Now you are a man

I wrestled with the thought of God when I was young. I asked for a sign—"Flash lights from that parking lot, and I'll end this life of sin, I promise." I was high, and I thought the lights flashed. But I changed nothing.

This was years before Albuquerque. I was 12 when they sent me to a yeshiva to study for my bar mitzvah. Chabad was happy to have me, but studying? Not so much. They tried, but I only managed to read my prayers in translated phonetic Hebrew. My dad came for the ceremony, and when we arrived at the temple, no one was there. It was Passover, and most had gone home for the holiday. My father was furious, and my brother threatened to kill him. Then, people started to arrive, and I had my bar mitzvah. We threw a big party—someone balanced me in a chair on their chin. It was terrifying. We ate cured fish, and a band played music in Hebrew. I hated it then, and I still do.

The Chabad folks invited me to summer camp, and I was excited. I had to stay with a host family that lived like the Amish. The counselors didn’t want me at the camp, probably because I was annoying as hell. I know I still am. I was lonely and cried at night. I bought a hamster, and the host family got mad. They made me take it to camp. I put him outside in his cage, and it rained. In the morning, I found him floating. I cried.

I once shot a BB gun in the air, no particular direction, and hit a counselor in the leg. He didn’t like me before, and now he liked me even less. He chased me for a while, and I don’t remember what happened next. Oh, and I forgot to mention—on the first day at camp, someone had spray-painted a swastika on the camp sign.

I became religious at that camp. Started dressing like a Hasid—suit, hat, all the trimmings. They invited me to live in New York, and I was excited again. But my mom got really angry when I told her. She said if I went, I could never return. I said goodbye and boarded the plane, shoes still on. My new home was in Crown Heights, a yeshiva for newly religious kids and those no other religious school wanted anymore. I’m sure those bad kids had stories, but I was probably worse than any of them.

By then, I was a chronic masturbator. I had no privacy, and nothing to fuel my imagination, so I used religious books in the bathroom stall to get the job done. Incest stories and lying down. I made a friend, another bad kid. He showed me his host father's porno magazines. When he went to the shower, I masturbated, and somehow, he knew. We went to Manhattan and ate pork hot dogs. It was a big deal to him.

On Yom Kippur, during the fast-breaking, I got really drunk for the first time and threw up in my host family's bathroom sink. The mother made me clean it up, and I gagged while I scooped the vomit into the toilet. I’d call my mom from the payphone across the street, and it felt like I was calling from a warzone. Everyone hated us.

I went home for the holiday break and cried to my mom, begging her to let me stay. My brother convinced her to let me. I never believed in God, not even then, but I was lonely and bored with my life. The next year, we moved back to Israel.