinstein Agonistes? Or cheerleader interruptus? You be the judge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Levine
• Release date: Oct 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452431673

Roger Levine

I was born, appropriately enough, on April Fools’ Day, 1950, and brought up in Baldwin, Long Island, graduating from high school in 1968. I started at SUNY Binghamton (Harpur College) that year and ultimately graduated in 1974 (after a two year hiatus in Canada) with a degree in Philosophy.From early on I discovered I had the ability to make people laugh as well as certain musical proclivities. During college, I worked as a musician/comedian, and despite my degree in Philosophy (or perhaps because of it), after graduating I moved to Boston and continued working at folk and comedy clubs around the Northeast. I got married and needing to make more than the substance living my artistic ventures were providing, got into sales (office equipment) because that’s what my father did. As it turned out I was pretty good at it and prospered in the booming Massachusetts economy of the time. Unfortunately, my marriage did not prosper as well, and I got divorced and began the quest that is the central focus of In Search of the Golden Shiksa. When the Massachusetts economy died in the early 1990’s, I moved to Florida with my new wife, and unable to make a living down there, decided to go to law school (Northeastern University) from which I graduated in 1996. Unemployable, I was forced to go into practice by myself and discovered an entrepreneur hidden within, evolving a fairly successful Elder Law practice in the last fifteen years with two offices and a monthly radio show. I presently live in Canton, Massachusetts (south of Boston) with my wife, Donna, two sons, Jake (17) and Ben (13), as well as the three and a half cats.Although primarily concerned with career and family pursuits, the music, comedy and writing have never left me. Two unexpected bursts of creative flow (at age twenty for the music and my early forties for the books) where songs and stories seemed to channel through me (I’m not kidding), left me with a body of work I am trying to advance on a commercial level. In the spare time that I’ve had over the last ten years, I’ve worked on polishing the manuscripts to make them attractive enough for an agent and publisher (and ultimately for a video format) to pursue. It is with that effort and goal that I approach you with this project and hope you find it useful and enjoyable. Thanks.

Book preview

Chapter 1 - In the Beginning

Chapter 2 - The Second Act

Chapter 3 - Onto the Center of the Universe

Chapter 4 - A Stranger in a Strange Land

Chapter 5 - Biker Chicks and Titanium Geeks

Chapter 6 - Year of the Failed Shiksa

Chapter 7 - GS II Telebation & Folk Dictator

Chapter 8 - Driven Into Boston Harbor

Chapter 9 - Himmler and the Fucking Kikes

Chapter 10 - Shiksa Uber Alles

Chapter 1 – In the Beginning

Call me Weinstein.

I have lived my life of quiet desperation dominated by women. Well, not really dominated by them. More like dominated by the need for them. Controlled by the lack thereof and the pursuit therein.

Not that I have been without some small measure of success. After all, I was married for ten years and am currently married again; in fact, momentarily expecting the birth of my first child. Things have changed considerably for me, some might even say substantially improved. I sure would.

But as I look back from the purview of impending fatherhood at my assorted ventures of Jewish jelly and neurosis, I can only shake my head and laugh. Laugh at the journey that took me fleeing from the castrating contrary shrew-esses of New York to the gentle round-featured beauties of Harvard Square. Portnoy would be proud.

I have done it all. Singles dances, volleyball games, bike rides, weekend outings, video dating, skiing. Even, God forbid, folk dancing. Peering into the well lit vestibule of Concord Meeting House at the bobbing sea of sweating bandanna'd heads, I relieved my bursting bladder in the front bushes, of the five ounces of vodka imbibed in attempt to make even that activity palatable. Yes, I have done it all. Done it all in search of the Golden Shiksa.

By the time I arrived on the scene, the great Diaspora had wended its way from the Pale of Settlement to the suburbs of Long Island, halting for generational deposits in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. The fabled charm of the newly arrived immigrant and first generation ambition had given way to the sprawling mass of tract houses and faceless suburbia. How I longed for the Sunday morning socialist gatherings along the Coney Island boardwalk; the bath houses and the camaraderie of the aging community elders as we downed endless glasses of slivovitz; handball under the El and nasty waiters flinging forks at me at Ratners.

But alas, it was not to be. For the suffocating insularity of Delancey Street and Ocean Parkway had given way to the sterile void of burgeoning shopping malls, ranch houses with cookie-cutter yards, and two story brick-box school complexes. Progress, I think they call it. And though the sweaty over-involvement of the first half of the century had no doubt been glamorized by the time it was disintegrating, some primal consciousness, passed through the genes, told me that what we had gained was no match for what we had lost.

