Hi, I'm Forty-Nine and Butch!

They say when a man gets older his testosterone level goes down, while for a woman, testosterone levels go up. That is why Grandpa has titties and Grandma has a beard. If they live long enough, they can shop in the same department. You can’t afford a sex change operation? Wait a decade or two.

This also means that the fems become even more fey with age. Can you imagine? Ironically, all those butch lesbians get even more manly with age. What is scarier is that the bears end up with furry boobs, which brings us back to my Aunt Paula. Or, maybe we should just leave that one alone.

As I approach a certain mid-century milestone, I have noticed certain changes. The biggest change is that I make sure everyone knows how old I am, and I don’t know why.

“How does this shirt look on me? I’m forty-nine years old.” “You can’t touch your toes? I can, and I’m forty-nine years old.” “I’ll take a pound of the Lebanese bologna and a half pound of macaroni salad. I’m forty-nine years old.”

Now, I have always said that if a day went by that someone didn’t mention my height that would be the day I died. I have yet to go for twenty-four hours without hearing anything similar to or actually the following:

“If someone Milton’s size were to attack you, what would you do?”

“Wow, your head just missed the door frame.”

And my favorite every time I get into a car: “That seat goes back further.” My reply is always, “It is back all the way.”

So, it isn’t enough that I am a freak, I have this incredible need to point out that I am also an old freak. As I said, I cannot help but tell everyone my age. I am like Marie Osmond on Dancing with the Stars, a show by the way I hate. Every night, she would tell Tom Bergeron, “I am forty-eight.” Finally, she said, “As a woman my age …” and he interrupted, “You are seventy-three, right?” Even he was sick of it.

Like Tom Bergeron, I am sick of hearing myself mention my age. Sometimes, I feel as if I am on the outside observing myself and wondering who this annoying age-obsessed moron is.

Have you ever found yourself doing something annoying repeatedly, and you don’t know why? Maybe all of us have a little bit of a split personality.

As I grow older, I am also obsessed with my aging body and especially my dropping testosterone levels. I read somewhere that peanut butter is good for maintaining good testosterone, which is why I am constantly standing in front of the cupboard with an open jar of Skippy’s and a soup spoon.

However, there are certain things you cannot stop. For example, my ass is a full three inches lower and much more jiggly than it was twenty years ago. If I go jogging, I think someone is tapping me on the shoulder, and I look as if I am smuggling sofa cushions. I have always had a big ass, and while it has been a curse at times, the blessing is that when I do turn eighty (and believe me, you will know when I turn eighty), my pants will still have a good shelf upon which to rest.

While women complain about falling boobs, men also experience the effects of gravity. Our balls drop. If I walk across a room naked, I get rug burns on my scrotum.

Then, there is the sex drive. That drops, too. The first sign that your sex drive has diminished is when you cannot answer the following question: “When was the last time you jerked off?” If you have to think about your masturbation schedule …

In your teens, the answer was always within an hour. In your twenties, the answer was usually no more than twelve hours. In your thirties, a day, maybe two. In your late forties, you can’t remember.

And although masturbation is good for prostate health, you still don’t have the energy – or the time – to do something for your own well being.

While all the above has happened to me, I am experiencing a strange phenomenon since moving into my mobile home.

I got rid of all my old drag wear, except for one pair of stilettos and Nana’s pearls. In addition, I now do a lot of physical manly things.

Even though I have been a life-long fitness nut, in the past year, I have taken my physical activities to a whole new level. First, there was Krav Maga, which now I am so obsessed with that if I miss a class, I do everything possible to make it up, even driving thirty miles to the sister facility to take a Sunday class. While I had no intention of completing the six-hour belt testing when I first signed up, now I am training to test to the next level in September. If I am partnered with a young guy in class who is out of breath while I am still going strong, I always ask how old he is then tell him how old I am. I never miss an opportunity to say, “I am forty-nine years old, and I can do this.”

I competed in one of those extreme obstacle courses where I sprained and broke my ankle, and now I have signed up for another one. “She’s a cool one; she’s returning to the scene of the crime,” said Ethel Mertz. The best part of these obstacle courses is that I get to compete in the Men 45+ category, which gives me another opportunity to tell everyone my age from the people assigning bibs and chips, to the woman with the walkie-talkie monitoring the race, to whoever is standing next to me at the starting line. None of them give a shit, but that doesn’t stop me.

Next year, I will be like Sally O’Malley on SNL – “I’m fifty! I can kick and stretch and kick again. I’m fifty!”

This past week, I was asked to participate in an experimental boot camp at my gym. Six people were asked, and they signed up, but only three of us showed up for the class. Two women in their thirties and I. You guessed it. I made sure they all knew how old I was. “Hi, I’m Milton. I’m forty-nine.”

Well, the class began with two trainers and three students. We did all this kettle ball stuff, and plank push-ups, and climbing stairs, and barbell push-ups with clean and jerks and other things I never saw before. I was enjoying being pushed to my limits and on the verge of cardiac arrest, but I whined more than a grounded teenager. After thirty minutes, they declared the class over. I said, “That’s all you got?”

Me and my big mouth. The trainer, who couldn't get over how I could whine for thirty minutes then ask for more, pushed me and pushed me. Straight guys may love me, but they like to try to break me, too!

I finally said, “I’m doing the best I can; I’m almost fifty. I’m just an old drag queen trying to maintain his figure.”

