The Last Jewish Virgin

Chapter 3

5 3 T all and lanky, oozing attitude, bearing his middle years like a sexy, ageless musician, Mr. Rock stood in the doorway of the classroom, stooping slightly to fit. He wore tight black jeans that clung to his thighs, black sneakers and a black cotton sweater, and, oddly, mirrored sunglasses, like a tough hoodlum from back in the ’70s. For a moment, in the harshly lit doorway, his skin seemed so white as to be nearly transparent, while the color of his slicked-back hair was so black it appeared indifferent to nature. His long, narrow face spoke of dark times and hard living. Probably, though, he wasn’t much older than forty-five, my mother’s age, but, unlike her, he looked as if he barely knew that objects existed outside his own mirror. Nevertheless, his dark, intense looks were unquestionably powerful and disconcerting. Why were both of these men getting to me so much? Was it because I’d come dressed as a vampire, a creature on the prowl for fresh blood? Had I mistaken fashion iconography for reality? “I’m Mr. Rock,” he announced from the doorway. Although the sound of his voice was as cold as a blast of wind, it set ablaze what felt like volcanic lava inside me. With a gliding and fluid motion, he sat on the edge of his desk in the front of the room, pushing up the sleeves of his black sweater, revealing long, sinewy 6 The Last Jewish Virgin arms. His body was sharp, with prominent bones. He looked as if he’d been etched by a knife. I kept expecting him to remove his sunglasses. Against my will, I wanted to see his eyes, which I pictured as frosty blue with strands of gold, like a cool sky. At the same time, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling that he was staring right at me, although there was no way to be sure because of the mirrored sunglasses. “Attendance time,” he said, and the contrast of his mundane words with his almost otherworldly appearance was startling. He pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper from the pocket of those glovetight jeans, and as he spoke, all of his muscles seemed to tense, although his voice was lighter now. “Not that I personally give a damn about attendance. Institute rules, though.” I sensed everyone in the room relaxing, even the blond young man next to me. They were all probably thinking that Mr. Rock was all right, a hip art professor who didn’t cotton to rules and regulations any more than they did. But they were wrong: He wasn’t hip and he wasn’t on their side. I felt that I already understood him far better than they did, and I didn’t trust him. Coldly, he began to read from the roster. “Colin Abel,” he called out, no longer our hipster pal, just like that. He was mercurial and manipulative, the kind of man my mother, always on the lookout for “unreconstructed” men, called “Machiavellian,” the kind of man who would enjoy keeping us guessing, playing games with us, and then turning on us in a flash. “Colin Abel,” he repeated, his voice needle-sharp. “Here,” the blond young man next to me said so softly he was barely audible. Colin, I thought, not a Jewish name. Abel, maybe Jewish. And so what, I asked myself. Why the obsession with who was and wasn’t? Some sort of vestigial thing, I figured—maybe because throughout history Jews on the run have had to find their own. “Suzanne Bradley,” Mr. Rock called out. “Here.” The word was spoken by someone I hadn’t noticed before . She wasn’t poised and polished like the other females in the room, and I was certain that she wasn’t Jewish. WASP-y, but not Janice Eidus 7 sophisticated, she was more like a shy Nebraskan whose life, prior to today, had consisted of church, cows and 4-H—not that I’d ever been to Nebraska, of course. In any case, she seemed scared and completely out of place at Bennett. Her nose ran; her rimless, unstylish eyeglasses were crooked; she sounded more than ready to catch the first flight home. Mr. Rock went on to the next name and the next—“Dahlia Feinberg . . . Maribel Fernandez . . . Kim Pak Lee . . . Elissa Robinson .” He was lingering seductively over each...