Oh sure, a few memories of the Golden Era were preserved in the Holy Sepulcher Museum on East 4th Street, otherwise known as the basement of my grandfather's house. Hour after hour, I would immerse myself in the darkly lit mazes of that sub-chamber, culling from the dusty archives little jewels of memorabilia. Dewey beats Truman. FDR Dead. Mr. and Mrs. Hyman Applebaum invite you to the wedding of their daughter, Cecilia. Little hunks of history, public and private. Glimpses of a past that no longer was. What there was, was Long Island. And a block full of boys, a one street Hebraic enclave in the middle of a sea of Christianity.

There was the mandatory block bully, who double functioned as the giver of names. Cherry. Blimp. Yag. Babes. Mine was Nooge. Luckily, I had been spared the bad fortune assigned to the bully's two siblings, whom he christened Tush and Pig, respectively. I think he is practicing law with Tush in Miami today, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know what happened to Pig.

The bully, as giver of names, had somehow miraculously managed to escape one of his own. Until he broke my nose by chasing me into a brick wall. From then on, he was Captain Blood.

Say what you will about Captain Blood, he kept things hopping. He plastered his attic with Playboy centerfolds and formed a club that you could join by screwing one of the paste-ups. Redman and Yag had done it, but mustering the first act of chivalry in my life, I declined, though being sorely tested.

But pictures proved not to be sufficient for The Blood, as he came affectionately to be known, as he soon wandered across the fence to expose himself to the unsuspecting girl next door, Pinocchio. She too, is a lawyer today. The Blood got some counseling soon afterwards.

If the block was cursed with a shortage of females, there was no such similar dearth of them at school. There were scores of them. Cute, pig-tailed, knee-socked, big-eyed, pug-nosed, little girls. Second grade Lolitas. And though they were foreign to me, they had a mystical power that no line drive to left or quickly flicked wrist shot could hope to match. They were mysterious, beautiful, enticing. In short, they were the Other.

But as I considered the Other from afar, it was visions of paternalism that filled my head. How I saved the Other from a bullying older brother or a huge wave at Jones Beach or maybe a wild running dog. How the Other gazed at me and thanked me for my chivalry. Oh, the bliss of the Other's adulation. For somehow, there was a lack, a gap in me beginning to develop, that only the beatific smile of the selected Other could begin to fill. And since the raging hormones which would descend so cruelly a short time hence had not yet kicked in, I could pine for possession of the Other in a pure and holy fashion.

Every new school year brought the dawning of another Other. There was Holly Givens, she of the golden blond hair, and Diana Durham, of the cherubic chipmunk cheeks. There was Shannon Carter of the long pleated braid and the missing tooth smile, and Donna Hansen, a red haired, green eyed vixen, all four feet one of her covered with freckles; and finally, Heather Kalman, a little dot of a girl who broke my heart when her father transferred to Secaucus.

But if the Lord could take away, he could also giveth. As I pined for Heather, he blessed me with the arrival of a tugboat captain's daughter, one Irene Hennessey, a fair skinned, freckled lass, with blond flowing hair. And if the Holy Father's fourth grade deliverance was truly bountiful, he outdid himself and delivered the coup de grace in the 5th, in the form of Lisa Lukkasson, a Lutheran Minister's daughter, moving into town from the Midwest. In this vision of loveliness all thoughts of tugboat wanderings and chipmunk cheeks were quickly erased. With her soft blond hair, smooth tan skin, wide ivory smile and radiant blue eyes, she was an Other like no Other. The perfect Other. Such a good Other that she lasted for not just one, but two, count 'em, two years, all the way till the end of grammar school. Oh, thank you, bountiful Father, for thy gifts, which I will cherish and protect and honor in a faithful and upstanding way. For he who bringeth forth the mystery of Lisa Lukkason, is one to whom I am eternally grateful and indebted to. Tell me the price and I shall pay it. Tell me the burden, I shall not tarry. Oh, tell me Lord, how can I thank thee for the gift that is Lisa Lukkason.