He said, “Who cares! Fifteen more!”

I did fifteen more. I was sweating so much he called me a puddle. He also congratulated me.

Afterward, I asked when the next class would be. He thought I was nuts but glad I wanted to come back.

I went home, took a shower in Irish Spring, put on some Old Spice, and drank a Pabst Blue Ribbon while sitting on my porch with my hound dog, Esmeralda.

The question though is when did I become so damn butch?

Is this mobile home emitting testosterone from the steel frame? Is my AMC Eagle not just a lesbian magnet but a lesbian maker? And, when did I buy a pack of wife beaters?

I think I need to go dress shopping. Any takers?

If you like what you just read, follow me, or better yet, BUY MY BOOK by clicking here! The Gay Jew in the Trailer Park on Amazon Kindle now; hard copies available in September 2012.

Lickity Split Down the Main Street of Town

Recently, I declared my disdain for some New Yorkers, and I was subjected to an earful of comments, which were surprisingly positive! This means either my fan base is mostly southern, or New Yorkers can’t read.

Well, this all got me to thinking … a dangerous thing at times. Have you ever noticed how there are some people who think anything that comes from New York City is automatically the best? My mother was guilty of this especially when it came to food. “Try these bagels, they’re from New York.” “Aren’t these knishes to die for? They’re from New York.” “It couldn’t have been the lox that gave me diarrhea; it was from New York.”

Frankly, I could never tell the difference between a New York bagel and a Newport News bagel. They both tasted like shit to me. I am probably the only Jew who doesn’t like bagels. I like bialys or Bialystoks, as some people call them. I once wrote an article for a magazine about Internet shopping (right after Al Gore invented the Internet) about bialys, their history and the fact that you could order them online from a company in … you guessed it, New York. Ok, New Yorkers, the best bialys come from New York; even I will admit that (of course, you can’t find them outside New York).

The one thing about New Yorkers that I find interesting is that they never vacation anywhere else. Sure, they go to the Hamptons, but aren’t those in New York? Do you have friends who live in New York City? I do. How many times have you invited them to come visit you? Do they? No. However, they always insist you visit them.

“Come on up for the weekend, you can stay at my place.” Oh sure, I can’t wait to spend a weekend with you in your $4,500-a-month, ten-by-twelve, studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen with a bed on a six-foot high platform that serves as your closet and dining room.

You can always tell the amateur pornographers who are from New York. In the background are a bed, a stove, a mini-refrigerator, a garment rack, a sink, and a cat who keeps walking in front of the camera. The place is usually a mess, too.

Come visit us in the South, and you can have your own bedroom, and we will serve you breakfast on the veranda. Our cats live outside along with our hound dogs, chickens, and cows.

Another reason I don’t want to visit New York is that just about every crime show on television seems to take place there. Law & Order SVU, Law & Order Criminal Intent, Law & Order Who Stole My Bagel, Castle, CSI New York, and True Blue Jew, just to name a few. And, the crimes are so heinous. You don’t just get murdered; they chop off your body parts and leave them all over the city. Someone doesn’t just steal your purse; he takes your whole arm with it.

Even my mother, New York fan extraordinaire, would say, “Don’t wear good jewelry in Central Park; they’ll cut your hand off to get a bracelet.” Maybe this is why she only wore gaudy costume jewelry. I always said she could walk through Central Park at 3:00 am, and no one would bother her.

When was the last time you saw CSI Bent Fork or Law & Order Bootleggers and Brothels?

I’ll tell you why, and the New Yorkers will love this. In the South, we do things a little bit more slowly, so it takes a while for us to catch our criminals. A case has to be open at least fourteen years before they will declare it a cold case. In addition, our criminals are also a bit slow.

In New York, they drive either white vans or black mid-size sedans. In the South, they drive a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice or some other car you could pick out in a parking lot full of charcoal gray Honda Accords. That is what the snipers were driving, and it took them a month to find them.

When I lived in Newport News in the 1980s, a neighbor was murdered, and the felons took off in his turquoise 1965 Chevrolet Impala. They were finally caught two weeks later in Nevada. Why did it take so long? They took a southern route.

Just listen in on a police call.

“Hey, Marge, we need to put out an APB … oh she’s fine, just getting over a cold, but we’re getting plenty of milk out of her now … oh, you weren’t talking about her … my wife, oh the same, she switched to filter-less, and now she doesn’t cough as much … Marge, two guys just held up Tyrone's gas station … yep, they were last seen going lickity split down the main street of town … oh I don’t know … a witness says they were going about twenty maybe even twenty-five miles per hour … we got that; they were driving a yellow AMC Gremlin … uh huh with a white hockey-stick stripe … yep, I had one, too, fine car … he says it had the big bumpers, so it must be a 1974 or 75, maybe even a 1976 … nope, he said it was going too fast to get a license plate number … ok, when you come back from lunch, you put out that APB. Ok?”

If you think I’m kidding, several years ago, a couple of guys were shooting at cars in southwest Virginia, and they were driving a yellow AMC Gremlin.

It took them three weeks to catch them.

If you like things slow and bagels from Newport News, follow me, or just buy my damn book on Kindle here.

Thank God, I’m a Southerner

John Denver sang, “Thank God, I’m a Country Boy,” written by John Martin Sommers. Whenever I encounter a typical New Yorker, I am reminded of that song, but with my own lyrical twist, “Thank God, I’m a Southerner.”

What follows will probably offend just about anyone from New York City, especially Jews. It will also offend a lot of other people.

Too bad.

As you know, I was born in Newport News, Virginia. Some claim that does not make me a true Southerner, and I always argue that Newport News is an hour’s drive south of the capital of the Confederacy. My mother was born in Baltimore and raised in Washington, DC. Her mother, Nana, was born in Russia, and when she was two years old, her family settled in Newport News – the year was 1905. In the 1920s, she moved to Baltimore to go to secretarial school where she met Milton Summers. Being blond and blue-eyed, Nana had to read The Forward backward to his neighbors to prove she was Jewish.

My father was born and raised in Brooklyn. His mother was born in Brooklyn, and his father in Budapest, Hungary.  

I enjoyed eating in restaurants with my mother. When eating in a restaurant with my father, I always feared the chef was putting Visine in our food. For years, I thought his rudeness and how he treated waiters was just a part of his personality.

There was a time when I really didn’t like being a Southerner. After watching the Godfather, I really wished I had been born a New York Italian or is the correct term, an Italian from New York? There just seemed to be something alluring about being raised in a culture so rich with ethnicity. I found my Southern upbringing to be a bit bland.

They even murdered people with class. Think about it. Which is better, choking someone with a piano wire or blowing his head off with a sawed-off shotgun? One is quick and quiet, the other, loud and sloppy.

Some say I have a bit of a Southern twist to how I talk. I don’t hear it, y’all. One day in synagogue I was chanting a prayer, and the rabbi said, “You speak Hebrew with a Southern accent.” I do say, y’all a lot. My great-grandmother apparently would say, “Vas machst y’all?”

I had a few encounters with New Yorkers while involved with United Synagogue Youth (USY). Many of them found Jews from the South to be a curiosity, but I’ll never forget Aunt Flossie’s encounter with them. Aunt Flossie was born in New York, but her father moved their family to Newport News at the beginning of World War II. He was a barber, and he found work at Fort Eustis cutting soldiers’ hair. She was thirteen at the time.

A group of teenagers from the New York chapters of USY stayed at the Newport News Jewish Community Center for the weekend, and according to Aunt Flossie, who was in charge of the logistics, they just about destroyed the place.

Whenever we visited their chapters, we left things exactly as we found them. To do otherwise would be positively un-Southern.

However, my first real encounter with New Yorkers came about when I moved to Florida in 1992. Florida is a strange place. Although it is as south as one can get, everyone speaks with a New York accent, even the native Floridians.

On the day I arrived, the real estate agent, who arranged my rental of the cottage attached to the brothel (a little nuance of the property she neglected to relay), drove me around Lake Worth to show me everything. Surprisingly, she was also a Southern Jew. While telling me about my new landlord, “a typical New York Jew if I ever met one” – as she put it, she said the most shocking thing I have ever heard, which I refuse to write here. All I can say is it was about Holocaust.

Seriously, I am almost fifty, and it was the most shocking thing I ever heard. I said that already, didn’t I?

I finally met my landlord when my plumbing completely stopped working and backed up, and I could not shower for work. She sent a plumber, who had to get a back hoe to dig up the driveway because the main water and sewer lines to the house had both burst.

I complained that this was unacceptable and I needed the use of a bathroom and to shower for work and they should provide me with a hotel room. This was Florida, where the heat and humidity are so high that plastic plants grow. I worked as a waiter at the Rod and Gun at the time, and the last thing my customers needed was a smelly server who hadn’t wiped his ass.

Her response was, “Put on some deodorant and shit in the woods.”

I almost had the vapors! Who says such things?

Needless to say, I missed work that night, which in restaurant terms means a night’s pay.

When her husband came by to replace the window air conditioning unit, he tracked grease all over the carpet. I had the carpets steam cleaned, but whatever he tracked in would not come out. After I moved from the cottage, she refused to refund my security deposit because of the grease on the carpet and because I had hung pictures on the walls. I had never before, nor since, been refused my security deposit.

That may have been my first experience, but as I mentioned, I worked at the Rod and Gun – the same restaurant where Endora was told the salmon was dry.

And that is where I soon became proud to be a Southerner. I also finally realized my father was not unique.

First off, they eat dinner at 4:30 pm in what I soon learned was something called an Early Bird. I honestly did not understand the concept until my third night working there. Soup or salad, coffee or tea and dessert for $14.95, but you eat before the sun goes down.

At 4:15 pm every night, the doors were opened, and they all arrived in groups of four, six or eight – never two!

For those who have never experienced the Early Bird crowd, let me give you some typical scenarios:

“I want my salmon broiled dry.” I deliver the salmon, and the lady says, “The salmon is very dry.” My response, “That is how you ordered it.”

If I had a nickel for every time I heard “on the side,” I wouldn’t be living in a singlewide.

“I’ll have the thousand island dressing on the side.”

“I want hot tea, tea bag on the side.” I will never forget that one because her husband said, “Tea bag on the side? You sound like a fucking idiot.”

At least ten times an evening: “I’ll have the prime rib. I want an end cut.” One night, I finally said, “How many feshtungina prime ribs do you think we have back there?”

My all time favorite was when a group said, “We are all diabetic, so we need to be served quickly.” After dinner, I brought them sugar free Jello for dessert without asking. “What is this? We want cheesecake.” To which I replied, “I’m sorry, you are all diabetic, so you can only have sugar free Jello. Here is your check. Have a nice evening.”