In my fantasia of pedestal-ic love, little could I know that time was rapidly running out on my holy chivalrous universe. That a curse worse than the invading Mongol hordes was about to descend on me and defile my little world of purity. That the joys of the mental possession of the Other would give way to the gnawing, rasping, unholy carnality of physical desire. That my little wide eyed beauties pictured from afar would no longer be sufficient to bridge the gap of fulfillment the tingling in my loins was calling for.

Oh Lord, surely when I mentioned any burden, you could not have meant this. Surely when I mentioned any price, this could not have been what you had in mind. Surely, Lord, you jest.

So I ask you, oh Lord, deliver me from the strangle hold of impure thoughts bombarding my head in desecration of the Other. Deliver me, my Master, from the aching pangs of longing now filling my soul, where once purity reigned unencumbered. Yes, deliver me, oh Lord, fromseventh grade.

I could feel it from Day One. Something cold, hard, metallic about this place, more like a prison than a school. The clanging of endless rows of metal lockers; hordes of unfamiliar faces lining the hallways; the wide open vacuum of the cafeteria; the stench and impersonality of the locker room and gym. A stranger in a strange land.

Things wouldn't be simple anymore, I sensed. For as frightening as the unfamiliarity of my new surroundings were, they were nowhere near as frightening as the changes happening within me. All of a sudden it mattered how I looked, what I wore. For years my mother had picked out my clothes the night before and I had donned them willingly, with no second thought. For years my parents had sent me faithfully to Vince's Highway Barbershop, where, in between selling hot TV sets and toaster ovens, Vince and his serene cousin Tony shaved my head on a tri-weekly basis.

But that tranquil world had given way to a burgeoning era of skin-tight pants, budding breasts and pompadour hairdos. The argyle socks had to go. The red pants, long gone. My cousin's hand-me-downs might continue to be okay, at least with the proper alterations. And Vince the barber would have to be content in seeing my head half as often and of having to pay attention to detail when he did. The look of the Gulag was out.

Within my skin-tight pants, there was no room for comfort. Between the constant war of my continuous erection and the combs and wallets stuffed into pockets, the Cuban Missile Crisis looked like a May Day parade, in comparison. Something was going to explode in my pants, of that I was sure. Hopefully all innocent bystanders would be outside the four foot safety cordon.

Since the Junior High had been a mating of six or seven grade schools, each elementary school gang banded together to form its own little mini-tribe. These were composed for mutual defense, as well as for staking out new turf. Our tribe consisted of eight to nine members and we were the elite of Lenox School. I had made the tribe based on my athletic ability, although I was clearly one of its lesser members. The problem was height, or lack thereof.

The tribe would do everything together. Stand in line before entering school, eat in the cafeteria, hang out in gym class, gather in the courtyard during break time. From the safety of the tribe, we could gaze out at the forbidden fruit we so desperately longed for: the girls of the other tribes, or the foreign tribesses, as it were. For not only had nature unleashed in us strange new cravings, but the educational system had provided a new and expanded context in which to exercise them. All of a sudden we were surrounded with packs of delicious and budding young nubiles. The girls of Plaza School. The girls of Schubert School. The girls of Milburn and Coolidge and Prospect and Brookside Schools. Our own paltry lot from Lenox paled in comparison, or at least it seemed they did. Maybe we were just used to them.

Status began to appear, as the inevitable cross-pollenization of the mixing of different schools in the classroom evolved. Our big guns mixed with their big guns and the female elite banded together as well. Our tribe of location was breaking down to be replaced by newer models based on social standing. As my fast fading grasp started slipping, gone were my golden connections to Dougy LeDoux and Solon Panagloss and Jerry Herman, the erstwhile power brokers of grammar school legend. Down, down, I plummeted, falling fast and finally bottoming out in the bosom of the antiestablishment. If we couldn't be the in crowd, we would be the official out crowd, our outness being the defining character. Oh sure, we were higher on the social scale than the science nerds and the AV squad but then again, so were paramecium. Yes, we would be beatniks, the rebels, the intellectuals, at least the seventh grade version of them, anyway. I would steal my sister's sandals and take the Long Island Railroad into Washington Square to hear the Jewish Ragtime Cowboys play the budding acoustical tunes of the early sixties.

Unfortunately, I wasn't tall enough to be considered handsome. I did make cute, however. With my little jokes and recently liberated hair, many of the girls who sat around me developed crushes, at least the shorter ones did. Local girls, I called them. And though I was flattered by their attention, my heart longed for the seventh grade Lolitas who were hopelessly out of my reach. The age old theme of not wanting what you can have and not having what you wanted, was starting to rear its ugly little head; although I'm not sure I would have known what to do with either group, if given the chance. So, erect and farting, I continued to pine. Pining was becoming a way of existence.