And, more times than not, I heard, “This is ridiculous! I want to speak with the manager! I want compensation!” or “I am not as happy as I thought I would be.”

But my all time favorite was, “I was in the restaurant business.” Really, how many delicatessens are there in New York, since every goddamn one of you owned one? I thought it; I never said it.

I became the manager of the restaurant (big surprise since I am a number eleven), which was when the real fun began.

We never took 5:45 pm reservations because the Early Bird ended at 6:00 pm, and the rule was one had to be seated by 6:00 pm. So, 5:30 pm was the last time one could make a reservation for the Early Bird.

I don’t know how many times I heard after saying to someone over the phone, “We do not take 5:45 pm reservations and one needs to be seated before 6:00 pm,” “Well, we are going to arrive at 5:45, and we expect to be seated for the Early Bird.” I always felt as if I were talking to a wall.

The most hilarious was “We drove all the way from Boca to have your cheesecake.” The restaurant was in Delray Beach, one stoplight from Boca. I replied, “I drove all the way from Lake Worth to tell you we are out of cheesecake.” Lake Worth was five miles away.

My all time favorite was Mrs. Posner, a little one-hundred-forty-five-year-old pain in the ass who once dated Moses. I was at the host stand, and she came barreling through the door at 5:45 with her party of six yelling as her foot crossed the threshold, “I have a 5:45 reservation for six for Posner, and we expect to be seated immediately for the Early Bird.” All before she made it to the host stand, which means she was rehearsing her speech in her Crown Victoria with the left turn signal on the whole drive to the restaurant.

I looked right at her, and I said, “Really? We don’t take 5:45 reservations.”

“Well, I called today and made one.”

“Whom did you speak to?”

“The manager.”

“A man or a woman?”

“A woman.”

“Mrs. Posner, I am the manager, and you are lying. I am the only one who answers the phone here or it goes to voice mail. You did not make a 5:45 reservation. We don’t take 5:45 reservations. I will seat you when a table opens up.”

She was actually speechless. I did seat her at 5:55, and when her waiter took sick, I actually took over her table and served her and her guests with the utmost efficiency. Needless to say, no one in her party gave me any shit that night. They didn’t even tell me the salmon was dry.

But, I have to say something in their defense. New York Jews ALWAYS tip! I will never forget the waiters complaining about only getting fifteen percent tips. Obviously, they had never waited on Southern Baptists from North Carolina visiting Williamsburg, Virginia, as I did for more years than I care to admit. They leave one dollar for every check on the table. Whenever I approached a table of Southern Baptists from North Carolina, even a family, I would ask, “Separate checks?”

I finally left Florida and my cousins from the North, hoping never to wait on them again. But in our world today, which brings people from all over closer together, I was bound to have another New Yorker encounter – this time a Gentile.

And, you Goyim thought you were off the hook this time. Ha!

I am president of the Straight Eights Gay Car Club, and this year we are hosting the Lambda Car Club International (LCCI) Grand Invitational. That means we won’t just get a sprinkling of members from all over the country, we expect more than three hundred people from all over.

We had an Early Bird registration period that ended recently, and as always whenever one approaches any kind of deadline with an inviational, the nasty people come out. One of my fellow chapter presidents, a New York Gentile, complained about the price of the invitational and made the following statement: “Just want to mention that a number of my members find the price of $180 per person a bit high during these hard times. I hope the food and activities justify the cost!”

My first inclination was to reply “fuck you.”

Just so you know, our invitational covers four days and six meals and two snacks along with every other expense that goes into planning such an event. In addition, his chapter has a reputation for being the snottiest in all of LCCI. They do not let anyone who doesn’t own an antique luxury car participate in their events. Not only that, they have NEVER held an invitational (we hold a regional every year), let alone hosted a Grand Invitational. And one more thing, this is a car club filled with people who will spend thousands and thousands of dollars on “classics” some would consider used cars, yet they are the first to complain about a $5 increase in a fee. I am not kidding.

So, I found his complaint about the price to be a bit nasty. Using my Southern charms, I responded to him about what is involved and how we calculated the registration price based on expenses divided by the maximum number of attendees, and we still offered the discounted Early Bird price to help people out. I did not display any offense or anger; I just laid out the facts. I ended by telling him that I found his statement, especially from a fellow president, to be a bit nasty.

He responded that I should not get offended and angry and then proceeded to insult our hotel, Rehoboth Beach and the last two Grand Invitationals which were hosted by chapters in Detroit and Arizona. His response was ten paragraphs about how we were doing this wrong and that wrong. Did I mention, they have never hosted an event!?! He ended with this: “I am a tough Native New Yorker and I am right to the point. It works!! Trust me!” (copied directly with no change in punctuation).

My response was just the following: “I was not offended or angry. I am from the South, and we are not condescending and nasty. Trust me. It works.”

Thank God, I’m a Southerner!

If you are offended by what I just wrote, buy my book, The Gay Jew in the Trailer Park; it is available on Amazon Kindle by clicking here. Hard copy release in September.

The World's Greatest Chest Model

No one, and I mean no one, has tried harder to get his picture in any publication more than I have, yet, I never appear anywhere. I am tempted to get a billboard that says, “Appearing Nightly in a Trailer Park in Jessup, the One, the Only …”

I am beginning to feel like Jeannie. She could not be photographed, so a mannequin stood in for her when she married Major Anthony Nelson.

There are those people whose pictures appear all the time in the newspaper, magazines, local flyers, etc. No matter where they go, a photographer is always present. We have a local rag called MW (Metropolitan Weekly). Every week, they have a spread of pictures showing who was at this A-list event and that A-list event – with everyone dressed in tuxes and holding cocktails. Every week, I see the same goddamn faces. I can actually document how people have aged since I moved to the area fifteen years ago. Some, not so well. There is one person who has had a sex change, and I have watched the transformation totally in the pages of MW.

Since I don’t go to or get invited to A-list events, I have no chance in hell of appearing in MW’s weekly spread.

Every year after Capital Pride, they have spreads in MW’s print and online versions of every picture they took during the parade and at the festival. Since moving here, I have participated in the Pride Parade on a float six times, and I walked between two antique cars handing out beads two years ago. I participated in the festival in one way or another for the first twelve years I lived here. Photographers would come around and take my picture, but get this. Whatever pictures were taken of me were never posted or published!

No pictures of our entire Straight Eights Car Club contingent were published! I take full responsibility. Had I not participated in the parade …

When I was in my twenties, I was constantly told I should be a model. I never pursued modeling because my portfolio would have been all blank pages. Maybe I could have been a ghost model?

My brother appears in the newspaper all the time in ads and in spreads about his business.

I must confess that I did appear in the newspaper a long, long time ago in a land far, far away. The summer of 1969, a reporter and photographer from The Daily Press, both of whom were friends of my mother’s, came to our house to take pictures of me and interview my mother about my beginning first grade that fall. I appeared in a two-page spread with a girl who was also in my class. The first day of school, Mrs. Diggs (the greatest first grade teacher of all time) put the newspaper spreads on the bulletin board for everyone to see. I was so proud.

But, my mother must have made a deal with the devil because that would be the last time anyone would publish my picture.

Once when appearing in a musical review, a photographer and reporter were sent to cover the rehearsals. The director decided that the three of us who were performing “Money” from Cabaret should be the subject of the photo spread. There I stood with these two women on either side of me. All of us were in long sleeve black tops with gold coins sewn onto our costumes. I was finally going to appear in the newspaper.

I was so excited when someone called to tell me that the article and picture were published the following day. I immediately opened my paper, and what did I see? The two women who were in the number with me; their faces were in front of a black backdrop with coins sewn onto the fabric. That backdrop was my chest. My head was cropped from the picture. Seriously!

I was so mad because those two women were the most annoying prima donnas I had ever met.

Whom does a Jew have to blow around here to get one goddamn picture in the newspaper?

A few years after I moved to Washington, DC, I was on the board of Bet Mishpachah, and with my good friend, Ellen, we planned the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the synagogue. A reporter and photographer from the Washington Blade, a gay newspaper, came to the event to interview us. They took quite a few pictures. The following week, the article was published with one picture of everyone doing the “Electric Slide.” I was completely cropped out from the left side of the picture. Seriously!

As I have mentioned ad nauseam over the last few weeks, I participated in the Hero Rush obstacle course benefitting fallen firefighters. Before the race, I bought a picture package from a professional sports photography company. I figured that since the pictures were for personal use and not publication, I would have a chance to have some photographs to share after the event. Five days after I took first place in Men 45+ (I cannot stop mentioning that), I was supposed to get an email telling me my package was ready for download.

On the Hero Rush Facebook page, I managed to find three pictures of me that their staff had taken. I immediately downloaded them even though I look terrible in all of them.

Five days went by, and I heard nothing. Two weeks later, I received the following email:

“Hi, what is your full name and bib number? We cannot seem to locate any pictures of you?”

My response:

“Look for the two snotty women running in front of a sweaty dark green backdrop. That backdrop would be my chest.”

I clearly should have been a chest model.

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I Cannot Run in Flats

Have you ever watched a baby learning how to walk? They run first. Actually, they run, then fall, then get up, then run. It is easier to balance yourself when you are moving quickly, which babies figure out immediately.

Have you ever watched a man try to walk in heels for the first time? They go slowly. The take a step, they whine, take another step, they whine. Why does it take them so long to realize running in heels is much easier than walking in them? They call them high heel races for a reason! A race is a blast. A high heel walk would be annoying with all that whining – like watching a bunch of very slow cats.

You heard it here first. Walk quickly in your heels, and you will be ever so graceful, which brings me to this:

In my ongoing quest to do crazy shit before I turn fifty, I decided to do one of those extreme obstacle courses that have become popular in the last few years. As a matter of fact, they are so popular that you need to sign up for one at least six months in advance.

A few of my gay friends in other parts of the country have completed these, and they said they were a blast. Everyone was muddy and shirtless and looking all smoky and hot. However, I couldn’t get one gay friend around here to do one with me; they wouldn’t even come and watch.

As I searched for an extreme obstacle course with any open slots, I came across a new one called Hero Rush, benefitting fallen firefighters. They had openings, so I signed up as a VIP (you get better parking), competing in the Men45+ category. The race was to take place on April 28, so I figured the temperature would be hot enough for good eye candy while I lay flat on my back after falling off a wall or something.

The day was approaching, and the weather was not looking too good. At the beginning of the week, they were calling for temperatures in the sixties, by the end, in the fifties, and the day of, cloudy and in the forties. Well, that discourage me from falling on my back and watching the hotties fly by.