There was a friend's bar mitzvah where I met a Jewish bombshell, my first official JAP, who I would pine for the next year, and her friend, who it turned out pined for me and whose father owned the largest baseball card company in America. If only my gold digging ways had been more developed, I could be sharing box seats with Hank Aaron today. But alas, with my pining heart and semi-priapic state, I languished in the emotional wasteland of seventh grade, headed for the rocky shoals of eighth. All the rumbling miles of the LIRR, and the strumming guitars of Rambling Elliot Adnopoz and Robert Zimmerman could not dispel the dark gathering clouds on the horizon. Until I met her.

She had been the star of Brookside School, the class vice-president. She had made the advanced class and the boys of Brookside were touting her highly. She was being set up with the elite of our elite, tall scholar athlete Doug LeDoux, but somehow, she fell short of the mark. For as the blossoming young beauties vaulted vertically, Debby sprouted horizontally. Ultimately, her tragic flaw was that she had too much brains and brawn to make the highest rankings of the social register. As her star plummeted, she carried a sweet sadness about her of one who has tasted the heights and knows that they are forever more closed to her.

Not that she was without substantial redeeming qualities. For she was not fat, but merely short and stocky. Zaftig, they called it. Some males would kill for it, and I was one of them. And in that squat little frame developed two of the fullest, roundest and irresistibly tempting breasts known to the likes of eighth grade masculinity. It was enough to pop a zipper at thirty paces.

She was German and her face showed it. High cheek bones, wide-set blue-green eyes, a little round bulb of a nose, a huge mouth with full lips, and straight, shoulder length, brown hair. It may seem cruel to say, but she looked like a feminized version of Babe Ruth. But she was beautiful to me.

I had seen her the year before, but she was foreign to me, and, I knew, reserved for the elite. All I remembered was that she had a beautiful smile.

And so I found myself one row over and one seat back from her in eighth grade Spanish class. I was Carlos and she was Juanita. I had always hated languages with a passion, having about as much ability in them as I did with a square knot. But somehow, a glance at those soft firm breasts said that this was compensation that might make language class worthwhile.

After three or four days, I was sitting at my desk waiting for class to start, thumbing through a Mets yearbook, when she came in and settled at her desk. She half turned around to me and flashed the beautiful smile. She said Hi.

I almost fell on the floor. Unsolicited, unprovoked, unanticipated, I gathered my startled self and attempted to respond. I think I grunted, as some kind of gurgling noise escaped my exploding larynx and wafted toward her ears. I'm sure it wasn't English; I'm not even sure it was human, but when it reached her, she sort of half-giggled and turned back around. Senora Delfuedo came in and class started.

My mind raced. Surely she had made a mistake, or I had made a mistake. She had smiled at the guy next to me. Except the guy next to me was Susan Hallerman. Didn't she know we were not of the same caste? That I was beneath her and not worthy of her attention? What did she know about the lowly world of Washington Square and Bob Dylan? She was on the cheerleading squad, for God's sake! Surely it must be a mistake. Maybe she wanted to get to Doug LeDoux through me. After all, this President Kennedy junior look alike was my next door neighbor. Yes, that must be it, I thought.

But then the same thing happened the next day and then again on a third. It wasn't a fluke. She was actually saying hi to me, for God only knows what reason. By the fourth or fifth day, I was gradually able to utter a response that was possibly English and almost definitely human. I was in deep monosyllable with her. I think she was enjoying it.

Suddenly I was always early for Spanish class, sometimes so early I'd have to wait for the class before to leave. Weeks passed and I managed to evolve into complete sentences. Sometimes two at a time. She asked me what I thought about things. She actually seemed to care what I had to say. She was the first girl who had ever taken me seriously and I had no clue as to why. All I knew was that I was flattered.

I used whatever limited skills I had in Spanish to impress her. With hopelessly tangled syntax, I made primal little jokes like Los Chicas son peros, (the girls are dogs). If I couldn't speak in the language, at least I could joke in it, enough so the class could recognize and laugh. Senora Delfuedo grew flustered but seemed to understand that I was working for a higher purpose than my accustomed C. Yo quiero la una con los tres ojos, (I