With this being the first of the first for this particular event, I figured they would have some kinks to work out, but I decided to go with the flow. I arrived an hour early as instructed, and they had postponed the first wave as only ten people showed up, so they combined it with our wave (they call each group a wave), and at 9:00 am, the bell rang and we were off. It was actually a 911 call since this course was designed by insane firefighters, who moonlighted as serial killers.

The first obstacle was a flight of stairs with no railing then you grabbed onto and slid down a pole. I have done a lot of things with poles over the years, but I never slid down one. Once you did that and crossed a black rubber strip, your time began. All of us wore chips like runaway dogs, so our owners could find us, but for the record, even Esmeralda is not crazy enough to try something like this.

There were obstacles that involved hopping over walls, crawling through smoky mazes in the dark, dragging dummies through tunnels and pulling hoses over walls. Photographers were supposed to be stationed at each of the nineteen obstacles, but I found out later there were only six photographers. A girl needs her photo op.

What I did not realize was the amount of running involved – and not on pavement, but through woods and fields and on rutted pathways. A third of the way in, I twisted my ankle.

Honey, I just can’t run in flats!

Being the Neanderthal that I am, I just put some dirt on it and walked it off. The only problem I had was the zip line. Apparently, they had a weight limit and did not tell anyone. You can bet that whenever there is a weight limit, I am over it. I grabbed onto the zip line, and down I went – straight down! I didn’t even zip! I thought, “That can’t be good.”

Then I twisted my ankle again. I put more dirt on it and walked it off.

Toward the end, you first wade waist-deep in a pool of green muck that is supposed to be like hazardous waste. Since when do firefighters wade through waist-deep green muck?

The last stunt was wading through ice cold water (did I tell you it was forty degrees outside) while a bunch of kids spray fire hoses on you. Do you know how much pressure comes out of a fire hose? I went under, and when I came up, my hair was a mess. I didn’t even want to know how my face looked. I did take a mental picture of every one of those brats (a Sephardic curse would be in their futures).

Once extricated from the pool, you run some more then hop over three lines of fire – real fire, but you are soaking wet and freezing, so catching on fire would have been the least of my problems.

I finally saw a photographer at the end.

I actually enjoyed it, and believe it or not, would do another one, but next time in July!

After changing in the men's tent alongside a rather attractive Jewish straight man in his thirties who was behind me the whole time and who was a delightful conversationalist – so my demographic, I walked the grounds and went to the food pavilion. I ordered two hot dogs. I figured no one knew me here, so who was going to look down on my plate. It was 10:30 am.

While scarfing down my post-obstacle treat with a root beer, I heard the following from two guys at another table who had just finished the race:

“After Cobalt, we went to Nellie’s for a drink, but no one was there.”

“Were you able to get the Lady Ga Ga tickets?”

I found my gays!

I walked over and introduced myself and noted that we may be the only three members of the family there.

Now that I had found my gays and one straight Jewish man, all I needed was a middle-aged yeanta, and my audience would have been complete!

Later that day, I found out the first place finisher in the race was a nice Jewish boy in his twenties.

In case you were wondering, or if you weren’t, I am going to tell you anyway. My score was #1 in the men45+ at Hero Rush (I think I was the only one over 45, but that is just between us girls). Official Finish: 00:48:03.4; Overall: 17; Men: 16; M45+: 1.

Not bad for an alta cocker Gay Jew living in a trailer park.

And yes, I did sprain my ankle. Battle scars are hot.

If you like watching hotties while you lie on the ground follow me, join me, tell Andy Cohen I need my own reality show!

The Great Radish Incident of 1974

Now that spring is here, aaaaa …… chooooooooo!

Give me a second.

I have to share something. When I sneeze, the windows rattle, car alarms go off, and the United States Geological Survey alerts the public. I don’t sneeze once. I sneeze at least a dozen times. There are times when I check my Kleenex for gray matter. I once gave myself a concussion during a sneezing fit; seriously I had to go for a cat scan. They didn’t find anything. Laugh amongst yourselves.

Here is the strange part, if I scream goddammit or even better, mumble it when I stub my toe, Esmeralda immediately stops what she is doing and hides under the bed. If I sneeze, she just looks at me. Maybe she doesn’t care because she sneezes as much as I do, which as you know is why she got the name Esmeralda. I still check for unicorns and Mother Goose every time she sneezes. Only the gays will get that one.

Where was I? Oh yes, spring.

Who knew that this lifelong apartment dweller would have a knack for landscape design? Or so, my neighbors tell me. I have put in a walkway on either side of my house and had a truckload of mulch delivered, which I had to share with my neighbors, for how much shit can one man shovel – apparently, a truckload. I have planted bushes and flowers, color coordinated my pots of various and lovely designs, made a brick platform for my grill, seeded and watered my lawn, and created a pebble garden around my deck.

I need an intervention because every time I see a garden shop, I have to stop and shop!

Now, the best part is that for the first time since Betty Ford was found passed out under a sofa in the Blue Room, I can grow my own vegetables and make Michelle Obama proud as I fight Gay Jewish obesity. If you didn’t know, Gay Jewish obesity is quite the epidemic. Whitefish salad can take its toll on a girl’s figure.

Due to a large groundhog population in my mobile home community, we are advised to grow vegetables on our decks with screens around them or the ground hogs will be eating fresh tossed salads daily and farting nightly.

I did make one mistake, telling a member of my family that I had planted vegetables in my deck garden. If there is one thing my family loves to do it is remind you of every mistake you made from the time you pooped your first Pampers to the second before the conversation started. I was constantly reminded of how when I was five years old, I dented all my Matchbox cars, so they would look as if they had been in the Demolition Derby. Apparently, I am the reason we are not millionaires because the twenty or so cars I damaged would have been worth a fortune someday. For the record, I go to automotive swap meets all the time, and the most you will get for a Matchbox car is $15. So, considering I damaged maybe twenty cars, I owe my family $300.

Funny thing about my family. When I would point out their financial mistakes, they would get angry. For example, my mother used my penny collection to pay the newspaper boy when I was out playing football. There were over 300 coins in that collection. I had an Indian Head Penny that today is worth about $1,600. Somewhere there is a former newspaper boy driving a Cadillac on my dime … I mean penny. But God forbid, I should remind her of that. Somehow, I was portrayed as the bad guy for bringing it up.

So, I told my brother about my string beans and tomatoes that finally sprang up for spring, and being the Stern that he is, he asked if I was growing radishes. Leave it to my only living relative to remind me of the Great Radish Incident of 1974.

Oh my God.

Here is what happened. While my family was not known for having the best landscaped lawn. OK, that is putting it mildly. Our yard was designed by Lilly Munster, and my mother’s indoor houseplants were from the Morticia Addams collection. For a couple of summers, we attempted gardening. I remember one snotty neighbor, obviously a gentile because he had one of those huge gardens, and the goyim are really good at gardening (remember, God kicked us out of the garden to go to medical school – or Miami, I forget which), saying, “Oh look at your Victory Garden.”

Anyway, we grew green peppers, which I hate, cherry tomatoes, which my brother would eat off the vine every time one ripened, and radishes. One day, while watering the garden, I decided that the radishes were too close together, so I transplanted them, so they would be spaced properly. This might be when my OCD started. I had them perfectly spaced, but unfortunately, they died. Who knew you can’t transplant radishes.

Well, you’d have thought I took the magic beans and bought a donkey or was it the other way around?

The entire family was on my case because we had no radishes. Radishes! Who the fuck needs radishes? They were goddam radishes! I was eleven years old. Eleven-year-olds do stupid things, and in my case, try on his mother’s wedding dress, too. Come to think of it, if I ever get to use a time machine, I am going back to the summer of 1974 and transplant the radishes again, but this time while wearing her wedding dress. Then at least it will be worth mentioning for the next thirty-eight years!

When you think about it, I went from football practice to my secret drag show? I just got a brilliant idea – Drag Football!

Back to the current story …

One thing I always heard was, “You can dish it out, but you can’t take it.” For the record, no one in my family could take it, and I had to take it every time anyone mentioned gardening or a salad. When going out to eat with anyone in my family, I prayed there would be no radishes on the salad.

I decided at that point after the Great Radish Incident of 1974 never to attempt gardening in the presence of relatives again.

While we are pointing out gardening disasters, let me relay one from Dutch Village the summer my brother and I lived together. We had a small patch of grass behind our apartment that abutted the Monastery of the Poor Clairs. Did you know they take a vow of silence and only talk for twenty minutes a year? I couldn’t do that for an hour.

My brother decided to grow tomatoes. Our neighbor had planted elephant ears in her plot. I don’t know who went crazy with the fertilizer, but somehow the elephant ears were actually the size of elephant ears, and my brother’s tomato plants grew to more than seven feet tall! The tomatoes were the size of soccer balls. Every night I had a dream like the episode of Lost in Space when they landed on the planet where the plants had feelings and would scream if you picked an apple or a flower. I wouldn’t go out the back door for fear of being attacked by either the elephant ears or one of my brother’s steroid-laden tomato plants.

I think I did eat one of the tomatoes, which may explain why I was six-three at the beginning of that summer and two inches taller at the end, and I was twenty three years old at the time!

Of course, I have never mentioned the gargantuan tomatoes to my brother since then because I didn’t see a reason to dwell on the past … until now.

And for the record, I still love my brother, and I did not plant radishes. After all, I don’t have time to transplant them into neat little rows perfectly spaced apart, and I know if I planted them, for some reason that only my therapist can explain, I would.

If you love radishes as much as I do, follow me, email me, get on my list.

Suffering Happily

Christian holidays are festive and filled with fun activities and sweet food like jelly beans, chocolate bunnies and fruit cake. Jewish holidays are filled with suffering and food that sits in your gut for days. Hanukah may be the exception, but then again, made correctly, latkes can constipate you halfway to Purim. Even though Purim is festive, there is a fast involved. With every Jewish holiday (and we have many; look at a Jewish calendar), there is always fasting.

“I can’t make it to work today; it’s the Fast of Gedaliah.”

Do you know how many people have converted to Judaism just to get more days off? Jews for Jesus only work three weeks a year!

But, you gotta give it to the Goyim. They have two High Holy Days. Christmas and Easter. Both are marked by sales and pagan traditions. I will never get the Goyim. They celebrate the birth of the Messiah by waiting in line at Best Buy for twenty hours for an iPod XIV that they wrap and put under a tree they cut down and put inside the house. They celebrate the resurrection by chasing colored eggs all over a lawn, while being chased by a giant bunny, then wear fancy hats in a parade down Fifth Avenue.

By the way, I love Easter Parade with Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Ann Miller. Big surprise, huh?

The only thing that drives me crazy is everyone wishing me a Happy Easter. This year, I responded with Happy Passover! I confused a few of my fellow Trailer Parkers.

When I lived in Mount Pleasant, which is neither a mount nor pleasant – discuss, we had a neighbor I called “Happy Holiday”; her real name was Chicken. I am not making that up. She would wish you a happy whatever until the next holiday. So, Merry Christmas through New Year’s, Happy New Year through Martin Luther King Day, Happy Martin Luther King Day through President’s Day, you get it. I would wish her the Jewish holidays in the same manner, but with so many holidays, I would get mixed up.

Is it Happy Tish B’Av or Merry Tu Bishvat? Oy, this is giving me a headache.

The irony is many Jews celebrate Christmas and Easter – at least the gift giving and chomping ears off bunnies part, but when was the last time you heard Bubba say to Dookey, “What’cha doing for Shavuot?”

For almost five decades, I have been explaining Jewish holidays to my gentile friends. So, for the last time:

“They tried to kill us; they didn’t; let’s eat.”

Of all the Jewish holidays, one makes you suffer for so long that you have to “count the omer” until your next bowel movement, and it is my favorite holiday of all! Yes, Passover or Pesach to those of the Hebrew persuasion.

For eight days, we get to eat more tasteless constipating foods than at any other time on the Hebrew calendar, and I love it. Here’s why. The holiday starts with a massive spring cleaning, and my inner Joan Crawford comes out in full force. “I am not made at you; I’m mad at the Chametz!”

My mother loved Passover; my father hated it. Then again, he didn’t like anything to do with Judaism, or Jews, or being Jewish. Yes, he was Jewish – very Jewish.

On Yom Kippur at around 10:00 am in the morning, he would start kvetching about going without food and being forced to suffer needlessly. Seriously? You are only skipping two meals. Oy Vay. On the second day of Passover, he would kvetch about how the matzah was tearing up his stomach. At my bar mitzvah, he complained that the rabbi’s sermon was too long and that I should have stopped at one Torah portion and chanted an abbreviated version of my Haftorah.

And once, he complained that my name was too Jewish.

Our Passover Seders ranged from the drama filled small family affairs with just Grandma in attendance to the free-for-alls we would have at Aunt Devera’s house. I love my Aunt Devera, but those services were so non-Sederlike. Uncle Seymour would scream at his sons, Aunt Anita would spill a glass of wine then have a meltdown, my father would make some off color joke that made no sense, Mother would compete for center of attention, and Aunt Flossie and I would roll our eyes at everyone else. The highlight was Rosalee’s homemade gefilte fish. It was fried, and the fish was unidentifiable. Even Aunt Anita’s cat turned up its nose at those smelly, crusted fish balls. To this day, I don’t know what she put in her gefilte fish, and I don’t want to know for fear of finding out I ate skate or viperfish.

My brother and I reached a point where we refused to go anymore because we found the whole evening to be sacrilegious. Can you imagine your children complaining because a Passover Seder is not traditional enough?

The last holiday I spent with my mother was Passover, and I led the service for the first time. I had to balance it between traditional and quick because Dad or Arnold the Gentile-Wannabe was there as well. It was the least drama-filled Passover of my life, and I think it was because we knew it would be my mother’s last one.

What came next was the strangest Passover I ever led. I was dating Blond Frankenstein, and it turned out one of his Jewish friends had never been to a Passover Seder, so I invited him and six other people. I was one of two Jews at the table. The service and food, if I say so myself, were nice, but they drank seven bottles of Manischewitz Blackberry wine! The next day, all of them complained they had diarrhea. I responded, “We don’t drink Mainschewitz by the bottle!” I don’t remember one full bottle being consumed at a Seder, let alone six.

Jackie Mason says gentile homes have no cockroaches because there is no food. How much gin can a cockroach drink?

Later, a new tradition started with rotating Passovers with my friend Ed with various friends and family, mostly his, rotating in and out. The part formerly played by Grandma was now being played by his sister Nancy, and I’ll let Ed talk about Nancy in his blog (DCXPAT). An entire treatise could be devoted to stories of Nancy’s idiosyncrasies. I like Nancy, but then again, I am not related to her.

Our services were quick but covered all the important parts, and we always enjoyed ourselves. Last year, Ed moved to Palms Springs. Take all the overly tanned, wrinkled up Jews in Boca, transform them into overly-tanned, wrinkled up Gays, remove the humidity, and you have Palm Springs. He is going to kill me for that one. I couldn’t help myself.

So, now I needed a new tradition. Do I host? Do I participate in the synagogue Seder-match (a system I created ten years ago that the Rabbi scoffed at but is still operational). But, I also longed for a more traditional Passover Seder rather than the abbreviated edition.

Then I received an invitation from my good friend, Allan. I accepted. He is one of my favorite people, and I knew it would be a good and traditional Passover Seder.

Not only was the service perfect, the company and the food were just as wonderful. But, the best part of all was that for perhaps the last time in my life, I was the youngest at the table, and I wasn’t at a nursing home. I couldn’t believe it. That meant I would get to read the four questions and open the door for Elijah.

I never felt so young and beautiful in my life! Thank you, Allan.

Happy Passover, Everyone!

Do you have four questions, ask me, get on my list, follow me!